Мороховская э.Я. Chapter XI general characteristics of predicative units

The predicative units of language are directly related to the enti­ties of concept because they verbalize human thought and represent lingually the main predicative form of thought, i.e. the proposition. Taking into consideration the interaction of objective and subjective factors in language and the dialectical unity of language and thought the predicative units of language must be considered as the indirect reflections of objective situations, as the reflections of the general in­terrelation of everything in nature and society. But linguistic predica­tive units should not be identified with their conceptual correlatives since these pertain to the different realities, to lingual and conceptual respectively. Due to logicism which pervaded grammar for centuries, the sentence was unjustly identified with the proposition. The dialecti­cal unity of language and thought presupposes the correlation of the predicative units of language with the predicative forms of thought as parts and counterparts of the dialectical unity. It is because of this unity that the analysis of the predicative units of language would be inefficient without any reference to the peculiarities of the forms of thought with which the given units correlate and which they represent lingually.

The formation of the propositions and correlatively of predicative" units in the process of verbal thinking reflects the development of thought and the establishment of the predicative relations between the constituting parts of the units. The propositions with their predicative relations embody themselves in the bases of lingual predicative units. The prepositional basis (пропозициональная база) seems to be univer­sal due to its ability to represent the universal proposition. It follows that all languages have predicative units the nucleus or the kernel of which is identified in terms of universal lingual categories.

The kernel of the predicative unit is an exocentric construction built of universal categories. The members of the kernel (prepositional* ba­sis) can be conventionally termed the "subjector" and the "predicator". The terms are chosen on purpose to distinguish linguistic notions from their logical correlatives: the subjector is, in fact, the linguistic repre­sentation of the logical subject and the predicator, respectively, re­presents the logical predicate. The relations between the constituents of the propositional basis are predicative relations correlating with the corresponding relations in the proposition.

The triangle pattern works here as usual to illustrate the correlativity of objective — conceptual — lingual facts (see p. 173).

Due to the correlation between propositions and propositional bases the typology of propositions can be extrapolated onto their linguistic counterparts. It is beyond our competence to dwell upon the typology of logical forms but the recognition of the actional propositions versus

1₇o

attributional ones is out of the question because they underlie the two main basic structures of predicative units: NV and N is A.

Predicative units in English are of different linguistic status: words, word-groups, clauses, sentences, etc. It is notable that all of them em­body propositions in their prepositional bases.