The attribute

The attribute is a secondary part of the sentence modifying a part of the sentence expressed by a noun, a substantivized pronoun, a cardinal numeral, and any substantivized word, and characterizing the thing named by these words as to its quality or property. The attribute can either precede or follow the noun it modifies. Accordingly we use terms prepositive and postpositive attribute. The position of an attribute with respect to its head-word depends partly on the morphological peculiarities of the attribute itself, and partly on stylistic factors. The size of the prepositive attributive phrase can be large in ME. Whatever is included between the article and the noun, is apprehended as an attribute.

 The paradigm of these linguistic means is rather manifold. We find here:

1. adjectives: the new house; a valuable thing; 2) nouns in the Possessive Case: my brother's book; 3) noun-adjunct groups (N + N): world peace, spring time; 4) prepositional noun-groups: the daughter of my friend 5) pronouns (possessive, demonstrative, indefinite): my joy, such flowers, every morning, a friend of his, little time; 6) infinitives and infinitival groups: an example to follow, a thing to do; 7) gerunds and participles: (a) walking distance, swimming suit; (b) a smiling face, a singing bird; 8) numerals: two friends, the first task; 9) words of the category of state: faces alight with happiness;10) idiomatic phrases: a love of a child, a jewel of a nature, etc.

28)9.6. Word order in English.

The term ''word order” is a singularly unhappy one, as it is based on a confusion of two distinct levels of language structure: the level of phrases and that of the sentence. To approach this problem from a viewpoint doing justice to modern linguistic theory, we should carefully distinguish between two sets of phenomena: the order of words within a phrase and the order of parts of the sentence within a sentence. Here we are again confronted with the problem of the attribute: if the attribute is a secondary part of the sentence, its place falls under the heading "order of the parts of the sentence”; if, on the other hand the attribute is part, not of a sentence, but of a phrase, its place with reference to its head word must be considered within the theory of the phrase and its parts. Since this question has not been settled yet, we may consider the place of the attribute in this chapter.

All other questions ought to be discussed under the heading "order of sentence parts", but as it is hardly possible to introduce-a change and to dismiss a term so firmly established, we will keep the term "word order", bearing in mind that it is quite conventional: what we shall discuss is the order of the parts of the sentence.

The English language is characterized by a rigid word order in accordance with which the subject of declarative sentences, as a rule, precedes the predicate. This is the so-called direct word order, e.g. The assistant greeted the professor.

Any deviation from the rigid word order is termed inversion, e.g. Often has he recollected the glorious days of the Civil War.

The direct object is usually placed after the verb unless the indirect object precedes it, e.g. He offered me his help. Sometimes the object is pushed to the front of the sentence, it occurs when:

1. The direct object is an interrogative word, which is naturally placed at the head of the sentence to form a special question, e.g. What did you do?

2. The object is separated from its verb by some other parts of the sentence – adverbial complements, prepositional objects – when it is intentionally placed at the end of the sentence for the sake of emphasis, logical stress, e.g. And unexpectedly he saw against the background of the forest two approaching figures.

The indirect object cannot be used in the sentence without the direct object. The indirect object is regularly put before the direct object. The prepositional objects can be put at the head of the sentence for the sake of emphasis.

Occasionally the prepositional object is placed before the direct object (in to-phrases).

The position of adverbial modifiers in the sentence is known to be comparatively more free that that of other parts.

Those which are most closely linked with the part of the sentence they modify are the ones that denote the frequency or the property of an action. They come between the subject and the predicate, or even inside the predicate if it consists of two words-an auxiliary and a notional verb, or two elements of a compound predicate.

The more usual position of the adverbial modifiers of time and place is, however, outside the group “subject+predicate+object”, that is, either before or after it. If it contains the main new things to be conveyed, this adverbial modifier will have to come at the end of the sentence. The adverbial modifier of time can go at the beginning of the sentence. An adverbial modifier can also come in between two components of the predicate.

The position of an attribute before or after it’s head word largely depends on its morphological type. An attribute consisting of a prepositional phrase can only come after its head word. As to adjectival attributes, their usual position is before their headword, but in some case they follow it. An attribute expressed by an adverb may come before its headword.

The position of direct address and parentheses of the sentence is probably more free that that of all other parts. A direct address can come in almost anywhere in the sentence. Some types of parentheses usually come in between two constituent parts of the predicate. Parentheses may also refer to one part of the sentence only, and is then bound to come before that part.

If a particle belongs to a noun connected to a noun connected with a preposition, the particle will come between the preposition and the noun. Sometimes a particle refers to the word of phrase immediately preceding it. This can only happen if the particle stands at the end of the sentence or at least at the end of a section of the sentence marked by a pause in oral speech and by a comma or other punctuation mark in writing. This usage seems to be restricted to more or less official style. Sometimes it comes before the predicate or between two elements of the predicate, while it refers to some secondary part of the sentence standing further ahead. In these cases, then, the position of the particle is determined, not by it’s semantic ties, but by the structure of the sentence.

On the whole, the problem of word order proves to be a highly complex one, requiring great care and subtlety in the handling. Different factors have something to do with determining the place of one part of a sentence or another.