Материалы представленные на сайте исключительно с целью ознакомления пользователям Интернета и не преследуют коммерческих целей или нарушение авторских прав.
© 2018 - 2024
35. The structural classification of sentences. The compound sentence.
36. The structural classification of sentences. The complex sentence.
The Composite Sentence
The composite sentence is a polypredicative syntactic unit composed from two or more clauses (analogous in their syntactic structures to simple sentences) which constitute a syntactic, semantic and communicative whole.
The composite sentence is not a mere combination of simple sentences but it is a qualitatively new syntactic unit of a higher syntactic sublevel.
The composite sentence has (a) semantic, (b) structural and (c) communicative peculiarities.
(a) It denotes more than one situation of reality and relations between them.
(b) There are two or more predicative lines.
(c) Clauses constituting a composite sentence lose their independent status, and the communicative status of the resultative composite sentence is established on the basis of the clause which has the status of the principal clause.
It is characterized by several levels of actual sentence division. The first level is drawn between the clauses. And the order of clauses follows the rule: the clause that comes first is the theme; the clause that comes last presents the rheme.
Besides, each clause in the structure of the composite sentence has its own level of actual sentence division.
According to the basic semantic difference in the relations between clauses, that of coordination / subordination, the composite sentence falls into two types: compound and complex.
| The composite sentence | ||
| ↓ | ↓ | |
| Compound | Complex | |
| Coordination reflects the most general types of logical relations between situations and events: conjunction, disjunction, juxtaposition, cause and consequence. | Subordination reflects various relations of dependence between events: condition, result, cause, etc. |
The meaning of coordination / subordination is manifested by special words (conjunctions, conjunctive adverbs, and pronouns) which perform a double function: they connect the clauses into one whole and specify the type of semantic relations between clauses.
1. The Compound sentence is a syntactic unit which consists of two or more clauses joined together on the basis of coordinate relations.
There exist 4 types of semantic relations between clauses:
· copulative
· adversative
· disjunctive
· causative-consecutive.
2. The Complex sentence is a polypredicative syntactic structure that includes two or more clauses with subordinate relations between them.
The complex sentence reflects the dependence between the events.
There exist different classifications of complex sentences.
On the basis of similarity of functions of parts of the sentence it is possible to differentiate between: subject, predicative, object, attributive and adverbial clauses.
On the basis of the morphological criterion it is possible to differentiate between: noun, verbal, adjectival and adverbial clauses.
1. THE DEFINITION OF THE PHRASE
The largest syntactic units – sentences – can be decomposed into smaller units: word-combinations (or word-groups, word-clusters, or phrases). So phrases can be considered constituents of a sentence. They can be also viewed upon as combinations built outside a sentence (each grammatical class has its own combinatorial properties, so they can form language units larger than a word).
There are different definitions of the phrase, but there is not any on which scientists were unanimous.
Traditionally we define a phrase as a cluster of words connected in accordance with a certain morphological and syntactic pattern.
B. Ilyish defines a phrase as ‘every combination of two or more words that is a grammatical unit but is not an analytical form of some words’ (Ilyish, p. 171).
Cf. has been coming is not a phrase but a form of a word.
There are two specific features of the phrase:
1. It is a combination of two or more notional words, from which it follows that a combination of a notional word with a functional word is not a phrase, but a syntactic form of word (e. g. in the yard).
2. The phrase is basically different from the sentence. The principal difference between the phrase and the sentence lies in the fact that the sentence is a unit of communication whereas the phrase is not.
The phrase names some phenomena thus performing the naming function (the word also performs the naming function). There are a lot of phrases which are equivalent to words: e. g. a new born child – a baby, an anmarried man – a bachelor, an unnaturally small person – a dwarf, a very cheap and lucky buy – a steal, a very beautiful girl – a stopper, etc.
2. CLASSIFICATION OF PHRASES
There are different approaches to classification of phrases.
Phrases can be classified morphologically according to the classes of words the elements of a phrase belong to. Thus, phrases fall into:
1) nominal, or substantive
e. g. a silver spoon, room at the top, three chapters
2) verbal
e. g. to run quickly, to live happily, to build castles
3) adjectival
e. g. exceedingly greedy, stone silent
4) adverbial
e. g. too seldom, very briefly.
This principal of classifying phrases is most widely spread.
The structural, or formal, classification is based on the presence or absence of a head word in the phrase. It was worked out by one of the well-known linguists who made his contribution to the theory of a phrase – the American scientist L. Bloomflied (the 30-s, this century). His understanding of a phrase is very wide. According to his point of view any syntactically organized group can be treated as a phrase in the aspect of its linear structure. Thus he divided all phrases into 1) endocentric (headed); 2) exocentric (non-headed).
Head is a lexical unit around which a phrase is built.
The head of a phrase has two distinctive features. First, this element is always present in the phrase. Second, the meaning associated with the phrase is the meaning inherent to the head.
The main feature of endocentric phrases is that one or another constituent can function instead of the whole combination, in other words an endocentric group has the same position as its head-word.
e.g. poor John is endocentric because the element John can substitute the whole combination poor John in Poor John ran away. It will look like John ran away.
It is true with the phrase Tom and Mary as Tom and Mary ran away can be substituted for Tom ran away and Mary ran away.
In exocentric phrases the substitution of the part for the whole is impossible as the distribution of an exocentric group differs from the distribution of its components. In the sentence I like reading books the combination reading books is endocentric. One can say I like reading. In contrast I like is exocentric, it has no head, and the attempts to substitute the part for the whole will give the following: I reading books, like reading books. Neither makes sense.
Endocentric and exocentric groups according to the position of the head-expression are further classified into:
Endocentric:
1) tail-head expressions: the centre stands at the end of the combination;
1a) the head is a noun (noun-headed phrases): e. g. a nice apple;
1b) the head is a verb (verb-headed phrases): e. g. may come, may have come, may possibly come.
2) head-tail expressions;
2a) noun-phrases: e. g. funds available to all, news strange enough, a lemon impossible to eat;
2b) verbal-headed phrases: infinitive, -ing-form: e. g. reading books.
Exocentric :
1) prepositional phrases
P + N
P + Pron;
2) subject-predicate groups
e. g. She is reading.
The semantic classification is based on the meaning of the head-word which serves to unite words derived from the same root (to love books, love for books, a lover of books, a book lover, loving books).
A classification of phrases may be complex, based on several principles.
The development of generative and semantic syntax brought about one more approach to the classification of phrases based on their derivational history. In this classification all phrases fall into two large classes: primary, or non-derivational and secondary, or derivational.
Primary phrases are those which are not derived from sentences, they are not results of transformation of sentences. Primary phrases can be classified on the morphological principle into verbal, adjectival, adverbial, pronominal and partially substantive. The primary substantive phrases include:
a) noun phrases which consist of a determiner and a noun
e. g. every child, any boy, three books etc.
b) noun phrases which consist of a noun and an adjective with an evaluative, identifying or an intensifying meaning
e. g. dear friend, old Jolyon, a mere child, a perfect idiot.
Such phrases are not derived from sentences which is easily verified by the fact that they cannot be used in the position of predicatives, e. g. *the child is mere, *the idiot is perfect.
Secondary phrases are phrases derived from sentences by means of the syntactic process of nominalization and correlated structurally and semantically with the sentences from which they are derived.
Nominalization is defined as a process of changing a sentence into a form that can appear in the position of NP in another sentence.
e. g. He is ill → His being ill → His illness → I did not know about his being ill (his illness).
Secondary, or derivational phrases fall into two groups according to the degree of nominalization: completely nominalized and partially nominalized.
Completely nominalized phrases are those in which the verb of the basic sentence is deleted.
e. g. The smile is sweet → a sweet smile, the sweetness of the smile;
The wall is of stone → a stone wall.
Partially nominalized phrases include infinitival, gerundial and participial structures.
e. g. You are wise → to be wise → being wise. It’s easy for you to be wise. I rely on your being wise in this situation.
2. SYNTACTIC TIES WITHIN PHRASES.
In the process of building a phrase the components of a phrase are not just put together but the relations between them are based on certain types of grammatical means characteristic of a particular language.
There are 4 grammatical means of expressing syntactic relations between the components of a phrase, types of syntactic ties:
1) concord (agreement);
2) government;
3) adjoinment (примыкание); enclosure (рамочная конструкция, замыкание)
4) connection (the arrangement of ).
The distribution and significance of these four types varies across languages and depends on the type of the language. In inflectional languages with highly developed morphology the most important role is played by agreement and government.
Concord is such a way to connect words when the leading element influences the form of the dependent word (and the latter has the same form).
e. g. in Russian adjectives agree with nouns (in A + N combinations) in number, gender, case.
But this is not mere copying of the form of the head-word by the subordinate word. Both express the same meaning by means of the same forms of the connected words.
Compare in Russian: голубой вагон , голубая чашка , голубое небо , голубые дали or in German: ein blaues Kleid, ein blauer Wagen, eine blaue Tasse.
There exist the following cases of agreement in English:
a) between the head-word and its attribute
The sphere of usage is limited: there is no agreement in gender or case, only in number between ‘a demonstrative pronoun (this, that) + a noun’, and ‘the indefinite article + a noun’.
b) between the subject and the predicate
Some scholars, professor Ilyish for one, think that in English in contrast with Russian there is no agreement between subjects and predicates. The reason for this is that in English it is possible to say ‘My family is small’ and ‘My family are not potato-eaters’. The fact that these sentences exist side by side proves that there is no agreement in English.
Government is such a way to connect words when the form of the head-word requires a certain form of the subordinate word, but these forms do not coincide (this is the main difference between agreement and government).
The only case that can be called government in English is the use of the objective case of personal pronouns and of the pronoun who when they follow a verb or a preposition.
e. g. I see him; to him.
Some scientists say that government can not be applied to the form whom as it is often substituted by the form who in sentences like Who(m) were you talking to? There is no government with nouns in English. Government is typical of languages with the developed case system.
Cf. Russ: Я вижу мальчика.
E: I see the / a boy.
In Russian there are cases of the so-called free use of some forms.
Cf. Я вижу смысл (вин.пад.)
Я не вижу смысла (род.пад.)
Он выпил воду / воды (depends on the context).
The difference between the agreement and government consists in the following: in the case of agreement the subordinate word has the same grammatical forms(s) as the subordinating word. In the case of government the form of the subordinate form is not the same as that of the subordinate word, but it is determined by the subordinate word.
Language as a system presents an integral whole in which everything is interconnected and interdependent, so nothing can happen in one place without echoing in another. The loss of the significance of agreement and government as the grammatical means of expressing syntactic relations between the components of a phrase which was the result of the loss of inflections was compensated by the growing significance of the two other means: adjoining and connection.
Adjoining and connection became the leading grammatical means of expressing syntactic relations in English.
Adjoinment is such a way to connect words when there is no change in form, the elements are connected by their position and meaning.
English adjectives and nouns are connected by means of adjoinment.
e. g. a green apple
The same is with verbs and adverbs.
e. g. read fluently
In cases of adjoinment two factors: grammatical and lexical subordination work at a time.
In Russian adjoining is actually defined negatively as absence of both agreement and government whereas in English the essence of adjoining consists in the position of the subordinated word (preposition or postposition) and is actually related to fixed word order which came to replace the free word order after the loss of inflections.
It is worthwhile to return to the problem of case. If case is understood as a category of deep syntax expressing the relations between the action and its participants then adjoining is one of the means to express case relations: an object is placed in postposition to the head verb, the indirect non-prepositional object precedes the direct object, the adverb of manner and degree follows the verb etc.
Of special importance is one variety of adjoining called enclosure which arranges the relations in a noun phrase.
Enclosure is such a way to connect elements of a phrase when a certain element is enclosed between two parts of another element.
Adjectives in English are enclosed between nouns and articles. In fact, any part of speech, a phrase and even a whole sentence placed in between the determiner and the head noun becomes an attribute to the head noun.
e .g. a yes man, a carrot-and-stick policy, a know-nothing face, a head-in-the-sand attitude, a little-eaten lunch.
Despite their length, enclosed prepositive attributes are perceived as single attributes and for this reason they are often hyphenated to look like one word, even if a prepositive attribute is expressed by a sentential structure.
The second type is a split infinitive. e. g. to fully guess the idea.
Дата: 2019-02-19, просмотров: 388.