During 60-70s of the 20^th century there became prominent three basic schools. The first came from the views on semantic value of syntactic structure of the sentence and was based on the idea that syntactic model of a sentence indicates not only its structural type but in some degree characterizes its contents parameters. So, according to this conception the sentence, being structuralized by the model “subject – predicate”, denotes the situation with one participant, in certain mental or physical condition or performing an action not going onto any object (The boy is sleeping; The girl stood up; Tom is well-behaved). If the structure of a sentence looks like “subject – predicate – direct object” in that case the sentence denotes the situation with two participants and the predicate denotes the influence of the subject onto the object (The boy is reading a book; The girl bought an ice-cream; Tom received a letter). The weak points of this theory are that structurally identical sentences in most cases denote different situations as in the number of participants of these situations and also in the view of the semantic roles which they perform and the character of relations which are set between them. Thus, the sentences, of structural type “subject – predicate” which denote the situations in which there are no participants (It rains; It is getting dark.).

    The sentences of the type “subject – predicate – direct object” can denote the situations either with two participants (Tom received a letter) or with one participant (Tom received much pleasure) or more than one situation in case of using the names of propositional semantics (A terrorist attack causes death).

    The second semantico-syntactical school can be called subject – predicate. It is based on the Aristotle’s logics according to which a sentence is a lingual form of the judgement, built on the basis of the formula S is P. The application if this approach is rather attractive as it allows to describe the forms of cognition (gnoseological aspect) by means of language (lingual aspect), reflecting the situation in real world (onthological aspect). But the weak point of this conception is inability to analyse sentences to denote the situation with several participants: Tom sold Mary a book. What feature is prescribed to Tom as the subject of the sentence? How Mary and book being the elements of predicative part characterize Tom or what information do they report about him?

    The third predicate – argument approach considers a sentence as lingual representation of proposition whose base structure can be expressed in the form of formula aRb, where a and b are actants, indicating the participants of onthological situation and R-relational predicate that expresses relations between actants.

    From the point of view of semantic of the syntax the whole lexicon can be subdivided into two groups of words – names and predicates. Under names we understand not only nouns and pronouns also partially or wholly substantivized parts of speech the main feature of which is the ability to correlate with actants on a propositional level and with participants on the onthological level. Names denote things (in a wide sense) or essensses involved into real or imagery situations.

    Predicate is the part of lexicon which is used to denote relations (in wide sense) between things. We can relate propositions, conjunctions, adjectives and, of course, verbs. A special status of verbs is given to them by such feature as valency. Under valency we mean the ability of the verb to combine with several names. The number of names is not random, but is given by the semantics of the verb. For example, the verb to drop can have two names, the first of which usually denotes a doer of the action which is expressed by the verb and the second a certain object being an object of the action. Mary dropped a dog.

    The question what part of sentence subject or predicate is a dominated one has been solved and the predicate has been acknowledged as the dominant.

The theory of speech acts

    Another meaningful aspect of syntax is its pragmatical aspect. Initially the term “pragmatics” was introduced in the sphere of “semiotics” – the science about signs and sign systems considering their object in logico-phylosophical plan. Along with syntactics and semantics pragmatics is one of the key notions of semiotics, denoting the relations between the sign and the user of the sign, while syntactics means the relation between signs and semantics – between a sign and an object denoted by it. Pragmalinguistics study such questions as aims and tasks of the communicants during their speech interchange, discourse strategies of speech partners, communicative effects and so on – all in all it studies everything which concerns intentional potential of a speech utterance, of an act of speech as a special sort of activity. As the human activity is comprehended and performed under certain conditions, encouraged by the purpose to solve some tasks (so there is an aim), is realized in accord with possible consequences then speech activity should be studied with respect to all features.

    In the basis of the theory of speech acts developing in the middle of 20^th century lies the idea about the possibility of dividing all utterances made in the form of a sentence into two main types – constatives and performatives. The founder of this theory, English philosopher J.L. Austin noticed that along with utterances describing a certain fragment or events of non-lingual world or situation – in other words, declaring a certain state of affairs in the world, there exist other utterances which do not denote anything beyond language and are actions, acts, activities of purely lingual character. Such speech acts received the name of performatives and became the object of the theory of speech acts. The first feature of performative utterances is their ability to be language signs of themselves. Their second feature is in the presence in any performative utterance of performative verb in the first person singular in present tense, in active voice, indicative mood: I name the boy Jack; I promise to be loyal to you; I congratulate you on the occasion. If we change even one parameter of the utterance, it becomes a constative. You (they, he, she)name(s) the boy Jack. It is the sign of non-lingual situation naming a boy by someone. While performing a speech act in the form of I name the boy Jack a speaker performs the action of naming a boy Jack and he can’t do it anyhow as pronounce such sentence. That’s why performatives are not sign analogue of the fragment of the world: they are certain facts of reality by themselves.

    Such approach is very important in analyzing functional side of language. Now we can’t consider speech activity only as semiotic signification and substitution of the world happening in parallel or additionally to the world. Consequently, we can apply the principles of activity approach to the language phenomenon (in wide sense) and consider such characteristics as motives, strategies, aims and so on.

    In the theory of speech acts there are different typologies of performative utterance. The common feature of all sentences is that the name of every type of performative utterance is the same of performative verb which is the most prominent representative of this or that pragmatic intention of the utterance. There exist:

1) speech acts – requestives: I request that you help me.

2) Speech acts – prohibitives: I prohibit your going there alone.

3) Speech acts – promises: I promise not to be late.

4) Speech acts – directives: I order you to obey.

We speak about this forth type we should bear in mind that a language developed a special form of mood – imperative – for them. Come here! – I order [that you come here]. The theory of speech acts has also enriched linguistics by such terms as locution, illocutive power, perlocutive effect of the utterance. Under locution we understand the act of speech production, the speech act itself, performing a speaker as the author and creator of the utterance. Under illocutive power the communicative intention of the speaker; it’s the illocutive power which forms the basis for classification of speech acts: threats, promises, orders, requests, prohibition, congratulations and so on. The perlocutive effect of the utterance is the behavioristic reaction of the listener on which the speaker accounts. The perlocutive effect can be expressed in action or in collection of actions. In the theory of speech acts it was noticed that very often the illocutive power of the utterance and its form do not coincide. Communicants, leading by different purposes (tactfulness, shyness, delicacy) often apply indirect methods to express a certain illocutive power. For example, an idea of discussing can be expressed by such utterances as: You should have behaved differently. Couldn’t you have acted differently. Look, people don’t act like that.

Thus, indirect speech act is an act in which an illocutive power isn’t marked by any means fixed in language to express it. We can say in conclusion that firstly the theory of speech acts doesn’t limit its object only by performative utterances. It unites and simplifies the theory, extracting all indirect speech acts. The weak point of this theory is that it doesn’t take into account that wide social, extralingual context which serves as a natural background of the utterance.  

References

1. Blokh M.Y. A Course in Theoretical English Grammar. – M., 2000. – p.229-236, 261-272

2. Ilyish B.A. The structure of Modern English. – L., 1971. –Ch.26-29, 31

3. Бархударов Л.С. Структура простого предложения современного английского языка. - М., 1982

4. Долинина И.Б. Системный анализ предложения. – М., 1977

5. Смирницкйи А.И. Синтаксис английского языка. – М., 1957.

COLLOQUIAL SYNTAX

1. Basic features of colloquial speech

2. Types of colloquial constructions

3. Grammar of conversation