The notions of surface and deep structures of the sentence. “Case grammar” theory of Ch. Fillmore. “Immediate constituents’

The notion of a predicative line. The traditional classification of notional parts (members of the sentence): principal/secondary/detached.

The finite verb, expressing the basic predicative meaning of the sentence and performing the function of the predicate, and the subject combine the so-called “predicative line” of the sentence. On the basis of predicative line presentation, sentences are divided into monopredicative (with one predicative line expressed), i.e. simple, and polypredicative (with two or more predicative lines expressed), i.e. composite and semi-composite.

Traditionally, the simple sentence has been studied primarily from the point of view of its grammatical, or nominative division. The content of the situation reflected by the sentence, which includes 1) a certain process as its dynamic center, 2) the agent of the process, 3) the objects of the process, 4) various conditions of the process form the basis for traditional syntactic division of the sentence into its nominative parts, or members of the sentence. In other words, each notional part expresses a certain semantic component or “role”¹ in the situation. In the structure of the sentence they perform the function of modifying either each other or the sentence in general.

The syntactic functions or the members of the sentence are traditionally divided into principal (main) and secondary.

- The principal parts of the sentence are the subject and the predicate, which modify each other: the subject is the “person” modifier of the predicate, and the predicate is the “process” modifier of the subject. They are interdependent.

- The secondary parts are: the object – a substance modifier of the predicate; the attribute – a quality modifier of substantive parts, either the subject or the object; the adverbial modifier – a quality modifier of the predicate; the apposition – a substance modifier of the subject; the parenthesis (parenthetical enclosure) - a detached speaker-bound modifier either of one of the nominative parts of the sentence or of the sentence in general; the address (addressing enclosure) – a modifier of the destination of the whole sentence; the interjection (interjectional enclosure) – an emotional modifier.

In the middle of the 20th century, new approaches to the analysis of the sentence were developed. In particular, the American linguist Noam Chomsky proposed the distinction between the level of the deep (semantic or conceptual structure) of the sentence and the level of its surface (syntactic structure), which are connected by various transformations. Chomsky’s transformational grammar theory in the sphere of the nominative division of the sentence was further developed by C. J. Fillmore, who formulated the theory of case grammar: its central idea is that each notional part of the sentence correlates with one element of the underlying semantic level and possesses a ‘semantic case’² which represents its semantic role. In traditional linguistics, only adverbial modifiers enjoy a detailed semantic sub-classification into adverbial modifiers of time, place, manner, attendant circumstances, etc. In the classification of semantic roles, all semantic components of the situation are taken into consideration. For example, the “Agent” is the personal doer of the action, the “Power” the impersonal doer of the action, the “Patient” the direct object of the action, the “Instrument” the object with the help of which the action is fulfilled, the “Locative” some point or location in space, etc³.

The classification of semantic roles is complementary to the classification of notional parts of the sentence, and the two classifications can be employed together to better describe the nominative aspect of the sentence. For instance, the subject can be described as subject-agent: I opened the door; as subject-patient: The door was opened; subject-power: The wind opened the door; subject-instrument: The key opened the door; subject-locative: Kirovohrad hosted a summit.

All nominative parts of the sentence are syntagmatically connected, and the relations between them can be analyzed in a linear as well as in a hierarchical way (“immediate constituents” analysis): My child always obeys me.

S

NP VP

Pron. N D

V Pron.

My child always obeys me

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11