Typology of the sentence 2 страница

Ø Recommended literature:

1. Бархударов Л.С. Структура простого предложения современного английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 1966. – С. 12-13, 44-140.

2. Блох М.Я. Практикум по теоретической грамматике английского языка / М.Я. Блох, Т.Н. Семенова, С.В. Тимофеева. – М.: Высшая школа, 2004. – С. 245-266.

3. Блох М.Я. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 2008. – С. 247-254.

4. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 1981. – С. 100-163.

5. Ильиш Б.А. Строй современного английского языка. – Л.: Просвещение, 1971. – С. 171-181.

6. Иофик Л.Л., Чахоян Л.П., Поспелова А.Г. Хрестоматия по теоретической грамматике английского языка. – Л.: Изд-во «Просвещение», 1981. – С. 106-116.

7. Кобрина Н.А. Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка: Учебное пособие / Н.А. Кобрина, Н.Н. Болдырев, А.А. Худяков. – М.: Высшая школа, 2007. – С. 170-183.

8. Хаймович Б.С., Роговская Б.И. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 1967. – С. 220.

9. Худяков А.А. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. – М.: Издат. центр «Академия», 2005. – С. 75.

Ø Supplementary literature:

1. Аракин В.Д.Сравнительная типология английского и русского языков. – М.: ФИЗМАТЛИТ, 2000. – С. 139-174.

2. Блох М.Я. Теоретические основы грамматики. – М.: Высшая школа, 2004. – С. 43-47.

3. Бурлакова В.В. Основы структуры словосочетания в современном английском языке. – Л.: Изд-во Ленинградского университета, 1975. – С. 3-121.

4. Бурлакова В.В. Синтаксические структуры современного английского языка. – М.: Просвещение, 1984. – С. 4-96.

5. Гак В.Г. Теоретическая грамматика французского языка. – М.: Добросвет, 2000. – С. 468-473, 507-530.

6. Гуревич В.В. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. Сравнительная типология английского и русского языков. – М.: Флинта: Наука, 2003. – С. 64-67, 160-161.

7. Левицкий Ю.А. Основы теории синтаксиса. – М.: КомКнига, 2005. – С. 97-103.

8. Смирницкий А.И.Синтаксис английского языка. – М.: Изд-во литературы на иностранных языках, 1957. – С. 48-99.

9. Современный русский язык / В.А. Белошапкова, Е.А. Брызгунова, Е.А. Земскова и др.; Под ред. В.А. Белошапковой. – М.: Азбуковник, 1999. – С. 606-656, 667-681.

10. Хлебникова И.Б. Основы английской морфологии. – М.: «ЧеРо», 2001. – С. 7-17.

1. The sentence: the problem of its definition.
2. The sentence. Its major categories:

v Predicativity and predication.

v Modality.

1. Typology of the sentence.

1. The sentence: the problem of its definition

The sentence, along with the word, is probably the most familiar of all grammatical terms introduced early in school. This leads to an impression that the definition of the sentence is self-evident. The opposite turns out to be the case. The number of definitions of the sentence amounts to 1000 but none of them is generally accepted. There are different approaches to the definition of the sentence: some of them sound simple; others try to account for all the complexity of the phenomenon.

(1) The old definition of the sentence states that it is “a complete expression of a single thought”. But this notional approach is too vague to be of much help. There are many sentences expressing a single thought but which do not seem complete:

E.g.: Lovely day! Taxi! Nice one! Tennis?

There are also sentences which are complete but express more than one thought:

E.g.: For his birthday, Ben wants a bike and a visit to the theme park.

Thus the notional definition fails because it is completely subjective. There is no objective standard by which completeness of a thought can be measured.

(2) A sentence is defined as a group of words that contains an unsubordinated subject and predicate. But this definition rules out all one-member sentences.

(3) A sentence may be interpreted as something which begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop. Then some questions arise:

Ø What do we do with question and exclamation marks?

Ø People disagree about punctuation.

Ø Punctuation is often not used even in writing.

(4) Linguists noticed that a sentence is not a mere group of words or other units. It is something integral: it’s a unity of formal nature. Thus a sentence is a structural unit built in accordance with one of the patterns existing in a given language. Though the formal approach to English grammar tries to avoid all the difficulties by describing the way sentences are constructed, speech proves that everything is more complicated than that: (1) an oral sentence differs greatly from a written sentence, and (2) structural patterns are applicable to simple sentences (transformational and generative grammar is limited to generating only simple sentences. The list of kernel sentences developed by Z. Harris comprises only simple sentences and cannot be extended over the domain of composite sentences). Besides, the structural definition overlooks the meaningful side of a sentence.

The list of definitions is by no means complete. To sum it up, there are several distinguishable, and more or less well-known, approaches which seek to provide an answer to the question What is the sentence?:

1) logical;

2) psychological;

3) phonetic;

4) graphic;

5) grammatical.

Logical definitions do not make the distinction between a sentence and a judgment. But forms of thinking cannot be matched one-to-one with forms of language. There is a whole range of possibilities how forms of thinking can be expressed in linguistic forms. Within the psychological approach the sentence was understood as some form of reflection emerging in a person’s head. But in this case the sentence does not have any linguistic characteristics and becomes a peculiar property of an individual psychic activity. The phonetic definition makes the sentence dependent on the intonation contour as the sentence is understood as a stretch of speech between two pauses. Consequently, sentences should only exist in oral speech. Then, pauses can be made both within a simple and a composite sentence and can never be a reliable criterion of the boundaries of a sentence. The defects of the graphic definition have already been discussed above. Grammatical definitions take into account the grammatical properties of the sentence and aim at defining this notion with maximum precision. But here again there is a wide range of possibilities depending on the linguistic theory and related principles.

To arrive at the comprehensive definition of the sentence, its specific parameters should be determined and properly described. As a linguistic entity, the sentence has its structural, meaningful, and communicative sides. These sides are realized in four dimensions: (1) syntactic structure or formal structure, (2) syntactic semantics, (3) communicative value, and (4) nominative or denotational aspect of the sentence[66].

The sentence is a structural or formal unit. A structure in linguistics implies an arrangement of elements tied to each other in a fixed way[67]. It is built according to existing structural patterns as each language has its own systems of structural groupings. They are referred to as syntactic paradigms, structural types of the sentence. There is a long history of establishing these structural types and patterns in linguistics, as it has always been a challenge for grammarians to fit all the multitude of language structures into a concise classification. As is known, structuralists used IC analysis and singled out immediate constituents in the sentence, dividing the sentence into two parts: the VP (verb phrase) and the NP (noun phrase). Though their theory is quite precise, its sphere of application is restricted to simple sentences, leaving out the composite sentence. Transformational grammar focused on establishing kernel sentences (basic structures) and a set of transformation rules to derive all the infinitude of existing sentences. The goal of this type of grammar was to explain the generation of sentences. Within this approach Z. Harris established seven types of kernel sentences in English. But again these types cover only the simple sentence. Traditional grammar is concentrated on the description of existing structural types of the sentence. The structure underlying the sentence can be classified according to different bases: one-member ÷ two-member, free ÷ bound, extended ÷ unextended, simple ÷ composite, syndetic ÷ asyndetic.

The structure underlying the sentence has a semantic value as well[68]. Structural semantics presupposes the description of the sentence in terms of Case Grammar (Ch. Fillmore) or the theory of semantic roles. Case Grammar “came into being in an atmosphere in which the search for a more “semantically” defined underlying structure was at the top of the linguistic agenda” [Construction Grammars 2005: 2].

According to Ch. Fillmore, in the framework of Case Grammar, the term case identifies ‘the underlying syntactic-semantic relationship’. The case categories, which Ch. Fillmore singles out, are taken from a universal list of meaningful relationships in which items stand to each other in a sentence: Agentive (John opened the door; The door was opened by John), Instrumental (The key opened the door; John opened the door with the key; John used the key to open the door), Dative (John believed that he could win; We persuaded John that he would win; It was apparent to John that he would win), Factitive (The man makes a wurly), Locative (Chicago is windy; It is windy in Chicago)[69]. To this list he adds Benefactive and Comitative (He and his wife are coming; He is coming with his wife). The list of cases is accompanied with lists of roles: AGENT, EXPERIENCER, INSTRUMENT, OBJECT, SOURCE, GOAL, LOCATION, TIME. The linguist also studies case frames, i.e. “the case environment the sentence provides”[70]. This approach, despite its drawbacks and limitations, relates semantic cases or thematic roles to syntactic description and reveals semantic divergence of seemingly similar syntactic structures (cf.: The door opened. ÷ John opened the door.) and the relationship of semantic similarity of seemingly different syntactic structures (cf. the examples above).

G.G. Pocheptsov uses the term semantic role as it gives a better account of the changing, variable characteristics of the semantic content of the nominal group. Semantic units, which correspond to the participants of the situation, are called semantic roles [Иванова, Бурлакова, Почепцов 1981: 241]. The sentence structure may contain the semantic roles of agens, patiens, benefactive, nominative, factitive, instrument, locative, etc. The semantic configuration of the sentence is a set of semantic roles necessary for the semantic markedness of the sentence, plus the meaning of the action [Иванова, Бурлакова, Почепцов 1981: 242]. Thus the sentence is structured with reference to these semantic positions. Nevertheless sometimes semantic roles may be minimized due to lexical semantics. In this case the verb includes some semantic role in its semantic structure (e.g., to gild conveys the idea of the action ‘to cover’ and that of the material ‘gold’). Thus the role structure of the verb to gild contains two semantic roles, that of agens and that of patiens (They gilded the spire) [Иванова, Бурлакова, Почепцов 1981: 248-249].

P. Kroeger sums up different approaches to the way semantic roles are labeled by different grammarians (as he puts it, “unfortunately but not surprisingly”) and comes up with a final list he makes use of:

AGENT: causer or initiator of events;

EXPERIENCER: animate entity which perceives a stimulus or registers a particular mental or emotional process or state;

RECIPIENT: animate entity which receives or acquires something;

BENEFICIARY: entity (usually animate) for whose benefit an action is performed;

INSTRUMENT: inanimate entity used by an agent to perform some action

THEME: entity which undergoes a change of location or possession, or whose location is being specified;

PATIENT: entity which is acted upon, affected, or created; or of which a state or change of state is predicated;

STIMULUS: object of perception, cognition, or emotion; entity which is seen, known, remembered, loved, hated, etc.;

LOCATION: spatial reference point of the event (the SOURCE, GOAL, and PATH roles are often considered to be sub-types of LOCATION);

SOURCE: the origin or beginning point of a motion;

GOAL: the destination or end-point of a motion;

PATH: the trajectory or pathway of a motion;

ACCOMPANIMENT (or COMITATIVE): entity which accompanies or is associated with the performance of an action [Kroeger 2006: 54-55].

The examples[71] below show how the system works:

A) John	gave	Mary	a bouquet
AGENT		RECIPIENT	THEME
B) John	baked	Mary	a cake
AGENT		BENEFICIARY	PATIENT
C) John	opened	the lock	with a key
AGENT		PATIENT	INSTRUMENT
D)Sherlock Holmes	heard	a piercing scream
EXPERIENCER		STIMULUS

From the point of view of its communicative value, the sentence can be analyzed from different standpoints: the purpose of the utterance (whether the speaker wants to declare something, ask a question, or give a command), the communicative task (express a surprise, protest, etc.), and actual division of the sentence.

Actual division of the sentence is based on the idea that the message conveyed by the sentence in English is constructed in terms of theme and rheme. Theme in English is put first and is defined as “the element which serves as the point of departure of the message; it is that with which the clause[72] is concerned”[73]. The rest is the rheme of the message, which is indicative of some new information.

And, finally, the sentence denotes something (the nominative or denotational aspect) as it refers to some situation and names it, thus fulfilling its nominative function. Thus the sentence has its own meaning which is deducible from the lexical meanings of its parts. Sentences unlike words and word-combinations denote an actualized situation, i.e. a situation related to reality. It means that the thought is placed in some temporal perspective and in the act of speech it acquires some modal characteristics. By way of comparing a word and a sentence it’s worth mentioning that a word is a nominative unit of language, while a sentence is a predicative unit, i.e. it presents some objects as making up a situation and reflects the connection between the nominal denotation of the event, on the one hand, and the objective reality, on the other, showing the time, indicating reality or unreality, desirability, or necessity. Another difference between a sentence and a word is that a word exists ready-made, while a sentence is created by the speaker in the course of communication. Thus a sentence performs two essential functions: firstly, the nominative function; and secondly, reality-evaluating, or predicative function.

All these dimensions correspond to the aspects of the sentence and constitute levels of its analysis[74]. Nevertheless this is not the only possible approach within the framework of modern linguistics. The structural, semantic and communicative aspects of the sentence are matched with other levels of the analysis of the sentence. Thus, V.G. Gak sees it necessary to analyze

ü the semantic level (showing what the sentence is about in terms of semantic roles or cases; in addition to that, propositions are addressed in order to determine the nominative value of the sentence);

ü the logic and communicative level (this is fulfilled through the reference to the analysis of theme-rheme division);

ü the syntactic level (the analysis of the formal structure of the sentence, members of the sentence).

These three levels do not exhaust the analysis of the sentence and should be supplemented with

ü the analysis of the emotional expressive aspect of the sentence,

ü its discursive communicative role, i.e. the role of the sentence in the formation of discourse (initiating, maintaining contact, responding the interlocutor, etc.),

ü the pragmatic meaning, which is additional and is brought in by the situation of communication [Гак 2000: 547-550].

There are other approaches to the analysis of the sentence as well. All of them have contributed in one way or another to the construction of a comprehensive theory of the sentence.

Thus a sentence turns out to be quite a complex, many-faceted phenomenon, and it is quite a task for a linguist to represent its constitutive features in a concise definition. M.Y. Blokh defines a sentence as “an immediate integral unit of speech built up of words according to a definite syntactic pattern and distinguished by a contextually relevant communicative purpose” [Блох 1983: 229-231]. A similar definition is given in the Theoretical grammar of English by I.P. Ivanova, V.V. Burlakova, G.G. Pocheptsov: a sentence is a minimal syntactic construction used in acts of speech communication, characterized by predicativity and realizing a certain syntactic structure [Иванова, Бурлакова, Почепцов 1981: 164]. L.P. Vinokurova adds some more detail to this definition. She writes that a sentence is the smallest, semantically complete, intonationally delimited unit of speech, of a certain grammatical structure. It directly reflects reality and expresses an attitude towards reality [Винокурова 1954: 223]. V.L. Kaushanskaya arrives at the conclusion that a sentence is a unit of speech whose grammatical structure conforms to the laws of the language and which serves as the chief means of conveying a thought. A sentence is not only a means of communicating something about reality but also a means of revealing the speaker’s attitude to it [Каушанская 1963: 221].

2. The sentence. Its major categories

As is seen from the discussion above, the sentence has three sides (semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic) and is characterized by two major categories, i.e. predicativity and modality. These two categories are closely tied up and make up the predicative modal nucleus due to which the sentence gets its syntactic status and performs its functions.

v Predicativity and predication

Predicativity is a syntactic category, the key constituent feature of the sentence. Predicativity refers the information intended for expression to the situation of speech and, due to it, forms a unit to convey a message. V.V. Vinogradov characterized predicativity as an aggregate of those grammatical categories which determine the nature of the sentence as a grammatically organized unit of speech communication, expressing the attitude of the speaker towards to reality and conveying a relatively complete thought [Русский язык 2003: 367]. A.I. Smirnitsky specifies this assumption and gives a helpful explanation that predicativity shows whether something exists or not («включает сказанное в систему бытия» [Смирниций 1957: 102]). It is due to predicativity that a word becomes a sentence. E.g. spring as a word is a nominative unit, Spring! as a sentence refers the phenomenon it designates to reality: the phenomenon the sentence is about exists in reality and is characterized by some temporal characteristics, which are realized via supra-segmental components of an utterance. Another example is: a flying bird – a bird’s flight – A bird flies. The latter structure is characterized by predicativity. Predicativity refers the sentence to some temporal plane as well as modifies the utterance as real or unreal. This is achieved mostly with the help of the categories of tense and mood. The category of tense refers the statement to a certain moment of speech with the help of special verb-forms. Mood shows whether an action is thought of as real or unreal and occurring in the past, present, or future as probable, desirable, required. In this respect predicativity is closely connected with modality.

The theory of predicativity also makes use of the term predication. Approaches to predicativity and predication differ: there are linguists who do not differentiate between them (e.g. M.Y. Blokh only discusses predication and does not resort to the term ‘predicativity’ [Блох 1983: 236-243], so does A.I. Smirnitsky [Смирницкий 1957: 100-107]), as well as there are grammarians who tell them apart. Thus, according to B.S. Khaimovich & B.J. Rogovskaya, predicativity is a global, general property of an utterance, “the relation of the thought of a sentence to the situation of speech” [Хаймович, Роговская 1967: 221]. “A predication in English is usually a combination of two words (or word-morphemes) united by predicativity” [Хаймович, Роговская 1967: 238]. Thus predication is an act of connecting words into sentences, it’s one of the functions of a sentence. So by predication linguists understand concrete types of predicative relations linking the subject and the predicate. Predication is realized by the verb, which can ascribe a certain feature (i.e. action, state, property, or quality) to the subject of the sentence (i.e. predict this feature) by virtue of the verbal categories of tense and mood[75].

Thus predicativity is the general ability of the sentence to name the feature described in the sentence [Худяков 2005: 65] and place it in a certain time perspective [Русская грамматика 1982: 10], it is a term of high abstraction. Hence predicativity as a grammatical meaning of the sentence is a complex meaning comprising the expression of both time relations and reality/unreality [Современный русский язык 1999: 772]. The degree to which the feature belongs to what the sentence is about, and due to which the relation of the sentence to reality is established can be called modality [Худяков 2005: 65]. Modality is the second obligatory category of the sentence[76]. Nevertheless, linguists do underscore the existence of close links between these two syntactic categories.

v Modality

Modality is inseparable from predicativity. Nevertheless it represents an independent grammatical category also constituting a sentence. It is worth noting that modality contains an evaluative aspect. It establishes the relation of the utterance to reality from the point of view of the speaker as it is expressed by the speaker. The category of modality traditionally regarded as the essential feature of the sentence is also the subject of a good deal of controversy.

There are two approaches to modality. V.V. Vinogradov’s fairly broad view of modality is based on the assumption that modality includes the emotional colouring of the utterance, its communicative purpose, negation, evaluation, time indication. The barbs of criticism against this approach are oriented towards its comprehensive character. The broad understanding of modality is criticized for being too overwhelming and thus very vague, for having no clear-cut borders, for its ambiguous and elusive content. In the narrower sense, modality implies the expression of reality/ unreality.

Traditionally two types of modality are distinguished: (1) objective modality and (2) subjective modality. The former is held to be the basic one, whereas the latter is assumed as supplementary. The sphere of objective modality is to express the relation of the sentence to reality. Thus the main opposition is whether the utterance renders something as real or unreal. Sometimes the range of related modal meanings covers reality – probability – supposition – unreality [Русский язык 2003: 239]. M.A.K. Halliday defines modality as an indication of the speaker’s attitude in terms of certainty and obligation to what s/he is saying[77].Objective modality is usually expressed by the mood forms of the verb.

Alongside objective modality obligatory for every sentence, subjective modal meaning can also be implied and expressed. Subjective modality implies the attitude of the speaker towards what he is speaking about. Subjective modal meanings constitute the second layer of modal evaluation and assessment. The semantic volume of subjective modality is much bigger than that of objective modality. It implies intellectual (logical) and emotional evaluation. Means of expressing subjective modality are heterogeneous and belong to different strata of the language system, among them are modal words (unfortunately, surely, perhaps) adverbs (allegedly), particles (even, only), interjections (bang!), word order means, intonation (to express different shades of subjective attitude: irony, surprise, protest, etc), special syntactic structures (it is … that). Subjective modality does not express any syntactic relations between sentence constituents and because of that it is not considered a syntactic but rather a semantic category.

Linguists classify sentences according to different principles:

ü according to the thought expressed (declarative, interrogative, imperative);

ü according to their structure (one-member and two-member);

ü whether the S-P structure is complemented or not (extended and unextended);

ü whether the sentence contains other independent S-P structures (simple and composite) [Бархударов, Штелинг 1965: 280-281].

The complexity of language, the existence of border-line cases, ambiguity of definitions, broad headings and groupings, intrinsic connection of different syntactic structures entail further discussion and diversity of opinions in reference to each group. On the other hand, linguists do not feel quite satisfied with these separate criteria and, consequently, unmatched classifications. G.G. Pocheptsov made an attempt to combine the structural, informational, and communicative aspects and advanced a classification comprising the existing variety of sentence types. In the proposed classification sentences are divided into sentences proper and quasi sentences. Sentences proper contain some information and have the S-P structure. They are further subdivided into declarative (John came.), interrogative (Did John come?), optative (If John came.), and imperative (Come!). On the contrary, quasi sentences do not contain information, they do not have the S-P structure, but they have the status of a sentence because they substitute for it. They do not have any nominative content; they only imply it. Quasi sentences may be vocative (John!), exclamatory (Oh!), and meta communicative (Good day!) [Иванова, Бурлакова, Почепцов 1981: 174].

Ø Recommended literature:

1. Бархударов Л.С. Структура простого предложения современного английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 1966. – С. 15-16, 20-28, 141-145, 172-180.

2. Блох М.Я. Практикум по теоретической грамматике английского языка / М.Я. Блох, Т.Н. Семенова, С.В. Тимофеева. – М.: Высшая школа, 2004. – С. 309—311, 328-332, 353-357.

3. Блох М.Я. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 2008. – С. 255-302.

4. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 1981. – С. 164-183.

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