From Sentence to Text

1. Sentence in the text.
2. Text as a linguistic notion.
3. Textual units and textual categories.

Recommended literature

1) Блох М.Я. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 2006.

2) Блох М.Я. Практикум по теоретической грамматике английского языка: Учеб. пособие. – М.: Высшая школа, 2007. – 471 с.

3) Блох М.Я. Теоретические основы грамматики. – М.: Высшая школа, 2005.

4) Бахтин М.М. Литературно-критические статьи. – М., 1986.

In continual speech sentences are not used in isolation; they are interconnected both semantically-topically and syntactically.

Inter-sentential connections have come under linguistic investigation but recently. The highest lingual unit approached by traditional grammar was the sentence. Scholars even specially stressed that to surpass the boundaries of the sentence was equal to surpassing the boundaries of grammar.

Traditional grammar treats the sentence as the highest lingual unit. So, L. Bloomfield pointed out that the sentence is the largest grammatically arranged linguistic form. However this thesis was disproved by further studies in this field. In fact sentences in speech do combine with one another syntactically and semantically thus forming a unit larger than a sentence.

M.A.K. Halliday and R. Hasan in their work Cohesion in English state that a text does not consist of sentences; it is realized by sentences, or is encoded in them. So, a text is best regarded as a semantic unit, i.e. a unit of meaning. The authors of Comprehensive Grammar of English (1985) R. Quirk, S. Greenbaum, G. Leech, J. Svartvik express the same idea, saying that “… a text – unlike a sentence – is not a grammatical unit but rather a semantic and even pragmatic one”.

According to prof. Blokh, any text is a coherent stretch of speech. Textual stretches are organized syntactically according to a communicative purpose in a particular communicative situation. As a result, a textual stretch has a unifying topic. So, text as a linguistic notion has two main differential features: topical unity and semantico-syntactic cohesion.

The general idea of a sequence of sentences forming a text includes two different notions. On the one hand, it presupposes a succession of spoken or written utterances. On the other hand, it implies a strictly topical stretch of talk (a common informative purpose). Thus, the text is characterized by 2 distinguishing features: (1) semantic (topical) unity and (2) by semantico-syntactic cohesion.

The primary division of sentence sequences in speech should be based on the communicative direction of their component sentences. From this point of view monologue sequences and dialogue sequences are to be discriminated.

In a monologue, sentences connected in a continual sequence are directed from one speaker to his one or several listeners (one-direction sequence).

e.g.:

We’ll have a lovely garden. We’ll have roses in it and daffodils and a lovely lawn with a swing for little Billy and little Barbara to play on. And we’ll have our meals down by the lily pond in summer.

The first scholars who identified a succession of such sentences were the Russian linguists N.S.Pospelov and L.A.Bulakhovsky. The former called the unit in question “ a complex syntactic unity ”, the latter, “ a super-phrasal unity ” (СФЕ). The corresponding English term is the “ supra-sentential construction ”.

As different from this, sentences in a dialogue sequence are uttered by the speakers-interlocutors in turn, so that they are directed to meet one another (a two-directed sequence).

e.g.:

“Annette, what have you done?” – “I’ve done what I had to do”.

The direction of communication should be looked upon as a deeper characteristic of the sentence-sequence than its outer presentation.

The formation of a one-direction sequence is based on syntactic cumulation of sentences (cumulative sentence-connection). The supra-sentential construction of one-direction communicative type can be called a “cumuleme”.

The formation of a two-direction sequence is based on its sentences being positioned to meet one another (occursive sentence-connection). The supra-sentential construction of two-direction communicative type can be called an “occurseme”.

From the hierarchical point of view the occurseme is placed above the cumuleme as it can be constructed by two or more cumulemes, e.g.:

“Damn you, stop talking about my wife. If you mention her name again I swear I’ll knock you down.” – “oh no, you won’t. you’re too great a gentleman to hit a feller smaller than yourself”.

So the supra-proposemic level in the lingual hierarchy can be divided into two sublevels: the lower one – “cumulemic”, and the higher one – “occursemic”. The functional characteristic of the two higher segmental units of language, it is representative of the function of the text as a whole.

The signemic essence of the text is exposed in its topic. The monologue text (discourse) is a topical entity; the dialogue text (conversation) is an exchange-topical entity.

Sentences in a cumulative sequence can be connected either “prospectively” or “retrospectively”. Prospective cumulation is effected by connective elements that relate a given sentence to one that follows it. In other words, a prospective connector signals a continuation of speech: the sentence containing it is semantically incomplete. Very often prospective connectors are notional words that perform the cumlative function for the nonce.

Retrospective cumulation is effected by connective elements that relate a given sentence to one that precedes it and is semattically complete by itself. It is the basic type of cumulation in ordinary speech.

Cumulation can be of two fundamental types:

– conjunctive (coordinative and subordinative conjunctions; adverbial and parathentical sentence-connectors: then, yet, however, hence, besides, moreover, etc.);

– correlative (the succeeding sentence is related to the preceding one) (the use of substitutes, repetitions, representative elements).

A cumuleme is formed by two or more independent sentences making up a topical syntactic unity. The cumuleme is delimited in the text by a finalizing intonation contour with a prolonged pause.

Cumuleme is used in all the functional varieties of speech including colloquial speech. E.g.:

Poetical text:

She is not fair to outward view, |As many maidens be; |Her loveliness I never knew |Until she smiled to me. |Oh, then I saw her eye was bright, |A well of love, a spring of light (H.Coleridge).

Cumuleme in writing is regularly expressed by a paragraph, but the two units are not wholly identical.

(1) The paragraph is a stretch of written or typed literary text delimited by a new line at the beginning and an incomplete line at the close. The cumuleme is a feature of all the varieties of speech (oral and written, literary and colloquial);

(2) The paragraph is a polyfunctional unit of written speech and is used not only for the written representation of a cumuleme, but also for introduction of a dialogue (parts of an occurseme), and for the introduction of separate points of enumeration;

(3) The paragraph in a monologue speech can contain more than one cumuleme;

(4) The paragraph in a monologue speech can contain only one sentence (expressive emphasis).

The cumuleme cannot be prolonged beyond the limits of the paragraph.

A paragraph (абзац) can contain more than one super-phrasal unities, or may coincide with it, but in any case a paragraph is first of all a graphic form of text realization.

“A paragraph. – points out R. Quirk, – has on the one hand a relatively strong sense of internal coherence and on the other a relatively loose linkage with the textual material before and after it” (A Comprehensive Grammar, p. 1445).

In other words, a paragraph extracted from the text can be regarded as a text itself. It is characterized by the main properties of the text, i.e. semantic and syntactic cohesion.

Since the text does not form any grammatical unit, it is very difficult to define the text. The text can be regarded in a very wide sense. M. Bakhtin (see: Проблема текста в лингвистике, филологии… – С. 473) drew the linguists attention to the problem of the boundaries of the text as well. So what is the text: a whole novel or just a sentence?

From linguistic point of view it’s rational to think that the text is a unit of oral communication, there is a good term which can be used for such phenomenon instead of text, it is “discourse” (conversation).

Early in the 50-s of the XXth century “discourse” as a linguistic phenomenon was analyzed by Z. Harris. In Soviet linguistics it was done by V.A. Zvegintsev (in the 70-s).

It is rather difficult to divide discourse into units. Such a unit should, by all means, have the following property: it should have communicative integrity (коммуникативную целостность).

Following the point of view of prof. Moskalskaya we shall consider super-phrasal unity (СФЕ) and its subtype dialogical unity (диалогическое единство) to be such units. These units can be also regarded as micro-texts displaying all the properties of macro-texts, the main of which is cohesion both semantic and syntactic (семантическая и синтаксическая связность).

Any text is built on the two main principles: epiphoric (anaphoric) and cataphoric progression, the first one dependent on the previous context, the latter oriented to the further one (C.f.: I recalled her – yes – I did; I’ll tell you what had happened.)

Text linguistics, or the Grammar of text, a young branch of linguistics, it’s dealing with these interesting and complicated things, the solution of which is a matter of future.

Among the textual units one can single out cumulemes, occursemes and dictemes.

The cumuleme is essentially a constituent part of one-direction sequence of sentences forming monologue speech. Two-direction sequences, called occursemes, build up constituent parts of dialogue speech.

The elementary topical textual unit is a dicteme. It occupies the highest position in the hierarchy of segmental units of language. The dicteme can be expressed either by a cumuleme, or by one single sentence placed in a topically significant position. The dicteme, as an elementary topical textual unit, is polyfunctional. In the text it performs the functions of nomination, predication, topicalization and stylization.

To the list of textual categories scholars usually refer cohesion, informativeness, retrospection, modality, implication, the author’s image and some others. This list seems to be open as linguists try to approach the text from different angles.

The basic textual categories which are recognized by most scholars, are topical unity and semantico-syntactic cohesion.

Among the means of textual cohesion we should name repetition of different kinds (lexical repetition, lexical synonymic repetition, repetition of verbs of motion, etc.), substitutions (nouns by pronouns), connectors (conjunctions, adverbial and parenthetical sentence-connectors, such as then, yet, however, moreover, nevertheless, etc.), contrast, associative relations of words, etc.

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