Debated Problems within a Simple Sentence

An Attribute

An attribute is a noun- oriented secondary or tertiary part of a sentence. It doesn’t enter the structural scheme of the sentence. Very often it facultative and can be easily omitted (A beautiful girl entered a spacious room). It can be used in pre-position and post-position. Its position is determined by its semantics. Attributes giving more concrete character to a noun are placed nearer to it than those giving general assessment (An attractive small girl). It can be complex, when it is expressed by a predicative construction (This is a book for you to read). An attribute very often merely decorates a sentence, but there are instances when without it a noun is communicatively empty (She has blue eyes), which makes it obligatory.

1. Debated is the status of a simple sentence with expansion. 1.1. Expanded are the simple sentences with homogeneous parts. Any member of the sentence can be homogeneous (The beauty of the lakes, the forests, and the stretches of the tranquil blue skies gently took the army out of Alessandro. M.Helprin. He came awake with a jerk, turned towards the window and almost screamed. St. King). 1.2. Expanded are the simple sentences with infinitival, gerundial and participial phrases(There are other businesses to attend to => There are other businesses which can be attended to). 1.3. Expanded are the simple sentences with infinitival, gerundial and participial predicative constructions which function as complex parts of a sentence {(I want it to be spring (an objective with an infinitive construction).Riding side by side, the night was beautiful (an absolute participial construction). Judging by his appearance, he is a second-rate actor(an absolute participial construction)}. A sentence with homogeneous parts is analysed as a simple sentence with one explicit predicative tie and two or more implicit predicative ties. Some scholars find it to be a compound sentence. A sentence carrying phrases and constructions with non-finites is considered to be a complex sentence with an abridged clause. B.A.Ilyish finds the structures with homogeneous elements, apposition, detachment and predicative constructions with non-finites, nouns, adjectives, statives to be transitional sentences between mono- and polypredicative structures.

2. Debated is the status of a sentence with syncretical elements(Her life was gone and done with. His hands are cut and bleeding (are is an auxiliary for perfect and continuous tenses).

3. There are no rigid criteria of distinguishing between secondary parts of the simple sentence: between an attribute and a prepositional object (The sound of the door opening made him start). In traditional linguistics nounal constructions with the preposition of after a noun are considered to be prepositional objects; between a prepositional object and an adverbial modifier (After many snows I was home again); between an attribute and an adverbial modifier(She is not a girl to marry).

O.Jespersen distinguished secondary parts into secondaries and tertiaries. A. Peshkovsky divided members of the sentence into those which are governed and those which are not governed. The theory of secondary parts has many weaknesses, hence structuralists discard traditional parsing into primaries and secondaries and resort to the IC method, distributional and transformational methods when analyzing non-included utterances (simple sentences).

4. Debated is the nature of the formations of the type His attachments may be said to have ended. It is not clear whether it is a complex subject expressed by the nominanative with the infinitive construction or a modal predicate of double orientation.

5. Debated are the character and the functional status of infinitival structures in such sentences as Common people to talk about him! B.A. Ilyish treated it as a two-member sentence with an infinitive functioning as a simple infinitival predicate. But it contradicts the generally established belief that a predicate should be expressed by a finite form of the verb.

6. Debated is the status of the sentence opening with conjunctions or conjunctive phrases (Silly little fool trying to flatter me. As if I don’t know that). The nature of the opening element and of the whole sentence is debated. B.A.Ilyish holds that it is an emancipated clause turning into an independent simple sentence. The opening element is no longer a conjunction. Acquiring some additional semantic meaning, it becomes an interjection.

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