Major components of the noun-head phrase 10 page

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 600.

To some extent, the conditions of inversion in reporting clauses are similar to those applying more generally to subject-verb inversion, reflecting the weight and communicative importance of the subject v. the verb: whichever is placed last becomes relatively more prominent. However, inversion in reporting clauses is occasionally found with subject pronouns: I said I think something's gone wrong with the auto bank machine, says I.(conv) "We may all be famous, then," said he.(fict) Note the fixed combination says I which is used by some speakers in reporting a conversation. The sequence say I with the grammatically correct verb form is not attested in the LSWE Corpus. Where clauses identifying the source of some quoted text precede the text reported, they have a more independent status and subject-verb order is typical, regardless of the relative weight of the subject and the verb: Standing, Rick said, "Can I take Dave Holden's notes with me?" (fict) She said: "Elderly people often have smaller groups of friends and family to support them." (news) However, subject-verb inversion is sometimes found in initial position in news: Said a pollster: "Frenchmen still like to believe that they are the world's greatest lovers." (news)

Reporting clauses are very common in fiction and news (including clauses with inversion (VS word order) and those with regular SV word order. News uses initial reporting clauses to a greater extent than fiction. The majority of reporting clauses have no expansion. When they are expanded, right expansion is strongly preferred over left expansion, especially with reporting clauses in final position.

Inversion is overwhelmingly a main-clause phenomenon: over 90% of all inversions in conversation, fiction, and, news occur in main clauses. 75% of all inversions in academic prose occur in main clauses. In fiction and news, inversion is most common in reporting clauses (over 50% of the total occurrences) [ Biber, 765] . In spite of its relative rarity, inversion is an important option. Inversion is usually so strongly conditioned by context that it is impossible to normalize the order without affecting the contextual fit of the clause or without loss of stylistic effect. Inversion is more frequent in the written registers than in conversation, with the highest frequency in fiction. In general, we may assume that writers of fiction make more use of the resources of the language, including options which were formerly in more frequent use. Subject-verb inversion is the main inversion type found in fiction, particularly for description of settings, where inversion is a natural option. Subject-operator inversion is virtually restricted to the written registers, presumably because it is usually a deliberate rhetorical choice. At the other extreme, inversion is least common in conversation, with dependent-clause inversion being especially rare. Conversation is spontaneously produced, and leaves less room for planning and varying the use of language resources. In addition, conversation is at the forefront of linguistic change and is thus less likely to make use of features which were previously more frequent in the language. Nevertheless, inversion is quite a normal option in conversation with certain more-or-less fixed patterns: here's ..., here are ..., there's ... (with locative there), and so is ..., so am I. The strong association of inversion with main clauses can be interpreted as follows: independent clauses are the main means of carrying the communication forward. Their syntactic independence correlates with greater possibilities of internal variation and adaptation to context. Dependent clauses, on the other hand, must fit into the superordinate syntactic structure and are less free to adapt to contextual requirements.

4. Structural types of sentences.Sentence is a multidimentional phenomenon.Therefore, the foundation for its classification is based on the three aspects: form, function, and meaning. Correspondingly, the classification is based on sentence structure, sentence meaning and pragmatic or communicative value.

Structurally,sentences fall into: a) simple or composite (compound and complex); b) one-member or two-member; c) complete or incomplete (elliptical). These three classifications are based on different approaches to the structural organization of sentences and reflect its different aspects. Schematically it can be presented as follows:

Sentences with only one predication are simple sentences. Those with more than one predication are composite sentences.

One-member and two-member sentences differ in the Tiber of principal parts they contain. Two-member sentences have two principal parts – the subject and the predicate. One member sentence have only one principal part, which is neither the subject nor the predicate: An old park. Mid-summer. Low tide, dusty water.

Complete and incomplete (elliptical) sentences are distinguished by the presence or absence of word-forms in the principal positions of two-member sentences. In complete sentences principal positions are filled with word-forms. In incomplete sentences one or both of the main positions are not filled: Cheerful, aren't you? Ready? Wrong again.

4.1. Simple sentence.The classification of sentences into simple, compound and complex, established in the English prescriptive grammar of the mid-19th century and accepted and developed by the authors of the classical scientific grammar, remains the prevalent scheme of the structural classification of sentences in the grammars of all types in the modern period. A very important syntactic concept which developed along with this classification was the concept of the clause as a syntactic unit, containing a subject and a predicate.

The attempts of the authors of the older scientific grammars to destroy the concept of the clause as it was understood by prescriptive grammar by introducing such notions as "half" clauses, "abridged" clauses, "infinitive", "gerund", "participle" clauses may be observed in the excerpt from Bryant's grammar, treating verbid clauses. This tendency, which has found favour with some structural linguists, may have far-reaching consequences in the theory of the complex sentence, as it leads to the demolition of the structural distinction between simple and complex sentences. Transformational grammar derives complex and traditional compound sentences from two or more underlying strings or source sentences (double-base transformations), including them into matrix sentences. The basic pattern of a simple sentence in English is one subject-predicate unit. It is the pattern of a two-member sentence. There are several variations of this basic pattern, depending on the kind of verb occupying the predicate position: SV: Tom walk; SVC: Tom is clever/a student; SVO: Tom speaks French; SVOO: Tom gives Mary his books; SVOA: Tom put the plate on the table; SVA: Tom lives in London/there; SVOC: We found Tom guilty/a bore;

A simple sentence containing some words besides the predication is extended. An unextended sentence contains no other parts but the subject and the predicate (SV and SVC). The extending elements in the above patterns are obligatory, i.e. the sentence is incomplete if one of these elements is omitted: *We read the book (type SVOA) and *He resembled (type SVO) are unacceptable. A sentence may be extended not only by obligatory elements but also by optional ones, including attributes, certain kinds of prepositional objects and adverbial modifiers. John ran quickly to me. My friend John is a very clever student. As part of the principle of end-weight in English, there is a feeling that the predicate of a clause should where possible be longer than the subject, thus a principle of structural compensation comes into force. With the SV pattern, one-word predicates are rare, and there is a preference for expressing simple present or past actions or states by some other, circumlocutory means. For example, the verb sang is very rarely used as a predicate in itself, although semantically complete. We may easily say He sang well or He was singing, but would rarely say simply He sang. A common means of 'stretching' the predicate into a multiword structure is the construction consisting of a verb of general meaning (have, take, give, make, do, etc.) followed by an object. She talked, He smoked, or We swam, I decided can be replaced by She had a talk, He had a smoke, We had a swim, I took a decision. Similarly, the habitual use of the present or past in He smokes and He smoked can be expressed by a SVC structure: He is/was a smoker.

4.1.1. One-member sentences.There are two types of one-member sentences: nominal and verbalsentences. Nominal sentencesare those in which the principal part is expressed by a noun. They state the existence of the things expressed in them. They may be unextended or extended: Silence, summer. Midnight. Dusk of a summer night. First spring flowers! There are the following subtypes of nominal sentences: a) nominal sentences naming an object of reality (A sunny day), b) sentences expressing command or request (Silence! Courage!), c) sentences with modal meaning of appraisal and emotional colouring (That woman! The unfairness of it all); d) wish-sentences (The sweet fragrance! Oh, the fine clothes, the expensive cars, the luxurious homes!); e) sentences of hypothetical modality (Loud creams, shouts, noises… you children, perhaps!)', f) conditional sentences (A word of excuse from Robert to his wife, and certainly he would be forgotten).

Verbal sentences are those in which the principal part is expressed by a non-finite form of the verb (infinitive or gerund). They are mostly used to describe different emotional perceptions of reality: To think of that! Living at the mercy of a woman. Considered in their grammatical organization one-member sentences should be divided into: 1) nominal sentences and 2) infinitival sentences. Nominal sentences may be unextended: Winter, and extended: Volcanic lake, dead sea (J. Joyce). One-member nominal sentences may express: 1) modality of reality: Poor thing! 2)imperative modality: Courage, wife!; 3) suppositional modality: Into that cop pice the moonlight would have crept! There would be shadows... No birds, beasts, flowers.... Infinitival sentences most colourful and affective in their stylistic aspect are fairly common in present-day English.

In terms of structure one-member infinitival sentences may be subdivided into two groups: 1) infinitival sentences, always exclamatory, in which the infiniyive with to stands at the beginning: To be alive! To have the life before you! To give her to that boy! 2) Another type is an interrogative sentence beginning with why followed by the bare infinitive: Why waste time? Why not tell the truth?(J. Galsworthy). Infinitival sentences may differ in their modal force. Compare the following: a) To have given such promise! = That I should have given such promise... (a real fact); b) To know what was in her mind! =I wish I knew what was in her mind! - irreality (a wish-sentence); c) Why not prove it? Do prove it! (a request). Infinitival sentences can communicate not only their denotative meanings but also the connotative suggestions of the various circumstances of their use. The occurrence of infinitival sentences in different syntactic environments shows a great variety of their grammatical content, subjective modal force, in particular (indignation, surprise, pleasure, blame, impatience, reproach, etc.). Imperative sentences with no subject mentioned are also classed among one-member infinitival sentences: Get away! Tell them the truth. Don't do it!

A special interest attaches to sentence-patterning "predicative without a verb". Here belong: one-member sentences type (Beautiful! Charming!);the isolated predicative with "and" (You were angry, and small blame to you);two-member sentences type: (Quite serious all this! Beautiful this view! No good doing such things. Nice of you to help us. Small wonder that we all liked it immensely).

4.1.2.Two-member sentence. A two-member simple sentence may be either complete or incomplete (elliptical). An elliptical sentence is a sentence in which one or more word-forms in the principal (subject and predicate) positions are omitted. Those words can be omitted, because they have only grammatical, structural relevance and do not carry any new relevant information. There are several types of elliptical sentences in English:

1. Sentences without a word-form in the subject position: Looks like rain. Seems difficult. Don't know anything about it.

2. Sentences without a word-form in the subject and part of the predicate position. The omitted part of the predicate may be either an auxiliary verb or a link verb: Not bad. Heard nothing about him lately. Going home soon? See what I mean? Free this evening?

3. Sentences without a word-form in part of the predicate position which may be an auxiliary or a link verb: You seen them? Everything fixed? You sure? All settled.

4. Sentences without a word-form in the subject and the predicate position. Such ellipses occur in various responses: What were you thinking about? – You. Where're you going? – Home.

5. Sentences without a word-form in the predicate position. Such ellipses occur only in replies to questions: Who lives there? – Jack. What's happened? – Nothing.

Ellipsis can act in apparently bizarre ways. The subject of a sentence can be ellipted in the main clause but not in the subordinate clause: He's good at his job. Knows what he's doing, but not *He's good at his job because knows what he's doing [Fawcett, 1997: 92]. Elliptical sentences are only special cases of full sentences (on condition that we can supply what is felt as missing from the immediate context. It is part of the definition of ellipsis that it should be absolutely obvious what the omitted words are. If it is unclear what has been omitted, we cannot call a sentence elliptical. The principle of being able to work out exactly what the omitted words are, by looking at the context, is called the principle of recoverability There are three kinds of recoverability:

1.Textual recoverability. The full form of the sentence can be found by looking at the rest of the text (the immediate context): How was the concert? - Very good (= The concert was very good).

2. Situational recoverability. The full form of the sentence can be deduced by looking at the situation in which it was used: Told you so, while the choice of omitted subject (I or we) would be evident from the people present. Situational ellipsis is very common in conversation: Want a drink?

3. Structural recoverability. The full form of the relevant complete grammatical construction of a given pattern: Looks like rain (=It looks like rain). Good to see you (= It is good to see you).

Ellipsis is typical of conversational English. It is the most vivid manifestation of speech economy. When a speaker combines a sentence with a previous sentence in speech, s/he often leaves out some redundant parts that are clear from the foregoing sentence, otherwise speech would be cumbersome. A sentence is often reduced to one word: Why did she die? – Cancer. One and the same sentence may be represented differently in speech, depending on the sentence it is combined with. If the sentence John returned from London yesterday is to be the answer Who returned from London? it may be reduced to John. As answer to When did John return from London? it may be reduced to yesterday. In answer to Where did John return from? Thus, John, Yesterday, London, may be regarded as positionally conditioned speech variants of a regular two-member sentence. In this they differ from one-member sentences.

In present-day English the tendency to compactness through nominality is brought into particular prominence, The variety of nominalization may be well illustrated by the extensive use of one-member sentences (Winter. Silence. The stillness of the night); the use of infinitival sentences as independent units of communication and infinitival phrases: (To have her friendship, her admiration! (J. Galsworthy). Carrie smiled to think of it (Th. Dreiser)); the extensive use of noun-adjunct groups (nuclear students, ice-cream woman, coal production, horse power); compression of different types of sub-clauses by nominalization (gerundial, infinitival and participial nominals:I rely on it that he will come – I rely on him to come – I rely on his coming); different types of sentence-patterning in syntactic structures introducing direct speech (And another voice: "I do not want to be too down" (Th. Dreiser))."It's good", with a sincerity (A. Sillitoe); the use of nouns and prepositional phrases with prepositional meaning: They did not come because the children were ill - They did not come because of the children. With a sigh, he left the room. The absolute use of verbal nouns transformed into independent sentences is most characteristic in Modern English, for instance: Another glance or two, however, would reveal Hie fact that he was only a rough, weekly unfurnished sketch of the type (J. Priestley). The term nominalization may apply not only to noun phrases with an abstract noun head as in the following examples: the critic's hostile reception of the play or the play's hostile reception by the critics, but also to concrete noun phrases with an agential noun head as in: She is a good writer. ~ She writes well. The relation between a nominalisation and a corresponding clause structure саn be more or less explicit, according to how far the nominalization specifies, through modifiers and determinatives, the nominal or adverbial elements of a corresponding clause. In this respect we may compare a clause The reviewers criticized his play in a hostile manner with the following patterns: the reviewers' hostile criticizing of his play; the reviewers' hostile criticism of his play; the reviewers' criticism of his play; the reviewers' criticism; their criticism. These noun phrases are ordered from most explicit to least explicit, but each of them could occupy the function of a nominalization. The study of various aspects of nominalization yielded conclusions highly relevant to such broader theoretical issues as language variation, semantic correlation of linguistic units in speech acts, synonimy and paraphrase. In a word, aspects which are relevant to style problems in grammar.

5. Composite sentence. There is structural opposition between the simple sentence and the composite sentence. The difference between the two lies in that the former contains only one predication, whereas in the latter predication occurs more than once. Compare, for instance: You can take my life, but you cannot change my mind. I can't tell you how can I help you till I know the truth. This general characterization of the composite sentence should be specified. In a composite sentence, each predication together with the words attached makes up a clause,a unit structured around a verb phrase. The lexical verb in the verb phrase characteristically denotes an action (drive, run, shout) or a state (know, seem, resemble). The verb phrase is accompanied by one or more elements which denote the participants involved in the action, state, (agent, affected, recipient, etc), the attendant circumstances, the relationship of the clause to the surrounding structures, etc. Together with the verb phrase, these are the clause elements.The clause elements are realized by phrases or by embedded clauses. The following examples illustrate the distribution of clauses in discourse. The verb phrases are given in bold, and the elements of the same clause are enclosed within brackets: The Prime Minister threatened [to quit] last night, [as hard bargaining continued for a second day with the opposition over the shape of the new government.] The Prime Minister's threat appeared [to seek a weakening of the opposition demands], but mayalso have been directed at hardline elements in the party reluctant [ to yield any further to the opposition]. (news report)

As it is shown by examples, in its structure a clause is similar to a simple sentence, but unlike a simple sentence it forms part of a bigger syntactical unit. The English language provides separate terms for the denomination of sentenceas an independent unit, and clause as a unit which possesses the structure of a sentence, being at the same time a dependent syntactical unit within a sentence. A component of the composite sentence does not equal sentence, since it has no independent communicative meaning. The clause is used in communication only as a component of a larger syntactic unit - composite sentence. Even parts of the composite sentence may hardly be called communication units. As a rule, they are linked by cause-consequence, temporal or other types of relations, and breaking these relations by presenting a clause as an independent syntactic unit means breaking these syntactic and semantic relations.

Polypredication of the composite sentence does not mean just multiple predications as such. For example, in the sentence She said good-buy and left, predication appears twice: said good-buy and left. Each of the predicates is related to she, yet there is no composite sentence. Therefore, it is essential that the composite sentence contains several predication centres represented by the subject and the predicate. Two or more consecutively placed sentences are also characterized by several centres, still it is obvious that they do not make up a composite sentence. Clauses form a certain type of the composite sentence on the basis of syntactic relations. In complex sentences, the syntactic relation is explicitly expressed by subordinating conjunctions, The issue of the compound sentence is much more complicated. Even if there is a conjunction (e.g. and, but, etc.), the predicate construction may be an independent sentence.

Functionally, the composite sentence is similar to the simple sentence. Like the simple sentence, the composite sentence constitutes a communicative integrity and is complete intonationally. From the point of view of their communicative content, composite sentences, like simple sentences, maybe declarative, interrogative, optative and imperative.

The composite sentence is more specific when its structural characteristics are concerned. Predication here is realized on the level of constituents rather than on the sentence level. Unlike the simple sentence, constructed, with qualitatively different units (word forms, words, word combinations), the composite sentence is constituted with the help of units similar to sentences.The composite sentence is classified according to the way in which the parts of a composite sentence (i.e. its clauses) are joined together. This may be achieved either by means of special words designed for this function, or without the help of such words. In the first case, the method of joining the clauses is syndetic, and the composite sentence itself may be called syndetic. In the second case the method of joining the clauses is asyndetic, and so is the composite sentence itself. The difference between two variants of syndetic joining of sentences depends on the character and syntactic function of the word used to join them.

This joining word may either be a conjunction, a pronoun or an adverb. If it is a conjunction, it has no other function in the sentence but that of joining the clauses together. If it is a pronoun or an adverb (i.e. a relative pronoun or a relative adverb), its function in the sentence is twofold: on the one hand, it is a member of one of the two clauses which are joined, and on the other hand, it serves to join the two sentences together, that is, it has a connecting function as well. Within syndetic composite sentences, clauses may be linked by means of coordination or subordination, forming a compoundor complex sentence respectively.

In compoundsentences, the clauses of which they consist are linked by coordination. They are equal in rank and have the same status in the sentence. Their equality in rank is expressed above all in each sequential clause explicitly corresponding to a new effort of thought. Coordination is signaled by a linking word, called coordinator. The most common coordinators are and, or, but, correlatives both…and, neither.. nor. Each coordinate clause could stand as a sentence on its own, that is to be independent: I study the English language in Britain and Mary in the USA. (=I studied the English language in Britain. Mary studied the English language in the USA).

In complex sentences,the clauses are linked by subordination, usually signaled by a linking word, called a subordinator. The structurally simplest complex sentence consists of the main clause and the subordinate, standing beneath the main clause in rank. There more than onemain clause and more than one subordinate clause in sentence. There are two kinds of subordinators: a) conjunctive words (conjunctions), whose function is to mark a structure as a certain type of sub-clause; b) conjunctive and relative pronouns, which have a further function within the structural pattern of a sub-clause. In subordination, the clauses that are joined together do not have the same grammatical status. One clause (the subordinate, dependent, or embedded clause) is subordinated to another (the main or principal clause). A subordinate clause, however important the information rendered by it might be for the whole communication, presents if as naturally supplementing the information of the principal clause: I answered the door when Jane rang the bell. The subordinate clause cannot stand as a sentence on its own. When Jane rang the bell needs some other clause before it can be used.

In compound sentences, the whole clauses are coordinated, together with their predications (a sequential clause refers to the whole of the leading clause). In complex sentences, a clause is mostly subordinated not to the whole principal clause but to some word in it which may be regarded as its head-word. The subordinate clause always expands an element of main clause structure, all or part of the subject, object, predicative, or adverbial. In I know where she lives the subordinate clause is an adjunct of the objective verb know. In I know the place where she lives the subordinate clause is the adjunct of the noun place. In The important thing is where she lives the subordinate clause is an adjunct of the link verb is. The only exception is the subordinate clause in a sentence like Where she lives is unknown in which it functions as the subject. The order of clauses within a compound sentence is often more rigid than in complex sentences. The position of a coordinate clause is rigidly fixed in relation to the previous clause, and cannot change places with it without impairing the sense of the sentence: He came at six and we had dinner together. – *And we had dinner together, he came at six. This is a big difference between coordinate clauses and most subordinate clauses: Harry went to Leeds, when Mary went to York. When Mary went to York, Harry went to Leeds. Coordinators cannot be preceded by another conjunction: Hilary went to Leeds, and but Mary went to York. This is another way in which coordination differs from subordination: Hilary went to Leeds; and when she arrived, Mary left.

These peculiarities of compound and complex sentences may account for the difference in their treatment. The clauses of compound sentences are sometimes regarded as independent. Some linguists are even of the opinion that compound sentences are merely sequences of simple sentences, combinations of sentences. The clauses of a complex sentence, on the contrary, are often treated as forming a unity, a simple sentence in which some part is replaced by a clause. Such extreme views are not quite justified, especially if we take into consideration that the border lines between coordination and subordination are fluid. A clause may be introduced by a typical subordinating conjunction and yet its connection with the principal clause is so loose that it can hardly be regarded as a subordinate clause at all. Compare: I met John, who told me (- and he told me) the latest news. Or, conversely, a coordinating conjunction may express relations typical of subordination: You must interfere now, for (= because) they are getting quite beyond me.