16. The sentence.

Most people recognize a sentence as a unit which begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, a question mark, or an exclamatory mark. Sentence has also been defined notionally as units which express a “complete thought”.

According to the purpose of the utterance sentences are divided into declarative, interrogative, imperative and exclamatory.

According to their structure sentences are divided into simple: one-member, two-memebr (extended and unextended) and composite (compound and complex).

The principal parts of the sentence are the subject and the predicate. Depending on the character of the subject sentences are divided into personal, indefinite-personal and impersonal.

There are different types of predicate: the simple verbal predicate, the compound verbal predicate and the compound nominal predicate.

Secondary parts of the sentence : the object (direct, indirect, the prepositional, complex object), the attribute (prepositive, postpositive), The adverbial modifiers (of place, time, cause, purpose, manner, attending circumstances, result, degree and measure, condition and concession.)

17. The Verb: Verbals.

A verbal is a form of a verb used as a noun, adjective, or adverb. While verbals are forms of the verbs, they are not the action associated with the subject. In other words they are not verbs.

Gerunds are forms of the verb that function as nouns. They always end in –ing;

Participles are forms of the verb that function as adjectives. They can end in –ed, -en, -ing;

Infinitives are forms of the verb that may act as adjectives, adverbs or nouns.

As noted, verbals do not act in conjunction with the subject as a verb.They may modify the subject and in fact they may be the subject, but they don not act as the verb for the subject.

1. Susan soaked her tired feet in the cool water. (tired is participle)

2. Childs enjoy surfing the net. (gerund)

3. Billy refused to accept the idea that his birthday cake was gone. (infinitive)

Verbals do not indicate the time of the action, however they do have aspect.

Active: gerund/participle – writing;

Active – perfect gerund/perfect participle – having written;

Passive – gerund/participle – being written;

Passive – gerund/perfect participle – having been written;

18. Functional sentence Perspective (Actual division of the sentence)

It is well known fact that the notional parts of the sentence form together the nominative meaning of the sentence. The division of the sentence into notional parts can be called the nominative division a long side of nominative division. The actual division purpose is to reveal the correlative significance of the sentence parts from the point of view of their actual informative role in an utterance.

The main components of the actual division are the “theme” and the “rheme”.

Theme expresses the starting point of the communication.

Rheme expresses the basic informative part of the communication.

Between the theme and the rheme are positioned intermediary parts of the actual division. The theme may or may not coincide with the subject of the sentence. The rheme with a predicate. The actual division finds its full expression only in a concrete context of speech. If it is stylistically neutral construction the theme is the subject and the rheme is the predicate and this kind of actual division is direct. The actual division in which the rheme is expressed by the subject is inverted.

The means of expressing the rheme :

• Lexical meanings – particles (only,even)

• Logical stress- Change of syntactic structure (It was he who did it)

• Passive voice.

Means of expressing theme

• Definite article.

• Word order.

The actual division is an active means of expressing functional meaning. Actual division is the result of the influence of context and situation. Intonation is a very important means of actual division.

К.Г.Крушельницкая/А.В. де Грот: actual division is the reflection of the speaker’s attitude towards what is said. This point of view is less acceptable.

Actual Division of a Sentence a linguistic term meaning the division of a sentence based on its expression of a concrete meaning in the context of a given situation.

Actual division breaks up a sentence into that which is considered to be known or easily understood (the theme, or point of departure), that which is told about the theme (the rheme), and the elements of transition. For example, “He (theme) proved to be (transition) a splendid teacher (rheme).” Actual division of a sentence is presented as an alternative to the formal division of a sentence into grammatical elements.

19. The adverb

The adverb is a part of speech which expresses some circumstances that attend an action or state, or points out some characteristic features of an action or a quality.

The function – is that of an adverbial modifier. An adverb may modify verbs (verbals), adjectives, adverbs.

Structure: 1)simple (long, enough, then, there); 2)derivative (slowly, forward, likewise); 3)compound (anyhow, sometimes, nowhere); 4) composite ( at once, at last);

Comparison of adverbs.

Like adj., adv. have three forms of comparison: positive, comparative, and superlative.

Adverb comparison

Most adverbs are compared by using another adverb.

More or less are used to express the comparative degree.

Most or least are used to express the superlative degree.

I dance gracefully/more gracefully /most gracefully .

Suffix comparison

Some adverbs are compared using a suffix –er for the comparative forms and –est for the superlative forms.

I will arrive soon/arrive sooner/arrive soonest.