Literature

1. Blokh m.Y., Semionova t.N., Timofeyeva s.V. Theoretical English Grammar.

Seminars. Moscow, 2007.

2. Кобрина н.А., Болдырев н.Н., Худяков а.А. Теоретическая грамматика

современного английского языка. Москва, 2007.

3. Lectures on syntax (this book).

4. Croft W. Syntactic categories and grammatical relations. The cognitive

organization of information. Chicago, 1991.

5. Croft W. and Cruse D.Alan. Cognitive linguistics. – Manchester: University of

Manchester, 2003.

6. Dowty D. “The garden swams with bees and the fallacy of “argument

alteration”. In Ravin Y. and Leacock C (eds). Polysemy: Theoretical and Computational Approaches. Oxford: University Press, 2000, pp.111-128.

7. Hopper P.J., Thompson S.A. Transitivity in Grammar and Discourse//Language.

– 1980. – Vol.56. – P.251-299.

8. Болдырев Н.Н. Категория сказуемого с прототипической точки зрения //

На стыке парадигм лингвистического знания в начале XXI века:

грамматика, семантика, словообразование. Мат. межд. конф. Калининград.-

КГУ, 2003.

Practical tasks

I. Analyse the structure of the following sentences in terms of the case grammar by

Fillmore.

1. Her brown hand waved us a jaunty salute.

2. A child of five was handing out the flowers.

3. The boy fisted the rice into his mouth.

II. The subject-verb-complement clause patterns express different event types,

such as action chains, mental interactions or container structures. State the

event type in the following examples:

1. Dad opened the box with a knife.

2. Little Sue wants a mountain bike.

3. Jack brings along the most recent CDs.

4. The bus holds 40 people.

5. She was dreaming of her Italian boyfriend.

6. The village consists of a church and three cottages.

7. Sorry, I have forgotten your name.

8. The area abounds with pubs.

9. This anthology assembles a lot of unknown poems.

10. Diana was sipping her long drink.

III. One can claim that all action chains consist of at least three elements (agent,

instrument, patient). Examine the following two-element structures and try to

find the instrumental that might be added:

1. Susan is picking strawberries.

2. Susan is reading a book.

3. Susan turns the key.

4. Susan kicks the ball.

Explain why the instrument is not expressed in these sentences.

Seminar 5

ACTUAL DIVISION OF THE SENTENCE.

COMMUNICATIVE TYPES OF SENTENCES

Topics for Discussion

1. The notions of theme and rheme. The correlation of syntactical division and actual

division of the sentence.

2. Language means of expressing the theme and rheme.

3. The problem of classification of sentences according to the purpose of

communication.

4. Cardinal communicative types and mixed communicative types.

Topics for reports

1. The notions of topic, comment and focus in discourse (from T.A. van Dijk “Text and

context. Explorations in the semantics and pragmatics of discourse” in the book by

Blokh M.Y., Semionova T.N., Timofeyeva S.V. Theoretical English Grammar.

Seminars. Moscow, 2007, Pp. 274-293).

2. Non-sentence utterances (see: Кобрина Н.А., Корнеева Е.А., Оссовская М.И.,

Гузеева К.А. Грамматика английского языка. Морфология. Синтаксис. – СПб.,

1999. С. 300-313).