8. Communicative types of sentences. The Simple Sentence.

The sentence is a communicative unit. Therefore the primary classification should be based on the communicative aspect. In accordance with the purpose of communication, 3 cardinal sentence types are recognized in linguistic tradition: ◊ the declarative s-e (expresses a statement either affirmative or negative);

◊the imperative s-e (expresses inducement either affirmative or negative, that is this s-e urges the listener in the form of request or command to perform a certain action); ◊the interrogative s-e (expresses a question, that is a request for information wanted by the speaker from the listener). Also there exist exclamatory sentences, but they don’t bring any cardinal change into our purpose of communication. They only impart a shade of meaning t the previous 3 types.

The simple s-e is defined as a sentence whish has only 1 predicative line. If the English sentence has 1 subject but 2 predicates, it is not simple but extended. (E.g.: Mary saw me yesterday and spoke with me)

9. Listening comprehension skill

Listening comprehension is a receptive kind of communicative activity which aims at speech understanding and audio perception at the moment of its production. It is derivative, secondary to speaking, it accompanies speaking and is simultaneous to it.

Teaching aids: records (separate phrases, dialogues, monologues, interviews, songs, films, TV programmes).

Principles for developing listening ability: ● listening develops through focusing on meaning and trying to learn new and important content in the target language. ●l-g develops through work of comprehension activities. ●l-g develops through attention to accuracy and analysis of form.

Stages of l-g comprehension: 1)pre-listening (introduction of new words, brainstorming, questions, lexical tests); 2) while-listening stage (exercises: paraphrasing, matching, detection of mistakes, selection of the titles to the paragraphs); 3) post-listening (answering questions, retelling, summarizing, compiling dialogues,etc).

10. Main phonetic changes within the historical context.

OE sound system developed from PG sound system.

OE Word Stress/Accent:

fixed (can’t move either in form- or word-building and is usually placed on root or prefix);

dynamic (force, breath stress);

in Noun and Adjective stress was mainly on the prefix if there was one, in Verb stress was mainly on the root even if there was a prefix:

stress served to distinguish Noun from Verb.

OE Vowels

Unstressed vowels were weakened and dropped.

Stressed vowels underwent some changes:

splitting – 1 phoneme split into several allophones which later become separate phonemes

merging – separate phonemes become allophones of one phoneme and then disappear and are not distinguished any more as separate phonemes

OE Consonants

OE consonants underwent the following changes:

Hardening (the process when a soft consonant becomes harder)– usually initially and after nasals ([m, n])

Voicing (the process when a voiceless consonant becomes voiced in certain positions) – intervocally and between a vowel and a voiced consonant or sonorant

Middle, New English

Word Stress/Accent:

In ME and NE word stress acquired greater positions freedom and greater role in word derivation.

Recessive tendency – stress in loan-words moved closer to the beginning of the word (e.g. in French words the stress is usually placed on the ultimate or pen-ultimate syllable, but the stress in the words of the French origin that penetrated into English has moved to the beginning of the word).

Rhythmic tendency – regular alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables (3 or more) that creates rhythm and has led to the appearance of the secondary stress.

The changes that occurred to vowels in ME were as follows: