6.3. The Sentence: General Notions

Sentence is a predicative unit, i.e. it does not only name a referent but presents a certain situation (situational event) and reflects the connection between denotation of the event and the objective reality. In this sense sentence is represented as a component of the nomination of situation. So, while the word serves to nominate an object or phemomenon, the sentence reflects an event or situation. Events can be also nominated by words, e.g. battle, elections, but only in the sentence they are linked by certain relations that reproduce interconnections and interrelations existing between the objects of the reality. So, the relative semantic schemes of the events are given by the sentence.

One-member sentence also turns into an utterance expressing the semantic complex through its concrete contextual connections. Unlike the word, the sentence does not exist as a ready-made unit; it is created in the course of communication. A. I. Smirnitsky considered the sentence as a coherent flow of words containing a complete thought. Being a unit of speech, the sentence is intonationally delimited, i.e. the intonation separates one sentence from another. Let’s consider one-member sentence Marriage in different syntactic contexts:

1) Marriage. They talked so much together that it was inevitable for her to learn his views on it.

2) Marriage? What did she cared about marriage?

3) Marriage. A social union or legal contract between people that create kinship.

4) Marriage. Large waves of love and romance are nice, but all waves of strong feeling must crash into reality.

The sentence Marriage in the 1^st case refers to reminiscences; in the 2^nd – presents a question in argument; in the 3^rd – gives a definition; in the 4^th – a proposition of reason.

As a unit of communication the sentence presents two different sides: on one hand, each sentence reveals definite syntactical semantic features which make up a typical model; on the other hand, the generalized pattern (kernel / basic structure) is repeated in an indefinite number of actual utterances. The pattern is not present in the sentence, it is a theoretical construction which is studied by grammatical theory.

Peculiar features of the sentence are: integrity, predicativity, semantic completeness, modality, intonational contor. The center of predication in the sentence of a verbal type (which is predominant in English) is a finite verb. The finite verb expresses essential predicative meanings by its categorial forms – tense, mood, voice and aspect (person, case, and number reflect the corresponding categories of the subject). The predication is effected by intonation, word order, and functional words. To syntactic meaning of the sentence belong its purpose (declaration – interrogation – inducement), modal probability, affirmation and negation.

The Simple Sentence

The basic predicative meaning of a typical English sentence is expressed by a finite verb which is connected with the subject. The predicative connection is referred to as a “predicative line”. Depending on the complexity of a sentence it may have one or several predicative lines. In other words, a sentence may be monopredicative or polypredicative. In these terms we may say that the simple sentence is a sentence with one predicative line, e.g.: Opinions differ. The sentence with several predicates referring to one and the same subject has several predicative lines, e.g.: I took the letter and opened it. It is evident that the second sentence has two predicative lines. The content of this sentence reflects two closely connected events that happened in immediate succession.

A sentence having one verb-predicate and more than one subject to it can be considered as a composite (2^nd one is elliptical), e.g.: The door was open, and also the front window.

Thus, the syntactic feature of monopredication serves as a criterion for identifying the simple sentence in distinction to the composite one.

The simple sentence is organized as a system of function-expressing positions. The nominative parts occupying the notional position in the sentence are: the subject, the predicate, the object, the attribute, the adverbial, the paranthetical enclosure, the addressing enclosure. A special, semi-notional position is occupied by the interjectional enclosure. The parts are organized in a hierarchy, wherein each of them performs a modifying role. The subject is a person-modifier of the predicate.

The predicate is a process-modifier of the subject.

The object is a substance-modifier of the predicate.

The adverbial is a quality-modifier of the predicate or the whole sentence.

The attribute is a quality-modifier of the substantive part (subject, object).

The paranthetical enclosure is a speaker-bound modifier (відокремлене означення) of any sentence-part or the whole sentence.

The addressing enclosure is a substantive modifier of the destination of the whole sentence.

The interjectional enclosure is a speaker-bound emotional modifier of the whole sentence.

All modifiers may be expressed either singly or collectively, i.e. in a co-ordinative combination, e.g., co-modifiers or homogeneous modifiers.