Синтаксис английского языка от слова к тексту = A Students’ Guide to English Syntax from Word to Discourse. Учебное пособие

Chapter IV. Basic rules of punctuation

2.No, the taxi driver said curtly, I cannot get you to the airport in fifteen minutes.

3.I believe, Jack remarked, that the best time of year to visit Europe is in spring. At least that's what I read in a book entitled Guide to Europe.

4.My French professor told me that my accent is abominable.

5.She asked, Is Time a magazine you read regularly?

6.Flannery O'Connor probably got the title of one of her stories from the words of the old popular song, A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

7.When did Roosevelt say, We have nothing to fear but fear itself?

8.It seems to me that hip and cool are words that are going out of style.

9.Yesterday, John said, This afternoon I'll bring back your book Conflict in the Middle East; however, he did not return it.

10.Can you believe, Dot asked me, that it has been almost five years since we've seen each other?

11.A Perfect Day for Bananafish is, I believe, J.D. Salinger's best short story.

12.Certainly, Mr. Martin said, I shall explain the whole situation to him. I know that he will understand.

Exercise 7. Put in semicolons, colons, dashes, quotation marks, italics (use an underline), and parentheses where ever they are needed in the following sentences.

1.The men in question Harold Keene, Jim Peterson, and Gerald Greene deserve awards.

2.Several countries participated in the airlift Italy, Belgium, France, and Luxembourg.

3.Only one course was open to us surrender, said the ex-major, and we did.

4.Judge Carswell later to be nominated for the Supreme Court had ruled against civil rights.

5.In last week's New Yorker, one of my favorite magazines, I enjoyed reading Leland's article How Not to Go Camping.

6.Yes, Jim said, I'll be home by ten.

7.There was only one thing to do study till dawn.

8.Montaigne wrote the following A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.

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YULIA SERGEEVA, IRINA SYRESINA. A STUDENTS’ GUIDE TO ENGLISH SYNTAX: FROM WORD TO DISCOURSE

9. The following are the primary colors red, blue, and yellow.

10.Arriving on the 8 10 plane were Liz Brooks, my old roommate her husband and Tim, their son.

11.When the teacher commented that her spelling was poor, Lynn replied All the members of my family are poor spellers. Why not me?

12.He used the phrase you know so often that I finally said No, I don't know.

13.The automobile dealer handled three makes of cars Volkswagens, Porsches, and Mercedes Benz.

14.Though Phil said he would arrive on the 9 19 flight, he came instead on the 10 36 flight.

15.Whoever thought said Helen that Jack would be elected class president?

16.In baseball, a show boat is a man who shows off.

17.The minister quoted Isaiah 5 21 in last Sunday's sermon.

18.There was a very interesting article entitled The New Rage for Folk Singing in last Sunday's New York Times newspaper.

19.Whoever is elected secretary of the club Ashley, or Chandra, or Aisha must be prepared to do a great deal of work, said Jumita, the previous secretary.

20.Darwin's On the Origin of Species 1859 caused a great controversy when it appeared.

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CHAPTER V

TEXT AS A SYNTACTIC UNIT

5.1. TEXT GRAMMAR AND THEORY OF DISCOURSE

Modern linguistics considers the text as the ultimate unit of communication and the text level to be the highest level in the hierarchy of linguistic levels.

The text is a unit of a language characterized by semantic, structural and communicative integrity. Its semantic integrity is exposed in topical succession and coherence, structural integrity is manifested in cohesion, and communicative integrity is revealed in communicative intention of the text producer.

The text is different from the supra-sentential construction in that it alone is characterized by global completeness, while the SSC is not entirely complete: it is a constituent part of a higher unity – the text.

There are different approaches to text analysis, which, taken together, reveal the three planes of this complex linguistic sign: its form, meaning and function. These are expressed by a number of textual categories, including coherence, cohesion, informativity and intentionality.

The text is a language unit and it manifests itself in speech as discourse.

There are at least three approaches to defining discourse: formal, functional and a mixture of both. The proponents of the formal view consider discourse as a text. The functional definition of discourse is “social interaction”. The formal-functionalist approach views discourse as “text in social context”. According to this view the terms “text” and “discourse” do not refer to different domains. They are aspects of the same phenomenon, i.e. communication. The terms reflect a difference in focus. Text is the basic means of communication. Discourse is the process of communication, with a special emphasis on its functional (social) plane. It is a more embracing term: it comprises both text and social context. Understanding discourse as “text in social context” shows the interdependence of language and society to be an important feature of human life.

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YULIA SERGEEVA, IRINA SYRESINA. A STUDENTS’ GUIDE TO ENGLISH SYNTAX: FROM WORD TO DISCOURSE

Large-scale inquiries into text functioning in social context lead to the appearance of discourse analysis. Discourse analysis as an important area of study resides at the borders of different academic disciplines: anthropology, ethnography, sociology, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and text linguistics. There are several approaches to the linguistic study of discourse. They are speech act theory, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, pragmatics, conversation analysis, and variation analysis. Discourse analysis is just another approach to study the text, namely in social context.

Text as a unit of the highest (super-syntactic) level is studied by text linguistics which is concerned with the analysis of formal and structural features of the text.

5.2. THE CATEGORIES OF THE TEXT

Text can be defined as a sequence of sentences connected logically and semantically which convey a complete message. Textual basic integrative properties can be described with the help of the notions of coherence (целостность), cohesion (формальная связность) and deixis (указание).

Coherence is a semantic or topical unity of the spoken or written text – that is, the sentences within the text are usually connected by the same general topic. Generally speaking, a coherent text is the text that ‘sticks together’ as a whole unit. Coherence is usually achieved by means of the theme and rheme progression. There exist various types of the theme and rheme progression, e.g.

a)T1 – R1 Once there lived an old man. T2 – R2 The old man lived in a hut. T3 – R3 The hut was near a wood.

b)T1 – R1 Michael is a student.

T1 – R2 He lives in Boston.

T1 – R3 He has a cheap car.

c)The general topic is Russia (T)

Subtopics are its climate, industry, population (R1, R2, R3)

T1 – R1, T2 – R2, T3 – R3.

Naturally, in the process of text development different types of theme and rheme progression are combined.

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Cohesionisasuccessionofspokenorwrittensentences.Sometimes the sentences may even not coincide topically. The connection we want to draw between various parts of the text may be achieved by textual and lexical cohesion. Textual cohesion may be achieved by formal markers which express conjunctive relations and serve as text connectors.

Text connectors may be of four different types:

a)additive – and, furthermore, similarly, in addition, etc.

b)adversative – but, however, on the other hand, in fact, anyway, after all, nevertheless, etc.

c)causal –so, consequently, for this reason, thus, etc.

d)temporal – then, after that, finally, at last, in the long run, etc.

The full list of text connectors is very long. Some of them do not possess direct equivalents in the Russian language. At the same time it is impossible to speak and write English naturally without knowing for sure when and how to use text connectors.

Lexical cohesion occurs when two words in the text are semantically related in the same way – in other words, they are related in terms of their meaning. Two major categories of lexical cohesion are reiteration and collocation. Reiteration includes repetition, synonym or near synonym use and the use of general words.

e.g. (1) You could try driving the car up the slope. The incline isn’t at all that steep.

(2) Pneumonia arrives with the cold and wet conditions. The illness can strike everyone from infants to the elderly.

Collocation includes all those items in text that are semantically related. The items may be related in one text and not related in other. For instance, the words ‘neighbour’ and ‘scoundrel’ are not related at all. However, in the following text they are collocated:

My neighbour has just let one of his trees fall into my garden. And the scoundrel refuses to pay for the damage he has caused.

Cohesive ties within the text are also formed by endophoric relations. Endophoric relations are of two kinds – those that look back in the text for their interpretation are called anaphoric relations; those that look forward in the text are called cataphoric relations:

e.g. Look at the sun. It is going down quickly. ‘It’ refers back to ‘the sun’.

It is going down quickly, the sun. ‘It’ refers forwards to ‘the sun’. As a linguistic term deixis means “identification by pointing”.

Much of the textual meaning can be understood by looking at

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YULIA SERGEEVA, IRINA SYRESINA. A STUDENTS’ GUIDE TO ENGLISH SYNTAX: FROM WORD TO DISCOURSE

linguistic markers that have a pointing function in a given context. For example, consider the following note pinned on a professor’s door: “Sorry, I missed you. I’m in my other office. Back in an hour.”

Without knowing who the addressee is, what time the note was written, or the location of the other office, it is really hard to grasp precise information of the message.

Those terms that we cannot interpret without an immediate context are called deixis. Deictic terms are used to refer to ourselves, to others, and to objects in our environment. They are also used to locate actions in a time frame relative to the present. Deictic terms can show social relationship – the social location of individuals in relation to others. They may be used to locate parts of a text in relation to other parts.

Deictic expressions are typically pronouns, certain time and place adverbs (here, now, etc.), some verbs of motion (come, go, leave, arrive, etc), and tense forms of those verbs. In fact all languages have expressions that link a sentence to a time and space context and that help to determine reference.

We can identify five major types of deictic markers – personal, locative, temporal, textual and social.

Personal deixis refers to grammatical markers of communicant roles in a speech event. The first person is the speaker’s reference to himself/herself; the second person is the speaker’s reference to addressee(s) and the third person is reference to others who are neither speaker nor addressee.

Locative deixis (place) refers to how languages show the relationship between space and the location of the participants in the text: this, that, here, there, in front of, at our place, etc.

Temporal deixis (time) refers to the time of speaking: now, then, today, yesterday, tomorrow, etc.

Textual deixis keeps track of reference in the unfolding text: in the following chapter, but, first, I’d like to discuss, etc. Most of the text connectors discussed above belong to this group.

Social deixis is used to code social relationships between speakers and addressee or audience. Here belong honorifics, titles of addressees and pronouns. There are two kinds of social deixis: relational and absolute.

Absolute deictic markers are forms attached to a social role: Your Honour, Mr. President, Your Grace, Madam, etc.

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Relational deictic markers locate persons in relation to the speaker rather than by their roles in the society: my cousin, you, her, etc. In English, social deixis is not heavily coded in the pronoun system.‘You’ refers to both – singular and plural. English possesses ‘a powerful we’:

We are happy to inform…, In this article we claim …

Summing it all up, textual categories appear and function only in the text as a language unit of the highest rank. They reveal the cardinal and the most general differential features of the text. Today the list of textual categories is open: linguists name different textual categories because they approach the text from different angles.

The new approach to the nature of the text treats it as a unit of language in use. It is not a grammatical unit, like a clause or a sentence; and it is not defined by its size. It implies a continual succession of sentences centering on a common informative purpose. In this sense the text can be interpreted as a lingual entity with its two distinguishing features: topical unity and semantic-syntactic cohesion. The elementary topical textual unit is called the dicteme (the notion of dicteme was introduced by M.Y. Blokh).

The dicteme occupies the highest position in the hierarchy of segmental levels of language. It can be expressed either by a cumuleme (a sequence of two or more sentences), or by one single sentence placed in a topically significant position. The cumuleme is a one-direction sequence of sentences forming monologue speech. Two-direction sequences (occursemes) should be recognized as constituent parts of dialogue speech.

The dicteme, as an elementary topical textual unit, is polyfunctional. In the text it performs the functions of nomination, predication, topicalization, and stylization.

5.3. STYLISTIC DEVICES BASED ON THE STRUCTURE OF LINGUAL UNITS

(SYNTACTICAL EXPRESSIVE MEANS)

Sentences in a text often show no regular alternation of form. We say that such text is stylistically neutral. However, certain syntactic alternations and reiterations are stylistically relevant. Here we search for stylistic functions in the sequence of sentences and dwell on the expressive means arranged according to their structure:

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YULIA SERGEEVA, IRINA SYRESINA. A STUDENTS’ GUIDE TO ENGLISH SYNTAX: FROM WORD TO DISCOURSE

a)syntactical expressive means based on the absence of some element (on the principle of economy);

b)syntactical expressive means based on the presence of extraelements (on the principle of redundancy);

c)syntactical expressive means based on the unusual arrangement of syntactic elements in a sequence.

5.3.1. Syntactical expressive means based on the absence of some element (on the principle of economy)

Syntactical expressive means based on the absence of some element are as follows: a) ellipsis; b) one-member sentences; c) aposiopesis; d) apokoinou; e) asyndeton.

ELLIPSIS is a deliberate omission of one or more parts of the sentence (usually principal parts) that are easily understood from the context and can be restored if necessary. Ellipsis is, first and foremost, typical of colloquial speech. In colloquial style it simply makes the speech more compact, abrupt, while in literary descriptions it may give the construction an additional expressive or emotional colouring. For example, the solemn, elevated tone is often created by omission of predicates as in the following lines:

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,/But tell of days in goodness spent,/A mind at peace with all below,/A heart whose love is innocent! (Byron)

The sea is but another sky,/The sky a sea as well (Longfellow). Youth is full of pleasance,/Age is full of care;/Youth like summer

morn,/Age like winter weather (Shakespeare).

He rocked to and fro in his chair. What did he understand? Nothing. Where was he headed? Nowhere. What did he want? To know. What? A meaning. Why? A riddle (McCullers)

Besides oral speech and fiction (which aim at economy and expressiveness, respectively) ellipsis is common to some special types of texts. For the sake of brevity elliptical sentences are used in handbooks and papers on technology and natural sciences. Ellipsis (and abbreviation) is always employed in encyclopedic dictionaries and reference books of the “Who is Who” type. All kinds of elliptical constructions including ready-made formulas are used in telegraphic messages, where every word is paid for. Along with ellipsis proper articles and prepositions are also omitted here:

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“Just arrived. Elephant passed through half an hour ago, creating wildest fright and excitement. Elephant raged around streets; two plumbers going by killed one – other escaped. Regret general. O’Flaherty, detective” (M. Twain).

A lazy correspondent got a cable from his office: WHY UNNEWS? He cabled back: UNNEWS GOOD NEWS. His office replied: UNNEWS UNJOB (MN, 1981, No 48).

ONE-MEMBER SENTENCES are sentences with only one principal part – the subject or the predicate (see 1.1). From stylistic point of view nominative sentences are more frequent, but it doesn’t make verbal ones less valuable. Consider the following lines:

Sow seed,– but let no tyrant reap;/Find wealth,– let no tyrant heap;/ Weave robes,– let not the idle wear;/Forge arms,– in your defense to bear (Shelley).

Nominative one-member sentences always produce a considerable stylistic effect due to the following feature: the noun unites within itself the image of an object and the idea of its existence here and now and thus it makes the reader visualize the picture described.

Their main functions in the text are as follows:

a)They open the narration to present the background of the action. They are used for preliminary description to create the exposition:

e.g. Dusk – of a summer night. And the tall walls of the commercial heart of an American city of perhaps 400,000 inhabitants – such walls as in time may linger as a mere fable (the initial lines of “An American Tragedy” by T. Dreiser).

b)They may also create the so-called“cinematographic effect”,when a broad panorama is composed by separate episodes, exact details.

c)Their laconic character helps to focus the reader’s attention on what is most important; they may heighten the emotional tension of the narration:

e.g. The horror! The flight! The exposure! The police! The first to desert him – these – all save Sondra perhaps. And even she, too. Yes, she, of course. The horror in her eyes (Dreiser).

The fragment represents a kaleidoscopic range of images in Clyde Griffiths’ imagination (the main character of the above mentioned novel).

d)They are a typical device used in stage remarks:

e.g. Lady Sneerwell’s dressing room. Lady Sneerwell discovered at her toilet; Mr. Snake drinking chocolate (Sheridan).

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YULIA SERGEEVA, IRINA SYRESINA. A STUDENTS’ GUIDE TO ENGLISH SYNTAX: FROM WORD TO DISCOURSE

APOSIOPESIS in Greek means “silence”. It denotes an intentional break of the narration.It is a sudden stop in the middle of the sentence. The speaker either begins a new utterance or stops altogether. In every-day speech aposiopesis is presented by such incomplete sentences as Of all the…/Well, I never! (= Such impudence is quite unexpected)/Don’t you do this, or… (=a threat)/These are certainly good intentions, but… (=good intentions pave the way to Hell).

Graphically it is marked by dots or by a dash or several dashes. This device is extensively used in imaginative prose where it performs the following functions:

a)It shows the emotional state of the speaker, usually the state of great tension, when someone is at a loss for words;

b)It focuses the reader’s attention on the non-pronounced part of the utterance, because it contains the most important information;

c)It is a typical feature of a represented speech and thus it helps to portray a character.

Consider some examples of it from literary works:

He thought for an instant: then why can’t you understand how I – And in the next instant thought: but you do understand, that’s the whole trouble (Plain).

Keith: My God! If the police come – Find me here – She dashes to the door. Then stops. (Galsworthy)

I sent a message to the fish:

I told them, “This is what I wish.” The little fishes’ answer was: “We cannot do it, Sir, because –”

Then someone came to me and said, “The little fishes are in bed.”

And he was very proud and stiff;

He said, “I’d go and wake them, if –” I took a corkscrew from the shelf And went to wake them up myself. And when I found the door was shut,

I tried to turn the handle, but – (Carroll).

APOKOINOU («от общего») is a Greek word which indicates the blending of two sentences through a word that has two syntactical functions, one for each of the blending sentences:

e.g. It was he told me about it.

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