29 The Definition of the Sentence. Its Essential Features. The Classification of Sentences.

A sentence is a unit of speech whose grammatical structure conforms to the laws of the language and which serves as the chief means of conveying a thought. A sentence is not only a means of communicating something about reality but a means of showing the speaker’s attitude to it.

It is rather difficult to define the sentence as it is connected with many lingual and extra lingual aspects – logical, psychological and philosophical. We will just stick to one of them - according to academician G.Pocheptsov, the sentence is the central syntactic construction used as the minimal communicative unit that has its primary predication, actualises a definite structural scheme and possesses definite intonation characteristics.

The most essential features of the sentence as a linguistic unit are a) its structural characteristics – subject-predicate relations (primary predication), and b) its semantic characteristics – it refers to some fact in the objective reality.

According to the purpose of the utterance we distinguish 4 kinds of sentences:

1- The declarative sentence states a fact in the affirmative or negative form. In DS the subject precedes the predicate (pronounced with falling intonation) (!: English predicate can have only one negation).

He does not go anywhere.

2- An Imperative sentence serves to induce a person to do smth, so it expresses a command (falling tone: Come to the blackboard!), a request or invitation (rising tone: Open the door, please!).

3- The interrogative sentence asks a question. It is formed by means of inversion (unless subject is an interrogative word: Who is in the room? – no inversion).

There are several kinds of questions:

General questions requiring the answer yes or no and spoken with a rising intonation. They are formed by placing part of the predicative (auxiliary or modal verb) before the subject.

Do you like art? Can you speak English?

Astonishment: Haven’t you seen him yet?

Rhetoric questions: Can you commit a whole country to their own prisons?

Special q. beginning with an interrogative word (falling intonation)

Where do you live? (order of words is as in Gen. question)

Who lives in this room? (Who – is a subject, order of words is as that of a statement)

Alternative questions, indicating choice

Do you live in town or in the country?

Disjunctive questions requiring the answer yes or no and consisting of an affirmative statement followed by a negative question, or a negative statement followed by an affirmative question

You speak English, don’t you?

4- An exclamatory sentence expresses some kind of emotion or feeling. It often begins with the words what and how, it is always in the declarative form (no inversion) (falling intonation: What a lovely day it is! How wonderful!)

25. the noun (ENGLISH)The categorial meaning of the noun is “substance” or “thingness”. Nouns directly name various phenomena of reality and have the strongest nominative force among notional parts of speech: practically every phenomenon can be presented by a noun as an independent referent, or, can be substantivized. Nouns denote things and objects proper (tree), abstract notions (love), various qualities (bitterness), and even actions (movement). All these words function in speech in the same way as nouns denoting things proper. the noun is characterized by a specific set of word-building affixes and word-building models, which unmistakably mark a noun, among them: suffixes of the doer (worker, naturalist, etc.), suffixes of abstract notions (laziness, rotation, security, elegance, etc.), special conversion patterns (to find – a find), etc. As for word-changing categories, the noun is changed according to the categories of number (boy-boys), case (boy-boy’s), and article determination (boy, a boy, the boy). Formally the noun is also characterized by specific combinability with verbs, adjectives and other nouns, introduced either by preposition or by sheer contact. The noun is the only part of speech which can be prepositionally combined with other words, e.g.: the book of the teacher, to go out of the room, away from home, typical of the noun, etc. The most characteristic functions of the noun in a sentence are the function of a subject and an object, since they commonly denote persons and things as components of the situation, e.g.: The teacher took the book. Besides, the noun can function as a predicative (part of a compound predicate), e.g.: He is a teacher; and as an adverbial modifier, e.g.: It happened last summer. The noun in English can also function as an attribute in the following cases: when it is used in the genitive case (the teacher’s book), when it is used with a preposition (the book of the teacher), or in contact groups of two nouns the first of which qualifies the second (cannon ball, space exploration, sea breeze, the Bush administration, etc.). most “noun + noun” groups are formed freely in speech; besides, they can be easily transformed into other types of word-combinations (this type of transformation test is known as “the isolability test”), e.g., prepositional word-combinations: a cannon ball à a ball for cannon, space exploration à exploration of space, etc.; compound words as a rule need additional transformations which explain their “inner form”, or etymological motivation, e.g.: a waterfall – water of a stream, river, etc., falling straight down over rocks. So, combinations like space exploration are combinations of two nouns, the first of which is used as an attribute of the other. They may include several noun attributes, especially in scientific style texts, e.g.: population density factor, space exploration programmes, etc. accord with various particular semantico-functional and formal features of the constituent words. The main grammatically relevant subclasses of nouns are distinguished in the following correlations.On the basis of “type of nomination” proper nouns are opposed to common nouns. Common nouns present a general name of any thing belonging to a certain class of things, e.g.: river – any river, boy – any boy, while the proper nouns have no generalized meaning; they serve as a label, a nickname of a separate individual being or thing, e.g.: Mississippi, John, New York, etc. The use of proper nouns in the plural or with the articles is restricted to a limited number of contexts: normally, one cannot use the plural form of the word New York, though it is possible to say There are two Lenas in our group, or The Joneses are to visit us. If proper nouns are used with articles or other determiners and/or in the plural, in most contexts it signifies their transposition from the group of proper nouns into the group of common nouns, e.g.: You are my Romeo!; I can’t approve of young Casanovas like you. On the basis of “form of existence” of the referents animate nouns are opposed to inanimate nouns, the former denoting living beings (man, woman, dog), the latter denoting things and phenomena (tree, table). This semantic difference is formally exposed through the category of case forms, as animate nouns are predominantly used in the genitive case, cf.: John’s leg, but the leg of the table. This subdivision of nouns is semantically closely connected with the following one.On the basis of “personal quality” human animate nouns (person nouns), denoting human beings, or persons, are opposed to non-human (animate and inanimate) nouns (non-person nouns), denoting all the other referents. This lexico-semantic subdivision of nouns is traditionally overlooked in practical and theoretical courses on grammar, but it is grammatically relevant because only human nouns in English can distinguish masculine or feminine genders, e.g.: man – he, woman – she, while the non-human nouns, both animate and inanimate, are substituted by the neuter gender pronoun ‘it’. The exceptions take place only in cases of transposition of the noun from one group into another, e.g., in cases of personification, e.g.: the sun - he, the moon - she, etc. On the basis of “quantitative structure” of the referent countable (variable) nouns are opposed to uncountable (invariable) nouns, the former denoting discrete, separate things which can be counted and form discrete multitudes, e.g.: table – tables, the latter denoting either substances (sugar), or multitudes as a whole (police), or abstract notions (anger), and some others entities.

27.(English) The category of number is expressed by the paradigmatic opposition of two forms: the singular and the plural. The strong member in this opposition, the plural, is marked by special formal marks, the main of which is the productive suffix –(e)s which exists in three allomorphs - [s], [z], [iz], e.g.: cats, boys, roses. The term “productive” means that new nouns appearing in English form the plural with the help of this suffix. Non-productive means of expressing the plural are either historical relics of ancient number paradigms, or borrowed, e.g.: the suppletive forms with interchange of vowels (man – men, tooth – teeth), the archaic suffix –en (ox – oxen), a number of individual singular and plural suffixes of borrowed nouns (antenna – antennae, stratum – strata, nucleus – nuclei, etc.); in addition, a number of nouns have a plural form homonymous with the singular (sheep, fish, deer, etc.). The singular is regularly unmarked (possesses a “zero suffix”). The grammatical meaning of the singular is traditionally defined in a simplified way as “one”, and the meaning of the plural – as “many (more than one)”. This is true for the bulk of the nouns, namely those denoting simple countable objects (table – tables). But the noun in the singular can denote not only “one discrete separate object”, but also substances (water), abstract notions (love), units of measure (hour) and other referents. The same applies to the meaning of the plural: plural forms do not always denote “more than one object”, but express some other meanings, such as feelings (horrors of war), sorts of substances (wines), picturesqueness (sands, waters), etc. Thus, the broader understanding of the grammatical meaning of the singular can be defined as the non-dismembering reflection of the referent and the grammatical meaning of the plural as potentially dismembering reflection of the referent; or, in other words, the singular forms of nouns present their referents as indivisible, and the plural forms – as divisible. The absolute singular nouns usually denote the following referents: abstract notions – love, hate, despair, etc.; names of substances and materials – snow, wine, sugar, etc.; branches of professional activity – politics, linguistics, mathematics; some collective objects – fruit, machinery, foliage, etc. There are some other singularia tantum nouns, that are difficult to classify, e.g., advice, news and others. As the examples above show, the nouns themselves do not possess any formal marks of their singularia tantum status: their form may either coincide with the regular singular – advice, or with the regular plural – news. Their singularia tantum status is formally established in their combinability, being reflected by the adjacent words: all singularia tantum nouns are used with the verbs in the singular; they exclude the use of the numeral “one” or of the indefinite article. Their quantity is expressed with the help of special lexical The absolute plural nouns usually denote the following: objects consisting of two halves – scissors, trousers, spectacles, etc.; some diseases and abnormal states – mumps, measles, creeps, hysterics, etc.; indefinite plurality, collective referents – earnings, police, cattle, etc. The nouns belonging to the pluralia tantum group are used with verbs in the plural; they cannot be combined with numerals, and their quantity is rendered by special lexical quantifiers a pair of, a case of, etc., e.g.: a pair of trousers, several cases of measles, etc. quantifiers little, much, some, any, a piece, a bit, an item, e.g.: an item of news, a piece of advice, a bit of joy, etc In terms of the oppositional theory one can say that in the formation of the two subclasses of uncountable nouns, the number opposition is “constantly” (lexically) reduced either to the weak member (singularia tantum) or to the strong member (pluralia tantum). Absolute singular nouns or absolute plural nouns are “lexicalized” as separate words or as lexico-semantic variants of regular countable nouns. For example: a hair as a countable noun denotes “a threadlike growth from the skin” as in I found a woman’s hair on my husband’s jacket; hair as an uncountable noun denotes a mass of hairs, as in Her hair was long and curly. Similar cases of oppositional neutralization take place when countable nouns are used in the absolute singular form to express the corresponding abstract ideas, e.g.: to burst into song; or the material correlated with the countable referent, e.g.: chicken soup; or to express generic meaning, e.g.: The rose is my favourite flower (=Roses are my favourite flowers). The opposite process of the restoration of the number category to its full oppositional force takes place when uncountable nouns develop lexico-semantic variants denoting either various sorts of materials (silks, wines), or manifestations of feelings (What a joy!), or the reasons of various feelings (pleasures of life – all the good things that make life pleasant), etc.

28/(English) The category of case in English constitutes a great linguistic problem. Linguists argue, first, whether the category of case really exists in modern English, and, second, if it does exist, how many case forms of the noun can be distinguished in English. The main disagreements concern the grammatical status of “noun + an apostrophe + –s” form (Ted’s book, the chairman’s decision) rendering the same meaning of appurtenance as the unfeatured form of the noun in a prepositional construction, cf.: the chairman’s decision – the decision of the chairman. The following four approaches, advanced at various times by different scholars, can be distinguished in the analysis of this problem. The approach which can be defined as “the theory of limited case” is the most widely accepted theory of case in English today. It was formulated by linguists H. Sweet, O. Jespersen and further developed by Russian linguists A. Smirnitsky, L. Barchudarov and others. It is based on the oppositional presentation of the category; the category of case is expressed by the opposition of two forms: the first form, “the genitive case”, is the strong, featured member of the opposition, marked by the postpositional element ‘–s’ after an apostrophe in the singular and just an apostrophe in the plural, e.g.: the girl’s books, the girls’ books; the second, unfeatured form is the weak member of the opposition and is usually referred to as “the common case” (“non-genitive”). The category of case is realized in full in animate nouns and restrictedly in inanimate nouns in English, hence the name – “the theory of limited case”. Besides being semantically (lexically) limited, the category of case in English is limited syntactically, as the genitive case form of the noun is used only as an attribute, and it is also positionally limited: it is used predominantly in preposition to the word it modifies (except for some contexts, known as “double genitive”, e.g.: this idea of Tom’s). The solution to the problem of the category of case in English can be formulated on the basis of the two theories, “the theory of limited case” and “the theory of the possessive postpositive”, critically revised and combined. There is no doubt that the inflectional case of the noun in English has ceased to exist. The particle nature of –‘s is evident, since it can be added to units larger than the word, but this does not prove the absence of the category of case: it is a specific particle expression of case which can be likened to the particle expression of the category of mood in Russian, cf.: Я бы пошел с тобой. A new, peculiar category of case has developed in modern English: it is realized by the paradigmatic opposition of the unmarked “direct”, or “common” case form and the only “oblique” case form: the genitive marked by the possessive postpositional particle. Two subtypes of the genitive are to be recognized: the word genitive (the principal type) and the phrase genitive (the minor type). Since similar meanings can be rendered in English by prepositional constructions, the genitive may be regarded as subsidiary to the syntactic system of prepositional phrases; still, the semantic differences between them and their complementary uses sustain the preservation of the particle genitive in the systemic expression of nounal relations in English. Within the general semantics of appurtenance, the following semantic subtypes of the genitive can be distinguished:

1. the genitive of possessor (of inorganic possession), e.g.: Tom’s toy; this type of meaning can be explicitly demonstrated by a special transformational diagnostic test: Tom’s toy à the toy belongs to Tom;

2. the genitive of the whole (of organic possession), e.g.: Tom’s hand à the hand is a part of Tom; as a subtype the genitive of received qualification can be distinguished, e.g.: Tom’s vanity à vanity is the peculiar feature of Tom;

3. the genitive of agent, or subject of action, e.g.: Tom’s actions à Tom acts; the minor subtype of this is the genitive of author, e.g.: Dickens’s novels à the novels written by Dickens;

4. the genitive of patient, or object of action, e.g.: the hostages’ release à the hostages were released;

5. the genitive of destination, e.g.: women’s underwear à underwear for women;

6. the genitive of qualification, e.g.: a girl’s voice à the voice characteristic of a girl, peculiar to a girl; subtype – the genitive of comparison, e.g.: a cock’s self-confidence à self-confidence like that of a cock, resembling the self-confidence of a cock;

7. the adverbial genitive (usually of place and time modification), e.g.: yesterday’s talks à the talks that took place yesterday;

8. the genitive of quantity, e.g.: a three miles’ distance from here.

The approach which can be defined as “the theory of positional cases” was developed by J. C. Nesfield, M. Deutchbein, M. Bryant and other linguists, mainly in English-speaking countries. They follow the patterns of classical Latin grammar, distinguishing nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative cases in English. Since there are no special morphological marks to distinguish these cases in English (except for the genitive) like in Latin or other inflectional languages, the cases are differentiated by the functional position of the noun in the sentence, e.g.: the nominative case corresponds with the subject, the accusative case with the direct object, the dative case with indirect object, and the vocative case with the address. Thus, “the theory of positional cases” presents an obvious confusion of the formal, morphological characteristics of the noun and its functional, syntactic features.

The approach which can be defined as “the theory of prepositional cases” supplements the previous one and follows the same route of Latin-oriented, old school grammar traditions. The linguists who formulated it, G. Curme among them, treat the combinations of nouns with prepositions as specific analytical case forms, e.g.: the dative case is expressed by nouns with the prepositions ‘to’ and ‘for’, the genitive case by nouns with the preposition ‘of’, the instrumental case by nouns with the preposition ‘with’, e.g.: for the girl, of the girl, with a key. They see the system of cases in English as comprising the regular inflectional case (the genitive), “positional cases”, and “prepositional cases”. This approach is not recognized by mainstream linguistics, because, again, syntactical and morphological characteristics of the noun are confused. Besides, as B. Ilyish noted, if we are consistent in applying this theory, each prepositional phrase should be considered as a separate case form and their number will be almost infinite. The approach which can be defined as “the theory of the possessive postposition”, or “the theory of no case” states that the category of case which did exist in Old English was completely lost by the noun in the course of its historical development. The proponents of this theory, G. N. Vorontsova, A. M. Mukhin among them, maintain that what is traditionally treated as the inflectional genitive case form is actually a combination of the noun with a postposition denoting possession. The main arguments to support this point of view are as follows: first, the postpositional element ‘s is not only used with words, but also with the units larger than the word, with word-combinations and even sentences, e.g.: his daughter Mary’s arrival,

12(R) The category of article determination shows, or, determines the relations of the referent of the noun to the other referents of the same class. The article is a determiner, a unit which determines a noun, but unlike other determiners (the lexical means of determination: this, that, some, any, very, certain, kind of, etc.), it is so general, that it has become a grammatical means of determination in modern English. When no lexical determiner is used, a noun is obligatorily modified either by a definite article ‘the’, or an indefinite article ‘a/an’, or by a meaningful absence of such, otherwise defined as a “zero article”. The idea of a “zero article” has been challenged by different scholars on the grounds that only morphemes can be distinguished as “zero marks” in oppositional correlations of words. Still, the following semantic and paradigmatic presentation of the category of article determination makes it possible to distinguish three, rather than just two, “article + noun” forms. The definite article expresses the identification or individualization of the referent of the noun. The object that the noun denotes is taken as concrete and individual, or definite. The identificational meaning of the definite article can be explicitly demonstrated in a substitution test, when ‘the’ is substituted by the so-called demonstrative lexical determiners, e.g.: the man à this man, the very man (I saw yesterday), etc. The indefinite article expresses classification, or relative, classifying generalization of the referent, which means that this article refers the object denoted to a certain class. The classifying meaning of the indefinite article can be explicitly demonstrated by substitution with classifying words and phrases, e.g.: a man à some man, a certain man, some kind of a man, etc. The semantic difference between the identifying definite article and the classifying indefinite article can be demonstrated by a contrast test, e.g.: the man – this very man, not other men (contrasted with other objects of the same class); a man – a certain man, not a woman (contrasted with other classes of objects).The zero article, or, the meaningful non-use of the article, expresses absolute generalization, abstraction of the referent denoted by the noun. It renders the idea of the highest degree of generalization and abstraction. This meaning can be demonstrated by the insertion test, where the generalizing expressions “in general, in the abstract, in the broadest sense” are inserted into the construction to explicitly show the abstraction, e.g.: Home should be a safe and comfortable place. – Home (in the abstract, in general) should be a safe and comfortable place.One should bear in mind that with uncountable nouns the absence of the article expresses not only abstract generalization, but also classifying generalization, because the uncountable nouns cannot be used with the indefinite article, which is still semantically connected with its etymological base, the numeral “one”. So, the difference between the classifying absence of the article and the abstract generalized absence of the article with an uncountable noun can be stated only on the basis of either the substitution or the insertion tests offered above. E.g.: Knowledge (in general) is power (absolute generalization). – He demonstrated (some, some kind of) knowledge in the field (relative generalization, classification). The same applies to countable nouns in the plural, because the indefinite article, unlike the definite article, is used only in the singular (due to the same etymological reasons). Cf.: I like flowers (in general) (abstract, absolute generalization). – There are flowers (some, several) on the table (classifying, relative generalization). the category of article determination is formed by two oppositions organized hierarchically: on the upper level, the definite article determination, the strong member of the opposition, is opposed to the indefinite article determination and the meaningful absence of the article, both of which express generalization and jointly make the weak member of the opposition; on the lower level, the indefinite article determination and the meaningful absence of the article with uncountable nouns and nouns in the plural (ø1) expressing relative generalization (classification), which jointly make the strong member of the opposition, are opposed to the zero article determination denoting absolute generalization (abstraction) (ø2) – the weak member of the opposition. The problem of article determination has given rise to much controversy; there is much dispute about the status of the article itself and the status of its combination with the noun. The question is: is the article an independent word like other determiners, does it form a word-combination with the noun which it determines, or is it a purely grammatical, dependable, morpheme-like auxiliary word used to build an analytical form of the noun? There are pros and cons to sustain each of these two approaches, but it seems more plausible to interpret the article in terms of the general linguistic field approach as a lingual unit of intermediary status between the word and the morpheme, as a special type of grammatical auxiliary, and its combination with the noun as an intermediary phenomenon between the word and the word-combination.

5(E) The verb as a notional part of speech has the categorial meaning of dynamic process, or process developing in time, including not only actions as such (to work, to build), but also states, forms of existence (to be, to become, to lie), various types of attitude, feelings (to love, to appreciate), etc. Formally, the verb is characterized by a set of specific word-building affixes, e.g.: to activate, to widen, to classify, to synchronize, to overestimate, to reread, etc.; there are some other means of building verbs, among them sound-replacive and stress-shifting models, e.g.: blood – to bleed, import – to import. There is a peculiar means of rendering the meaning of the process, which occupies an intermediary position between the word and the word-combination: the so-called “phrasal verbs”, consisting of a verb and a postpositional element. Some phrasal verbs are closer to the word, because their meaning cannot be deduced from the meaning of the verb or the meaning of the postposition separately, e.g.: to give up, to give in, etc.; others are semantically closer to the word-combination, e.g.: to stand up, to sit down, etc. A separate group of phrasal verbs is made by combinations of broad meaning verbs to have, to give, to take and nouns, e.g.: to give a look, to have rest, to have a bite, etc. The processual semantics of the verb determines its combinability with nouns denoting either the subject or the object of the action, and its combinability with adverbs denoting the quality of the process. In certain contexts, some verbs can be combined with adjectives (in compound nominal predicates) and other verbs. The verb is usually characterized as the most complex part of speech, because it has more word-changing categories than any other notional part of speech. It is changed according to the categories of person and number, tense, aspect, voice and mood. Besides, each verb has a specific set of non-finite forms (the infinitive, the gerund, participles I and II), otherwise called “verbals”, or “verbids”, opposed to the finite forms of the verb, otherwise called “finites”; their opposition is treated as “the category of finitude”. Such a wide range of forms is mainly due to the importance of the function that the verb performs in the sentence: its primary function (and the only function of its finite forms) is the function of a predicate – the central, organizing member of the sentence, expressing its crucial predicative meanings, or the relations of the event denoted by the sentence to actual reality. The non-finite forms of the verbs, verbids, perform functions characteristic of other notional parts of speech – nouns, adjectives, or adverbs, but still, they can express partial predication and share a number of other important verbal features with the finites On the upper level, all the verbs according to their semantic (nominative) value fall into two big sub-classes: the sub-class of notional verbs and the sub-class of functional and semi-functional verbs. Notional verbs have full nominative value and are independent in the expression of the process, e.g.: to work, to build, to lie, to love, etc.; these verbs comprise the bulk of the class and constitute an open group of words. Functional and semi-functional (or, semi-notional) verbs make a closed group of verbs of partial nominative value. They are dependent on other words in the denotation of the process, but through their forms the predicative semantics of the sentence is expressed (they function as predicators). The subdivision of verbs into notional and (semi-)functional is grammatically relevant since the verbs of the two subclasses perform different syntactic functions in the sentence: notional verbs function as predicates, semi-functional and functional verbs as parts of predicates (predicators). Notional verbs are subdivided into several groups as follow Mental and sensual processes can be presented as actional or statal; they can be denoted either by correlated pairs of different verbs, or by the same verbal lexeme, e.g.: to know (mental perception) – to think (mental activity), to see, to hear (physical perception as such) - to look, to listen (physical perceptional activity); The cake tastes nice (taste denotes physical perception, it is used as a statal verb). According to the mode of realization, the process may be instantaneous (momentary), durative (continual), repeated, starting, completed, uncompleted, etc. For example: instantaneous actions are denoted by the verbs to drop, to click, to jump, etc.; starting, durative. Limitive verbs present a process as potentially limited, directed towards reaching a certain border point, beyond which the process denoted by the verb is stopped or ceases to exist, e.g.: to come, to sit down, to bring, to drop, etc. Unlimitive verbs present the process as potentially not limited by any border point, e.g.: to go, to sit, to carry, to exist, etc. Some limitive and unlimitive verbs form semantically opposed pairs, denoting roughly the same actual process presented as either potentially limited or unlimited, cf.: to come – to go, to sit down – to sit, to bring – to carry; Uncomplementive verbs are further subdivided into two groups of verbs: personal and impersonal verbs. Personal verbs imply the subject of the action denoted (animate or inanimate, human or non-human), e.g.: to work, to laugh, to grow, to start, etc., as in I’m working; The concert started. Impersonal verbs usually denote natural phenomena, e.g.: to rain, to snow, to drizzle, etc.; the number of impersonal verbs is limited; in English they are combined with a formal subject, e.g.: It’s raining (in Russian impersonal uncomplementive verbs can be used without any subject at all, cf.: Моросит; Смеркается). Complementive

23(e) Non-finite forms of the verb, the infinitive, the gerund, participle I (present participle) and participle II (past participle), are otherwise called “verbals”, or “verbids”. The term, introduced by O. Jespersen, implies that they are not verbs in the proper sense of the word, because they combine features of the verb with features of other notional parts of speech. Their mixed, hybrid nature is revealed in all the spheres of the parts-of-speech characterization: meaning, formal features, and functions. The non-verbal features of verbids are as follows: they do not denote pure processes, but present them as specific kinds of substances and properties; they are not conjugated according to the categories of person and number, have no tense or mood forms; in some contexts they are combined with the verbs like non-verbal parts of speech; they never function as independent predicates; their functions are those characteristic for other notional parts of speech. The verbal features of verbids are as follows: their grammatical meaning is basically processual; like finites, they do have (at least, most of them have) aspect and voice forms and verbal combinability with direct objects and adverbial modifiers; they can express predication in specific semi-predicative constructions. Thus, verbids can be characterized as intermediary phenomena between verbs and other non-verbal parts of speech. The opposition between finite and non-finite forms of verbs expresses the category of “finitude”. The grammatical meaning, the content of this category is the expression of verbal predication: the finite forms of the verb render full (primary, complete, genuine) predication, the non-finite forms render semi-predication, or secondary (potential) predication. The formal differential feature is constituted by the expression of verbal time and mood, which underlie the predicative function: having no immediate means of expressing time-mood categorial semantics, the verbids are the weak member of the opposition.It is interesting to note that historically verbids in English were at first separate non-verbal nominative forms, but later they were drawn into the class of verbs by acquiring aspect and voice forms, verbal combinability, etc. The Infinitive is the most generalized, the most abstract form of the verb, serving as the verbal name of a process; it is used as the derivation base for all the other verbal forms. That is why the infinitive is traditionally used as the head word for the lexicographic entry of the verb in dictionaries. The infinitive combines verbal features with features of the noun; it is a phenomenon of hybrid processual-substantive nature, intermediary between the verb and the noun. It has voice and aspect forms, e.g.: to write, to be writing, to have written, to be written, to have been written; it can be combined with nouns and pronouns denoting the subject or the object of the action, and with the adverbial modifiers, e.g.: for him to write a letter; to write a letter to someone; to write a letter very carefully. The non-verbal properties of the infinitive are displayed in its syntactic functions and its combinability. The infinitive performs all the functions characteristic of the noun – that of a subject, e.g.: To write a letter was the main thing he had planned for the day; of a predicative, e.g.: The main thing he had planned for the day was to write a letter; of an object, e.g.: He wanted to write a letter to her; of an attribute, e.g.: It was the main thing to do; of an adverbial modifier, e.g.: He stood on a chair in order to reach for the top shelf. In these functions the infinitive displays substantive combinability with finite verbs. If the subject of the action denoted by the infinitive is named, in the sentence it forms a secondary predicative line with the infinitive. Syntactically, semi-predicative infinitive constructions may be free or bound to the primary predicative part of the sentence. The “for + to infinitive” construction in free use (either as a subject or as any other substantive notional part of the sentence) includes the infinitive and its own, inner subject, e.g.: For him to be late for the presentation was unthinkable; I sent the papers in order for you to study them carefully before the meeting. The constructions known as “complex object with the infinitive” and “complex subject with the infinitive” (the passive transformation of the complex object constructions) intersect with the primary predicative part of the sentence: the inner subject of the secondary predicative part forms either the object or the subject of the primary predicative part, e.g.: I saw her enter the room; She was seen to enter the room. The predicative character of the secondary sentence-situation can be manifested in the transformation of the whole sentence into a composite syntactic construction, e.g.: I sent the papers in order for you to study them carefully before the meeting. à I sent the papers so that you could study them carefully before the meeting; I saw her enter the room. à I saw her when she was entering the room.In most cases the infinitive is used with the particle “to”, which is its formal mark; it is called a “marked infinitive” and can be treated as an analytical form of the verb. In certain contexts, enumerated in detail in practical grammar text-books, the infinitive is used without the particle “to” and is called a “bare infinitive”, or “unmarked infinitive”; the “bare infinitive” is used when it is combined with functional and semi-functional predicator-verbs to build the analytical forms of the finite verbs (the “bound” use of the infinitive) in some fixed constructions, etc., e.g.: Will you go there? Why not go there? I’d rather stay at home; etc. The particle, just like any other auxiliary component of analytical forms, can be separated from the infinitive by an adverbial modifier, e.g.: to thoroughly think something over. These cases are usually stylistically marked and are known as the “split infinitive”. The gerund is another verbid that serves as the verbal name of a process and combines verbal features with those of a noun; the gerund, like the infinitive, can be characterized as a phenomenon of hybrid processual-substantive nature, intermediary between the verb and the noun. It is even closer to the noun, because besides performing the substantive functions in a sentence like the infinitive, it can also be modified by an attribute and can be used with a preposition, which the infinitive can not do, e.g.: Thank you for listening to me; Your careful listening to me is very much appreciated. The functions of the gerund in the sentence are as follows - that of a subject, e.g.: Your listening to me is very much appreciated; It’s no use crying over spilt milk; of a predicative, e.g.: The only remedy for such headache is going to bed; of an object, e.g.: I love reading; of an attribute, e.g.: He had a gift of listening; of an adverbial modifier, e.g.: On entering the house I said “hello”. In these functions the gerund displays nounal combinability with verbs, adjectives, and nouns, especially in cases of prepositional connections. As for the verbal features of the gerund, first of all, there is no denying the fact, that its meaning is basically processual, which is evident when the gerund is compared with the nouns, cf.: Thank you for helping me. – Thank you for your help; in addition, the gerund distinguishes some aspect and voice forms, e.g.: writing, being written, having written, having been written. Like the finites, it can be combined with nouns and pronouns denoting the subject and the object of the action, and with modifying adverbs, e.g.: I have made good progress in understanding English; She burst out crying bitterly; Her crying irritated me. The verbal features distinguish the gerund from the verbal noun, which may be homonymous with the indefinite active form of the gerund, but, first, it has no other verbal forms (passive or perfect); second, cannot take a direct object, but only prepositional objects like all other nouns, cf.: reading the letters (gerund) – the reading of the letters (verbal noun); and, third, like most nouns can be used with an article and in the plural, cf.: my coming (gerund) – his comings and goings (verbal noun). In the correlation of the three processual-substantive phenomena, which constitute a continuum of transitions between the verb and the noun – the infinitive, the gerund, and the verbal noun, the infinitive is the closest to the verb, as it is more dynamic and possesses fewer substantive features, the gerund is somewhere in between the two, semantically semi-dynamic, and the verbal noun is the closest to the noun, semantically static, possessing practically all the features of normal nouns. They can be treated as the three stages of a lexico-grammatical category of processual representation which underlies various situation-naming constructions in the sphere of syntactic nominalization (see Unit 24), cf.: He helped us. à for him to help us à his helping us à his help to us. Another difference between the gerund and the infinitive involves the category of so-called ‘modal representation’: the infinitive, unlike the gerund, has a certain modal force, especially in the attributive function, e.g.: There was no one to tell him the truth (= There was no one who could tell him the truth). The gerund can express secondary predication, when the gerundial sentence-part, or the semi-predicative gerundial construction has its own, separate subject. The subject of the secondary predicative part of the sentence can be expressed either by a possessive pronoun or by a noun in the genitive case, if it denotes an animate referent, e.g.: Mike’s coming back was a total surprise to us; Do you mind my smoking?; it can also be expressed by a noun in the common case form or an objective pronoun, e.g.: She said something about my watch being slow. The gerundial semi-predicative constructions can be used as different notional parts of a sentence, cf.: Mike’s coming back was a total surprise to us (the subject); Do you mind my smoking? (object); I couldn’t sleep because of his snoring (adverbial modifier); The thought of him being in Paris now was frustrating (attribute). Participle I (present participle) is fully homonymous with the gerund: it is also an ‘ing-form’ (or, rather, four ‘ing-forms’, cf.: writing, being written, having written, having been written). But its semantics is different: it denotes processual quality, combining verbal features with features of the adjective and the adverb; participle I can be characterized as a phenomenon of hybrid processual-qualifying nature, intermediary between the verb and the adjective/adverb. The triple nature of participle I finds its expression in its mixed valency and syntactic functions. The verb-type combinability of participle I is revealed in its combinations with nouns denoting the subject and the object of the action, e.g.: her entering the room, with modifying adverbs and with auxiliary verbs in the analytical forms of the verb; the adjective-type combinability of participle I is manifested in its combinations with modified nouns and modifying adverbs of degree, e.g.: an extremely maddening presence; the adverb-type combinability of the participle is revealed in its combinations with modified verbs, e.g.: to speak stuttering at every word. In its free use, participle I can function as a predicative, e.g.: Her presence is extremely maddening to me; as an attribute, e.g.: The fence surrounding the garden was newly painted; and as an adverbial modifier, e.g.: While waiting he whistled. Like any other verbid, participle I can form semi-predicative constructions if it is combined with the noun or the pronoun denoting the subject of the action; for example, complex object with participle I, e.g.: I saw her entering the room; complex subject with participle I (the passive transformation of the complex object constructions), e.g.: She was seen entering the room. In addition, participle I can form a detached semi-predicative construction, known as the absolute participial construction, which does not intersect in any of its components with the primary sentence part, e.g.: The weather being fine, we decided to take a walk; I won’t speak with him staring at me like that.In complex object and complex subject constructions the difference between the infinitive and participle I lies in the aspective presentation of the process: participle I presents the process as developing, cf.: I often heard her sing in the backyard. – I hear her singing in the backyard.The absolute homonymy of the gerund and participle I has made some linguists, among them American descriptivists, the Russian linguists V. Y.Plotkin, L. S. Barkhudarov, and some others, treat them not as two different verbids, but as generalized cases of substantive and qualitative functioning of one and the same “ing-form” verbid. Particularly disputable is the status of the semi-predicative construction, traditionally defined as the “half-gerund” construction, in which the semantics of the “ing-form” is neither clearly processual-substantive nor processual-qualifying and it is combined with the noun in the common case form, e.g.: I remember the boy singing in the backyard.The dubious cases can be clarified if the gerund and the participle are distinctly opposed as polar phenomena. In gerundial constructions the semantic accent is on the substantivized process itself; the nominal character of the verbid can be shown by a number of tests, for example, by a question-forming test, cf.: I remember the boy’s singing (his singing). - What do you remember?; the noun denoting the subject of the action semantically and syntactically modifies the gerund – Whose singing do you remember? In participial constructions the semantic emphasis is on the doer of the action, e.g.: I remember him singing. - Whom do you remember?; the present participle modifies its subject, denoting processual quality. In half-gerund constructions the semantic accent is on the event described, on the situational content with the processual substance as its core, cf.: I remember the boy singing in the backyard. – What do you remember about the boy? This case can be treated as the neutralization of the opposition, as a transferred participle, or a gerundial participle.In the attributive function, the semantic differences between participle I and the gerund are unquestionable: the noun modified by participle I denotes the actual doer of the action, and the participle denotes its processual qualification; the meaning of the gerund in the attributive function is non-dynamic; the difference can be demonstrated in the following tests, cf.: a sleeping girl à a girl who is sleeping (participle I); a sleeping pill à a pill taken to induce sleep (the gerund). Participle II, like participle I, denotes processual quality and can be characterized as a phenomenon of hybrid processual-qualifying nature. It has only one form, traditionally treated in practical grammar as the verbal “third form”, used to build the analytical forms of the passive and the perfect of finites, e.g.: is taken; has taken. The categorial meanings of the perfect and the passive are implicitly conveyed by participle II in its free use, for example, when it functions as a predicative or an attribute, e.g.: He answered through a firmly locked door (participle II as an attribute); The room was big and brightly lit (participle II as a predicative). The functioning of participle II is often seen as adverbial in cases like the following: When asked directly about the purpose of her visit she answered vaguely. But such constructions present cases of syntactic compression rather than an independent participle II used adverbially, cf.: When asked directly ß When she was asked directly… Thus, participle II can be characterized as a verbid combining verbal features (processual semantics and combinability) with the features of the adjective. Like any other verbid, participle II can form semi-predicative constructions if combined with the inner subject of its own; they include complex object with participle II, e.g.: I’d like to have my hair cut; We found the door locked; complex subject with participle II (the passive transformation of the complex object constructions), e.g.: The door was found firmly locked; and absolute participial construction with participle II, e.g.: She approached us, head half turned; He couldn’t walk far with his leg broken.The meaning of the perfect is rendered by participle II in correlation with the aspective lexico-grammatical character of the verb: with limitive verbs participle II denotes priority (“relative past”) while participle I denotes simultaneity (“relative present”), cf.: burnt leaves (‘the leaves have already been burnt’; relative past) – burning leaves (‘the leaves are burning now’; relative present); hence the alternative terms: participle I – present participle, participle II – past participle. With unlimitive verbs this difference is neutralized and participle II denotes simultaneity, e.g.: a brightly lit room. In addition, participle I and participle II are sometimes opposed as the active participle and the passive participle, cf.: the person asked (passive) – the person asking the question (active); though participle II also participates in the structural formation of the passive and the perfect of participle I, e.g.: being asked, having asked. This, together with the other differential properties, supports the status of participle II as a separate verbid.

12-13?(e) Traditionally, the category of number is treated as the correlation of the plural and the singular, and the category of person as the correlation of three deictic functions, reflecting the relations of the referents to the participants of speech communication: the first person – the speaker, the second person – the person spoken to, and the third person – the person or thing spoken about. But in the system of the verb in English these two categories are so closely interconnected, both semantically and formally, that they are often referred to as one single category: the category of person and number. First, the semantics of both person and number categories is not inherently “verbal”, these two categories are reflective: the verbal form reflects the person and number characteristics of the subject, denoted by the noun (or pronoun) with which the verb is combined in the sentence. And in the meaning of the subject the expression of number semantics is blended with the expression of person semantics; for example, in the paradigm of personal pronouns the following six members are distinguished by person and number characteristics combined: first person singular - I, first person plural - we, second person singular – you (or, archaic thou), second person plural - you, third person singular - he/she/it, third person plural - they. Second, formally, the categories of person and number are also fused, being expressed by one and the same verbal form, e.g.: he speaks; this fact supports the unity of the two categories in the system of the verb. In modern English all verbs can be divided according to the expression of this category into three groups. Modal verbs distinguish no person or number forms at all. The verb ‘to be’, on the contrary, has preserved more person-number forms than any other verb in modern English, cf.: I am; we are; you are; he/she/it is; they are; in the past tense the verb to be distinguishes two number forms in the first person and the third person: I, he/she/it was (sing.) – we, they were (pl.); in the second person the form were is used in the singular and in the plural. The bulk of the verbs in English have a distinctive form only for the third person singular of the present tense indicative mood. Thus, the category of person and number in modern English is fragmental and asymmetrical, realized in the present tense indicative mood by the opposition of two forms: the strong, marked member in this opposition is the third person singular (speaks) and the weak member embraces all the other person and number forms, so, it can be called “a common form” (speak). Some archaic person and number verbal forms are preserved in high flown style, in elevated speech, especially the archaic second person singular forms of all the verbs, including the modal verbs and the verb ‘to be’, e.g.: Thou shalt not kill; Thou comest to the needy; Thou art omniscient. Some older grammar textbooks state that the category of person is also expressed in the future and future-in-the-past tenses by the opposition of analytical verbal forms with auxiliary verbs shall/should for the first person and will/would for the rest. But, first of all, this distinction has practically disappeared in American English, especially in colloquial speech, and, second, in British English it is interconnected with certain modal differences, expressing voluntary or non-voluntary future for the first person and mere future or modal future for the second and third persons together. One can say that the category of person and number is expressed “natively” by the third person singular present indicative form of the verb, and “junctionally”, though the obligatory reference to the form of the subject, in all the other person and number forms. Deficient as it is, the system of person and number forms of the verb in English plays an important semantic role in contexts in which the immediate forms of the noun do not distinguish the category of number, e.g., singularia tantum nouns or pluralia tantum nouns, or nouns modified by numerical attributes, or collective nouns, when we wish to stress either their single-unit quality or plural composition, cf.: The family was gathered round the table – The family were gathered round the table; Ten dollars is a huge sum of money for me. – There are ten dollars in my pocket. In these cases, traditionally described in terms of “notional concord” or “agreement in sense”, the form of the verb reflects not the categorial form of the subject morphemically expressed, but the actual personal-numerical interpretation of the referent denoted. The category of person and number can be neutralized in colloquial speech or in some regional and social variants and dialects of English, cf.: Here’s your keys; It ain’t nobody’s business.

14.(E) The grammatical expression of verbal time through morphological forms of the verbs constitutes the grammatical category of tense (from the Latin word “tempus” – “time”). The future forms of the verb in English express relative time – posteriority in relation to either the present or the past. The present and the past forms of the verb render absolutive time semantics, referring the events to either the plane of the present or to the plane of the past; this involves all the finite verb forms, including the perfect, the continuous, and the future forms. Thus, there is not just one verbal category of tense in English but two interconnected tense categories, one of them rendering absolutive time semantics by way of retrospect (past vs. present) and the other rendering relative time semantics by way of prospect (after-action vs. non-after-action). The first verbal tense category, which can be called “primary time”, “absolutive time”, or “retrospective time”, is expressed by the opposition of the past and the present forms. The suffix “-ed” of the regular verbs is the formal feature which marks the past as the strong member of the opposition. Besides this productive form, there are some unproductive past forms of verbs, such as suppletive forms (e.g.: eat – ate), or past forms homonymous with the present (cut – cut). The marked forms denote past actions which receive retrospective evaluation from the point of view of the moment of speech. The present, like any other weak member of an opposition, has a much wider range of meanings than its strong counterpart: the present denotes actions taking place in the sphere of the present, during the period of time including the moment of speech, e.g.: What are you doing?; Terrorism is the major threat of the twenty first century; it may denote repeated actions, e.g.: We go out every Friday night; actions unchanged in the course of time, e.g.: Two plus two makes four; universal truths, e.g.: He who laughs last laughs best; instantaneous actions which begin and end approximately at the moment of speech (as in sports commentaries), e.g.: Smith passes to Brown; etc. To stress its weak oppositional characteristics the present is also referred to as “non-past”. The opposition of the past and the present can be reduced in certain contexts. For example, the present tense form of the verb can be used to describe past events in order to create a vivid picture of the past, as if to make one’s interlocutor the eyewitness of the past events, e.g.: I stopped to greet him and what do you think he does? He pretends he doesn’t know me! This type of transposition is known as “historic present” (or, “preterite present”). It is one of the rare cases when the use of the weak member of the opposition instead of the strong member results in transposition and is stylistically colored. The transposition of past tense forms into the context of the present is used to express various degrees of politeness, e.g.: Could you help me, please? These cases are known as “preterite of modesty”, or “attitudinal past”. The second verbal tense category, which may be called “prospective”, or “relative”, is formed by the opposition of the future and the non-future separately in relation to the present or to the past. The strong member of the opposition is the future, marked by the auxiliary verbs shall/will (the future in relation to the present) or should/would (the future in relation to the past). It is used to denote posterior actions, after-actions in relation to some other actions or to a certain point of time in the present or in the past. The two tense categories interact in the lingual presentation of time: any action in English is at first evaluated retrospectively as belonging to the sphere of the past or to the sphere of the present, and then it is evaluated prospectively as an after-action or a non-after-action to either the past or the present. The opposition of the prospective time category can be reduced. Present forms are regularly used to denote future actions planned, arranged or anticipated in the near future: We go to London tomorrow; or in subordinate clauses of time and condition: If you stay, you will learn a lot of interesting things about yourself. These two examples can be treated as cases of neutralization: the weak member of the opposition is used instead of the strong one with no stylistic coloring involved. Transposition takes place when the future forms are used to express insistence, e.g.: When he needs something, he will talk and talk about it for days on end. shall/will and should/would are in their immediate etymology modal verbs: verbs of obligation (shall) and volition (will). But nowadays they preserve their modal meanings in no higher degree than the future tense forms in other languages: the future differs in this respect from the past and the present, because no one can be positively sure about events that have not yet taken place or are not taking place now. A certain modal coloring is inherent to the future tense semantics in any language as future actions are always either anticipated, or foreseen, or planned, or desired, or necessary, etc. On the other hand, modal verbs are treated as able to convey certain future implication in many contexts, cf.: I may/might/ could travel by bus.

13/(e) The general meaning of the category of aspect is the inherent mode of realization of the process. Aspect is closely connected with time semantics, showing, as A. M. Peshkovsky puts it, “the distribution of the action in time”, or the “temporal structure” of the action. One of the most controversial points in considering the category of aspect is exactly the same logical contradiction that we had to tackle when studying the category of time: the category cannot be expressed twice in one and the same grammatical form; the members of one paradigm should be mutually exclusive; but there is a double aspective verbal form known as the perfect continuous form. The contradiction can be solved in exactly the same way that was employed with the tense category: the category of aspect, just like the category of tense, is not a unique grammatical category in English, but a system of two categories. The first category is realized through the paradigmatic opposition of the continuous (progressive) forms and the non-continuous (indefinite, simple) forms of the verb; this category can be called the category of development. The marked member of the opposition, the continuous, is formed by means of the auxiliary verb to be and participle I of the notional verb, e.g.: I am working. The grammatical meaning of the continuous has been treated traditionally as denoting a process going on simultaneously with another process; this temporal interpretation of the continuous was developed by H. Sweet, O. Jespersen and others. I. P. Ivanova treated the continuous as rendering a blend of temporal and aspective semantics, as denoting an action in progress, simultaneous with another action or time point. The majority of linguists today support the point of view developed by A. I. Smirnitsky, B. A. Ilyish, L. S. Barkhudarov, and others, that the meaning of the continuous is purely aspective - “action in progress, developing action”. The weak, unfeatured member of the opposition, the indefinite, stresses the mere fact of the performance of the action The main argument against the idea that relative time meaning, simultaneity, is expressed by the continuous, is as follows: simultaneous actions can be shown with or without the help of continuous verbal forms, cf.: While I worked, they were speaking with each other. – While I worked, they spoke with each other. The second action, simultaneous with the first in both sentences, is described as durative, or developing in time in the first sentence and as a mere fact in the second sentence. The simutaneity is actually rendered by either the syntactic construction or the broader semantic context, since it is quite natural for the developing action to be connected with a certain time point. Besides, as we mentioned, the aspective meaning of the continuous can be used in combination with the perfect (the perfect continuous form), and the very idea of perfect excludes any possibility of simultaneity. As with any category, the category of development can be reduced and in most cases the contextual reduction is dependent on the lexico-semantic aspective characteristics of the verbs. The neutralization of the category regularly takes place with unlimitive verbs, especially statal verbs like to be, to have, verbs of sense perception, relation, etc., e.g.: I have a problem; I love you. Their indefinite forms are used instead of the continuous for semantic reasons: statal verbs denote developing processes by their own meaning, Since such cases are systemically fixed in English grammar (as the “never-used-in-the-continuous” verbs), the use of the statal verbs in the continuous can be treated as “reverse transposition” (“de-neutralization” of the opposition): their meaning is transformed, they become actional for the nonce, and most of such cases are stylistically colored, cf.: You are being naughty!; I’m loving it! No continuous forms are used with purely limitive verbs whose own meaning excludes any possibility of development, except for contexts which specifically demand the expression of an action in progress, e.g.: The train was arriving when we reached the station. The use of the continuous with limitive verbs neutralizes the expression of their lexical aspect, turning them for the nonce, vice versa, into unlimitive verbs.

The neutralization of the category of development can take place for a purely formal reason: to avoid the use of two ing-forms together; for example, no continuous forms are used if there is a participial construction to follow, e.g.: He stood there staring at me.

The classic example of stylistically colored transposition within the category of development is the use of the continuous instead of the indefinite to denote habitual, repeated actions in emphatic speech with strong negative connotations, e.g.: You are constantly grumbling! Thus, summarizing all the peculiarities of the perfect outlined within different approaches, we can characterize the opposition of the perfect and the non-perfect as a separate verbal category, semantically intermediate between aspective and temporal. The perfect forms denote a preceding action successively, or transmissively connected with a certain time limit or another action; the following situation is included in the sphere of influence of the preceding situation. So, the two semantic components constituting the hybrid semantics of the perfect are as follows: priority (relative time) and coordination, transmission, or result (aspective meaning). Hence the general name for the category is “the category of retrospective coordination”. In different contexts prominence may be given to either of these semantic components of the perfect; for example, in the sentence I haven’t seen you for ages prominence is given to priority, while in the sentence I haven’t seen you since we passed our last exam prominence is given to succession or coordination. When the perfect is used in combination with the continuous, the action is treated as prior, transmitted to the posterior situation and developing at the same time, e.g.: I have been thinking about you since we passed our last exam. Within the system of verbal aspect in English, two categories are interconnected: any action is evaluated as developing or non-developing, and then, it is evaluated as retrospectively coordinated or not coordinated with another action or time limit, which results in the four aspectual verbal forms. The interaction of the two aspect categories can be presented in the form of a table showing the strong and the weak members’ characteristics of the two oppositions in combination with each other:The category of development The category of retrospective coordination

As with any other grammatical category, the category of retrospective coordination can be reduced. Limitive verbs, which imply the idea of a certain result by themselves, are regularly used in the indefinite form instead of the perfect, e.g.: Sorry, I left my book at home. Colloquial neutralization of the category of retrospective coordination is also characteristic of verbs of physical and mental perception, cf.: Sorry, I forget your name. The neutralization of the category of retrospective coordination is particularly active in the American variant of English, where the use of the perfect is restricted compared with British English.Unlimitive verbs used in the perfect form are turned into “limitive for the nonce”, e.g.: He has never loved anyone like this before. Both aspective categories have a verbid representation, the continuous expressing the same categorial meaning of development and the perfect expressing the meaning of retrospective coordination, cf.: It was pleasant to be driving the car again; Having finished their coffee, they went out to the porch; She was believed to have been feeling unwell for some time. Additionally, both continuous and perfect forms of the infinitive acquire a special meaning of probability in combination with modal verbs, cf.: She must be waiting for you outside; The experiment must have been carried out by now. The perfect infinitive after the modal verbs ought and should is used to denote a failed action, together with a strong negative connotation of reprimand, e.g.: You should have waited for me! (but you didn’t).

17(e) The category of voice is expressed by the opposition of the passive and active forms of the verb; the active form of the verb is the unmarked, weak member of the opposition, and the passive is the strong member marked by the combination of the auxiliary verb to be (or the verbs to get, to become in colloquial speech) and participle II of the notional verb. It denotes the action received or a state experienced by the referent of the subject of the syntactic construction; in other words, the syntactic subject of the sentence denotes the patient, the receiver of the action in the situation described, while the syntactic object, if any, denotes the doer, or the agent of the action, e.g.: The cup was broken by his daughter. Passive constructions are used when the agent is unknown or irrelevant, e.g.: He was killed during the war; The cup has been broken.In the active syntactic construction the subject and the object both in the situation described and in the syntactic structure of the sentence coincide, cf.: His daughter broke the cup. One can say that in most cases the active and passive syntactic constructions actually depict the same situation presented differently by the speaker: in the passive construction the semantic emphasis is laid on the experience of the object, while in the active construction prominence is given to the actions of the doer; in many cases active and passive constructions are mutually transformative, cf.: His daughter broke the cup. - The cup was broken by his daughter. Besides the immediate “active” meaning as such, the active forms of verbs denote a wide range of various non-passive meanings, for example, processes which do not imply any objects at all, e.g.: The child cried; It rained; etc. Besides passive and active constructions, there are also the so-called “medial” voice types, whose status is problematic: semantically, they are neither strictly passive nor active, though the verb used is formally active. There are three “medial” voice types distinguished in English: “reflexive”, “reciprocal”, and “middle”. In reflexive constructions the action performed by the referent of the subject is not passed to any outer object, but to the referent itself, i.e. the subject of the action is the object of the action at the same time, e.g.: He dressed quickly. This meaning can be rendered explicitly by the reflexive “-self” pronouns, e.g.: He dressed himself; He washed himself; etc. In reciprocal constructions the subject denotes a group of doers whose actions are directed towards each other; again, the subject of the action is its object at the same time, e.g.: They struggled; They quarreled; etc. This meaning can be rendered explicitly with the help of the reciprocal pronouns one another, each other, with one another, e.g.: They quarreled with each other. In middle constructions the subject combined with the otherwise transitive verb is neither the doer of the action nor its immediate object, the action is as if of its own accord, e.g.: The door opened; The concert began; The book reads easily; The book sells like hot cakes. The same applies to the use of the active infinitive in the function of an attribute, cf.: She is pleasant to look at; The first thing to do is to write a letter. These constructions can be treated as a specific case of neutralization: the weak member of the opposition, the active voice form, when used instead of the strong member, the passive form, does not fully coincide with it in meaning, but denotes something intermediary - the state or the capacity of the referent as a result of some action. Some of these construction are closer in their meaning to the passive voice meaning (The book sells… = The book is sold…; The first thing to do… = The first thing to be done…); others are closer to the active voice meaning (The concert began), but in general their meaning is between the two.

18(e)The problem is whether the “medial” voice functions can be treated as rendered by separate voice forms of the verbs (the reflexive, reciprocal, or middle verbal forms). In Russian the “medial” voice meanings (up to fifteen types) are rendered lexically by a special group of “reflexive” verbs, derived with the help of the suffix –ся/сь, e.g.: брить – бриться, ругать – ругаться, начинать – начинаться, etc. In English the “medial” voice types can be seen as specific reflexive, reciprocal, and middle uses of the active voice, verbal forms which constitute the non-objective (intransitive) lexico-semantic variants of regularly objective verbs. There is a problem of distinction between the homonymous use of participle II with the link verb to be in a compound nominal predicate and participle II with the auxiliary verb to be as a passive voice form, e.g.: She is upset; The letter is written. In German there is a clear formal distinction between the two cases as two different functional verbs are used; werden and sein, cf.: Der Brief ist geschriben (the compound nominal predicate); Der Brief wird geschriben (the passive form). In English, the verb to be is used both as a link verb and as an auxiliary verb, which makes the two constructions homonymous. The two cases can be distinguished on the basis of the categorial and functional properties of the participle: if processual passivity is meant (the participle denotes the action produced), the construction is passive; if the participle turns into an adjective (is adjectivized) and is used to describe the subject, it is a sentence with a compound nominal predicate. This can be stimulated or suppressed by the context; adverbial modifiers of degree or homogeneous predicatives can function as contextual “voice-suppressing”, “statalizing” stimulators, e.g.: She was very much upset; I was cold but too excited to mind it; action-modifying adverbials and specific categorial forms of the verb in the passive (the future, the continuous, the perfect) function as “processualizing” voice stimulators, e.g.: Do what she wants, or she’ll be upset (you will upset her by your refusal); The door has been closed by the wind with a loud bang. Still, some cases remain ambiguous, with the status of the participle wholly neutralized, especially the past participle of limitive verbs, which combines the semantics of processual passive and resultative perfect, cf.: I was impressed by his fluency; The job was finished at two o’clock; such constructions are sometimes defined as “semi-passive” or “pseudo-passive”.

19(e) The category of mood expresses the character of connections between the process denoted by the verb and actual reality, in other words, it shows whether the action is real or unreal. This category is realized through the opposition of the direct (indicative) mood forms of the verb and the oblique mood forms: the indicative mood shows that the process is real, i.e. that it took place in the past, takes place in the present, or will take place in the future, e.g.: She helped me; She helps me; She will help me; the oblique mood shows that the process is unreal, imaginary (hypothetical, possible or impossible, desired, etc.), e.g.: If only she helped me! In this respect the category of mood resembles the category of voice: it shows the speaker’s subjective interpretation of the event as either actual or imaginary. We follow the Smirnitskij's classif-ion. It is the most constant & meaning oriented. His system includes 6 M-s:

_______Real_______________Hypothetical_____________Unreal___

(Indicative) (Imperative,subj1,Suppos) (Subj2,Condition)

The Indicative M presents the act as real from the speaker's point of v. It is the most frequently used. It has the gratest number of forms. It is used in 2 communic types of sent: Declarative & Interrogative.

The Imperative M is used to expr inducement to act which means that the speaker considers the act as desirable, necessary. Yet, the act is not real. The enducement refferes to the future event if this futur is a moment away from the pres moment. The forms of the Imper M is the INF without 'to', the neg forms are built with the aux 'Do'.

Subj 2 is used in the following types of sent:

- in simple sent to expr unreal wish or desire(If only he were free.).

- in subj clauses after the Principle clause "it's time"

- in pred clause introduced by the conj which serves as the signal of turning from the real state of things into unreal.(You look as if...).

- in Obj clauses after "to wish" in the princ clause.

Such sent-s expr a wish contrary to reality, smth that cannot fulfiled.

- in addverbial clauses of comparison, concession & condition. Ex: He looked at me as if he were embarrassed.

The Conditional M is built with the help of "should/would"+Inf of the notional verb. It is used to present an act which is the consequence of an unreal condition.

The other 2 M-s Subj 1 & Suppositional are diffr in form but very similar in meaning & context of use.

The forms of Subj 1 are homonimous to the Inf without 'to'.

The Suppos M is built with the help of 'should' for all persons + Inf.

Both the M-s present the act as possible, hypothetical, necessary. Both are used in the same type of clauses: Subj & Obj (after suggest, propose, demand, command);Adv Cl of purpose,concession, condition.

The only diffr b/w them is that only Subj 1 is used in simple sent. Ex: Long live friendship.

Now Subj 1 is common in AmE but it is rearely used in BrE.

The category of mood

The category of mood is the most controversial category of the verb. Professor Ilyish wrote : “the category of mood in the present English verb has given rise to so many discussions and has been treated in so many different ways that it seems hardly possible to arrive at any more or less convincing and universally acceptable conclusion concerning it”.

Extensive investigations were undertaken by Soviet scholars in the past decades. They are A.I. Smirnitsky, Ilyish, Barkhudarov and a number of others.

The category of mood expresses the character of connection between the process denoted by the verb and the actual reality, either presenting the process as a fact that really happened, happens or will happen, or treating it as an imaginary phenomenon.

Academician V.Vinogradov wrote: “Mood expresses the relation of the action to reality as a stated by the speaker”. Mood is one of the kinds of modality, which may be expressed also by lexical means (modal verbs and modal words) and intonation (melody).

Mood modality is based on the opposition: reality – unreality.

Most of the soviet grammarians distinguish three moods in Modern English. It is a traditional division

1) Indicative expressing real facts.

2) Imperative expressing command, order, request.

3) Subjunctive expressing something desirable, problematic, unreal etc.

The Indicative has no special forms of expression – it is all the tenses in active and passive. H. Sweet calls it a fact mood. Its modal meaning is reality and it may be considered as expressing zero modality.

The Subjunctive mood may be expressed both synthetically and analytically. E.g. I wish you were here.

There are different points of view as to the number of moods in M.E. Professor Smirnitsky distinguishes 4 oblique moods: Subjunctive I, Subjunctive II, the Conditional and the Suppositional. Each of them differs in modal meaning and in form.

1) Subjunctive I expresses synthetically a problematic action, which doesn’t contradict reality.

E.g. He gave orders that we be present.

2) Subjunctive II expresses synthetically and analytically an unreal action. E.g. I wish you were not late.

3) The Conditional mood expresses analytically depended unreality: the realization of the action depends on some condition, which may not be expressed. E.g. It would be good to be here.

4) The Suppositional mood expresses analytically a problematic action, not contradicting reality. The realization of the action may depend on certain circumstances. E.g. Should you meet him, tell him to come

The Suppositional and Subjunctive I almost coincide in meaning but differ in style and usage.

Professor Barkhudarov finds only 2 moods: Imperative and Indicative, the latter may express unreality by the shifting of tenses or context. He puts Subjunctive I as Imperative on the ground that they both are similar in form and meaning. E.g. I suggest that he go there. Go there!

Some of the scholars (Plotkin) are of the opinion that there is no morphological system of moods at all and various mood meanings are expressed syntactically and by lexico-semantic means. The mood forms are often homonymous and synonymous and their meanings often depend on the context.

E.g. I wish he would go. He would go if u went. He said he would go.

Various oblique mood meanings are connected with syntax rather than with morphology and one and the same meaning may be expressed by different forms: If he came. If he had come. Should he come.

One and the same form may express different modality:

Necessity: It is necessary that he should come.

Doubt: We feared that he should come.

Order, suggestion: I order that he should come.

20. Grammatical category of voice – GC which denotes in the form of the verb that the subject of the action is acted upon (in the majority of cases), is not the agent of the action in the passive voice, as opposed to the active voice. It is the grammatically marked diateze, i.e. the regular indication of the relations between the units of the syntactic & the semantic levels of the sentence by the form of the verb.

The gr cat-ry of Voice shows the dir-ion of the process as reguards the participants of the situation reflected in the sentact construction. The voice is expressed by the oppos-ion of the passive form of the verb to the active form. The sign marker of the passive form is the combination of the aux verb 'to be'+past participle of the conjugated verb.

The pass form as the strong member of the oppos-ion expr reception of the act by the subj of the sentactic constr-ion; the act form as the weak member leaves this meaning uncpecifed, ie it expr-s 'nonpassivity'.

In colloquial sp the role of the passive auxiliary can occasionally be performed by the verbs: get, become. Ex: He became admired by all.

The situation reflected by the passive constr doesn't differ from the situat reflected by the active constr-ion.

Category of voice

The category of voice is represented in M. E. by the system of opposemes: loves – is loved, to love – to be loved, etc, and it shows whether the object is the doer of the action or its object. E. g. He opened the door. The door was opened (by him).

The active voice is unmarked, the passive is marked in form and meaning. Some forms of the active voice find no parallel in the passive Future Continuous, Present Perfect Continuous, Past Perfect Continuous, Future Perfect Continuous. In addition to two voices three other voices have been suggested:

1) the reflexive – he addressed himself

2) the reciprocal – they greeted each other

3) the middle voice – the door opened.

So Professor Ilyish finds 5 voices in M. E. This viewpoint was criticized by professor Smirnitsky who believed that there are only two grammatical voices – active and passive, which are clearly opposed structurally and semantically. All the other differences are lexical.

An extreme point of view is expressed nowadays by V. Plotkin, who is of opinion that the English finite verb has no morphological category of voice at all, and the construction be + Ven is the nominal predicate expressing state and consequently it is a syntactical category.

Some of the western linguists find it possible to classify English voice into 3:

1) active: I opened the door

2) passive: The door is opened by me

3) stative: the doo is opened

O. Jespersen distinguished 2 passive forms: actional passive and stational passive. E.g. The house is painted white every year. The house is painted white.

20(rus) The adjective expresses the categorial meaning of property of a substance, e.g.: hard work. That means that semantically the adjective is a bound word of partial nominative value: it can not be used without a word denoting the substance which it characterizes[1]. Even in contexts where no substance is named, it is presupposed (implied) or denoted by a substitutive word “one”, e.g.: Red is my favourite colour; The blouse is a bit small. Have you got a bigger one? When the adjective is used independently it is substantivized, i.e. it acquires certain features of a noun. Adjectives are distinguished by a specific combinability with the nouns which they modify, with link verbs and with modifying adverbs. The functions performed by the adjective correlate with their combinability: when combined with nouns, adjectives perform the function of an attribute (either in preposition to the noun modified or in post-position if accompanied by adjuncts), e.g.: a suspicious man; a man suspicious of his wife; when combined with link verbs they perform the function of a predicative (part of a compound nominal predicate), e.g.: The man was very suspicious of his wife. Usually, constructions with the attributive and predicative use of the adjective are easily transformed into each other, as in the examples given. But there are adjectives that can be used only attributively, e.g.: joint (venture), main (point), lone (wolf), live (music), daily (magazine), etc.; there are adjectives that are used only predicatively (usually adjectives denoting states and relations), e.g.: glad, fond, concerned, etc.; in addition, the predicative or attributive use may differentiate homonymous adjectives or different lexico-semantic variants of the same adjective, cf.: a certain man - I’m certain that the report is ready; ill manners – I’m ill.

Formally, adjectives are characterized by a specific set of word-building affixes, e.g.: hopeful, flawless, bluish, famous, decorative, accurate, inaccurate, basic, etc. As for word-changing categories, the adjective had a number of reflective categories in Old English: it agreed with the noun in number, case and gender; all these forms were lost in the course of historical development and today the only morphological category of the adjective is the immanent category of comparison. There is also a group of partially substantivized adjectives which are characterized by mixed (hybrid) lexico-grammatical features: they convey the mixed adjectival-nounal semantics of property; in a sentence they perform functions characteristic of nouns; and they have deficient paradigms of number and article determination (they are not changed according to the category of number and are combined only with the definite article). They include words denoting groups of people sharing the same feature – the rich, the beautiful, the English, and words denoting abstract notions – the unforgettable, the invisible, etc. The former resemble the pluralia tantum nouns, and the latter the singularia tantum nouns. They make up a specific group of adjectives marginal to the nouns and can be called “adjectivids” by analogy with “verbids”.

This type of word-building has become particularly productive in modern English, involving adjectivized past participles, which exhibit “triply” mixed meanings, e.g.: the newly wed, the unemployed, etc. And these tend to acquire more and more substantive features in the course of time, e.g., one can say the newly-weds, or an unemployed.

21(rus) The category of comparison expresses the quantitative characteristics of the quality rendered by the adjective, in other words, it expresses the relative evaluation of the amount of the quality of some referent in comparison with other referents possessing the same quality. Three forms constitute this category: the positive degree, the comparative degree, and the superlative degree forms of the adjective. The basic form, known as the positive degree, has no special formal mark, e.g.: tall, beautiful; the comparative degree is marked by two kinds of forms; synthetical forms with the suffix “-er” and analytical forms with the auxiliary word more, e.g.: taller, more beautiful; the superlative degree is also formed either synthetically with the help of the grammatical suffix “-est”, or analytically with the help of the auxiliary word most, e.g.: tallest, most beautiful. The synthetic and analytical degrees stand in complementary distribution to each other, their choice is determined by syllabo-phonetic forms of adjectives and is covered in detail in practical grammar textbooks. Also, there are suppletive forms of the degrees of comparison, e.g.: bad – worse – worst.In the plane of content the category of comparison constitutes a gradual ternary opposition (see Unit 3). To be consistent with the oppositional approach, the category of comparison can be reduced to two binary oppositions correlated with each other in a hierarchy of two levels in the following way:

Degrees of comparison

On the upper level the positive degree, as the unmarked member, is opposed to the comparative and superlative degrees, as the marked forms of the opposition, denoting the superiority of a certain referent in the property named by the adjective[2].The weak member, the positive degree, has a wider range of meanings: it denotes either the absence of comparison, or equality/inequality in special constructions of comparison, e.g.: He is tall; He is as tall as my brother; He is not so tall as my brother. On the lower level the comparative degree is opposed to the superlative degree. The comparative degree denotes relative, or restricted superiority, involving a restricted number of referents compared, normally two, e.g.: He is taller than my brother. The superlative degree denotes absolute, or unrestricted superiority, implying that all the members of a certain class of referents are compared and the referent of the word modified by the adjective possesses the property in question to the highest possible degree, e.g.: He is the tallest man I’ve ever seen. The superlative degree at this level of the opposition is the strong member, being more concrete in its semantics. The opposition can be contextually reduced: the superlative degree can be used instead of the positive degree in contexts where no comparison is meant, to denote a very high degree of a certain quality intensely presented, cf.: She is a most unusual woman (She is an extremely unusual woman); It was most generous of you (It was very generous of you). This kind of grammatical transposition is known as “the elative superlative”. Thus, the superlative degree is used in two senses: the absolute superiority (unrestricted superiority) and the elative superiority (a very high degree of a certain quality). The formal mark of the difference between the two cases is the possibility of indefinite article determination or the use of the zero article with the noun modified by the adjective in the superlative degree, e.g.: It was a most generous gesture; a sensation of deepest regret.

The same grammatical metaphor is used in Russian, cf.: умнейший человек, с огромнейшим удовольствием, etc.; it must be noted, though, that the Russian elative superlative is usually expressed by synthetic forms of adjectives, while in English analytical forms are most often used. The quantitative evaluation of a quality involves not only an increase in its amount or its intensity, but also the reverse, its reduction, rendered by the combination of the adjective with the words less and least, e.g.: important, less important, least important. These combinations can be treated as specific analytical forms of the category of comparison: they denote what can be called “negative comparison”, or “reverse comparison” and are formed with the help of the auxiliary words less and least; the regular synthetic and analytical forms denoting an increase in the amount of a quality may be specified as “direct comparison”, or “positive comparison” forms. Thus, the whole category of comparison is constituted not by three forms, but by five forms: one positive degree form (important), two comparative degree forms, direct and reverse (more important, less important), and two superlative degree forms: direct and reverse (most important, least important).

The reverse forms of comparison are rarely studied within the category of comparison; this can be explained, besides purely semantic reasons, by the fact that reverse comparison has no synthetical forms of expression, and by the fact that the grammatical meaning of its forms is not idiomatic: the auxiliary word retains its own lexical meaning. Still, if the analytical means of direct comparison, whose idiomatism is also weak, are considered to be grammatical forms of the adjectives, there is no reason to consider the forms of reverse comparison free word-combination Adjectives are traditionally divided on the basis of their semantics into two grammatically relevant subclasses: qualitative and relative adjectives. Qualitative adjectives denote the qualities of objects as such, e.g.: red, long, beautiful, etc. Relative adjectives denote qualities of objects in relation to other objects; such adjectives are usually derived from nouns, e.g.: wood – wooden, ice – icy, etc. The ability to form degrees of comparison is usually treated as the formal sign of qualitative adjectives, because they denote qualities which admit of quantitative estimation, e.g.: very long, rather long, not so long, long – longer - longest. But this is not exactly the case. First, there are a number of qualitative adjectives which have no forms of comparison because their own semantics is either inherently comparative or superlative, or incompatible with the idea of comparison at all (non-gradable), e.g.: excellent, semi-final, extinct, deaf, etc. Second, some relative adjectives, when used figuratively, perform the same semantic function of qualitative evaluation as qualitative adjectives proper and in such contexts acquire the ability to change their form according to the category of comparison, cf.: a golden crown: a relative adjective ‘golden’ is used in its primary meaning – a crown made of gold; golden hair: a relative adjective ‘golden’ is used in its figurative meaning – hair of the colour of gold; one can say: Her hair is even more golden than her mother’s hair. On the other hand, a qualitative adjective may be used in the specificative function as a relative adjective, specifying the property of some objects in their relations to the other objects, e.g.: a hard disk – the basically qualitative adjective ‘hard’ in this context specifies the type of the disk in relation to other types: hard disks - floppy disks. In such cases qualitative adjectives do not form the degrees of comparison. Thus, the grammatically relevant subdivision of adjectives should actually be based not on their general semantics, but on their semantic function: the basic semantic function of qualitative adjectives is evaluation, and they normally form the degrees of comparison; the basic semantic function of relative adjectives is specification, and they normally do not form the degrees of comparison. Still, when used in the evaluative function, both qualitative and relative adjectives form the degrees of comparison; when used in the specificative function, neither qualitative, nor relative adjectives form the degrees of comparison.

31.(rus) The main components of the actual division of a sentence are the theme and the rheme. The theme (originally called “the basis” by V. Mathesius) is the starting point of communication, a thing or a phenomenon about which something is reported in the sentence; it usually contains some old, “already known” information. The rheme (originally called “the nucleus” by V. Mathesius) is the basic informative part of the sentence, its contextually relevant communicative center, the “peak” of communication, or the information reported about the theme; it usually contains some new information. There may be transitional parts of actual division of various degrees of informative value, neither purely thematic, nor rhematic; they can be treated as a secondary rheme, the “subrhematic” part of a sentence; this part is called “a transition” (this idea was put forward by another scholar of the Prague Linguistic Circle, J. Firbas). For example: Again Charlie is late. – Again (transition) Charlie (theme) is late (rheme). The rheme is the obligatory informative component of a sentence, there may be sentences which include only the rheme; the theme and the transition are optional. The theory of actual division of the sentence is connected with the logical analysis of the proposition. The principal parts of the proposition are the logical subject and the logical predicate; these two parts correlate with the theme and the rheme of the sentence respectively. Logical analysis deals with the process of thinking and the actual division reveals the corresponding lingual means of rendering the informative content in the process of communication. The logical subject and the logical predicate, like the theme and the rheme, may or may not coincide, respectively, with the subject and the predicate of the sentence. When the actual division of the sentence reflects the natural flow of thinking directed from the starting point of communication to its semantic core, from the logical subject to the logical predicate, the theme precedes the rheme and this type of actual division is called “direct”, “unspecialized”, or “unmarked”. In English, with its fixed word order, direct actual division means that the theme coincides with the subject (or the subject group) in the syntactic structure of the sentence, while the rheme coincides with the predicate (the predicate group) of the sentence, as in Charlie is late. - Charlie (theme) is late (rheme). In some sentences, the rheme may be expressed by the subject and it may precede the theme, which is expressed by the predicate, e.g.: Who is late today? – Charlie (rheme) is late (theme). This type of actual division is called “inverted”, “reverse”, “specialized”, or “marked”. The last example shows that actual division of the sentence finds its full expression only in a concrete context of speech (therefore it is sometimes referred to as the “contextual” division of the sentence). The close connection of the actual division of the sentence with the context, which makes it possible to divide the informative parts of the communication into those “already known” by the listener and those “not yet known”, does not mean that the actual division is a purely semantic factor. There are special formal lingual means of expressing the distinction between the meaningful center of the utterance, the rheme, and the starting point of its content, the theme. They are as follows: word order patterns, constructions with introducers, syntactic patterns of contrastive complexes, constructions with articles and other determiners, constructions with intensifying particles, and intonation contours.

The connection between word order and actual division has been described above: direct actual division usually means that the theme coincides with the subject in the syntactic structure of the sentence, while the rheme coincides with the predicate. Inverted word order can indicate inverted actual division, though the correlation is not obligatory. For example: (There was a box.) Inside the box was a microphone; the adverbial modifier of place at the beginning of the sentence expresses the theme, while the subject at the end of the utterance is the rheme; the word order in this sentence is inverted, though its actual division is direct. Reversed order of actual division, i.e. the positioning of the rheme at the beginning of the sentence, is connected with emphatic speech, e.g.: Off you go! What a nice little girl she is!

Constructions with the introducer ‘there’ identify the subject of the sentence as the rheme, while the theme (usually it is an adverbial modifier of place) is shifted to the end of the utterance, e.g.: There is a book on the table. The actual division of such sentences is reverse without any emotive connotations expressed. Cf.: The book is on the table; in this sentence both the word order and the actual division are direct: the subject is the theme of the sentence. Emphatic identification of the rheme expressed by various nominative parts of the sentence (except for the predicate) is achieved by constructions with the anticipatory ‘it’, e.g.: It is Charlie who is late; It was back in 1895 that Popov invented radio.The opposed nominative parts of the sentence are marked as rhematic in sentences with contrastive complexes, e.g.: Charlie, not John, is absent today.Articles and other determiners, in accord with their either identifying or generalizing semantics, are used to identify the informative part “already known“, the theme (definite determiners) or the “not yet known” information, the rheme (indefinite determiners). E.g.: The man (theme) appeared unexpectedly. – A man (rheme) appeared. But this correlation is not obligatory, because the theme is not always the information already known; it may be something about which certain information is given, so, the indefinite article may be used with the theme too, e.g.: A voice called Mary.

Various intensifying particles, such as only, just, merely, namely, at least, rather than, even, precisely, etc., identify the nominative part of the sentence before which they are used as the rheme, e.g.: Only Charlie is late today. Similar is the function of the intensifying auxiliary verb ‘do’, which turns the predicate into the rheme of the sentence, while the rest of the predicate group is turned into the transition or even the theme, e.g.: I did help your sister (cf.: I helped your sister) The major lingual means of actual division of the sentence is intonation, especially the stress which identifies the rheme; it is traditionally defined as “logical accent” or “rhematic accent”. Intonation is universal and inseparable from the other means of actual division described above, especially from word-order patterns: in cases of direct actual division (which make up the majority of sentences) the logical stress is focused on the last notional word in the sentence in the predicate group, identifying it as the informative center of the sentence; in cases of reverse actual division, the logical stress may indicate the rheme at the beginning of the utterance, e.g.: Charlie (theme) is late (logical accent, rheme). - Charlie (logical accent, rheme) is late (theme).

32(rus) The sentence is above all a communicative unit; therefore, the primary classification of sentences is based on the communicative principle, traditionally defined as “the purpose of communication”. According to the purpose of communication, sentences are subdivided into declarative, interrogative and imperative. Declarative sentences are traditionally defined as those expressing statements, either affirmative or negative, e.g.: He (didn’t) shut the window. Imperative sentences express inducements of various kinds (orders or requests); they may also be either affirmative or negative, e.g.: (Don’t) Shut the window, please. Interrogative sentences express questions, or requests for information, e.g.: Did he shut the window? Fries’s classification does not refute the traditional classification of communicative sentence types, but rather confirms and specifies it: the purpose of communication inherent in the addressing sentence is reflected in the listener’s response. Therefore, the two approaches can be combined in the descriptions of each type of sentence according to their inner and outer communicative features: declarative sentences are defined as sentences which express statements and can be syntagmatically connected with the listener’s signals of attention (his or her appraisal, agreement, disagreement, etc.), e.g.: He didn’t shut the window. - Oh, really?; imperative sentences express inducements, situationally connected with the listener’s actions or verbal agreement/disagreement to perform these actions, e.g.: Shut the window, please. – OK, I will; interrogative sentences express requests for information and are syntagmatically connected with answers, e.g.: Did he shut the window? – Yes, he did. The other types utterances distinguished by Fries are minor intermediary communicative types of sentences: greetings make up the periphery of the declarative sentence type as statements of good will at meeting and parting; calls can be treated as the periphery of the inducement sentence type, as requests for attention; “non-communicative” utterances are excluded from the general category of the sentence as such, because they lack major constituent features of sentences. The strictly declarative sentence immediately expresses a certain proposition, and the actual division of the declarative sentence presents itself in the most developed and complete form: the rheme of the declarative sentence provides the immediate information that constitutes the informative center of the sentence in opposition with its thematic part, e.g.: He (theme) shut the window (rheme).

The strictly imperative sentence does not express any statement of fact, i.e. any proposition proper. It is only based on a proposition, without formulating it directly, e.g.: Let him shut the window (He hasn’t shut the window). Thus, the rheme of the imperative sentence expresses the informative nucleus not of an explicit proposition, but of an inducement, an action wanted, required, necessary, etc. (or, unwanted, unnecessary, etc.). Due to the communicative nature of the inducement addressed to the listener, the theme of the imperative sentence may be omitted or may take the form of an address, e.g.: Shut the window, please; Tom, shut the window.

The rheme of the interrogative sentence is informationally open: it is an informative gap, which is to be filled by the answer. This rhematic “zero” in pronominal (“special”) questions is expressed by an interrogative pronoun, which is substituted by the actual information wanted in the answer, e.g.: Who shut the window? – Tom (did). The interrogative pronoun in the question and the rheme of the answer make up the rhematic unity in the question-answer construction. The openness of the rheme in non-pronominal questions consists in the alternative semantic suggestions from which the listener has to choose the appropriate one. The semantic choice is explicit in the structure of alternative questions, e.g.: Did he or his friend shut the window? The rheme of non-pronominal questions requiring either confirmation or negation (“general” question of yes-no response type) is implicitly alternative, implying the choice between the existence or non-existence of an indicated fact (true to life or not true to life?), e.g.: Did he shut the window? – Yes, he did (No, he didn’t). The thematic part of the answer, being expressed in the question, is easily omitted, fully or partially, as the examples show. Traditionally, the so-called exclamatory sentence is distinguished as one more communicative type of sentence. Exclamatory sentences are marked by specific intonation patterns (represented by an exclamation mark in written speech), word-order and special constructions with functional-auxiliary words, rendering the high emotional intensity of the utterance. But these regular grammatical features can not be treated as sufficient grounds for placing the exclamatory sentences on the same level as the three cardinal communicative types of sentences. In fact, each cardinal communicative type, declarative, imperative or interrogative, may be represented in its exclamatory, emotionally coloured variant, as opposed to a non-exclamatory, unemotional variant, cf.: She is a nice little girl – What a nice little girl she is!; Open the door. – For God’s sake, open the door!; Why are you late? – Why on earth are you late?! Exclamation is actually an accompanying feature of the three cardinal communicative types of sentences, which discriminates emotionally intense constructions from emotionally neutral ones at the lower level of analysis, but it does not constitute a separate communicative type.

As for so-called “purely exclamatory sentences”, such as My God!; Goodness gracious!; etc., as was mentioned earlier, they are not sentences in the proper sense of the term: though they occupy isolated positions like separate utterances in speech and resemble regular sentences in written representation, these interjection-type outcries do not render any situational nomination or predication and they possess no informative perspective. They can be defined as “non-sentential utterances” which serve as symptoms of emotional reactions; they are also treated as “pseudo-sentences”, “sentence-substitutes” or “non-communicative utterances” (according to Ch. Fries). So-called indirect questions have the form of a declarative sentence, but actually express a request for information, e.g.: I wonder who shut the window (cf.: Who shut the window?). An answer is expected, as with a regular question, e.g.: I wonder who shut the window. – Tom did. so-called rhetorical questions are interrogative in their structural form, but express a declarative functional meaning of high intensity, e.g.: How can you say a thing like this? The sentence does not express a question; it is a reprimand. Intermediary between statements and inducements are formally declarative sentences with modal verbs and other lexical means of inducement, e.g.: You must shut the window.

Inducive constructions can also be used to express a request for information, inducing the listener to verbal response of information rendering; they represent another type of indirect question, e.g.: Tell me who shut the window. Thus, the classification of the communicative sentence types, in addition to three cardinal communicative types, includes six intermediary subtypes of sentences of mixed communicative features; first, mixed sentence patterns of declaration (interrogative-declarative, imperative-declarative), second, mixed sentence patterns of interrogation (declarative-interrogative, imperative-interrogative), and, third, mixed sentence patterns of inducement (declarative-imperative, interrogative-imperative). Most of the intermediary communicative types of sentences perform distinct stylistic functions, and can be treated as cases of transposition of the communicative types of sentences presented in oppositions, paradigmatically.

30(Rus)the simple sen-se

The finite verb, expressing the basic predicative meaning of the sentence and performing the function of the predicate, and the subject combined with it form the so-called “predicative line” of the sentence. On the basis of predicative line presentation, sentences are divided into monopredicative (with one predicative line expressed), i.e. simple, and polypredicative (with two or more predicative lines expressed), i.e. composite and semi-composite.

Traditionally, the simple sentence has been studied primarily from the point of view of its grammatical, or nominative division: the content of the situational event reflected by the sentence, which includes a certain process as its dynamic center, the agent of the process, the objects of the process, various conditions and circumstances of the process, form the basis of the traditional syntactic division of the sentence into its nominative (positional) parts, or members of the sentence. In other words, each notional part expresses a certain semantic component or “role”[1] in the situation; in the structure of the sentence, they perform the function of modifying either each other or the sentence in general.

The syntactic functions or the members of the sentence are traditionally divided into principal (main) and secondary. The principal parts of the sentence are the subject and the predicate, which modify each other: the subject is the “person” modifier of the predicate, and the predicate is the “process” modifier of the subject; they are interdependent. The secondary parts are: the object – a substance modifier of the predicate; the attribute – a quality modifier of substantive parts, either the subject or the object; the adverbial modifier – a quality modifier of the predicate; the apposition – a substance modifier of the subject; the parenthesis (parenthetical enclosure) - a detached speaker-bound modifier either of one of the nominative parts of the sentence or of the sentence in general; the address (addressing enclosure) – a modifier of the destination of the whole sentence; the interjection (interjectional enclosure) – an emotional modifier. All nominative parts of the sentence are syntagmatically connected, and the modificational relations between them can be analyzed in a linear as well as in a hierarchical way (“immediate constituents” analysis, IC analysis), The structural pattern of the sentence is determined by the valency of the verb-predicate; the verb functions as the central predicative organizer of the sentence constituents. The subdivision of all notional sentence parts into obligatory and optional in accord with the valency of the verb-predicate makes it possible to distinguish the category of “elementary sentence”: it is a sentence in which all the positions are obligatory; in other words, an “elementary sentence” includes, besides the principal parts, only complementive modifiers.

The elementary sentence coincides structurally with the so-called unexpanded simple sentence, a monopredicative sentence, which includes only obligatory nominative parts. The expanded simple sentence includes also some optional parts, i.e. supplementive modifiers, which do not violate the syntactic status of the simple sentence, i.e. do not make it into a composite or semi-composite sentence. For example, the sentence ‘He gave me the book’ is unexpanded, because all the nominative parts of this sentence are required by the obligatory valency of the verb to give; cf.: *He gave…; He gave me… - these constructions would be semantically and structurally deficient. The sentence ‘He gave me a very interesting book’ is expanded, because it includes an expansion, the attribute-supplement very interesting; the second sentence is reducible to the elementary unexpanded sentence built on the syntagmatic pattern of the bicomplementive verb to give. The two principal parts of the sentence, the subject and the predicate, with the subordinate secondary parts attached to them are the two constitutive members or “axes” of the sentence: the subject group (the subject “axis”) and the predicate group (the predicate “axis”). On the basis of their representation in the outer structure of the sentence, sentences are subdivided into complete sentences and incomplete sentences: in complete sentences both the subject group and the predicate group are present; they are also called “two-member sentences” or “two-axis sentences”; if only one axis is expressed in the outer structure of the sentence, the sentence is defined as incomplete; it is also called “one-member sentence”, “one-axis sentence”, or “elliptical sentence”.

Traditionally, one-axis sentences and elliptical sentences are distinguished in the following way: only those sentences in which the nominative parts are contextually omitted are considered to be elliptical, e.g.: Who is there? – Your brother. Since the missing parts are easily restored (“understood”) from the context, elliptical sentences are treated as two-member sentences. “Genuine” one-member sentences are traditionally treated as those which do not imply the missing member on contextual lines, e.g.: What a nice day! The additional semantics of the fixed one-axis sentences (like the emotional “scream-style” name-calling of the sentence analyzed) is destroyed by such restorations. Nevertheless, there is no strictly defined demarcation line between free and fixed one-axis sentences: there is a continuum of sentences, related to the two-axis sentences by direct or indirect associations, cf.: Open the door. – You open the door; Thank you! – I thank you; etc. As for negation and affirmation formulas (Yes; No; All right), vocative sentences (Ladies and gentlemen! Dear friends!), greeting and parting formulas (Hello! Good-bye!) and other similar constructions, they constitute the periphery of the category of the sentence: they are not exactly word-sentences, but rather sentence-representatives, related to the corresponding two-axis sentences not by “vague” implications, but by representation. Most of them exist only in syntagmatic combinations with full-sense antecedent predicative constructions. Cf.: Are you going to come? – No (= I am not going to come). The isolated exclamations of interjectional type, like My God! For heaven’s sake! Gosh!, etc., are not related to any two-axis constructions at all, either by vague implications or by representation, being “pseudo-sentences”, or “non-communicative utterances” and rendering no situational nomination, predication or informative perspective of any kind. The semantic classification of simple sentences is based on principal parts semantics. On the basis of subject categorial meaning, sentences are divided into impersonal, e.g.: It drizzles; There is no use crying over spilt milk; and personal; personal sentences are further subdivided into human and non-human. Human sentences are further subdivided into definite, e.g.: I know it; and indefinite, e.g.: One never knows such things for sure. Non-human sentences are further subdivided into animate, e.g.: A cat entered the room; and inanimate, e.g.: The wind opened the door. Impersonal sentences may be further subdivided into factual, e.g.: It drizzles; and perceptional, e.g. It looks like rain.

On the basis of predicate categorial meaning, sentences are divided into process featuring (“verbal”) and substance featuring (“nominal”); process featuring sentences are further subdivided into actional, e.g.: I play ball; and statal, e.g.: I enjoy your party; substance featuring sentences are further subdivided into factual, e.g.: She is clever; and perceptional, e.g.: She seems to be clever. As the examples show, the differences in subject categorial meaning are sustained by obvious differences in the subject-predicate combinability.

33(rus) Regular paradigmatic description of syntax started in the middle of the 20th century in the wake of the transformational grammar theory of N. Chomsky, who, as was mentioned before, distinguished deep and surface levels of syntactic structures, transformationally connected with each other. In order to speak about sentence patterns opposed in syntactic paradigms in accord with their differential features, it is necessary to single out the initial basic element of syntactic derivation, the “sentence-root”, which undergoes various transformations and serves as the basis for identifying syntactic categorial oppositions. This element is known under different names: “the basic syntactic pattern”, “the elementary sentence model”, “the base sentence”, or “the kernel sentence”. Structurally, the kernel sentence coincides with the elementary sentence, organized by the obligatory valencies of the predicate verb, e.g.: Mary put the book on the table.

The derivation of genuine sentences in “surface” speech out of kernel sentences in “deep” speech can be analyzed as a process consisting of elementary transformational steps, or syntactic derivational procedures. These include: morphological arrangement of the sentence parts expressing syntactically relevant categories, primarily the morphological changes of the finite form of the verb performing the function of the predicate (tense, aspect, voice, and mood), e.g.: Mary put the book on the table à Mary would have put the book on the table…; the use of functional words (functional expansion), which transform syntactic constructions the same way grammatical morphemes transform words, e.g.: Mary put the book on the table. à Did Mary put the book on the table?; the process of substitution, including the use of personal, demonstrative and indefinite pronouns and of various substitutive half-notional words, e.g.: Mary put the book on the table. à Mary put it on the table; deletion, i.e. elimination of some elements in various contextual conditions, e.g.: Put the book on the table!; the process of positional arrangement, involving changes of the word order, e.g.: Mary put the book on the table. à On the table Mary put the book; the process of intonational arrangement, i.e. application of various functional tones and accents, e.g.: Mary put the book on the table. à Mary put the book on the table?(!)

All these procedures are functionally relevant: they serve as markers of syntactically meaningful dynamic features of the sentence. These derivational steps may be employed either alone or in combination with each other; for example, the pronominal question Where did Mary put the book? can be described as the transform of the kernel sentence Mary put the book on the table, derived with the help of a special functional word (the auxiliary verb did), substitution (the interrogative substitutive adverb where), and the use of special positional and intonational arrangement. In the constructional system of syntactic paradigmatics, kernel sentences and expanded base sentences are transformed into clauses and phrases. The transformation of a base sentence into a clause can be called “clausalization”; it changes a sentence into a clause in the process of the subordinative or coordinative combination of sentences. The main transformational procedure of clausalization is the use of conjunctive words; in addition, the change of the word order, the change of intonational arrangement, deletion, substitution and other derivational procedures may be involved. Cf.: The team won. + It caused a sensation.à The team won and it caused a sensation; When the team won, it caused a sensation.

The transformation of a base sentence into a phrase can be called “phrasalization”; it changes the sentence into a phrase in the process of building the syntactic constructions of various degrees of complexity: expanded simple sentences or semi-composite sentences. Phrasalization may be of several types; one of them, nominalization, i.e. the transformation of a sentence into a nominal phrase, has already been mentioned; by complete nominalization the kernel sentence is changed into a regular noun phrase and is completely deprived of its predicative semantics, e.g.: The team won. à the team’s victory; The weather changed. à the change of the weather; by partial nominalization the sentence is changed into a semi-predicative gerundial or infinitive phrase and is deprived of part of its predicative semantics, e.g.: the team’s winning; for the team to win; the weather changing. These situation-naming constructions differ semantically, as more dynamic or more static, in accord with different types of processual representation (see Unit 11). The other types of phrasalization include transformations of kernel sentences into various participial and infinitive constructions, which make up the semi-clauses of complex objects, adverbial constructions, and some other semi-predicative constructions, e.g.: Having won, the team caused a sensation.

The formation of more complex clausal structures out of simpler ones involves two base sentences and resembles the process of a compound word being built on the base of two stems (cf.: to fall + water à a waterfall, an aircraft + to carry à an aircraft-carrier), e.g.: The team won. + It caused a sensation.à The team won and it caused a sensation; When the team won, it caused a sensation; Having won, the team caused a sensation; The team’s winning caused a sensation; The victory of the team caused a sensation; etc.

In the predicative system of syntactic paradigmatics, a kernel sentence undergoes transformations connected with the expression of predicative syntactic semantics. Predicative functions, expressed by primary sentence patterns, can be subdivided into “lower” and “higher”. Lower functions include the expression of such morphological categories as tense and aspect; these are of “factual”, “truth-stating” semantic character. Higher predicative functions are “evaluative”; they are expressed by syntactic categorial oppositions, which make up the following syntactic categories: the category of communicative purpose, or rather two communicative sub-categories: the first sub-category, in which question is opposed to statement, cf..: Mary put the book on the table. – Did Mary put the book on the table?; and the second sub-category, in which statement is opposed to inducement, e.g.: Mary put the book on the table. – Mary, put the book on the table; the category of existence quality (affirmation and negation), in which affirmation is opposed to negation, cf.: Mary put the book on the table. – Mary didn’t put the book on the table; the category of realization, in which unreality is opposed to reality, cf.: Mary put the book on the table. – Mary would have put the book on the table…; the category of probability, in which probability is opposed to fact, cf.: Mary put the book on the table. – Mary might put he book on the table; the category of modal identity, in which modal identity is opposed to fact, cf.: Mary put the book on the table. – Mary happened to put the book on the table; the category of subjective modality, in which modal subject-action relation is opposed to fact, cf.: Mary put the book on the table. – Mary must put the book on the table; the category of subject-action relations, in which specified actual subject-action relation is opposed to fact, cf.: Mary put the book on the table. – Mary tried to put the book on the table; the category of phase, in which phase of action is opposed to fact, cf.: Mary put the book on the table. – Mary started putting her book on the table (though I asked her not to); the category of subject-object relations, in which passive action is opposed to active action, cf.: Mary put the book on the table. – The book was put on the table by Mary; the category of informative perspective, in which specialized, reverse actual division is opposed to non-specialized, direct actual division, cf.: Mary put the book on the table. – It was Mary who put the book on the table; the category of (emotional) intensity, in which emphasis (emotiveness) is opposed to emotional neutrality, cf.: Mary put the book on the table. – Mary did put the book on the table!

It is important, that syntactic derivation should no be understood as an immediate change of one sentence into another: the primary sentences, presented above as examples, do not form the immediate paradigmatic series. The total system of all the pattern-forms of one sentence base, which make up its general syntactic paradigm of predicative functions, is extremely complicated; for example, within the framework of the question – statement opposition, pronominal and alternative questions are identified, each of them including a set of varieties; the same applies to all the other syntactic oppositions.

All the categories enumerated here may or may not be represented in an utterance by their strong function members. The total volume of the strong members of predicative oppositions actually represented in a sentence can be defined as its “predicative load”. The kernel sentence, which is characterized in oppositional terms as non-interrogative, non-imperative, non-negative, non-modal-identifying, etc., can be treated as predicatively “non-loaded” (has a “zero predicative load”); sentences with the most typical predicative loads of one or two positive feature expressed can be treated as “lightly” loaded; sentences with intricate predicative semantics of more than two positive predicative features (normally, no more than six) are “heavily” loaded. For example, the sentence Why on earth has Mary failed to put my book back on the table?! can be described as expressing positive predicative semantics of interrogations, subject-action relations and intensity; its predicative load is “heavy”.

35(rus) There has been some controversy concerning the syntactic status of the compound sentence: some linguists maintain that it is not a specific syntactic construction, but a sequence of separate sentences similar to the combination of semantically related independent sentences in speech, as in supra-sentential constructions in the text. The following arguments are used to show the arbitrariness of compound sentences: the possibility of a falling, finalizing tone between the coordinated predicative units and the possibility of using the same coordinative conjunctions for the introduction of separate sentences; cf.: They quarreled, but then they made up again. - They quarreled. But then they made up again. The fact is, there is a distinct semantico-syntactic difference between the two constructions: the closeness of connections between the events is shown by means of combining predicative units into a coordinative polypredicative sequence, while the connections between the events in a sequence of independent sentences are shown as rather loose. Besides, the subordinate clauses can also be separated in the text, being changed into specific independent sentences, but this does not challenge the status of the complex sentence as a separate syntactic unit. Coordination, just like subordination, can be expressed either syndetically (by means of coordinative connectors) or asyndetically. Coordinative connectors, or coordinators, are divided into conjunctions proper, e.g.: and, but, or, for, either…or, neither… nor, etc., and semi-functional connectors of adverbial character, e.g.: nevertheless, besides, however, yet, thus, so, etc. Adverbial connectors, unlike pure conjunctions, can be shifted in the sequential clause (except for yet and so), e.g.: The company’s profits have fallen, but there is, however, another side to this problem. The coordinate clauses can be combined asyndetically (by the zero coordinator), e.g.: The quarrel was over, the friendship was resumed.The intensity of cohesion between coordinate clauses can become loose, and in this case the construction is changed into a cumulative one, e.g.: I wasn’t going to leave; I’d only just arrived (cf.: I’d only just arrived and I wasn’t going to leave). Cumulative constructions have an intermediary status between the composite sentence and the sequence of independent sentences .Semantically, connections between coordinated clauses can be subdivided into two types: marked coordinative connection and unmarked coordinative connection. A marked coordination is expressed by conjunctions and adverbial connectors rendering adversative relations (but, however, yet, etc.), disjunctive relations (or, either… or, etc.), causal-consequential relations (so, for, therefore, thus, etc.), and positive and negative copulative relations of events (both... and, neither… nor). Unmarked coordination is expressed syndetically by the pure conjunction and, or asyndetically, by the zero coordinator. Relations rendered by unmarked connections are not specified in any way: they are either pure copulative relations, or enumerative relations, or broader connective meanings, which can be diagnosed by equivalent substitution with marked connections. Cf.: We started to sing and he started to sing along (unmarked coordination, copulative relations); They were sitting on the beach, the seagulls were flying above, the waves were rolling (unmarked coordination, relations of enumeration); Both unmarked and marked coordinative connections can be additionally specified when coordinators are used with an accompanying functional particle-like or adverb-like word, e.g.: and yet, and besides, but instead, but also, or else, etc. Some compound sentences can be easily transformed into complex sentences, and in these transformations complex sentences are used as diagnostic models to expose the semantic relations between the coordinate clauses; this is of especial importance for unmarked coordinative constructions. E.g.: Water the seeds and they will grow.à If you water the seeds, they will grow; the transformation shows that the event in the first clause is the condition for that in the second; She took some medicine and she became sick.à She became sick because she took some medicine; the copulative relations between the clauses can be specified as implying that one event is the cause which generated the following event as a consequence. Coordinative connections, as such transformations show, are semantically more general than the connections in complex sentences, which are semantically more discriminatory. It must be noted, though, that the coordinative and subordinative constructions above are not equivalent and coordinative connections are not reducible to subordinative connections. The basic type of the compound sentence, as with the complex sentence, is a two-clause construction. If more than two or more sequential clauses are combined with one leading clause, from the point of view of semantic correlation between the clauses, such constructions are divided into “open” and “closed”. “Open” constructions may be further expanded by additional clauses (as in various enumerations or descriptions), e.g.: They were sitting on the beach, the seagulls were flying above, the waves were rolling... In “closed” coordinative constructions the final part is joined on an unequal basis with the previous ones and the finalization of the chain of ideas is achieved, e.g.: He joked, he made faces, he jumped around, but the child did not smile