The attribute.

The attribute is a secondary part of the sentence which characterizes person or non-person expressed by a noun or another nominal part of speech. The headword that is characterized by an attribute can be in the function of the subject, predicative, object or adverbial modifier: The first volume is missing. / It was a fresh, fine morning. / He was staring at the falling snow. / He wore a large straw hat. / I received a letter from my younger brother.

The attribute can be expressed by:

1. an adjective: This big girl is very lazy.

2. a pronoun: He extended his hand to me.

3. a numeral: Three vacant seats were behind him.

4. a noun in the possessive case: Rip’s only friend in the house was his dog Wolf.

5. an adjectivised noun: The rain drops rattled on the leaves.

6. an adverb: The house over there is a school.

7. a prepositional phrase: The letter from her sister reassured her.

8. an infinitive or an infinitive construction: It was the wrong thing to do. This is an English article for you to translate.

9. a gerund or a gerundial construction: We were facing the problem of crossing the river. The thought of having it copied again and again set him into a sad mood.

10. participles I / II or a participial phrase: We sat in the growing darkness. A broken chair stood against the wall. I was dazzled by the snow glittering on the tree tops.

11. a quotation group: I don’t like his “don’t-talk-to-me-or-I’ll-contradict-to-you” air.

The attribute may either precede or follow the headword: The bright blue sky. / I have bought the book mentioned by you. / My brother’s book. / A book of my brother’s.

The Adverbial Modifiers

An adverbial characterizes the process denoted by the verb from the viewpoint of situation, quality or quantity.

Semantically adverbial modifiers are classified as adverbials:

1. of time: We shall try it tomorrow.

2. of frequency: We often see each other.

3. of place: She went there. We came from the cinema.

4. of manner: The boy walked slowly towards the house.

5. of attending circumstances: He sleeps with the window open. They went forward under a heavy rain.

6. of degree and measure: It is rather good. / I quite understand you. / It weighs a pound.

7. of purpose: He lay down to rest. / I came to see you off.

8. of cause: He was exhausted from want of sleep.

9. of condition: But for his kindness, she would never have been able to make a success.

10. of comparison: She is as beautiful as a flower. / When she heard her husband’s name, her face contracted as though in pain.

Word Order

The words in an English sentence are arranged in a certain order, which is generally fixed for every type of the sentence and therefore meaningful. The position of the word inside the sentence corresponds to its function in it. As a rule, the first position is taken by the subject, the second – by the predicate, the third -- by the object, the fourth – by the adverbial modifier. So the ideal succession of the parts of the sentence is as follows: Subject + predicate + object + adverbial modifier: She read a book slowly. The moon was shining brightly over the calm sea. He left the city last night. He sat down upon the grassy bank alone.

But this ideal word order can be broken for some specific purposes (emphatic, communicative, linking). Thus the adverbial modifiers, particularly of time and place, can be found before the subject - predicate unit: Tomorrow at 5 o’clock I’ll be flying to Greece. / Right near the house there was the central park of the town.

Sometimes the object can be placed before the main members of the sentence for grammatical or emphatic-communicative purposes: What wonderfully blue eyes you have, Earnest! / Passage after passage did he explore. / A fearful voyage I had with such a monster in the vessel./ Of his love he would tell her nothing. / To Martin the future did not seem so dim.

Sometimes the predicate or its part can precede the subject. This sort of word order is called inversion. We distinguish full inversion (when the predicate precedes the subject: Here comes the lady of the house. Hanging on the wall was a picture. ) or partial inversion ( when only part of the predicate precedes the subject: Happy may you be!)

In some cases inversion may be taken as a normal order of words in sentences of specific grammatical and communicative value:

• in general questions: Is it really true?

• In requests: Won’t you have a cup of tea?

• In special questions: What are the police after? What are you doing tonight?

• In ‘there’-sentences: There has been an accident. There occurred a sudden revolution in public taste.

• In ‘here’-sentences: Here is another example.

• In exclamatory sentences: Come what may! Wouldn’t that be fun! May you never feel what I then felt! Long live our Queen! Mind you what I say!

There are a lot of cases when a word is placed in an unusual position for emphatic or stylistic purposes in order to make it more prominent and thus attract the readers’ or the listeners’ attention to it. For example:

1. Through the open window came the sounds of a plane.

2. In rushed the children. (but: In they rushed).

3. No sooner had we reached home than it began pouring. (hardly, scarcely)

4. Never has she sung so beautifully. / Nowhere was the fighting so fierce as in that sky upon Stalingrad.

5. -- I have finished my work. – So have I. / -- She got up at 6. – So did everybody. / -- He hasn’t done it. – Neither has she. / -- I am not pleased with his work -- No more am I.

6. Now comes our stop. / Seldom have I seen such wonderful flowers. / Only then did they notice the blood trickling from his arm. / Only once did he meet his match in tennis. / Here comes my brother John.

7. Little did I then know the meaning of war and what I was in reality. / Terrible as was the storm we continued our way. / So loudly did he speak, everybody could hear him. / Sweet was that evening. / Great was his influence.

8. So it’s you that have disgraced the family. /It was on father’s suggestion that he went to law college.