Lecture 15 The Sentence.

1.1. The Sentence: Definition and Study Approaches.

The sentence is a unit of speech built up of words according to a definite syntactic pattern and distinguished by a contextually relevant communicative purpose.

The most essential features of the sentence are:

1) it is a predicative unit (it (1) presents the referents as making up a certain situation/event, and (2) reflects the connection between the nominal denotation of the event on the one hand, and objective reality on the other).

2) it is intonationally delimited.

3) it is characterised by a definite standard syntactic-semantic features.

4) it possesses syntactic modality.

5) it has a nominative function (substance namimg).

The sentence can be analyzed on the basis of various approaches:

1. Principal and secondary parts of the sentence.

2. Immediate constituents of the sentence (IC analysis). It aims at the principles of word arrangement in the sentence. Each language has its own way of structural grouping. English has dichotomous phrase structure, which means that the phrase in English can always be divided into two elements (constituents) until we get down to the single word. All groups of words are arranged in levels. The name given by linguists to these different levels of relationship is immediate constituents. Thus, one way of analyzing a sentence is to cut it to its immediate constituents, that is, to single out different levels of meaning (old men and women)

3. Oppositional analysis.

The oppositional method in syntax means correlating different sentence types: they possess common features and differential features. Differential features serve the basis for analysis (two member sentence – one member sentence (John worked – John! Work!)

4. Constructional analysis.

According to the constructional approach, not only the subject and the predicate but also all the necessary constituents of primary predication constitute the main parts because they are constructionally significant. Therefore, the secondary parts of the sentence are sometimes as necessary and important as the main ones.

1.2. Predication and Modality

The sentence is characterised by its specific category of predication. Predication establishes the relation of the named phenomena to actual life.

The general semantic category of modality is also defined by linguists as exposing the connection between the named objects and surrounding reality. However, modality, as different from predication, is not specifically confined to the sentence; this is a broader category revealed both in the grammatical elements of language and its lexical, purely nominative elements. Thus every word expressing a definite correlation between the named substance and objective reality should be recognised as modal namely:

1. lexemes of full notional standing (as probability, desirability, necessity etc) with all the derivationally relevant words;

2. semi-functional words and phrases of probability and existential evaluation (perhaps, may be, by all means, etc.);

3. word-particles of specifying modal semantics (just, even, would-be, etc.);

4. modal verbs expressing a range of modal meanings.

Predication proper embodies not any kind of modality, but only syntactic modality as the fundamental distinguishing feature of the sentence. It is the feature of predication, fully and explicitly expressed by a contextually relevant grammatical complex, that identifies the sentence in distinction to any other combination of words having a situational referent.

The centre of predication in a sentence of verbal type (the predominant type of sentence-structure in English) is a finite verb. The finite verb expresses essential predicative meanings by its categorial forms (primarily the categories of tense and mood). However predication is effected not only by the forms of the finite verb, but also by all the other forms and elements of the sentence establishing the connection between the named objects and reality (intonation, word order, different functional words). Besides the purely verbal categories, in the predicative semantics are included such syntactic sentence meanings as purposes of communication (declaration — interrogation — inducement), modal probability, affirmation and negation.