4. Structural Schemes of the Sentence. The Elementary Sentence

There are no structural limits for increasing the size of the sentence and

expanding its structure, however, the opposite procedure has a specific limit, the

limit being the elementary sentence. Omission of some element of the elementary

sentence destroys it as a structural and semantic unit.

Thus, the sentence “A low rumbling sound had broken the silence around

them.” (from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) can be made more

complicated by adding new attributes, introducing dependent clauses, inserting

modal words, etc. The process will have no end. However, omission of elements

that do not affect the structural and semantic completeness of the sentence can go

on until it meets a certain limit. Such limit for the sentence under consideration is

“A sound had broken the silence”. It realizes the syntactic structure made up by the

subject + a simple predicate expressed by a verb of non-prepositional directivity +

a direct object.

The structural scheme of the sentence is a sentence structure minimal

by its composition and simplest by grammatical and semantic structure. A

construction built according to a structural scheme and realizing all of its

components is called an elementary sentence. Prof. Pocheptsov lists some

structural schemes for verbal sentences and examples of corresponding elementary

sentences:

Structural schemes Elementary sentences

Subject – predicate expressed by a verb of nondirected

action (Active Voice)

Pages rustle. (S. Bedford)

Subject – predicate expressed by a verb of nonprepositional-

object directivity (Active Voice)

– direct object

Моr was enjoying the port.

(I. Murdoch)

Subject – predicate expressed by a verb

requiring two non-prepositional objects: object

of addressee and object of patient (Active

voice) – non-prepositional object of addressee

– non-prepositional object of patient

'I've taught him that.' (J. Galsworthy)

Subject – predicate expressed by a verb of

spatial directivity (Active Voice) – adverbial

modifier of place

The Judge is in the chair. (S. Bedford)

Subject – predicate expressed by a verb of

temporal directivity (Active Voice) – adverbial

modifier of time

That was long ago. (P. Abrahams)

Subject – predicate expressed by a verb of nonprepositional

object directivity (Passive Voice)

They had been seized. (H.G. Wells)

The set of structural schemes specific to every language is the initial basis

for building actual sentences as facts of speech.

One point that should be mentioned here is the status of passive sentences.

The question is whether they should be included into the set of structural schemes

as active sentences or whether they should be regarded as secondary constructions

built on the basis of active sentences. As it has been shown by psycholinguistic

experiments, passive sentences do not appear in actual speech as results of

transforming active sentences. Besides that, there are some passive sentences that

do not have corresponding active sentences (eg. I was born in France.). Therefore,

a passive sentence is not a derivative of an active one but an independent

syntactical phenomenon.

The total number of structural schemes in a language is a few dozens of

units.