- •1. Grammatical category. Grammatical meaning. Grammatical form
- •2. Theory of oppositions. Types of oppositions. Oppositions in morphology
- •3. Morpheme. Derivation morphemes and inflection morphemes
- •4. Distributional analysis. Morphemic analysis. Ic-analysis
- •1. Noun
- •2. Adjective
- •3. Pronoun
- •4. Numeral
- •5. The verb
- •7. The adverb
- •8. Prepositions
- •9. Conjunctions
- •10. Particles
- •11. Interjections
- •1. General characteristics
- •2. The category of number
- •3. The category of case
- •4. The Problem of Gender in English
- •5. The Category of Determination
- •1. A General Outline of the Verb as a Part of Speech
- •2. Classification of Verbs
- •3. The Category of Person
- •4. The Category of Number
- •5. The category of tense
- •6. The category of aspect
- •7. The category of temporal correlation
- •1. The category of voice
- •2. The Category of Mood
- •3. Mood and Modality
- •4. Oppositional reduction of verbal categories
- •Introductory
- •1. A general outline of the adjective
- •2. Classification of adjectives
- •3. The problem of the category of state
- •4. The category of comparison
- •5. The Adverb
- •1. A General Outline of Functional Parts of Speech
- •2. The Preposition
- •3. The Conjunction
- •4. The Particle
- •5. The Interjection
- •6. The Modal Word
- •1. The phrase as the basic unit of syntax.
- •2. Types of phrases
- •3. Types of syntactic relations
- •1. The notion of sentence. The sentence as a language unit
- •2. Classifications of simple sentences
- •1. The traditional scheme of sentence parsing
- •2. The main sentence parts: the subject and the predicate, their types
- •3. The Secondary Sentence Parts
- •4. Structural Schemes of the Sentence. The Elementary Sentence
- •5. Syntactic Processes
- •1. Semantic Roles and Semantic Configurations
- •2. Actual Division of the Sentence
- •3. Language means of expressing the theme and the rheme
- •1. The Definition of the Composite Sentence
- •2. Compound Sentences
- •3. Complex Sentences
- •4. Asyndetic Sentences
- •5. Transition From Simple To Composite Sentences
- •6. Mixed type of composite sentences
- •1. Semantics and Pragmatics
- •2. Indirect Meaning of the Utterance
- •1. Speech acts theory. Classification of speech acts
- •2. Pragmatic transposition of sentences
- •1. Conversational Implicature
- •2. The Cooperative principle and Grice’s maxims
- •3. The Politeness principle and Leech’s maxims
- •1. Text as an Object of Linguistic Research
- •2. Cohesion and Coherence
- •3. Textual Categories
- •4. Textual Units. Supra-Phrasal Unity and Paragraph
1. Text as an Object of Linguistic Research
The text is a unit of language in use. It applies to any passage, spoken or
written, of whatever length, that does form a unified whole – a semantic unit. The
text is the object of studies of the branch of linguistics called text linguistics. Text
lingustics is a relatively new branch of language studies that deals with texts as
communication systems. At the early stage of its development in the 60s of the 20th
century, text linguistics dealt mainly with ways of expressing cohesion and
coherence and distribution of the theme and the rheme of an utterance according to
the rules of the functional sentence perspective. Its original aims lay in uncovering
and describing text grammars. The application of text linguistics has, however,
evolved from this approach to a point in which text is viewed in much broader
terms that go beyond a mere extension of traditional grammar towards an entire
text. Contemporary text linguistics studies the text and its structure, its categories
and components as well as ways of constructing texts. Text linguistics takes into
account the form of the text, but also its setting, i.e. the way in which it is situated
in an interactional, communicative context. Both the author of a (written or
spoken) text as well as its addressee are taken into consideration in their respective
(social and/or institutonal) roles in the specific communicative context. In general
it is an application of linguistic analysis at the much broader level of text, rather
than just a sentence or word.
Despite the fact that there are many publications devoted to problems of text
linguistics, there does not exist an adequate definition of the text that would find
satisfaction with all researchers. The difficulties that arise when trying to work out
a universally acceptable definition of the text can be explained by the fact that
scholars study the text in its various aspects: grammatical, stylistic, semantic,
functional and so on.
The text can be studied as a product (text grammar) or as a process (theory
of text). The text-as-a-product approach is focused on the text cohesion, coherence,
topical organization, illocutionary structure and communicative functions; the textas-
a-process perspective studies the text production, reception and interpretation.
Text can be understood as an instance of (spoken or written) language use
(an act of parole), a relatively self-contained unit of communication. As a
‘communicative occurrence’ it meets seven criteria of textuality (the constitutive
principles of textual communication): cohesion, coherence, intentionality,
acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality, and three regulative
principles of textual communication: efficiency, effectiveness and appropriateness
(cf. de Beaugrande and Dressler 1981, Malmjaer 1991)
Regulative Principles of Textual Communication
The principle of efficiency requires that a text should be used with a
minimum effort - hence the use of plain (stereotyped and unimaginative) language
which, however boring and unimpressive, is easy to produce and comprehend.
In contrast, effectiveness presumes leaving a strong impression and the
creation of favourable conditions for attaining a communicative goal; this
presupposes the use of creative (original, imaginative) language which, however
effective, may lead to communicative breakdown.
The principle of appropriateness attempts to balance off the two above
principles by seeking an accord between the text setting and standards of textuality.