Particles

Particles are functional words of specifying and limiting meaning. They show subjective attitude. They refer to the word (or phrase) immediately following and give special prominence to the notion expressed by this word, or single it out in some other way, depending on the meaning of the particle. One just does what is reasonable. She could feel anger, even at this late date.

It can stand apart from the word it refers to – I have only met him twice. It is a specific part of the sentence, because without it the meaning of it changes.

The particle not deserves special treatment. It may stand outside the predicate – Not till we landed did we realize that we are alive. Or in short answers: Certainly not. Perhaps not. Of course not. (with modal words). It appears to be the main part of the sentence. Another use is within the predicate, as part of the verb: I am not, he is not, she does not. Here the particle is an auxiliary element within the morphology of the verb, and it has no syntactic function of its own. Its becoming a morpheme within the verb form is seen in the contracted forms isn’t, wouldn’t.

Sometimes the word almost causes doubts whether it is an adverb or a particle: The boat almost overturned. – whether it shows the subjective attitude (it was in danger of overturning) or it denotes the manner in which the action was conducted. It can be felt in the translation – чуть не перевернулась – particle, почти перевернулась – adverb.

Interjection

It is doubtful whether they are involuntary outcries, provoked by feelings of pain, joy, surprise, not restricted to any given language but common to all human beings as biological phenomena are.

But this only accounts for the etymology of interjections, which appeared from involuntary outcries, but now they belong to the word stock of the language as much as other types of words do. Interjections belonging to a certain language may contain sounds foreign to other languages. Thus, the English interjection alas contains the vowel phoneme [ ], which is not found either in Russian or in German language; the Russian interjection ах contains the consonant phoneme [x], which is not found in English.

The interjections, as different from nouns, verbs, prepositions, are not names of anything, but expressions of emotions. Thus, the emotion expressed by the interjection alas may be named despair, but can’t be named alas.

Some of the interjections express quite definite meanings (alas can never express joy), others express feeling in general (oh – surprise, joy, disappointment, fear).

On the phrase level the problem is whether an interjection can be part of any phrase and what types of words can be connected with it. Usually interjections are syntactically isolated, but sometimes it can be connected with a group “preposition+noun”, naming the person or thing which causes the feeling expressed by the interjection: Alas for my friends!

The interjection oh can be followed by the adjective dear to form a phrase which itself is equivalent to an interjection: Oh dear! It can only be the first component of a phrase.

On the sentence level we have to consider interjections a part of the sentence, loosely connected with the rest of it, and approaching a parenthesis in its character. Oh, she used awful grammar, but she was trying so hard to be elegant. They can form a sentence by themselves: “Oh!” said Scarlet, her hopes dashed. Some phrases are equivalent to interjections: dear me! Goodness gracious!

Words, that don’t belong to any classification

The existence of such words is admitted by some linguists, Academician Scherba, for one.

The words “please, yes, no” can’t be described as adverbs either by meaning or by syntactical function.

Glossary of linguistic terms:

1. co-ordinating - сочинительный

2. subordinating - подчинительный

3. manner – образа действия

additional reading

1. стр. 149-163

2. стр. 92 – 98

XXV. Modal words

The distinction between modal words and adverbs is based on two criteria: 1. Their meaning: modal words express the speaker’s attitude to reality of the action expressed in the sentence, 2. Their syntactical function: they are not adverbial modifiers, but parenthesis.

They can be classified into groups according to their meaning: expressing certainty, such as certainly, surely, undoubtedly; those expressing doubt, such as perhaps, maybe, possibly, etc.

If the modal word in the sentence is eliminated, the whole thought will lose the modal colouring and will appear to be stated as a fact, without any specific mention of the speaker’s attitude: She is a delicate little thing, perhaps nobody but me knows how delicate.

A modal word can also make up a sentence by itself. This happens when it is used to answer a general question: Certainly., Perhaps., Maybe. Certainly, I am.

The problem of modal words is connected with the very difficult problem of modality as a whole.

Glossary of linguistic terms:

1. parenthesis – вводные слова

additional reading

1. стр. 164-165

2. стр. 89-90

SYNTAX

XXVI. Sentence and phrase as the main objects of syntax

Syntax treats phrases and sentences. The phrase is a combination of two or more words which is a grammatical unit but is not an analytical form of a word.

The sentence is the immediate integral unit of speech built up of words according to definite syntactic pattern and distinguished by a contextually relevant communicative purpose (functional difference). The difference between the phrase and the sentence is fundamental: the phrase is a nominative unit (значимая единица), denoting a complex referent (phenomenon of reality), which can be a concrete thing, an action, a quality, or a whole situation (a picturesque village, to start with a joke, extremely difficult, the unexpected arrival of the chief). The phrase is further analyzable into its component elements with various relations between them. They (syntactic relations) will be one of the objects of our study of syntax. Phrases can be of a stable type and of free type. The stable phrases or phraseological units form the phraseological part of the lexicon, and are studied by the phraseological division of lexicology. Free phrases are built up in the process of speech on the existing productive models, which are another object of our study of syntax. Phrases are used as a notional part of the sentence (subject, object, predicate, attribute, adverbial modifier, parenthesis). So, above the word in the lingual hierarchy are notional parts of the sentence, which can be formed by phrases, or by separate notional words.

The difference between a phrase and a sentence is a fundamental one. A phrase is a means of naming some phenomena or processes, just as a word is. Each component of a phrase can undergo grammatical changes in accordance with grammatical categories represented in it, without destroying the identity of the phrase. For instance, in the phrase write letters the first component can change according to the verbal categories of tense, mood, etc., and the second component according to the category of number. Thus, writes a letter, has written a letter, would have written letters, etc., are grammatical modifications of one phrase.

With a sentence, things are entirely different. A sentence is a unit with every word having its definite form. A change in the form of one or more words would produce a new sentence. It must also be borne in mind that a phrase as such has no intonation, just as a word has none. Intonation is one of the most important features of a sentence, which distinguish it from a phrase.

The sentence is a unit of predication (difference in form) which shows the relation of the process, described as action, to reality (difference in meaning). When we transform the sentence so, that it loses the predication, we get a phrase: Yesterday I received a present from my sister. – My yesterday’s receiving a present from my sister. So, the sentence as a lingual unit performs not one, but two essential functions: substance-naming, or nominative function; and reality-evaluating, or predicative function.

Predication is relation of the utterance to reality as the base of the sentence. Grammar means of expressing predication are the categories of finite forms of verbs (tense, person, mood).

Each sentence as the immediate speech element has some standard syntactico-semantic features which make up a typical model, a generalized pattern repeated in an indefinite number of actual utterances. Those sentence structure patterns are one more object of our study of syntax.

But the sentence is not the highest unit of the language in the hierarchy of levels. Above is the level of super-sentenial constructions, which are formed by separate sentences united into topical groupings. These sentence-groups are distinguished by its micro-topical part of the continual text. In the printed text they coincide with paragraphs.

Glossary of lingustic terms:

1. nominative unit – значимая единица

2.complex reference – обозначение сложного объекта

3. communicative purpose – цель общения

4.phrase - словосочетания

5.stable phrase – устойчивое словосочетание

6. lingual hierarchy – языковая иерархия

7.super-sentenial constuction – сверхфразовое единство

8.paragraph – абзац

Additional reading:

1. стр. 171-172

2. стр. 100-104

3. –

4. стр. 247 – 248

5. стр. 245 – 247

Practical tasks:

9. Transform the following phrases into sentences:

• sanity and rationality of her behaviour,

- the existence of gypsy curses,

• a man, paying no attention

XXVII. Classification of Phrases.

There are several classifications of phrases by different linguists. The traditional classification is based on the part of speech status of the phrase constituents. So, there are “noun+noun”, “adjective+noun”, “verb+noun”, “verb+adverb”, “adverb+adjective”, “adverb+adverb” types of phrases. Phrases are made up not only by notional words but also by functional words, e.g.: “in accordance with”, “due to”, “apart form”, “as soon as” – such phrases function in the sentence like prepositions and conjunctions.

Phrases can also be classified according to the nominative value of their constituents. As a result three major types of phrases are identified: notional (consisting of grammatically connected notional words), formative (made up by notional and functional words – natural for us to expect) and functional, consisting of functional words alone. Notional phrases are subdivided into two groups on the principle of the constituent rank: equipotent phrases (the constituents are of equal rank – young and charming- co-ordinating) and dominational phrases (the syntactic ranks of the constituents are not equal as they refer to one another as the modifier and the modified - subordinating). Dominational phrases can be semi-predicative (a cat walking by himself), objective – bought a house (direct), think of a reason (indirect), qualifying: attributive – famous people, and adverbial – seriously ill, surprisingly intelligent.

Phrases can also be divided according to their function in the sentence into (1) those which perform the function of one or more parts of the sentence, for example, predicate, or predicate and object, or predicate and adverbial modifier, etc., and (2) those which do not perform any such function but whose function is equivalent to that of a preposition, or conjunction (in accordance with, in favour of, in spite of the fact that) and which are, in fact, to all intents and purposes equivalents of those parts of speech. The former of these two classes comprises the overwhelming majority of English phrases, but the latter is no less important from a general point of view.