3. Secondary Parts of the Sentence

The general implicit morphological nature and the syntactic function of the secondary parts of the sentence are generally isomorphic in the contrasted languages.

As to its structural forms, the object may be:

1. Simple. Then she heard music. He called ‘Hsst’ several times.

2. Simple prepositional. He was afraid of this. May I speak to Lucy?

3. Extended (expressed by a subordinate word-group). I do so dislike summer crowds. In his book he had drawn some pretty nasty characters.

4. Expanded objects (expressed by the co-ordinate word-group). The other two women continued to discuss the gas and the electricity bills. The car brought my father and mother home.

Apart from these, there can be:

1. direct non-prepositional or prepositional objects: He could make the money easy. I’ve heard of it. He went to Oxford, studied engineering and played rugger. He was describing the sufferings of the unemployed. Note! The verbs to ask, to answer, to take, to envy, to hear, to forgive take two direct objects in English, which is not so in Ukrainian. They scared him and asked him many questions.

2. Prepositional object, which is preceded / introduced by the preposition. It smelt not of vomit, but of food. ‘I must not panic’, she said to herself.

3. The indirect object, which is expressed in English only by a personal pronoun in the objective case and by the interrogative and relative pronoun who. I know they told me that. The doctor gave him pills to take. He handed her a paper. The clausal object is expressed by the object subordinate clause: You’re always telling me how good you are.

4. Formal object is an allomorphic feature pertained to English only. It expressed by the formal pronoun it which has an implicit meaning. On Saturday she would clean it, wash it and air it.

5. The complex object has some structural forms: the objective with the infinitive, the objective with the present participle or the gerund complexes / constructions:

If only I could see him laugh once more. She had expected him to be more sympathetic. I heard someone weeping. I hear him calling her name.

Attribute in both languages functions as an adjunct to a noun. Almost all Ukrainian adjuncts mostly agree with the head noun in gender, case and number. These adjuncts are: adjective, pronoun, numbers, participles. But it could be (in both languages) adverbial, infinitival and phrasal adjuncts: George was the first to recover. The then government; the books to read, the sentence below, the House of Commons debate.

Pertaining to English only are adjuncts consisting of:

1. cluster of nouns like sugar cane production (noun + noun structure);

2. stative adjuncts to nouns: Miss Ackroyd saw her uncle alive at a quarter to seven.

3. Gerundial adjuncts to nouns: You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you.

Adverbial parts of the sentence in the contrasted languages have most features in common. Their use in the sentence is predetermined by a concrete need to characterize the action, process or state from the viewpoint of manner, time, place, purpose, measure or degree of its proceeding. Adverbial modifiers refer either to a part of the sentence (usually predicate) or to the sentence as a whole. They may be obligatory or non-obligatory (optional).

Obligatory complements are used after the predicate verbs to act, to behave, to be, to cast, to treat. It costs a pretty penny. Slowly, John got up out of the chair. In fact, I thought you were rather short with the young person.

Adverbial compliment of time expresses time, frequency, duration or time relation of an action/ event. I was crying then. They gave guys the axe quite frequently at Pansey. Reaching the room, she turned on all the lights.

The adverbial modifier / complement of place:

1. place proper

2. direction or destination

3. distance

The old man sat there without moving. Suddenly people were coming to the door. Jude leaped out of arm’s length.

Adverbial Complement of manner characterizes the action of the verb indicating the way in which it is performed and the means it is performed by (How? In what way? By what means?)

We spent much time together. The wiry red-faced woman sat holding her tape-recorder modestly on her lap. It is a shame for people to spend so much money this way.

Practice # 8

WORD ORDER IN A SENTENCE AND ITS FUNCTIONS