Classification of a sentence

There exist thee types of sentences (with structural variants): simple, compound, complex (composite – сложные предложения).

Descriptivists introduced the following terms:

The single free utterance minimum and extended (распространённый) (that is a simple sentence)

The duplication of the pattern or multiplication (corresponds to a compound sentence) “He was young, the weather was beautiful and Europe was in war”.

Sequence with included utterances (a traditional complex sentence) “We don’t know where we’ll be tomorrow”.

Lecture #4.

The simple sentence. The principal and the secondary parts.

Plan:
1. The simple sentence and its classifications

2. General properties of the simple sentence (two-member extended)

3. Members of the sentence

4. The principal parts

5. The secondary parts

There are several classifications of a simple sentence:

1. Structural

2. communicatiove

3. semantic

4. pragmatic (the study of a relationship between linguistic units and the users of those units in done by pragmatics)

Communicatively the following types of sentences are distinguished:

1. Declarative (повествовательное): affirmative and negative

2. Interrogative

3. Imperative

4. Exclamatory

Structurally simple sentences are classified into:

1. one-member (single-nucleus). It’s a sentence having only one member which is neither the subject nor the predicate. This doesn’t mean that the other member is missing, for the one member makes the sense complete.

Two-member (double-nucleus). It’s a sentence that has two members – a subject and a predicate. If one of them is missing, it can be easily understood from the context.

More frequent are two-member sentences carrying a subject and a predicate and secondary pards. They can be extended and nonextended.

“The Sun shines (the subject + the predicate)

“A Robot robots a robot (the subject + the predicate + the object)

Morphological varieties of one-member sentences (in descriptive and emotional speech):

1. Nominal (nounal and adjectival) “Women! The men of property! Silence! Wonderful!” Noun of noun: “Perfect beauty of sunflower”.

2. Infinitival (stylistic alternatives to sentences with finite verb predication). Forget al so soon! To love her. To be loved by her” (variants constitute a paradigm of infinitive sentences)

In a one-member sentence neither subject, nor predicate is the main part.

A two member sentence can be:

1. complete (there’s a subject and a predicate)

2. elliptical (on part or both are missing, the meaning can be understood from the context).

General properties of a simple sentence (two-member extended):

Within the sentence we distinguish:

1. Primary/secondary

2. independent/dependant elements

3. the structural nucleus / its adjuncts

There exist several syntactic ties (синтаксические связи) within a sentence:

1. The primary predicative tie: it makes a sentence, it realizes itself in the changes of the verb for person, number, tense voice, mood, aspect, time, relation;

2. the secondary predication tie cane be revealed transformationally, it doesn’t make a sentence, it’s concealed in infinitival, gerundial, participial, constructions, predicative constructions with noun, adjectives, statives.

“I saw him running: (complex objective participial construction)

3. The coordinating tie establishes syntactic (синтаксический) homogeneity (однородность) = parataxis

4. The subordinating tie establishes syntactic dependence of nuns and pronouns upon verbs. There are certain preposition before nouns which are demanded by verbs “consists of”.

5. The attribute – completive tie: a modifier expressed by an adjective or an adverb doesn’t merely modify the noun or verb, it completes a sentence. “He behaved strangely”

Lecture #