Word order in the English sentence. Normal and inverted word order of the main parts

The sentence. The problem of its definition. Classification of sentences.

There is not only one definition of a sentence, there are several.

1. A sentence is a proposition expressed by words (something true). A proposition is the semantic invariant of all the members of modal and communicative paradigms of sentences and their transforms.

2. A sentence is a subject-predicate structure. So, a sentence is a structural scheme.

3. Phonological: a sentence is a flow of speech between 2 pauses.

The main peculiar features of the sentence are: integrity (целостность), syntactic independence, grammatical completeness, semantic completeness, communicative completeness, communicative functioning, predicativity, modality, intonational completeness.

Classification of sentences:

1.According to the types of communication:

Declarative

Imperative

Interrogative

The declarative sentence expresses a statement, either affirmative or negative, and as such stands in systemic syntagmatic correlation with the listener's responding signals of attention, of appraisal (including agreement or disagreement), of fellow-feeling. The strictly declarative sentence immediately expresses a certain proposition. The rheme of the declarative sentence makes up the centre of some statement as such.

The imperative sentence expresses inducement, either affirmative or negative. It urges the listener, in the form of request or command, to perform or not to perform a certain action. The strictly imperative sentence does not express any statement or fact, i.e. any proposition proper. It is only based on a proposition, without formulating it directly. There is an urge to do something (affirmative inducement) which is founded on the supposition that something is not done or an urge not to do something (negative inducement) which is founded on the supposition that something is done or may be done. The rheme of the imperative utterance expresses the informative nucleus not of an exp`licit proposition, but of an inducement — a wanted (or unwanted) action together with its referential attending elements (objects, qualities, circumstances). As for the thematic elements of the imperative utterance, they are often functionally charged with the type-grading of inducement itself, i.e. with making it into a command, prohibition, request, admonition, entreaty, etc.

The interrogative sentence expresses a question, i.e. a request for information wanted by the speaker from the listener. The interrogative sentence is also connected with an answer, forming together with it a question-answer dialogue unity. The unique quality of the interrogative actual division is determined by the fact that the interrogative sentence expresses an inquiry about information which the speaker does not possess. Therefore the rheme of the interrogative sentence, as the nucleus of the inquiry, is informationally open (gaping). Its function consists only in marking the rhematic position in the response sentence and programming the content of its filler in accord with the nature of the inquiry. The thematic part of the answer is usually zeroed since it’s already expressed in the question.

There is also another type of sentences recognised in English, the so-called exclamatory sentence. However, exclamatory sentences do not possess any complete set of qualities that could place them on one and the same level with the three main communicative types of sentences. The property of exclamation should be considered as an accompanying feature within the system of the three main communicative types. In other words, each of the three communicative sentence types can be represented in the two variants, non-exclamatory and exclamatory. By "purely exclamatory sentences" interjectional exclamations of ready-made order such as "Great Heavens!", "Good Lord!", "For God's sake!", "Oh, I say!" and the like are meant.

According to Structure

Simple

Composite

A simple sentence can be either declarative, or interrogative, or imperative. But things are more complicated with composite sentences. If both (or all) clauses making up a composite sentence are declarative, the composite sentence is declarative too. The same is with all the other types of communication. But sometimes composite sentences may consist of clauses belonging to different types of communication. Here it’s sometimes impossible to say to what type of communication the composite sentence as a whole belongs.

Word order in the English sentence. Normal and inverted word order of the main parts.

English language is characterized by a rigid word order in accordance with which the subject of declarative sentences, as a rule, precedes the predicate. This is the so-called direct word-order, e.g. The assistant greeted the professor.

Any deviation from the rigid word-order is termed inversion, e.g. Often has he recollected the glorious days of the Civil War.

The direct object is usually placed after the verb unless the indirect object precedes it, e.g. He offered me his help.

Sometimes the object is placed to the front of the sentence, it occurs when:

1.The direct object is an interrogative word which is naturally placed at the head of the sentence to form a special question, e.g. What did you do?

2.The object is separated from its verb by some other parts of the sentence – adverbial complements, prepositional objects – when it is intentionally placed at the end of the sentence for the sake of emphasis, logical stress, e.g. And unexpectedly he saw against the background of the forest two approaching figures.

The indirect object cannot be used in the sentence without the direct object. The indirect object is regularly put before the direct object. The prepositional objects can be put at the head of the sentence for the sake of emphasis.

Occasionally the prepositional object is placed before the direct object (in to-phrases).

The position of adverbial modifiers in the sentence is more free than that of other parts. Those, which are most closely linked with the part of the sentence they modify, are the ones that denote the frequency or the property of an action. They come between the subject and the predicate, or even inside the predicate if it consists of two words-an auxiliary and a notional verb, or two elements of a compound predicate.

The more usual position of the adverbial modifiers of time and place is outside the group “subject+predicate+object”, that is, either before or after it. If it contains new things, this adverbial modifier will come at the end of the sentence. The adverbial modifier of time can go at the beginning of the sentence.

An adverbial modifier can be placed between two components of the predicate.

The position of an attribute before or after its head word depends on its morphological type. An attribute consisting of a prepositional phrase can only come after its head word. As to adjectival attributes, their usual position is before their head word, but in some case they follow it. An attribute expressed by an adverb may come before it’s head word.

The position of direct address and parentheses in the sentence is probably more free than that of all other parts. A direct address can come in almost anywhere in the sentence.

And speaking of parentheses, we may say that some types of it usually come in between two constituent parts of the predicate. Parentheses may also refer to one part of the sentence only, and come before this part.

If a particle belongs to a noun connected to a noun connected with a preposition, the particle will come between the preposition and the noun. Sometimes a particle refers to the word of phrase immediately preceding it. This can only happens if the particle stands at the end of the sentence or at least at the end of a section of the sentence marked by a pause in oral speech and by a comma or other punctuation mark in writing. This usage is common for more or less official style. Sometimes a particle comes before the predicate or between two elements of the predicate, while it refers to some secondary part of the sentence standing ahead.