Identify predication lines to divide the sentence into constituent parts

Make a scheme to show the relations between sentence parts.

Define the constituents of each sentence.

1. Charlie stands there watching her; even from this distance he can hear the creak of the chain as the swing moves, and then, for no reason at all, Charlie is afraid that his sister will look up and see him, so he takes off as fast as he can, and even though he feels certain he is heading in the wrong direction, he doesn’t stop until he is all the way home.

2. She will call an assembly, she’ll invite Ed Reardon to come, she’ll find a speaker from AIDS organization who specializes in education, she will not put this issue up for the school board to debate; their discussion of the assembly might drag on for weeks and her students need to know now what AIDS is and how they can and cannot be exposed.

3. Nearly every night after dinner, when the children are in bed, Ivan goes back to the Institute; none of his colleagues asks him any questions, they’re used to what anyone else would consider odd working hours; last year there was one graduate student from California everyone called Vampire – he worked only from nine at night until dawn, no one had ever seen him during the day.

4. Two girls Amanda sincerely hates, not just because they are snobs who won’t speak to anyone who doesn’t have pierced ears, come in as Amanda’s fixing her hair; everybody at Cheshire knows their names, Mindy and Lori; Mindy, who’s on the gymnastic team, had better leotards than anyone else, really neat ones that the grandmother sends her from LA.

5. Amanda herself is in good spirits, no one said anything awful to her, and her teacher, who Amanda thinks is too pretty and young to be a teacher, called her aside and told her that it was a pleasure to have her in class and that if she missed any time her work could be sent home to be made up.

Test Yourself Questions

1. What is the principal difference between the transformation of nominalization and transformations in simple sentences?

2. Define the main objectives of the labeling and bracketing procedures.

3. What are the pluses and minuses of the IC analysis?

4. What types of diagrams are used in the IC analysis?

5. Which diagram do you find most relevant/valid? Explain your choice.

6. What are the merits of distributional analysis?

7. How do the positional, optional and stylistic variants differ within the framework of oppositional analysis?

8. Describe the main aspects of the descriptive approach.

9. Describe the main aspects of the prescriptive approach.

10. Give your arguments for (or against) universal grammar. Provide your own examples.

11. Give your own definition of a grammatical model and explain its main aspects.

12. Work out a set of principles (a scheme, a grid, etc.) to help differentiate between different types of grammar.

13. Is it justified to include semantics and phonology in the scope of grammatical analysis? Provide your arguments.

14. Account for the use of the following terms in the definition of the grammatical model: model, patterned sounds, predictable meanings, infinite use, finite means.

15. Explain briefly the terms arbitrariness and displacement.

16. Explain briefly the terms duality and productivity.

17. Functional view of the language

18. Basic functions of the language

19. Semiotic nature of the language.

20. Types of linguistic signs.

21. Language and thought: correlation or reflection?

22. Comment on the following statement: “Each system is a structured set of elements related to one another by a common function.” (Blokh, ibid., p.11)

23. Comment on the following statement:“The systemic nature of grammar is probably more evidnt than that of any other sphere of language, since grammar is responsible for the very organization of informative content of utterances” (Blokh, ibid., p.11)

24. Enumerate the main characteristics of the language viewed as a structure and as a system and analyze their significance for linguistic study.

25. Do you consider the description of the structural levels of the language consistent and valid? Provide your reasons.

26. Compare the nature/essence of lexical and grammatical meaning. Give examples.

27. Analyze the information about nucleus and periphery as they are defined in linguistics, think of examples of your own.