The problem of communication types.

There are compound sentences consisting of clauses belonging to different communication types. In this case it is impossible to state to what type the compound sentence as a whole belongs.

e.g. These came nearer than most to meaning something to her, but what? (declarative + interrogative) There is theory on the unity of communication type, which recognizes compound sentences as a special sentence type.

Compound sentences consist of clauses joined together by coordinating conjunctions: and, but, or, for, yet.

Grammatical structure of compound sentences: The semantic relations between the clauses making up the compound sentence depend partly on the lexical meaning of the conjunction uniting them, and partly on the meanings of the words making up the clauses themselves:

· Copulative conjunctions - and, neither…nor

· Disjunctive conjunctions - or, otherwise, either…or

· Adversative conjunctions - but, yet, still, nevertheless, however

As to the use of tenses in clauses making up a compound sentence, we should note that there is no general rule of their interdependence. However, in a number of cases we do find interdependence of co-ordinate clauses from this point of view.

The number of clauses in a compound sentence may be greater than 2, and in this case the conjunctions uniting the clauses may be different.

Actual division of the sentence

It is well known fact that the notional parts of the sentence form together the nominative meaning of the sentence. The division of the sentence into notional parts can be called the nominative division a long side of nominative division. The idea of the actual division has been put forward in theoretical linguistics. Its purpose is to reveal the correlative significance of the sentence parts from the point of view of their actual informative role in an utterance.

The main components of the actual division are the “theme” and the “rheme”. Theme expresses the starting point of the communication. Rheme expresses the basic informative part of the communication. Between the theme and the rheme are positioned intermediary parts of the actual division. The theme may or may not coincide with the subject of the sentence. The rheme with a predicate. The actual division finds its full expression only in a concrete context of speech. If it is stylistically neutral construction the theme is the subject and the rheme is the predicate and this kind of actual division is direct. The actual division in which the rheme is expressed by the subject is inverted.

The means of expressing the rheme:

1. Lexical meanings – particles (only,even)

2. Logical stress.

3. Change of syntactic structure (It was he who did it)

4. Passive voice.

Means of expressing theme:

1. Definite article.

2. Word order.

The actual division is an active means of expressing functional meaning.

According to I. Vardual division which presents the ‘basic item’ and the ‘nucleus of the message’, ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’, ‘given’ and ‘new’ was called by V.Mathesius “the actual division of the sentence” as distinguished from its “formal division”. Actual division is the result of the influence of context and situation. Intonation is a very important means of actual division. K. G. Krushelnitskaya and A.V. de Grot view actual division as the reflection of the speaker’s attitude towards what is said. This point of view is less acceptable.

The point of the actual division of the sentence is in the lingual limitation of the amount of information carried by the message.

Parts of the sentence

 

Parts of the sentence are a syntactic category constituted by the organic interaction of different linguistic units in speech.

It is important to observe that the division into parts of speech and the division into parts of the sentence are organically related. This does not call for much to explain. The part of speech classification is known to be based not only on the morphological and word-making characteristics of words but their semantic and syntactic features as well. The latter are particularly important for such parts of speech as have no morphological distinctions at all. A word (or a phrase) as a part of sentence may enter into various relations with the other parts of a given sentence. These mutual relationships are sometimes very complicated as being conditioned by different factors: lexical, morphological and syntactic proper.

Important observations in the theory of the parts of the sentence based on the interrelation of types of syntactic bond and types of syntactic content were made by A. I. Smirnitsky. A part of the sentence is defined as a typical combination of the given type of syntactic content and the given type of syntactic bond as regularly reproduced in speech. Different types of syntactic bond form a hierarchy where distinction should be made between predicative bond and non-predicative bond. On the level of the sentence elements this results in the opposition of principal parts and secondary parts.