Verbless two-member sentences and idiomatic sentences.

According to O. Jespersen and R. Long, here belong also patterns with "nexus of deprecation".

The frequency value of such syntactic units in Modern English is rather high. In terms of IC's analysis, they may be divided into two types: SP and PS, each of them characterised by various structural elements.

Type SP. The predicate (P) may be expressed by nouns, nounal groups, infinitives or participles, e. g.:

Anything the matter, Michael? (Galsworthy)

Next stop — the British Museum?

Weather to stay cold?

Your turn to speak.

Both engaged?

Gone! The scent of geranium fading; the little dog snuffling. (Galsworthy)

 

A tremor of insecurity went through her. The Future, how, how uncharted! (Galsworthy)

Cowperwood, the liar! Cowperwood, the sneak! (Dreiser)

Guard's van now — the tail light — alt spread — a crimson blue — setting East — going — going — gone! (Galsworthy)

Way of the world — one man's meat, another's poison! (Ibid.)

Type PS. In patterns of this type predicate (P) may be expressed by nouns, nounal groups, and all other non-conjugated elements of the predicate: 1) pronouns, 2) pronominal adverbs, 3) participial phrases. 4) infinitives, infinitival phrases, etc.

Flying a kite, you, a grown man?

Just to stay here, the two of us.

Bad to stick, sir. Sorry! (Galsworthy)

How ridiculous to run and feel happy!

How long until dinner?

What about your own words?

A rather charming garden here!

Why not go?

All patterns of this type are two-member sentences. The absence of attributive relations between their adnominal and nominal members may easily be proved by their structural and semantic traits as well as modulation features. The semantic value of the structure is often proved by thematic and rhematic analysis.

In terms of structure, we distinguish the following peculiarities of verbless sentences:

1) the pronominal member is not a possessive pronoun. Indicating persons or things in actual speech, pronouns are most commonly used as substitutes for names and as such generally do not need attributive adjuncts.

Words characterising pronouns are therefore predicative (not attributive) in their function, e. g.:

SP: You looking a baby of a thing this morning! PS: Wonderful civility this! Quite serious all this!

2) the presence of elements irrelevant to attributive relations, such as, for instance, the adverbial adjunct how, e. g.:

How annoying having to stand all the way home in the bus!

3) the presence or interpositional adverbial elements, modal words or negative particles, as in:

Complete Low-Cost Home Training Course now Available. Your cousin, probably, enjoying herself!

4) the use of the article: Rot the stuff!

Why the terrific hurry!

 

The composite sentence. Compound sentences.

Composite sentence and its types. The composite sentence is formed by two or more predicative lines. Being a polypredicative construction, it expresses a complicated act of thought, i.e. an act of mental activity which falls into two or more intellectual efforts closely combined with one another. In terms of situations and events this means that the composite sentence reflects two or more elementary situational events viewed as making up a unity;Each predicative unit in a composite sentence makes up a clause in it, so that a clause as part of a composite sentence corresponds to a separate sentence as part of a contextual sequence. There are two principal types of composite sentences: complex and compound. In compound sentences, the clauses are connected on the basis of coordinative connections (parataxis); by coordination the clauses are arranged as units of syntactically equal rank, i.e. equipotently (cf. equipotent, or coordinative phrases; see Unit 19). In complex sentences, the clauses are united on the basis of subordinative connections (hypotaxis); by subordination the clauses are arranged as units of syntactically unequal rank, one of which dominates another. In terms of the positional structure of the sentence; this means that by subordination one of the clauses (subordinate) is placed in a notional position of the other (principal). This structural characteristic has an essential semantic implication: a subordinate clause, however important the information rendered by it might be for the whole communication, presents it as naturally supplementing the information in the principal clause, cf.: This is the issue I planned to discuss with you. As for coordinated clauses, their equality in rank is expressed above all in each sequential clause explicitly corresponding to a new effort of thought, which can be introduced by the purely copulative conjunction and or the adversative conjunction but, cf.: I want to discuss something with you, but we can talk about it later. The sequential clause in a compound sentence is usually rigidly fixed and refers to the whole of the leading clause, whereas the subordinate clause in a complex sentence usually refers to one notional constituent in the principal clause and can vary positionally (as in the examples above).The means of combining clauses into a polypredicative sentence are divided into syndetic, i. e. conjunctional, and asyndetic, i. e. non-conjunctional.According to the traditional view, all composite sentences are to be classed into compound sentences (coordinating their clauses) and complex sentences (subordinating their clauses), syndetic or asyndetic types of clause connection being specifically displayed with both classes. we find another case of the construction of composite sentence, namely, when the connection between the clauses combined in a polypredicative unit is expressly loose, placing the sequential clause in a syntactically detached position. Thus, composite sentences as polypredicative constructions exist in the two type varieties as regards the degree of their predicative explicitness: first, composite sentences of complete composition; second, composite sentences of concise composition. Alongside the two basic types of composite sentences there is one more type of polypredicative construction, in which the connections between the clauses are rather loose, syntactically detached.In oral speech its formal sign is often the tone of sentential completion, followed by a shorter pause than the usual pause between separate sentences. In written speech such clauses are usually separated by semi-final punctuation marks: a dash, a colon, a semi-colon or brackets, This type of connection is called cumulation (see Unit 19), and such composite sentences can be called cumulative. The status of cumulative sentences is intermediary between composite sentences proper and combinations of sentences in supra-sentential constructions.Alongside the “completely” composite sentence, built up by two or more fully predicative lines, there are polypredicative constructions, in which one predicative line may be partially predicative (potentially predicative, semi-predicative), as, for example, in sentences with various verbid complexes, Such sentences actually render two situations and present two predicative lines in fusion, or blended with each other; this can be demonstrated in explanatory transformations of these constructions into composite sentences: I heard him, when he was singing in the backyard; He was singing in the backyard and I heard him. The transformations show that such sentences are derived from two base sentences and that their systemic status can be treated as intermediary between the simple sentence and the composite sentence. They can be defined as “ semi-composite sentences ”.

Composite Sentences

Problems to be discussed:

- the difference between simple and composite sentences

- the types of composite sentences:

a) compound

d) complex

c) mixed (compound-complex) sentences

The word "composite" is used by H. Poutsma (39) as a common term for both the

compound and complex sentences.

There are three types of composite sentences in Modern English:

1. The compound sentence contains two or more independent clauses with no dependent one.

2. The complex sentence contains one dependent clause and one or more independent clauses. The latter

usually tells something about the main clause and is used as a part of speech or as a part of sentence.

J. The compound-complex sentence combines the two previous types. The compound-complex sentences

are those which have at least two independent clauses and at least one dependent (subordinate) clause in its

structure: Blair found herself smiling at him and she took the letter he held out to her.

That there are three types of composite sentences in languages is contemporary approach to this issue.

Historically not all the grammarians were unanimous in this respect. According to it H. Sweet (42) there are

structurally two types of sentences: simple and complex.

“Two or more sentences may be joined together to form a single complex sentence … In every complex

there is one independent clause, called the principal clause together with at least one dependent clause, which stands

in the relation of adjunct to the principal clause. The dependent clause may be either coordinate or subordinate”.

Examples:

Principal clause

1.You shall walk, and I will ride.

Coordinate clause

Co-complex

Principal clause

2. You are the man I want.

Subordinate clause

Sub-complex

As one can see in H. Sweets conception there’s no place for compound sentences since even so-called “cocomplex”

there’s subordination.

In this paper we shall classify the composite sentences into three types as has been mentioned above.

Compound sentence. The compound sentence is a composite sentence built on the principle of coordination. Coordination, the same as subordination, can be expressed either syndetically (by means of coordinative connectors) or asyndetically.The main semantic relations between the clauses connected coordinatively are copulative, adversative, disjunctive, causal, consequential, resultative. Similar semantic types of relations are to be found between independent, separate sentences forming a continual text. As is known, this fact has given cause to some scholars to deny the existence of the compound sentence as a special, regular form of the composite sentence. by means of differences in syntactic distributions of predicative units, different distributions of the expressed ideas is achieved, which is just the coordinative syntactic functions in action; by means of combining or non-combining predicative units into a coordinative polypredicative sequence the corresponding closeness or looseness of connections between the reflected events is shown, which is another aspect of coordinative syntactic functions. It is due to these functions that the compound sentence does not only exist in the syntactic system of language, but occupies in it one of the constitutive places.The compound sentence is derived from two or more base sentences. The base sentences joined into one compound sentence lose their independent status and become coordinate clauses — parts of a composite unity. The first clause is "leading" (the "leader" clause), the successive clauses are "sequential".The coordinating connectors, or coordinators, are divided into conjunctions proper and semi-functional clausal connectors of adverbial character. The main coordinating conjunctions, both simple and discontinuous, are: and, but, or, nor, neither, for, either... or, neither... nor, etc. The main adverbial coordinators are: then, yet, so, thus, consequently, nevertheless, however, etc. The adverbial coordinators, unlike pure conjunctions, as a rule can shift their position in the sentence.The intensity of cohesion between the coordinate clauses can become loose, and in this case the construction is changed into a cumulative one.When approached from the semantico-syntactic point of view, the connection between the clauses in a compound sentence should be analysed into two basic types: first, the unmarked coordinative connection; second, the marked coordinative connection.The unmarked coordinative connection is realised by the coordinative conjunction and and also asyndetically. The marked coordinative connection is effected by the pure and adverbial coordinators It is easily seen that coordinative connections are correlated semantically with subordinative connections so that a compound sentence can often be transformed into a complex one with the preservation of the essential relational semantics between the clauses. The length of the compound sentence in terms of the number of its clausal parts (its predicative volume), the same as with the complex sentence, is in principle unlimited; it is determined by the informative purpose of the speaker. The commonest type of the compound sentence in this respect is a two-clause construction.On the other hand, predicatively longer sentences than two-clause ones, from the point of view of semantic correlation between the clauses, are divided into "open" and "closed" constructions. Copulative and enumerative types of connection, if they are not varied in the final sequential clause, form "open" coordinations. In the multi-clause compound sentence of a closed type the final part is joined on an unequal basis with the previous ones (or one), whereby a finalisation of the expressed chain of ideas is achieved.

Compound Sentences

The compound sentence was not felt to be a sentence proper. There were at least three

methods, as L. Iophic and Chahoyan (17) state, employed by the grammarians to find a way out of

this difficulty: (1) to explain it away by the complete independence and the possibility of isolating

each member of a compound sentence without any change of its meaning or intonation; (2) by

employing new terms to express more exactly the grammatical peculiarity of this combination of

sentences. The terms “double”, “triple” and “multiple” sentences were used by E. Kruisinga (36) in

“A Hand-book of Present day English” and H.R. Stokoe (41). (3) by excluding this concept from

the structural classification of sentences.

The analysis of compound sentences show that clauses of a compound sentence are usually

connected more closely than independent sentences. According to M. Blokh (7) “in these sentences

the clauses are arranged as units of syntactically equal rank, i.e. equipotent” (p.296). But more

close examination of these type of sentences shows that:

1. The order of clauses is fixed.

1.1. He came at six and we had dinner together.

1.2. The two women understood one another very well, but Paul seemed to be left outside

this conversation.