Lecture 6 Composite Sentence as Polypredicative Construction

II

"potentially" objective John reals, capable of implying both the transitive action of the syntactic person and the syntactic person's intransitive characteristics.

Lecture 3 Simple Sentence: Functional Perspective

The division of the sentence into notional parts can be called the "nominative division" (its existing names are "grammatical division" and the "syntactic division"). The discrimination of the nominative division of the sentence is traditional; this type of division can be conveniently shown by a model of immediate constituents based on the traditional syntactic analysis.

Alongside of the nominative division of the sentence the idea of the so-called actual division of the sentence has been put forward in theoretical linguistics. The purpose of the actual division of the sentence, called also the functional sentence perspective, is to reveal the comparative significance of the sentence parts from the point of view of their actual informative role in an utterance, i.e. from the point of view of the immediate semantic contribution they make to the total information conveyed by the sentence in the context of connected speech.

The main components of the actual division of the sentence are the theme and the rheme. The theme expresses the starting point of communication, i.e. it denotes an object or a phenomenon about which something has already been reported. The rheme expresses the basic informative part of the communication, its contextually relevant center. Between the theme and the rheme are positioned intermediary, transitional parts of various degree of informative value. These parts are called transition. Historically the theory of actual division of the sentence is connected with the logical analysis of the proposition. The principle parts of the proposition (logical subject and logical predicate) may or may not coincide with the subject and the predicate of the sentence. So the logical categories of subject and predicate are prototypes of the linguistic categories of theme and rheme. However, if logic analyses its categories of subject and predicate as the meaningful components of certain forms of thinking, linguistics analyses the categories of theme and rheme from the point of view of rendering the informative content of communication.

The theme of the actual division of the sentence usually coincides with the subject of the sentence. The rheme in its turn usually coincides with the predicate of the sentence - either with the whole predicative group or its part, such as the predicative, the object, the adverbial. For example: Again Charlie is being too clever.

In the cited sentence the adverbial introducer «again» can be characterized as a transitional element, the theme coincides with the subject and the rheme coincides with the predicate group. The main part of the rheme - the peak of informative perspective - is rendered in this sentence by the intensified predicate «too clever». This type of actual division of the sentence (where the theme coincides with the subject and the rheme coincides with the predicate) is called direct.

On the other hand, a certain context may be built round the given sentence in the conditions of which the order of actual division will be changed into the reverse, the subject will turn into the exposer of the rheme, while the predicate, accordingly, into the exposer of the theme. For example: Isn 't it surprising that Charlie is being too clever.

The actual division in which the rheme is expressed by the subject is to be referred to as inverted.

One of the most important manifestations of the immediate contextual relevance of the actual division is the regular deletion (ellipsis) of the thematic parts of utterances in dialogue speech. By this syntactic process, the rheme of the utterance or its most informative part is placed in isolation: How did you receive him? -Coldly.

So the actual division of the sentence finds its full expression only in a concrete context of speech, therefore it is sometimes referred to as the contextual division of the sentence. The close connection of the actual division of the sentence with the context gave cause to the recognized founder of the linguistic theory of actual division J. Mathesius to consider this kind of sentence division as a purely semantic factor sharply opposed to the "formally grammatical" or "purely syntactic" division of the sentence.

Among the formal means of expressing the distinction between the theme and the rheme investigators name such structural elements of language as word-order patterns, intonation, constructions with introducers syntactic patterns of contrastive complexes, constructions with articles and other determiners, constructions with intensifying particles.

1. The difference between the actual division of the sentences signaled by
the difference in their word-order patterns can be illustrated by the simplest type of
transformation:

The winner of the competition stood on the platform in the middle of the hall. —* On

the platform in the middle of the hall stood the winner of the competition.

In the cited sentences the rheme is placed towards the end of the sentence, while the

theme is positioned at the beginning of it. This kind of positioning the components of

the actual division in stylistically neutral sentences corresponds to the natural

development of thought from the starting point of communication to its semantic

center.

2. Among constructions with introducers, the '4here-pattern" provides for
the rhematic identification of the subject without emotive connotations:

Tall oak-trees surrounded the lake. —* There were tall oak-trees surrounding the lake.

3. Emphatic discrimination of the rheme expressed by various parts of the
sentence is achieved by constructions with the anticipatory "it":

At that moment Laura joined them. -» It was Laura who joined them at that moment.

4. Syntactic patterns of contrastive complexes based on some sort of
antithesis are used to expose the rheme of the utterance in cases when special
accuracy of distinction is needed:

The costume is meant not for your cousin, but for you.

5. Determiners, among them the articles, are also used as means of forming
certain patterns of actual division, namely, the definite determiners serve as
identifiers of the theme while the indefinite determiners serve as identifiers of the
rheme:

The whole book was devoted to the description of a tiny island on the Pacific. —* Л whole book is needed to describe that tiny island on the Pacific.

6. Intensifying particles (even, only, so) always identify the rheme and
commonly impart emotional coloring to the whole utterance:

Mr. Stores had a part in the general debate. — * Even Mr. Stores had a part in the general debate.

7. As for intonation as a means of realizing the actual division, its sphere is
totally confined to oral speech but may be treated as a universal means of expressing
the actual division in all types of lingual context. This universal rheme-identifying
function of intonation is directly connected with such prosodic feature as logical
stress. In other word the nucleus of the intonation pattern always indicates the
rhemative part of the sentence.

Thus, the actual division enters the predicative aspect of the sentence, because it strictly meets the functional purpose of predication as such, which is to relate the nominative content of the sentence to reality. Being an active means of expressing functional meaning, the actual division is involved in the process of building contexts out of constructional sentence models chosen to reflect different situations and events.

Lecture 4 Simple Sentence: Constituent Structure

The basic predicative meanings of the typical English sentence are expressed by the finite verb which is immediately connected with the subject of the sentence. This predicative connection is commonly referred to as the "predicative line". Depending on their predicative complexity sentences may be monopredicative and polypredicative. Using this distinction, we must say that the simple sentence is a sentence in which only one predicative line is expressed: Opinions differ. This may happen any time.

According to this definition, sentences with several predicates referring to one and the same subject cannot be considered as simple: / took the child in my arms and held him.

It is quite evident that the cited sentence, although it includes one subject, expresses two different predicative lines, since its two predicates are separately connected with the subject. The content of the sentence reflects two closely connected events that happened in immediate succession: "my taking the child" and "my holding him".

Sentences having one verb-predicate and more than one subject to it (if the subjects form actually separate predicative connections) cannot be considered as simple either: The door was open, and also the front window.

Thus, the syntactic feature of strict monopredication should serve as the basic diagnostic criterion for identifying the simple sentence in distinction to sentences of composite structures of various systemic standings.

The simple sentence is organized as a system of function-expressing positions which reflect a situational event. The nominative parts of the simple sentence are subject, predicate, object, adverbial, attribute, parenthetical enclosure, addressing enclosure; a special, semi-notional position is occupied by an interjectional enclosure. The parts are arranged in a hierarchy wherein all of them perform some modifying role. Thus, the subject is a person-modifier of the predicate. The predicate is a process-modifier of the subject. The object is a substance-modifier of a processual part. The adverbial is a quality-modifier of a processual part or the whole of the sentence. The attribute is a quality-modifier of a substantive part. The parenthetical enclosure is a detached modifier of any sentence-part or the whole sentence. The addressing enclosure is a substantive modifier of the destination of the sentence. The interjection is a speaker-bound emotional modifier of the whole sentence.

On the traditional scheme of the sentence The small lady listened to me attentively sentence-parts connected by immediate subordination are placed one under the other, while sentence-parts related to one another coordinately are placed in a horizontal order. Direct connections between the sentence-parts are represented by horizontal and vertical lines. Observing the given scheme carefully, we must note its one serious flaw. As a matter of fact, while distinctly exposing the subordination ranks of the parts of the sentence, it fails to present their linear order in speech.

This drawback is overcome in another scheme of analysis called the "model of immediate constituents" or the "IC-model".

The model of immediate constituents is based on the group-parsing of the sentence and consists in dividing the whole of the sentence into two groups: that of the subject and that of the predicate, which, in their turn, are divided into their sub-group constituents according to the successive subordinate order of the latter. The IC-model explicitly exposes the binary hierarchical principle of subordinative connections, showing the whole structure of the sentence as made up by binary immediate constituents.

Thus, structured by the IC-model, the cited sentence on the upper level of analysis is looked upon as a united whole; on the next lower level it is divided into two maximal constituents - the subject noun-phrase (NPh - subj) and the predicate verb-phrase (VPh-pred); on the next lower level the subject noun-phrase is divided into the determiner (det) and the rest of the noun phrase, while the predicate verb-phrase is divided into the adverbial (D) and the rest of the verb-phrase to which it semantically refers; the next level-stages of analysis include the division of the first noun-phrase into the adjective-attribute constituent (A) and the noun constituent (N), and correspondingly, the division of the verb-phrase into its verb constituent or finite verb (Vf) and obj<*rt noun-phrase constituent (NPH), the latter being finally divided into the preposition constituent (prp) and noun constituent (N).

The described model of immediate constituents has two basic versions. The first is known as the "analytical 1С- diagram", the second, as the -'IC-derivation tree". The analytical IC-diagram commonly shows the grouping of sentence constituents by means of vertical and horizontal lines.

The IC-derivation tree shows the groupings of sentence constituents by means of branches which make the division of the sentence into constituents.

When analyzing sentences in terms of syntagmatic connections of their parts, two types of subordinate relations are exposed: on the one hand, obligatory relations, on the other - optional relations, which may or may not be actually represented in the syntactic unit. These relations are often interpreted in terms of syntactic valency and are of special importance for the characteristic of the verb as the central predicative organizer of the sentence. The obligatory relations form the essential generalized model of the sentence, its semantico-syntactic backbone. For instance, in the cited sentence this pattern will be expressed by the string: The lady listened to me, the attribute small and the adverbial attentively being optional parts of the sentence.

In terms of valences and obligatory positions first of all the category of "elementary sentence" is to be recognized; this is a sentence all positions of which are obligatory. In other words, this is a sentence which besides the principal parts, includes only complementive modifiers; as for supplementive modifiers, they find no place in this type of predicative construction. Referring to the traditional classification of the simple sentence, the unexpanded simple sentence may be defined as a monopredicative sentence formed only by obligatory notional parts. The expanded simple sentence may be, accordingly, defined as a monopredicative sentence which includes both obligatory parts and some optional parts, i.e. some supplementive modifiers which do not constitute a predicative enlargement of the sentence.

To sum it up we should stress the idea that any simple sentence however expanded its structure might be is formed upon a single elementary sentence-base exposing its structural key-model. For example:

The tall trees by the island shore were shaking violently in the gusty wind. <— The trees were shaking.

The notions "elementary sentence" and "sentence model" do not exclude each other: while a model is always an abstraction, an elementary sentence should be taken both as an abstract category (in the capacity of the "sentence model") and as an actual utterance of real speech.

Lecture 5 Communicative Types of the English Sentence

The sentence is a communicative unit therefore the primary classification of sentences must be based on the communicative principle. This principle is formulated in traditional grammar as the "purpose of communication".

In accord with the purpose of communication three cardinal sentence-types have long been recognized in linguistic tradition:

- the declarative sentence (statement);

- the imperative sentence (inducement);

- the interrogative sentence (question).

These communicative sentence-types stand in strict opposition to one another, and their inner properties of form and meaning are immediately correlated with the corresponding features of the listener's responses. Thus, the declarative sentence expresses a statement, either affirmative or negative and stands in systemic syntagmatic correlation with the listener's responding signals of attention, of appraisal (including agreement or disagreement). For example: My sister was taken to hospital yesterday. - Poor little thing!

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. As such, the imperative sentence is situationally connected with the corresponding "action response". For example: Then marry me. - Really, Alan, I never met anyone with so few ideas.

Since the communicative purpose of the imperative sentence is to make the listener act as requested, silence on the part of the latter is also linguistically relevant. This gap in speech, which is situationally filled in by the listener's action, is represented in literary narration by special comments and descriptions. For example: "Knock on the wood!" -He leaned forward and knocked three times.

The interrogative sentence expresses a question, i.e. a request for information wanted by the speaker from the listener. This type of sentences is naturally connected with an answer, forming together with it a question-answer dialogue unity. For example: What do you suggest I should do then? - If I were you I should play a waiting game.

Naturally in the process of actual communication these dependencies may be broken. For example, a question may be followed by silence on the part of the listener or his verbal rejection to answer. For example: Did he know about her?

a) But she didn 't even notice him.

b) You 'd better ask your mum.

An attempt to revise the traditional communicative classification of sentences was made by the American scholar Ch. Fries, who studied the spontaneous spoken speech and classed all the utterances into groups in accordance with the responses they are followed. As a result of the study the following communicative classification was developed:

1. Utterances that are regularly followed by oral responses only. These are greetings, calls, questions.

2. Utterances that are regularly followed by action responses. These are requests or commands.

3. Utterances that are regularly followed by conventional signals of attention to continuous discourse. These are statements.

Alongside of the described "communicative" utterances, i.e. utterances directed to a definite listener, a minor type of utterances was recognized which is directed to the whole situation and expresses surprise, sudden pain, anger, laughter, sorrow: Oh! Goodness! Gosh! Such interjectional units were classed by Ch. Fries as "non-communicative" utterances.

Observing the given classification it is not difficult to see some points of similarity between the classification under analysis and the traditional classification. Thus, the second and the third groups of Ch. Fries's "communicative" utterances are just identical to imperative and declarative types both by the employed names and definition. As for the first group, it is essentially heterogeneous and includes three subgroups. One of these is constituted by questions (classical interrogative sentences), the other two, namely, greetings and calls are syntactically not cardinal but rather minor intermediary types making up the periphery of declarative sentences (greetings - statements of conventional goodwill at meeting and parting) and imperative sentences (calls - request for attention).

To sum it up we should state that the cited classification might be regarded as an actual application of the notions of communicative sentence-types to the study of oral speech.

Alongside of the three cardinal communicative types of sentences, another type of sentences is recognized in the theory of syntax, namely, the so-called exclamatory sentence. In modem linguistics it has been demonstrated that exclamatory sentences do not possess any complete set of qualities that could place them on one and the same level with the three cardinal communicative types of sentences. The exclamatory sentence correlates with the communicative types of sentences in such a way that sentences of any communicative type may be exclamatory or non-exclamatory. The following pair demonstrates exclamatory/non-exclamatory declarative type: Why, if it isn 't my lady! <— It is my lady.

The next pair demonstrates exclamatory/non-exclamatory interrogative type: Then why in God's name didyou come? *— Why did you come. And the last pair demonstrates exclamatory/non-exclamatory imperative type: Don't you dare to compare me to common people! <— Don't compare me to common people.

As is seen from the given examples, all the three pairs of communicative types of sentences make up distinct semantico-syntactic oppositions effected by regular grammatical means of language, such as intonation, word-order and special constructions. It follows from this that the functional-communicative classification specially distinguishing emotive factor should discriminate on the lower level of analysis between the six sentence-types forming three cardinal communicative groups.

The communicative properties of sentences can further be exposed in the light of the theory of actual division of the sentence. Each communicative sentence-type is distinguished by its specific actual division, which is revealed first of all in the nature of the rheme as the meaningful nucleus of the utterance.

The declarative sentence comprises both the theme and the rheme since it contains both the starting point of communication (the theme) and new information (the rheme) making up the center of some statement. This can be distinctly demonstrated by a question-test revealing the rhematic part of an utterance: The next instant she had recognized him. -* What had she done the next instant? This pronominal what-question clearly exposes the part (had) recognized him as the declarative rheme.

The imperative sentence due to its communicative nature represents itself the semantic center or the rheme of the utterance. Its thematic subject is usually zeroed though it can be represented in the form of direct address: / say, Bob, try to reconstruct the scene again. Different structural elements forming the type-grading of inducement (a command, a prohibition, a request) can be considered as transitions: Oh, please stop it!

The interrogative sentence vice versa expressing only an inquiry about new information presents itself the thematic component; its rheme is informationally open (gaping). The function of the interrogative sentence from the point of view of the functional sentence perspective consists only in marking the rhematic position in the response sentence and programming its content in accord with the nature of the inquiry.

The vast set of constructional sentence models possessed by language is formed not only by cardinal, monofunctional communicative types; besides, it includes also intermediary predicative constructions distinguished by mixed communicative features. Observations conducted on the said problem show that intermediary communicative models may be identified between all the three cardinal communicative correlations, namely, statement-question, statement-inducement, and inducement-question. They have grown and sustained in language as a result of the transference of certain characteristic features from one communicative type to another.

1. The declarative-interrogative communicative type may be illustrated by
the following sentence which is declarative by its formal features and interrogative by
its semantic content: I wonder why they come to me about it.

The interrogative-declarative communicative type is represented by all sorts of rhetorical questions, which have a structural framework of the interrogative sentence but express statement: Can man be free if woman is a slave? What more can a gentleman desire in this world?

2. The next pair of correlated, communicative sentence types is declarative
and imperative sentences. The declarati.ve-interrogative communicative type may be
illustrated by the expression of inducement within the framework of a declarative
sentence, which is regularly achieved by means of constructions with modal verbs:
You ought to get rid of it, you know. You must come to me for anything you want.

Vice versa induch e constructions can be used to express a declarative meaning forming the so-called imperative-declarative communicative type. The cited type of

sentences is distinguished by especially high expressiveness and intensity: Talk of the devil and he will appear. Roll my log and I will roll yours.

3. Imperative and interrogative sentences make up the third pair of opposed cardinal communicative sentence types. In this case imperative sentence induce the listener not to act, but to speak: Tell me about your upbringing.

The reverse intermediary construction, i.e. inducement effected in the form of the question, is employed in order to convey such additional shades of meaning as request, invitation, and suggestion: Why don't you get Aunt Ann to come? Could you tell me how to get to the station?

Thus, besides the three cardinal communicative types of sentences we should distinguish intermediary communicative types which belong to living productive syntactic means of language and should find the due reflection both in theoretical linguistic description and in practical language teaching.

Lecture 6 Composite Sentence as Polypredicative Construction

The composite sentence as different from the simple sentence is formed by two or more predicative lines. Being a polypredicative construction it expresses a complicated act of thought. 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 line in a composite sentence makes up a clause in it, so that a clause as a part of a composite sentence corresponds to a separate sentence as a part of a contextual sequence. For example:

When 1 sat down to dinner J looked for an opportunity to slip in the information that I had by accident run across the Driffields; but news traveled fast in Blackstable (S. Maugham).

The cited composite sentence includes four clauses which are related to one another on different semantic grounds: / sat down to dinner. I looked for an opportunity to slip in the information. I had by accident run across the Driffields. News traveledfast in Blackstable.

On the other hand, the composite sentence in its quality of a structural unit of language is indispensable for language by its own purely semantic merits, namely, tension of presentation, arrangement of difference situations, and intellectual elegance of expression.

The composite sentence is characteristic of literary written speech rather than colloquial oral speech. This fact is explained by the three reasons. First, the composite sentence structure answers the special needs of written mode of lingual expression. It is this type of speech that deals with lengthy reasonings, descriptions, narrations presenting a number of details, situational foreground and background, sequences of events interrupted by cross-references and parenthetical comments. Only a composite

sentence can adequately fulfil these semantic requirements.

Second, the said requirements go together with ле fact that in writing it is actually possible to produce long composiie sentences of complicated, but logically flawless structure. This is possible because the written sentence is open to various alterations, allows corrections, admits rearranging and reformulating one's ideas; in short it can be prepared. Third, the composite sentence enables the reader to go back to its starting line in order to gain the final understanding of each item and logical connection expressed by its wording or implied by its construction. So the volume of the written sentence is regulated not by memory limitations as such, but by the considerations of logical balance and stylistic arrangement.

Composite sentences display two principal types of construction: hypotaxis (subordination) and parataxis (coordination). By coordination the clauses are arranged as units of syntactically equal rank, i.e. equipotently; by subordination the clauses are arranged as units of unequal rank, one being categorically dominated by the other. In terms of the positional structure of the sentence it means that by subordination one of the clauses (subordinate) is placed in a notional position of the other (principal). For example:

/ could not help blushing with embarrassment when I looked at him. —» / could not help blushing with embarrassment at that moment.

By means of the cited substitutional test he can prove that the subordinate clause when I looked at him is placed in the notional position of the adverbial modifier of time within the structure of the principal clause.

The means of combining clauses into a polypredicative sentence are divided into syndetic, i.e. conjunctional, and asyndetic, i.e. non-conjunctional. Bearing in mind the cited observation the Russian scholar N.S. Pospelov put forward the classification of composite sentences where the type of the connection between clauses should be treated as first consideration. That is on the higher level of classification all the composite sentences should be divided into syndetic and asyndetic, while on the lower level the syndetic composite sentences should be divided into compound and complex ones in accord with the types of connective words used.

The analyzed approach was criticized by B.A. Ilish on the ground that within the sited theory strictly grammatical criteria of classification is mixed up with general semantic considerations. Indeed, if we compare the following asyndetic composite sentence with its compound syndetic counterpart on the basis of paradigmatic analysis, we shall immediately expose unquestionable equality in their semantico-syntactic status:

My uncle was going to refuse, we didn 't understand why. —* My uncle was going to refuse but we didn't understand why.

On the other hand, bearing in mind the in-positional nature of a subordinate clause, it would be irrational to deny a subordinate status of the asyndetic attributive, objective or predicative clauses: They 've given me a position I could never have got without them.

Thus, we should admit that both coordinate and subordinate composite sentences may be syndetic or asyndetic.

Besides the classical types of subordination and coordination of clauses, we find another case of the construction of composite sentence, namely, the so-called "loose-

composite" which occupies an intermediary posidon between clausal connection and sentential connection. In this loosely connected composite the sequential clause information is presented as an afterthought, an idea that has come to the mind of the speaker after the completion of the foregoing utterance. This kind of syntactic connection comes under the heading of cumulation. Its formal sign is often the tone of sentential competion followed by a short pause; in writing it is marked by a semi-final punctuation mark, such as a semicolon, a dash. For example:

It was just the time that my aunt and uncle would be coming home from their daily walk down the town and 1 did not like to run the risk of being seen with people whom they would not approve of; so I asked them to go on first, as they would go more quickly than I (S. Maugham).

According to the position within a composite sentence the whole domain of cumulation should be divided into two parts: first, the continuative cumulation, placing the cumulated clause in post-position to the expanded predicative construction; second, the parenthetical cumulation, placing the cumulated clause in inter-position as well as pre-position or post-position since the parenthetical clause gives only a back-ground to the essential information and may be easily shifted within the composite sentence.

Alongside to the composite sentence formed by minimum two predicative lines which are explicitly presented, there exist constructions in which one explicit predicative line is combined with another one, the latter being not completely expressed. To such constructions belong, for instance, sentences with homogeneous predicates, subjects, as well as sentences with verbid complexes. For example: Philip ignored the question and remained silent. I have never before heard her sing.

She followed him in, bending her head under the low door.

The cited utterances do not represent a classical explicitly constructed composite sentence-model. At the same time, they cannot be analyzed as simple sentences because they contain more than one predicative line, though presented in fusion. This can be demonstrated by explanatory expanding transformation: —* Philip ignored the question, he remained silent. —* I have never before heard how she sings. — * As she followed him in, she bent her head under the low door.

The performed test clearly shows that the sentences in question are derived from two base sentences so that the systemic status of the cited constructions is in fact intermediary between the simple sentence and the composite sentence. Therefore these predicative constructions should be analyzed under the heading of semi-composite sentences.

Thus, composite sentences as polypredicative constructions exist in two varieties as regards the degree of their predicative completeness: first, composite sentences of complete composition; second, composite sentences of concise composition.

Lecture 7 Complex Sentence: Structure and Classification of Clauses

The complex sentence is a polypredicative construction built up on the principle of subordination. It is derived from two or more base sentences one of which performs the role of a matrix in relation to the others, the insert sentences when joined into one complex sentence; the matrix sentence becomes the principal clause of it and the insert sentences, its subordinate clauses.

The complex sentence of minimal composition includes two clauses - a principal and a subordinate one, which form a semantico-syntactic unity. The subordinate clause is joined to the principal clause either by a subordinating connector or asyndetically. The functional character of the subordinative connector is that it presents a transformer of an independent sentence into a subordinate clause: She left the room. -* (He went on with his story) after she left the room.

In this connection asyndetic connection may be interpreted as the "zero" connector, since it performs the same functional role: She left the room. —* (How do you know) she left the room.

The minimal, two-clause complex sentence is the main volume type of complex sentences. It is the most important type, first, in terms of frequency, second, in terms of its paradigmatic status, because a complex sentence of any volume is analyzable into a combination of two-clause complex sentence units.

The principal clause always dominates the subordinate clause positionally but not always semantically. Various types of subordinate clauses specifically affect the principle clause from the point of view of the degree of its completeness. Of absolutely deficient character is the principle clause of the complex sentence that includes both subject and predicative subordinate clauses: the principle clause in this type of sentences is reduced to a sheer finite link-verb: How he managed to pull through is what battles me.

Despite the semantic predominance such clauses as subject and predicative remain subordinated to the matrix by way of being its embedded elements. Since the proper segment of the principle clause is predicatively deficient, the whole of the clause should be looked upon as merged with the corresponding subordinate clause. Thus, among the principle clauses there should be distinguished merger principal clauses and non-merger principal clauses. The merger principal clause is characteristic of the complex sentence with clausal deployment of their main parts. The non-merger principal clause is characteristic of the complex sentence with clausal deployment of their secondary parts.

The order of clauses plays an important role in distributing primary and secondary information between them since the functional perspective of the complex sentence is similar to that of the simple sentence, and, accordingly, rhematic part of the sentence tends to be placed somewhere towards the end of it. For example: The boy was friendly with me because I allowed him to keep the fishing line.

In this sentence the principal clause placed in the front position evidently expresses the starting point of the information delivered, or the theme of the sentence, while the subordinate clause renders the main sentential idea, namely, the speaker's

explanation of the boy's attitude. Should the order of the utterance be reversed, the

informative roles of the clauses will be re-shaped accordingly:

As I allowed the boy to keep the fishing line, he was friendly with me.

Of course, the clause-order, the same as word-order in general, is not the only means of indicating the informative value of clauses in complex sentences; intonation plays here also a crucial role, and it goes together with various lexical and constructional rheme-forming elements.

"Tie main problem in connection with the complex sentence is the classification of subordinate clauses. Namely, there are two different bases of classification, which are considered as competitive in this domain: the first is functional, the second is categorial.

In accord with the functional principle, subordinate clauses are to be classed on the analogy of the positional parts of the simple sentence. Despite the fact that there are clauses that do not find ready correspondences among the non-clausal parts of the sentence, this classification does reflect the essential properties of the studied syntactic units and has been proved useful throughout many years of application to language teaching. Within the cited classification we should distinguish between clauses of primary nominal positions and secondary nominal positions.

Clauses of primary nominal positions - subject, predicative, object - are interchangeable with one another:

What you saw at the exhibition is just what I want to know. —* What I want to know is just what you saw at the exhibition. —> I just want to know what you saw at the exhibition.

Subordinate clauses of secondary nominal positions include attributive clauses of various syntactic functions. They fall into two major classes: «descriptive» attributive clauses and «restrictive» attributive clauses. The descriptive attributive clause exposes some characteristic of the antecedent or substantive referent, while the restrictive attributive clause performs a purely identifying role. For example: At last we found a place where we could make afire (anyplace, such a place). The place where we could make afire was nut a lucky one (that particular place).

The descriptive clauses, in their turn, distinguish two major subtypes: first ordinary descriptive clauses; second, continuative descriptive clauses.

The ordinary descriptive attributive clause expresses various situational qualifications of nounal antecedents. The qualifications may present a constant situational feature or temporal situational feature of different contextual relations: It gave me a strange sensation to see a lit up window in a big house that was not lived in. He wore a blue shirt the collar of which was open at the throat.

The continuative attributive clause presents a situation on an equal domination basis with its principal clause, and so is attributive only in form, but not in meaning. It expresses a new predicative event which somehow continues the chain of situations reflected by the sentence as a whole: I phone to Mr. Smith, who recognized me at once and invited me to his office.

To attributive clauses belongs also a vast set of appositive clauses, which define antecedents of abstract semantics. In accord with the type of the governing antecedent all the appositive clauses fall into three groups:

- appositive clauses of nounal relation (the characteristic antecedents of
nominal apposition are abstract nouns like fact, idea, question, plan, suggestion, news,
information):

The news that Dr. Blare had refused to join the Antarctic expedition was sensational.

- appositive clauses of pronominal relation (antecedents of pronominal
apposition are indefinite or demonstrative pronouns):

/ couldn 't agree with all that she was saying in her irritation.

- appositive clauses of anticipatory relation, which are used in constructions
with the anticipatory pronoun it:

I would consider it (this) a personal offence if they didn 't accept the invitation, h would be a personal offence if they didn't accept the invitation.

Clauses of adverbial positions constitute a vast domain of syntax which falls into many subdivisions each distinguishing its own field of specifications and complications.

1. The first group includes clauses of time and clauses of place. Their common
semantic basis is to be defined as "localization" - respectively, temporal and spatial.
According to the choice of connector clauses of time and place are divided into
general and particularizing. The general local identification is expressed by the non-
marked conjunctions when and where. Taken by themselves, they do not introduce
any further specifications in time or place. As for the particularizing local
identification, it specifies the time and place correlations of the two events localizing
the subordinate one before the principal, parallel with the principal, after the principal,
and possibly expressing further subgradations of these correspondences with
subordinate clauses of time the particularizing localization is expressed by such
conjunctions as while, as, since, before, after, until, as soon as, now that, no sooner
than, etc. For example:

We lived in London when the war ended. While the war was going on we lived in London. After the war ended our family moved to Glasgow.

With clauses of place proper the particularizing localization is expressed mostly by the prepositional conjunctive combinations from where, to where. For example: The swimmers gathered where the beach formed a small circle. The swimmers kept together from where they started.

2. The second group of adverbial clauses includes clauses of manner and
comparison. The common semantic basis of their functions can be defined as
"qualification", since they give a qualification to the action or event rendered by the
principal clause. All the adverbial qualification clauses are to be divided into "factual"
and "speculative", depending on the real or unreal propositional event described by
them. The discrimination between manner and comparison clauses is based on the
actual comparison which may or may not be expressed by the considered clausal
construction. For example:

Mary received the guests as nicely as Aunt Emma had taught her ->... in a very nice way that Aunt Emma had taught her (clause of manner).

Mary received the guests as nicely as Aunt Emma would have done —*... in as nice a way as Aunt Emma would have done (clause of comparison).

3. The third and most numerous group of adverbial clauses includes different
clauses of circumstantial semantics, namely, clauses of attendant event, condition,
cause, reason, result (consequence), concession, purpose. Thus, the common semantic
basis of all these clauses can be defined as "circumstance". For example:

While the reception was going on, Mr. Smiles was engaged in a lively conversation

(the subordinate clause of attendant event).

Indeed there is but this different between us-he wears fine clothes while I go in rags

(the subordinate clause ofcontrastive attendant event).

Though she disapproved of their endless discussion, she had to put up with them (the

subordinate clause of real concession).

If she disapproved of their discussions, why would she put up with them? (the

subordinate clause of speculative condition).

The argument was so unexpected that for a moment Jack lost his ability to speak (the

subordinate clause of real consequence).

4. The fourth group of adverbial clauses is formed by parenthetical or insertive
constructions, which are joined to the principal clause on a looser basis than the other
adverbial clauses. For example:

Jack has called here twice this morning, if I am not mistaken. —>...(*)

The elimination of the parenthesis changes the meaning of the whole sentence from problematic to assertive: the original sense of the utterance is lost, and this shows that the parenthetical clause, though inserted in the construction by a looser connection, still performs an integral part of it. As for the subordinative quality of the connector, it can introduce either coordinate clause or subordinate clause. For example:

Tim said, and I quite agree with him, that it would be in vain to appeal to the common sense (coordinate parenthetical clause).

Tim said, though I don't quite agree with him, that it would be in vain to appeal to the common sense (subordinate parenthetical clause).

In accord with the categorial principle, subordinate clauses are to be classed by their inherent nominative properties irrespective of their immediate positional relations in the sentence. From the point of view of their general nominative features all the subordinate clauses can be divided into three categorial-semantic groups.

The first group includes clauses that name an event as a certain fact. These clauses may be defined as "substantive-nominal". Their substantive nature is easily checked by a substitution test:

That his letters remained unanswered annoyed him very much. —* That fact annoyed him very much.

The second group includes clauses that give a characteristic to some substantive entity. Such clauses may be called "qualification-nominal". The qualification nature of the clauses In question is proved through the corresponding replacement patterns: The man, who came in the morning, left a message. —* That man left a message.

Finally, the third group includes clauses that provide some dynamic relation characteristic of another event, or a process, or a quality of various descriptions. Such clauses may be defined «adverbial». Adverbial clauses are tested by the following transformation: Describe the picture as you see it. —* Describe the picture in the manner you see it.

When comparing the two classifications in the light of the systemic principles, we can't but admit that they are mutually complementary since the categorial features of clauses go together with their functional sentence-part features.

Subordinate clauses are introduced by functional connective words which effect their derivation from base sentences. Categorically these sentence subordinators fall into the two basic types: those that occupy a notional position in the derived clause, and those that do not occupy such a position. The non-positional subordinators are referred to as pure conjunctions. Here belong such words as since, before, until, if, in case, because, so that, in order that, though, however, than, as if, etc. The positional subordinators are in fact conjunctive substitutes. The main positional subordinators are the pronominal words who, whose, which, that, where, when, why, as. Some of them (where, when, that, as) are used both as conjunctive substitutes and conjunctions. For example:

77га/ was the day when she was wearing her pink dress. Sally put on her pink dress when she decided to join the party.

The relative pronominal when in the first of the cited sentences syntagmatically replaces the antecedent the day, while the conjunction when in the second sentence has no relative pronominal status.

Clauses in a complex sentence may be connected with one another more closely or less closely, similar to the parts of a simple sentence. For instance, a predicative clause, or a direct object clause are connected with the principal clause so closely that the latter cannot exist without them as a complete syntactic unit. So these clauses are quite obligatory: The matter is we haven't received all the necessary instructions yet.

As different from this, an ordinary adverbial clause is connected with the principal clause on a looser basis, it can be deleted without destroying the principal clause as an autonomous unit of information: The girl gazed at him (as though she was struck by something).

The division of subordinate clauses into obligatory and optional was employed by the Russian linguist N.S. Pospelov for the introduction of a new classification of complex sentences. In accord with his views, all the complex sentences of minimal structure should be classed as one-member, which are distinguished by an obligatory subordinate clause, and two-member complex sentences, which are distinguished by an optional subordinate connection. Semantically, one-member complex sentences are understood as reflecting one complex logical proposition, and two-member complex sentences as reflecting two logical propositions connected with each other on the subordinative principle.

Speaking not only of the complex sentences of minimal composition, but in terms of complex sentences in general, it would be appropriate to introduce the notions of monolythic and segregative sentence structures. Obligatory subordinate

connections underlie monolythic complexes, while optional subordinatfve connections underlie segregative complexes.

Monolythic complex sentences fall into four basic types:

1. Merger complex sentences or sentences with subject and predicative
subordinate clauses, where the subordinate clause is fused with its principal clause:

It was at this point that Bill had come into the room.

2. Valency monolyth complex sentences are characterized by the obligatory
right-hand valency of the verb in the principal clause. Here belong complexes with
object and valency-determined adverbial clauses:

/ don't know when he '11 come.

Put the book where you 've taken it from.

3. Correlation monolyth complex sentences are based on subordinative
correlations. Here belong also restrictive attributive clauses:

The more I think of it, the more I'm convinced of his innocence. His nose was as short as his upper lip was long.

4. Linear arrangement monolythic complex sentences are determined by the
linear order of clausal positions:

If he comes, tell him to wait.

Positional re-arrangement deprives them of this quality, changing the clausal connection from obligatory into optional: Tell him to wait (if he comes).

The rest of the complex sentences are characterized by segregative structure, the maximum degree of syntactic option being characteristic of subordinate parenthetical clauses.

Complex sentences which have two or more subordinate clauses discriminate two basic types of subordination arrangement: parallel and consecutive. Subordinate clauses immediately referring to one and the same principal clause are said to be subordinated "in parallel". Parallel subordination may be both homogeneous (if depend on the same element and perform the same function) and heterogeneous: When he agrees to hear me, and when we have spoken the matter over, I'll tell you the result (homogeneous).

The speakers who represented different social strata were unanimous in their call for peace which is so desired by the common people (heterogeneous).

As different from parallel subordination, consecutive subordination presents a hierarchy of clausal levels. In this hierarchy one subordinate clause is commonly subordinated to another, making up an uninterrupted gradation. This kind of clausal arrangement may be called direct consecutive subordination: I've no idea why she said she couldn 't call on us at the time I had suggested.

Another type of consecutive subordination is built up on a merger basis, without immediate domination of one subordinate clause over another and may be called oblique consecutive subordination: What he saw made him wince as though he had been struck.

The number of consecutive levels of subordination gives the evaluation of the "depth" of subordination perspective - one of the essential syntactic characteristics of the complex sentence: