Notion of the sentence.
- 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. But besides sentences which contain propositions there are interrogative and negative sentences. Speech is emotional. There is no one to one relationship. Then a sentence can be grammatically correct, but from the point of view of logic it won’t be correct, true to life (Water is a gas). Laws of thinking are universal but there are many languages. Grammar and Logic don’t coincide.
- A sentence is a subject-predicate structure. What are the subject and the predicate? Grammatical subject can only be defined in terms of the sentence. Moreover the grammatical subject often does not indicate what we are ‘talking about’ (The birds have eaten all the fruit. It is getting cold). Besides, this definition leaves out verbless sentences. There are one-member sentences. They are non-sentences? Conclusion – a sentence is a structural scheme.
- Phonological: A sentence is a flow of speech between 2 pauses. But speech is made up of incomplete, interrupted, unfinished, or even quite chaotic sentences. Speech is made up of utterances but utterances seldom correspond to sentences.
Thus, it is more preferable to describe a sentence than to define it. The main peculiar features of the sentence are: integrity, syntactic independence, grammatical completeness, semantic completeness, communicative completeness, communicative functioning, predicativity, modality, intonational completeness
Predicativity is a syntactical category. It is actualized reference to reality. Logical understanding: combination of 2 parts of proposition. Formally syntactic understanding: relations of the structural components of the sentence (subject and predicate). Semantic approach: correlation of the contents of the utterance with the situation. The latter is most popular.
Modality is a semantic category. It is broader a notion than predicativity, it is revealed both in grammatical elements of language and its lexical, purely nominative elements. Prof.Pocheptsov: predicativity is mood plus tense (predicativity is broader than modality)
Classification of sentences
- According to structural features: simple and composite; two-member and one- member sentences. Elliptical and one-member sentences:
e.g. Marvelous! Horrible! How very interesting!
e.g. No birds singing at the dawn (Strong resemblance to 2 member sentences).
e.g. I saw him there. Yesterday (parselation).
- According to the purpose of the utterance: declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory, ? optative. Prof.Ilyish: before dividing sentences into 3 classes we should divide them into emotional and non-emotional and within emotional we can establish 4 classes.
The strictly declarative sentence immediately expresses a certain proposition, that is why the actual division of the declarative sentence presents itself in the most developed and complete form. The rheme of the declarative sentence makes up the center of some statement as such.
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. Namely, the proposition underlying the imperative sentence is reversely contrasted against the content of the expressed inducement. It is so because an urge to do something (i.e. affirmative inducement) is based on a supposition that something is not done. An urge not to do something (i.e. negative inducement) is founded on the supposition that something is done or may be done. E.g Don’t talk about them (They talk about them). Thus, the rheme of the imperative sentence expresses the informative nucleus not of an explicit proposition, but of an inducement – a wanted or unwanted action.
The actual division of the strictly interrogative sentences is uniquely different from declarative and imperative sentences. It 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 the rheme 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: e.g. How are you? – Fine, thanks.
