One-member sentences and elliptical sentences.
The sentence containing both the subject and the predicate is called a two-member sentence. In the majority of cases the English sentence is a two-member sentence. A one-member sentence contains only one principle member, which is neither the subject nor the predicate of it. It is complete – no other element of it is implied or felt as missing or necessary. This type of sentence is rarely used except in written literary English texts. E.g. Silence. Not a word.
One-member sentences: a) nominal b) verbal.
Nominal – the principal part is expressed by a noun or a noun-phrase, they state the existence of the things. They are typical of descriptions and may be unextended (Silence. Midnight) & extended (English spring flowers!).
Verbal – the principal part expressed by a non-finite form of the verb, infinitive or gerund. Mostly used to describe different emotional perceptions of reality. (To think of that! Living at the mercy of a woman!).
It is a disputed point whether the main part of such a sentence should, or should not, be termed subject in some cases, and predicate, in others. Academician A. Shakhmatov held that the chief part of a one-member sentence was either the subject, or the predicate. Academician V. Vinogradov, on the other hand, started on the assumption that grammatical subject and grammatical predicate were correlative notions and that the terms were meaningless outside their relation to each other. Accordingly, he suggested that for one-member sentences, the term "main part" should be used, without giving it any more specific name.
One-member sentences should be kept apart from elliptical (incomplete) sentences – two-member sentences with either the subject or the predicate (or both) omitted, not expressed but implied in the text and they may be added to the sentence if necessary. Whatever is understood from the preceding context is omitted, and only the words containing the rheme are actually pronounced.
These words can be omitted because they have only grammatical, structural relevance, they do not carry any new important information and they can be easily restored to complete the meaning of the sentence: “Where are you going?” ― “To the library”. “Who lives in that house ?” ― “John and Mary”.
Some kinds of ellipsis are likely to be found only in casual speech, dialogues: Looks like rain. You sure?
Other kinds are typical of certain restricted use in writing, for example notices and headlines: Children not admitted. No smoking here.
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Many kinds of ellipsis, however, are common in both speech and writing as a means of reducing repetition or sharpening contrast.
When traditionalists deal with elliptical sentences, their main concern is whether to consider them as complete or incomplete sentences. In this context, they have come to the conclusion that “an elliptical sentence usually does not have grammatical completeness, but its meaning is always perfectly clear. They believe that elliptical sentences can be expanded into complete sentences from what precedes them“.
Supersyntax: supraphrasal unity, text.
Analyzing the structure of the text, linguists identify semantically connected sentence sequences as certain syntactic formations. One of new trends in modern text linguistics is describing such syntactic formations, or text units, identifying patterns according to which they are built, afnd studying relations between them. Irrespective of their specific features, all text units are united by their common function – they represent the text as a whole integrally expressing the textual topic.
It should be noted that there are some scholars who do not recognize the existence of linguistic units beyond the framework of the sentence. This opinion can be explained by the lack of a complete systematic description of linguistic peculiarities of such units.
The problem of text units has been addressed by numerous scholars both in this country and abroad. Speaking about Russian linguists, we should mention the works by I. R. Galperin, O. I. Moskalskaya, and others. A new approach to the nature of the text was proposed by Prof. Blokh, who introduced the notion of dicteme – the elementary topical textual unit.
The supra-phrasal unity is a minimal text unit consisting of two or more sentences united by a common topic. In some cases the SPU can coincide with the text if it’s a short one, for example, a news item in the newspaper, a mini-story, etc. However, most commonly, the SPU is a component of a larger text. The SPU consists of at least two sentences, it is characterized by topical, communicative and structural completeness and the author’s attitude towards what is being communicated. The SPU is a complex semantico-structural unit, the communicative value of which does not equal the sum of meanings of its constituent sentences, it is a new semantico-structural formation. It should be noted that sometimes it is not easy to delimit the boundaries of the SPU. In some cases it can coincide with the paragraph (in scientific papers and business documents), while in others the paragraph can be easily divided into several SPUs, for example, in fiction and poetry.
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As for the correlation of the supra-phrasal unity and the paragraph, a few decades ago the SPU was considered to be a unit equivalent to the paragraph. In today’s text linguistics there are two approaches to this problem. Some scholars still believe that the SPU coincides with the paragraph, or rejecting the term “supra-phrasal unity”, consider the paragraph to be a complex syntactic unity. Other researchers draw a strict demarcation (разграничение) line between the SPU and the paragraph saying that the former is a unit of composition while the latter is a unit of punctuation.
Analyzing sentences in the text, M. Blokh focuses on the structural features as primary ones. In his opinion, sentences in speech are connected both semantically and syntactically. They combine with one another on syntactic lines in the formation of larger parts of text. Text has two distinguishing features: first, it is a semantic (topical) unity, second, it is a syntactic cohesion. According to M. Y. Blokh, there are two types of text. Monologue is a one-direction sequence of sentences. Dialogue is a two-direction sequence, in which sentences are uttered by the speakers in turn.
M. A. K. Halliday focuses on the semantic aspect of the utterance as a dominating one. The word “text” in linguistics refers to any passage, spoken or written, of whatever length, that forms a unified whole. A text is a unit of language in use. It is not a grammatical unit, like a clause or a sentence, and it is not defined by its size. A text is a semantic unit. A text does not consist of sentences, it is realized by sentences.
The text is a sequence of linguistic units joined together by semantic connections and characterized by integrity (целостность), wholeness (цельность), and cohesion (связь).
Text as a linguistic unit has its own semantic and structural categories: The main semantic features/categories:
- information: Any text should carry complete information; it should express a certain communication.
- profundity: the text should have some depth, some food for thinking, some idea, which may either be expressed, or may be understood implicitly
- presupposition: the shared knowledge: there should be some level at which we communicate, otherwise there may be complete misunderstanding,
- completeness: text should be complete in meaning, it shouldn't be abrupt (except for fiction where it's a stylistic device).
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