CHAPTER 3. THE VERB AND ITS GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES 9 страница
As we can see, adverbs cover a wide semantic space and they are characterized by a different degree of proximity to the predicative words: verbs and adjectives. Adverbs of time, space, manner and degree are very close to the adjectives and verbs they modify, they add important qualitative or circumstantial information about action and quality. Some adverbs are so close semantically to the verb that they function as obligatory parts of the sentence and without them the sentence is ungrammatical, e.g. *He behaved (He behaved like a gentleman, wonderfully); *He treated us (He treated us royally). Very often adverbs help to clarify the meaning of the verb (in the case of polysemantic verbs) and its aspective character (in the case of verbs with a double aspective character). E.g. He took her here, there and everywhere(S. Maugham) — the verb take has the meaning of lead, guide, or escort. Don't take it seriously - take has the meaning of react, consider. He blushed immediately {blush expresses a single action). He blushed easily (blush expresses a repeated action which serves as a person's characteristic). Adverbs of time and space give esse'ntial circumstantial characteristic of the action and they provide an important temporal or spatial setting for the event. E.g. Last week in the forest I became a witness of a strange phenomenon. Quite often they serve as the communicative centre, or. the rheme. E.g. I rose early that morning. He does not
live here any longer. Never will I go there again. Attitudinal adverbs are not related to the predicate but to the whole sentence and express the speaker's epistemic or evaluational characteristic of the event presented in the sentence. Relational adverbs fulfil more of an organizing function and arrange clauses/sentences within a whole text thus revealing the logical arrangement of our thoughts in the process of communication. These adverbs play an important role in creating the text cohesion.
As we can see from the range of their functions adverbs participate in the expression of all the three basic metafunctions assigned to language. These metafunctions are: ideational, or semantic, interpersonal and textual, or organizational (for more detail see: [Halliday 1985, Introduction]. In fact these three metafunctions assigned to language are correlated to the three main aspects of language, pointed out by Ch. Morris and Y.S. Stepanov and discussed at the beginning of this book: semantics, pragmatics, and syntactics. Adverbs of time, space, degree, manner, comparison, means, and instrument and viewpoint participate in the expression of semantic function; attitudinal adverbs carry out the interpersonal function, and relational adverbs specialize in the expression of textual function, organizing sentences into a coherent text.
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The borderline between different subclasses of adverbs is very fuzzy . One and the same adverb can fulfil different functions, which becomes clear only in the context. E.g. We examined the room thoroughly (manner,) - We thoroughly disapprove of your choice (degree,). She behaved very strangely (manner) - Strangely, he did not feel upset (evaluation/
There are also the so called semantic blends, i.e. an adverb can realize two meanings at a time. E.g. He struggled furiously (manner and degree).
Arranging the class of adverbs on the prototypical principle we should place adverbs of time, space, manner (comparison, means and instrument) and adverbs of degree into the centre of the class as they denote property of property,' function as parts of the sentence (adverbial modifiers) and manner adverbs have morphological property of adverbs (degrees of comparison). Viewpoint adverbs constitute the close periphery: they do not have their own syntactic function in the sentence (as they belong not to the dictum, but to the modus) and yet they are semantically different from function words. Attitudinal and relational adverbs make up the further periphery of the adverbial class which is very close to two functional parts of speech: modal words and conjunctions respectively.
The syntactic functions and the position of adverbs in the sentence is conditioned by the peculiarities of their semantics and their functional role. In general the positions of adverbs in the sentence are less fixed than those of the other cardinal parts of speech. The most fixed position is assigned to adverbs of degree which are usually placed before the adjective or another adverb they modify (with the Exception of enough which always comes in postposition to
the adjective or another adverb). E.g. She was very upset and almost hysterical (E. Hemingway). Modifying a verb, adverbs of degree may take a position before or after it. E.g. / thoroughly disapprove of it. I disapprove of it thoroughly. Quite often the position of adverbs of time and space is determined by the needs of the actual division. In non-emphatic speech/writing they precede the predicate if they are thematic and follow the predicate when they are rhematic. E.g. Now she was silent again (A. Christie) -1 want a cat now (E. Hemingway). Adverbs of manner usually follow the verb in the sentence. E.g. Meanwhile the officer on-horseback was approaching slowly and proudly (D.H. Lawrence). In emphatic speech they are often fronted and may be detached. E.g. Slowly, economically, he got dressed and forced himself to walk (D.H. Lawrence).
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Evaluative and viewpoint adverbs are usually placed at the beginning of the sentence. They may and may not be separated from the rest of the sentence by a comma. E.g. Strangely, he wasn 't able to do it this time (N. Sparks). The chair fell over me because I walked into it. Logically this was proof that it had felt me knock it (D. Williams). Modal adverbs and relational are most mobile, they can occupy different positions in the sentence and therefore referred to as 'hopping1 adverbs', and, like viewpoint adverbs, they may and may not be separated by commas. E.g. However, the primary function of language is integrative (K. Nelson). It obviously felt I was there (D. Williams).
3. The interaction of adverbs with the other classes of words is manifested in many ways. Historically, as we have already pointed out adverbs were formed from 'fragments of other parts of speech': case forms of nouns and noun phrases, grammatical forms of the verb. At present the class of adverbs interacts functionally with" the other notional and functional parts of speech. Various adverbial meanings are regularly expressed by prepositional and non-prepositional noun phrases: at present, in the past, day and night, from morning till night, in the distance, at home, and also by numerous idiomatic expressions with adverbial meanings: next door, lock, stock and barrel, to look daggers, to speak volumes, full length, full tilt etc.
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Cases of adverbs transposition into the sphere of other parts of speech are not numerous and reveal the linguistic creativity of a writer. Adverbs of time and space are occasionally transposed into the syntactic positions of nouns. E.g. "Where are you, darling?" "Absolutely anywhere - in an alumunium and glass phone booth in a drab little American anywhere, with American nickels, dimes and quarters scattered on the little grey shelf before me" (K. Vonnegui). Adverbs of time now and then may be occasionally used in attributive positions.
E.g. But, standing there in the now crowded car, he had to face the fact that twice in one day he had forgotten something (I. Shaw). The use of the adverb now in the sentence has an effect similar to that of the Dramatic Present, it brings the narration closer to the reader thus achieving mental
synchronization of the action and its perception by the reader. As for the subclasses of modal and relational adverbs, they, as we have already pointed out, are functionally close to modal words and conjunctions.
The description of the class of adverbs would be incomplete without mentioning the problem of the postpositive elements which are often added to verbs either to impart a terminative meaning to them (to eat - to eat up, to drink — to drink up) or to change their lexical meaning (to bring — to bring up, to make — to make up etc.). The question of the grammatical status of these units has been' under debate for many years. Some scholars refer them to adverbs (A.I.Smirnitsky), others - to function words similar to prepositions (N.N. Amosova), still others - to a special class of language units intermediate between words and morphemes (B.A.Ilyish), and still others - as special particles that change the meaning of a verbal lexeme (E.E.Golubeva). Despite the variety of opinions, the majority of scholars are unanimous in stressing their functional status. It seems that there may be two ways of treating this problem. We can either consider the phenomenon in terms of categorial polysemy and state that space adverbs like up, down etc. can be used in the primary syntactic functions as adverbial modifiers and in the secondary function - as functional words. Or we may treat such cases in terms of homonymy. In either case the existence of these units is another confirmation of the fact that polysemy and homonymy are the most characteristic features of the grammatical structure of English and the borderline between them is often hard to draw, especially in the case of words with no morphological markers.
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PART 3. SYNTAX
At the beginning was the word. By the time the second word was added to it, there was trouble. For with it came syntax, the thing that tripped up so
many people.
J. Simon. Paradigms Lost
CHAPTER I. THE SIMPLE SENTENCE AND ITS CATEGORIES
1. The problem of the sentence definition and its level belonging.
2. The main categories of the sentence:
a) predicativity: its role in the sentence; types of predication: primary vs. secondary; explicit vs. implicit predication;
b) modality: its heterogeneous nature; the two types of modality; the culture- and gender-sensitive character of modality;
c) negation and its types: complete vs. partial; grammatical vs. lexical; explicit vs. implicit; direct vs. transferred negation; negation and the communicative type of the sentence; the specific features of negation in English.
1. The word 'syntax' is derived from the Greek 'syntaxis' which literally means 'composition', or 'order'. It is a part of grammar which studies ways of arranging words into phrases and sentences in order to produce speech. We communicate only with the help of sentences and it brings many linguists to a conclusion that syntax is the core, or the heart of grammar and morphology is subordinated to it as it serves the needs of syntax. The main units of the syntactic level of the language are: 1) the word in its syntactic position in the sentence (a part of the sentence); 2) the phrase which is a combination of two or more notional words arranged according to the rules of a particular language; 3) the simple sentence as the minimum unit of communication; 4) the composite sentence which is a combination of two or more clauses based either on coordinate (a compound sentence) or subordinate (a complex sentence) relations; 5) the text as the highest unit of language.
As we can see from the list of syntactic units the simple sentence occupies the central position in syntax.It is the minimal unit of communication. The two lower units serve as the building material for making a simple sentence and the two higher units are composed from simple sentences. Being the central unit of syntax the simple sentence has always been in the focus of linguistic attention. The problem of its definition like that of the word appears to be quite complicated. The German scholar John Ries in his book "Was 1st ein Satz?" written in 1931 collected 139 definitions of the simple sentence. By now this number may have doubled. Here are just a few definitions of the simple sentence: "a sentence is a word or a group of words capable of expressing a complete thought or meaning" (H.Sweet); "a sentence is a communication in words, conveying a sense of completeness and containing at
least one independent verb with its subject (M.Bryant); "each sentence is an independent linguistic form, not included by virtue of any grammatical construction in any larger linguistic form (L.Bloomfield); "S =NP +VP" (O.Thomas) This most laconic definition of the sentence suggested by a representative of transformational grammar tells us how the sentence is built: to derive a sentence (S) we have to combine a noun phrase (NP) with a verb phrase (VP).
The analysis of these definitions shows that they are largely determined by the theoretical standpoint of the linguist and the linguistic school he/she represents. In the so-called traditional syntax with its orientation on meaning the sentence is defined on the basis of its meaning, i.e. its ability to express a complete thought about an event of reality (see the definition given by H.Sweet). The sentence is a many-sided phenomenon and can be studied from several aspects. Its main aspects are: form which deals with the problem how the sentence is built; meaning which tells us what the sentence is about, and function which is correlated with the question what for the sentence was pronounced. The definition and the understanding of the sentence largely depend on the viewpoint of the linguist and the aspect of the sentence which is in the focus of the linguist's attention. Studied from the formal point of view the sentence is defined as a group of words based on predicative relations. From the view point of its meaning the sentence is defined as an expression of a complete thought or a judgement about an event of reality. Considered from the aspect of its function the sentence is defined as a minimum unit of communication and each sentence is uttered with a certain communicative aim: either to produce a statement, or to make a request, or to ask for information. Perhaps the most exhaustive definition would be the one that would embrace all the three aspects. Thus the sentence can be defined as a group of words based on predicative relations which expresses a complete thought about an event of reality and is used with a certain communicative aim.
Another problem arising in the study of the sentence is its level belonging, i.e. whether it is a unit of the language system or that of speech. Unlike words sentences do not exist in the language system as ready-made units. They are created by the speaker in the act of communication. Yet each sentence created by the speaker in the process of communication has at its basis a limited set of syntactic and semantic structures typical of many sentences of the language. These typical structures are a part of the speaker's competence of the language (mental grammar). They exist in the speaker's mind in the form of patterns into which words can be arranged. These patterns are partially genetically determined and partially acquired in the process of a language acquisition. Here we share the views of the linguists (N.Chomsky, S.Pinker, RJackendoff and others) who believe in the existence of a language instinct. According to their views a child's mind and a child's language competence do not present a tabula rasa but have some genetically determined qualities, so "the ability to speak and understand a.human language is a complex combination of nature and nurture" [Jackendoff 1994,6].
Thus we may conclude that the sentence belongs to both - language and speech. From the point of its underlying (basic)syntactic structure upon which it is built and which is repeated in an indefinite number of utterances it presents a unit of language. When actualized in real communication and uttered with a certain communicative aim and a certain intonation it becomes a unit of speech and is usually referred to as the utterance. The differentiation of the sentence as a unit of language and the utterance as a unit of speech is correlated with the basic dichotomy of language and speech, which is observed on all levels of language: the phoneme vs sound, the lexeme vs word, the sentence vs utterance, the text vs discourse. The utterance as a unit of speech is much wider in its characteristics than the sentence taken isolated from the communicative context. For example, the sentence It is cold in different communicative contexts may express a question when uttered with the rising tone "// is cold? " or an implicit request "// 's cold"("Give me something warm to wear " or "Close the -window"). However, very often in linguistic studies the term 'sentence' is used to refer to both; the sentence as a unit of the language and the utterance as the actualization of the sentence in speech.
2. The main categories of the sentence are predicativity, modality and negation.
a) There exist as many definitions of predicativity as of the sentence. V.G.Gak points out three main approaches to the understanding of predicativity: logical, denotational (semantic) and formal (syntactic) [FaK 2000, 550]. In the logic-oriented syntactic theories predicativity is defined as an act of attributing certain features to the subject. In the light of this approach predicativity presents a combination of two components of thought: the subject of thought and the predicate of thought which denotes a property, attributed to the subject by the predicate. In the denotational (semantic) approach predicativity expresses the relation of the sentence to the concrete situation of reality. From the syntactic point of view predicativity is defined as an establishment of syntactic relation between the subject and the predicate of the sentence carried out with the help of certain morphological categories. It is important to understand that these three approaches are not contradictory, they just reflect the manysided nature of the phenomenon and the possibility to analyze its essence from different aspects.
In our course we accept the following definition of predicativity: predicativity is a category which refers the nominative contents of the sentence to reality [ Blokh 1983, 243] . Let us consider this definition. We stated above that to become an utterance and present information about some event of objective reality the sentence must be actualized, i.e. related to a concrete situation of reality. Let's take, for example, the words winter and come. Just placed together they express a certain nominative contents but do not become a sentence yet. To refer the nominative contents of the sentence to reality we must place the event in time, present it as real, unreal or desirable and relate it with the doer of the action. - Winter has come. Winter is coming. Winter, come! If only winter came! Now the sentence is actualized. As we can see, predicativity involves establishing subject-predicate relations which, in its turn, is accomplished through the grammatical categories of tense, mood, number and person. (It is true however that once we use the English verb in the position of the predicate, not only these three categories but the other four (number, aspect, time correlation and mood) will also be expressed by the grammatical form of the predicate, but they are not directly related to the expression of predicativity). And as we can see from the analysis this understanding of predicativity takes into consideration two aspects of the sentence: semantic, or denotational (the nominative contents, or the situation of reality expressed by the sentence) and syntactic (the establishment of subject-predicate relations carried out with the help of certain grammatical categories). In peripheral structural types of sentences, such as one-member nominative sentences predicativity is expressed by the intonation (Early spring. London at night). The expression of predicativity in the sentence is usually referred to as predication. Scholars differentiate between primary and secondary predication and also between explicit and implicit types of predication. Primary predication establishes subject-predicate relations and makes the backbone of the sentence. It is expresses by the finite form of the verb. E.g. Cranes are flying. Secondary predication is contained in gerundial, infinitival, participial constructions, detached parts of the sentence. Such structures name an event but do not place it in time, e.g. / saw cranes flying. Structures of secondary predication cannot function as autonomous sentences and they are related to the objective reality only through the main predicative line of the sentence. From the point of view of their derivational history these structures are the result of syntactic transformation of two simple sentences and joining them into one. E.g. I saw cranes. The cranes were flying. — I saw cranes flying. Therefore sentences which have, besides the main predicative line, a structure of secondary predication (an infinitival, participial or a gerundial structure) cannot be treated as simple, they are semicomposite by their structure.
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