Lecture 1 Fundamentals of grammar

partly on stylistic factors.
Apposition has been often regarded as a special kind of attribute, and
sometimes as a secondary part of a sentence distinct from an attribute. Apposition
is a word or phrase referring to a part of the sentence expressed by a noun, and
explaining and specifying its meaning by giving it another name. Appositions are
usually expressed by nouns.
The major problem concerning the secondary sentence parts is caused by the
fact that characteristic features of each of the three types are not clearly defined,
therefore describing a given word or phrase as an object or an attribute in some
cases, or describing it as an object or an adverbial modifier, in others, often proves
to be a matter of personal opinion or predilection.
There are some elements of the sentence which are neither its main parts,
nor any of the usual secondary ones. They are the direct address and the
parenthesis. (Refer to the book by Ilyish for more information).
4. Structural Schemes of the Sentence. The Elementary Sentence
There are no structural limits for increasing the size of the sentence and
expanding its structure, however, the opposite procedure has a specific limit, the
limit being the elementary sentence. Omission of some element of the elementary
sentence destroys it as a structural and semantic unit.
Thus, the sentence “A low rumbling sound had broken the silence around
them.” (from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) can be made more
complicated by adding new attributes, introducing dependent clauses, inserting
modal words, etc. The process will have no end. However, omission of elements
that do not affect the structural and semantic completeness of the sentence can go
on until it meets a certain limit. Such limit for the sentence under consideration is
“A sound had broken the silence”. It realizes the syntactic structure made up by the
subject + a simple predicate expressed by a verb of non-prepositional directivity +
a direct object.