Lecture 1 Fundamentals of grammar

Contamination has a restricted usage. It can be applied only to the
predicate. The result of contamination is the so-called double, or contaminated,
predicate.
e.g. The sun shone glaring and dazzling.
Development (развертывание) is a modification of one element by another
element which depends on the former. Syntactic groups (they can be noun groups,
verb groups, adjectival groups, adverb groups, etc.) that appear in the result of
development are of endocentric character, their syntactic behavior is that of the
central element before it was modified
e.g. N → AN: flower – beautiful flower;
V → VAdv: walked – walked slowly;
A → AdvA: beautiful – strikingly beautiful.
Adjunction (присоединение) is similar to development. It consists in
modifying words as syntactic elements with particles (e.g. only for you, just in case, even at such a great sum).
Inclusion (включение) consists in inserting modal words and similar
elements into a sentence. (e. g. Apparently, this is the only way out. A true friend,indeed.) The specific status of these elements (certain semantics, independence of other sentence members, non-fixed position within the sentence boundaries) does not allow regarding them as a sentence member.
Isolation is a syntactic process aimed at accentuating some sentence
member or sentence member group. The needed effect is reached by prosodic
means, pausation being used most often. Parcellation is a particular case of
isolation. Parcellation takes place when the isolated element forms a separate
sentence. (e. g. I used to. At home.)
The examined syntactic processes deal either with modifying the structure of
a syntactic element aimed at making it more complicated, or with expanding the
element.
Substitution, representation and ellipsis play a different role. They are
characterized by general text dependence and orientation towards compression.
The resulting element is correlated either with some preceding or following
elements.
Substitution (замещение) is a use of words with generalized structural
meaning instead of words and constructions with specific meaning which were
mentioned earlier.
e.g. Do you want me to open the window? – Yes, please do.
Would you kindly pass me an apple? – Do you want a red one?
Representation (репрезентация) consists in using a part of some syntactic
unit representing the whole unit.
e.g. Could you help me? – I will be happy to.
He is not coming tonight, is he? – I hope not.
Ellipsis (опущение) takes place when a structurally needed element of the
construction is not explicitly used but only implied. The omitted element can be
restored from the context.
e.g. It seems so strange! – It is!
Conclusion: Accepting the elementary sentence and the syntactic process as
important syntactic notions, we can conclude that a sentence, on the one hand, is a
construction whose structure is built according to the language system, and on the
other, the structure of the sentence can be expanded and reduced according to
specific communication needs and conditions.