Lecture 1 Fundamentals of grammar

Lecture 11
The Sentence: General.
The Simple Sentence
1. The notion of sentence. The sentence as a language unit.
2. Structural classifications of simple sentences.
1. The notion of sentence. The sentence as a language unit
Complexity of the sentence makes it difficult to work out its adequate
definition. The sentence is a central syntactic construction. It is a minimal unit of
speech communication.
The difference between the phrase and the sentence is fundamental: the
phrase is a nominative unit which fulfils the function of polynomination denoting a
complex referent (phenomenon of reality) analyzable into its component elements
together with various relations between them; the sentence is a unit of predication
which, naming a certain situational event, shows the relation of the denoted event
towards reality. Predication establishes the relation of the named phenomena to
actual life. The general semantic category of modality is also defined by linguists
as exposing the connection between the named objects and surrounding reality.
However, modality, as different from predication, is not specifically confined to
the sentence; this is a broader category revealed both in the grammatical elements
of language and its lexical, purely nominative elements.
An important structural feature of the sentence is its entirety, that is, no word
of the given sentence can be the head or a dependent element relative to words that
stand outside this sentence.
So, the sentence can be defined as an immediate integral unit used in speech
communication, built up of words according to a definite syntactic pattern and
characterized by predication. It possesses the following properties:
1. The sentence as a linguistic expression of extralinguistic reality must be
actualized. Actualization of the sentence content makes predicativity an
inseparable property of every sentence.
2. The sentence, just like any other meaningful language unit, has a form. Every
sentence has an intonation pattern.
3. The sentence occupies the highest hierarchical position relative to other
structural language units since the final purpose of all structural language
units is to build sentences. Unlike the sentence, the text does not have accurate
and unambiguous structural characteristics. There are no universal structural
schemes of the text. None of semantico-structural means used to join
sentences is specific to the text. Therefore, the text cannot be considered a
structural language unit.