Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка для студентов

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.

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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.