Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка для студентов

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 

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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.
The structural scheme of the sentence is a sentence structure minimal 
by its composition and simplest by grammatical and semantic structure. A 
construction built according to a structural scheme and realizing all of its 
components is called an elementary sentence.
Prof. Pocheptsov lists some 
structural schemes for verbal sentences and examples of corresponding elementary 
sentences: 
Structural schemes 
Elementary sentences 
Subject – predicate expressed by a verb of non-
directed action (Active Voice) 
Pages rustle. (S. Bedford) 
Subject – predicate expressed by a verb of non-
prepositional-object directivity (Active Voice) 
– direct object 
Мо
r was enjoying the port.
(I. Murdoch) 
Subject – predicate expressed by a verb 
requiring two non-prepositional objects: object 
of addressee and object of patient (Active 
voice) – non-prepositional object of addressee 
– non-prepositional object of patient 
'I've taught him that.' (J. Galsworthy) 

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Subject – predicate expressed by a verb of 
spatial directivity (Active Voice) – adverbial 
modifier of place 
The Judge is in the chair. (S. Bedford) 
Subject – predicate expressed by a verb of 
temporal directivity (Active Voice) – adverbial 
modifier of time
That was long ago. (P. Abrahams) 
Subject – predicate expressed by a verb of non-
prepositional object directivity (Passive Voice) 
They had been seized. (H.G. Wells) 
The set of structural schemes specific to every language is the initial basis 
for building actual sentences as facts of speech.
One point that should be mentioned here is the status of passive sentences. 
The question is whether they should be included into the set of structural schemes 
as active sentences or whether they should be regarded as secondary constructions 
built on the basis of active sentences. As it has been shown by psycholinguistic 
experiments, passive sentences do not appear in actual speech as results of 
transforming active sentences. Besides that, there are some passive sentences that 
do not have corresponding active sentences (eg. 
I was born in France
.). Therefore, 
a passive sentence is not a derivative of an active one but an independent 
syntactical phenomenon.
The total number of structural schemes in a language is a few dozens of 
units.