Microsoft Word Theoretical Course of English Grammar

Nino Kirvalidze
96
(
dog, woman, table, book, river,
etc.), qualities (
quiet, beautiful, round, interesting, deep,
etc.), actions, states or processes, etc. (
bark, laugh, stand. read, crawl, 
etc.).
The next level in the hierarchical system of language is the syntactic level, the 
main unit of which is a sentence. The sentence is an elementary full sign as it not only 
designates a certain target situation or event but performs communicative function as 
well, transmitting a comparatively completed piece of information. For instance, the sen-
tence – “The American delegation arrived in Tbilisi for a three-day visit.” – designates a 
particular target event, on the one hand, and transmits the corresponding information 
about this event, on the other.
But the sentence is not the highest unit of language in the hierarchy of levels. 
When we speak or write we don’t normally confine ourselves to single phrases or sen-
tences, we string these together to make a connected sequence which results in building a 
text. Thus the highest level of lingual units is the textual level, represented by the text. 
There are two methodological approaches to the linguistic interpretation of the no-
tion of text: structural and functional. From the structuralist viewpoint, text can be de-
fined as a sequence of thematically interrelated well-formed sentences. According to 
this definition, the lower border of the text is restricted as it implies a sequence of at least 
two sentences. But the structural definition of the text leaves its upper (top) border open 
because of the varying diapason of the theme. On this basis, linguists differentiate struc-
tural types of texts into microtexts and macrotexts. In microtexts sentences centre around 
one concrete theme, whereas in a macrotext microtexts are united by a global, hyper-
theme which is derived from the constituent microthemes. Let’s consider an example 
which represents a news report about Prince Harry, the British royal: