Nataliya Pavlyuk

CONTRASTIVE
GRAMMAR
OF
ENGLISH AND UKRAINIAN

1
Н. Павлюк

ПОРІВНЯЛЬНА
ГРАМАТИКА
АНГЛІЙСЬКОЇ
ТА
УКРАЇНСЬКОЇ МОВ

Донецьк
ДонНУ
2010

2
 CONTENTS
ПЕРЕДМОВА ...............................................................................................................................4
INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................................5
1. CONTRASTIVE GRAMMAR............................................................................................5
2. THE MAIN BRANCHES OF GRAMMAR. UNITS OF GRAMMAR....................12
PART I MORPHOLOGY........................................................................................................18
1. THE PART OF SPEECH PROBLEM. PARTS OF SPEECH IN ENGLISH AND
UKRAINIAN ...........................................................................................................................18
2. GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES OF THE NOUN ...................................................23
3. GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES OF THE VERB.....................................................31
4. THE NON-FINITE FORMS OF THE VERB (VERBALS)....................................41
5. ADJECTIVE, NUMERAL AND ADVERB...................................................................45
PART II SYNTAX...................................................................................................................51
1. PHRASE ...........................................................................................................................52
2. SENTENCE.........................................................................................................................62
3. PARTS OF THE SENTENCE ........................................................................................69
4. COMPOSITE SENTENCE ..............................................................................................84
PRACTICE........................................................Ошибка! Закладка не определена.
READINGS............................................................................................................................... 101
GLOSSARY............................................................................................................................... 173
REFERENCES................................................. Ошибка! Закладка не определена.

3
 ПЕРЕДМОВА
Посібник з порівняльної граматики англійської і української мов
призначається для студентів освітньо-кваліфікаційного рівня
«бакалавр» факультетів іноземних мов університетів і педагогічних
інститутів іноземних мов, де є спеціальність "Переклад".
Курс складається з трьох розділів (Вступ, Морфологія і Синтаксис),
практичної частини, хрестоматії з теоретичної граматики англійських,
американських, українських і російських авторів, словника граматичних
термінів. Матеріали посібника відповідають програмним вимогам до
теоретичних курсів вищих навчальних закладів

4
 INTRODUCTION

1. CONTRASTIVE GRAMMAR

Typology as a branch of linguistics. Human language, an important and

perfect means of communication between people, means of interchanging
thoughts, can perform all its functions, because it is a flexible system, which is
at the same time so perfectly organized. As any other system, language has
two sides. On the one hand, it consists of the elements: phonemes,
morphemes, words, that have some material form: sounds, and on the other
hand, it has a structure. The language structure is its inner organization,
scheme of bonds and relations of the elements, enumerated above, which
functions in the act of communication.
While studying different languages, we can see that some languages have
similar features. For example, in Russian, Polish and Bulgarian there are many
words with similar roots. This phenomenon can be accounted for by the fact
that they belong to the same genetic group of languages (Slavonic languages).
At the same time, we can see, that the Russian language has a six-case system
of declensions, while Bulgarian has no declension system. Therefore, as far as
the noun structure is concerned, the languages have considerable differences.
There is an enormous number of languages in the world; some features
are similar for various languages, while the others are absolutely different.
There are also certain properties that are characteristic of just one language.
Language as a system consists of several subsystems all based on
oppositions, differences, samenesses and positional values.
Typology is a branch of linguistics aimed at classifying main significant
characteristics of the language features and formulating general regularities
that can be observed in different languages. It can also be defined as a science
of language types and the structure of language types. (Arakin)
Typology studies languages comparing them with the purpose of
establishing both common regularities of their historical development
universal regularities of positioning the elements of inner structure within the
systems of different languages. Typological studies should be called
comparative-typological, because comparing structures of different languages
is an integral part of such linguistic studies. As any other linguistic
investigation, typological studies can be both synchronic and diachronic.
(Katsnelson).
Contrastive typology aims at establishing the most general structural
types of languages on the basis of their dominant or common phonological,
morphological, lexical and syntactic features. Apart from this, contrastive
typology may equally treat dominant or common features only, as well as
5
divergent features only, which are found both in languages of the same
structural type (synthetic, analytical, agglutinative, etc.) as well as in
languages of different structural types.
The number of different languages which may be simultaneously
subjected to typological contrasting at a time is not limited and is always
predetermined by the aim pursued. The latter may be either theoretical or
practical and involve the investigation of common or both, common and
divergent features in the corresponding aspects of the contrasted languages.
2. The notion of grammar. Objectives of contrastive grammar.
The term "grammar" has two meanings: 1) a branch of linguistics that
studies language structure; 2) grammatical structure inherent in every
language, i.d. laws according to which language units function.
The fundamental purpose of language is to make sense – to communicate
intelligibly. But if we are to do this, we need to share a single system of
communication. It would be no use if one person were using Japanese and the
other were using English, or one knew only Morse code and the other knew
only semaphore. The rules controlling the way a communication system
works are known as its grammar, and both sender and recipient need to use
the same grammar if they are to understand each other. If there is no
grammar, there can be no effective communication. It is as simple as that.
We can see this by dipping into the vocabulary of English and trying to do
without grammar. With hundreds of thousands of words contained in the
lexicon, it is certainly the most prominent aspect of the language, yet without
grammar the value of this remarkable resource becomes so limited as to be
almost worthless. We might believe that “making sense” is a matter of
vocabulary – that meaning lies in the lexicon. This is certainly the superficial
impression we receive whenever we use a dictionary, and ‘look up a meaning’.
However, all the lexicon provides is a sense of a word’s meaning potential – its
semantic possibilities. To draw out this potential we need to add grammar. A
dictionary does this unobtrusively, through its definitions and citation. When
we use a dictionary, we are being fed grammar all the time, without realizing
it.
The grammatical system breaks up into subsystems owing to its relations
with vocabulary and the unity of lexical meaning of the words of each group.
Grammar and vocabulary are organically related and interdependent but they
do not lie on one plane. As a bilateral unity of form and content the grammar
of any language always retains the categories underlying its system.
The object of the present course is comparative investigation of the
English and Ukrainian grammar systems. It is important that this course aims
not only at establishing common and specific features of the languages, but
also at revealing the causes for the present state of a language structure,
referring to the history of the language development.
In the course of the contrastive grammar we are to single out isomorphic
and allomorphic features of English and Ukrainian grammatical structures.
6
 Isomorphic features/phenomena are common features/phenomena in
languages under contrastive analysis. Isomorphic in English and Ukrainian
are, for example, the categories of number, person, tense, as well as parts of
speech, the existence of different types of sentences etc.
Allomorphic features/phenomena are those observed in one language
and missing in the other.
Isomorphic and allomorphic features of the contrasted languages should
be singled out and analyzed, which can help in translation practice and foreign
language teaching.
The objectives of major contrastive typological investigations in grammar
are as follows:
1. To identify and classify the main isomorphic and allomorphic
grammatical features characteristic of the languages under analysis.
2. To draw from these common or divergent features respectively the
isomorphic regularities and the allomorphic singularities in the grammar
systems of the contrasted languages.
3. To establish on the basis of the obtained isomorphic features the
typical language structures and the types of languages.
4. To establish on this basis the universal features/phenomena, which
pertain to the languages under consideration.
(Korunets)
3. Criteria for contrastive study of different units.
To compare the languages we should first find the elements that can be
contrasted. What are the criteria of choosing the unit of typological
comparison on the morphological level? Thus, in English there is a complex
system of verb tense forms, while in Ukrainian this system is much simpler. In
Ukrainian there are aspect pairs of verbs, which cannot be found in English.
Taking into account the fact that typological comparison is carried out
not on the basis of the similarity of form or etymology, but on the basis of
functional similarity of definite phenomena of the contrasted languages, the
first criterion to characterize the unit of typological comparison should be
the criterion of functional similarity of the contrasted phenomena. Thus, for
instance, morphemes expressing degrees of comparison in Ukrainian ‐іше
and English –er, number morphemes in Ukrainian ‐і, ‐и, ‐а and in English –
(e)s.
But suffixes of the feminine gender in Ukrainian (вихователька,
учениця) cannot be contrasted to the corresponding English suffixes (-ess, -
me, -rix, -ine, -ette) which identify the masculine and feminine sex, not
grammatical gender.
The second criterion for the typological unit to be contrasted is its
ability to combine general and particular features. It allows to make
generalized conclusions as of the particular phenomena of the contrasted
languages (different cases have their own features, their own semes), while

7
they all have a common feature, they express the relation of the subject to
other subjects, phenomena, processes, etc.
The third criterion: the unit of typological comparison should include
not individual words but a class of words.
It is worth emphasizing that the general implicit and dependent
grammatical meanings of the notional parts of speech in both languages
coincide, which considerably facilitates their contrastive study. Besides, it is
important that in the process of typological study only correlated language
units and phenomena can be contrasted. It means that the units and
phenomena have to be of the same status, i.e. they have to belong to a
common class of units or phenomena in the languages in question. They have
to occupy the same position in the language systems and consequently serve
as constants for typological comparison.
Numberless examples in different languages show that grammar is not
indifferent to the concrete lexical meaning of words and their capacity to
combine with one another in certain patterns. The use of some grammatical
rules is well known to be lexically restricted.
Grammar and vocabulary are organically related to each other. No part of
grammar can be adequately described without reference to vocabulary. With
all this, it is essential to understand what separates grammar from
vocabulary, wherein lie the peculiarities of each of the two levels and their
relationship in general. To ignore this is to ignore the dialectical nature of
language.
The fact that grammar and vocabulary are organically related to each
other may be well illustrated by the development of analytical forms which
are known to have originated from free syntactic groups. These consist of at
least two words but actually constitute one sense-unit. Only one of the
elements has lexical meaning, the other has none, and being an auxiliary word
possesses only grammatical meaning.
Not less characteristic are idiomatic grammatical forms of the verb, such
as, for instance, going to-future or patterns with the verb to get + participle II
established by long use in the language to indicate voice distinctions, used to +
Infinitive, would + Infinitive for regular actions in the Past, and so on.
(Rayevskaya)
4. Language and speech. Human language exists in the form of individual
languages: Russian, English, Chinese and others. But what form does every
individual language exist in?
It is certainly not just dictionaries and grammar books, made up by
linguists. For there are many languages that have no dictionaries and
grammars compiled. Even the best of them can obviously give just
approximate and incomplete picture of the language objectively, apart from
the linguists' opinion. We could say that the language exists in the native
speakers' minds. But it is not a satisfactory answer either. Let us imagine the
way how the language comes to a human’s mind. The language is not
8
‘inherent', or ‘inherited’. The term ‘native tongue’ does not mean ‘inherent’, it
means ‘mastered when an infant’. The language penetrates into human mind
from ‘outside’, it penetrates because other people use it. Following their
example, a human starts to use it. On the other hand, the language can be
forgotten (even if it is a native tongue) if it is for some reason not used. A
language exists as a living one if it functions. It is in speech that it can function,
in the act of communication. (Maslov).
The distinction between language and speech, which was first introduced
by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857—1913), a Swiss linguist, in his book in
general linguistics, has since become one of the cornerstones of modern
linguistics. Though differences of opinion still persist as for the boundaries
between the two spheres, its general idea has been accepted by most scholars.
Speech is a manifestation of a language, or its use by various speakers
and writers of the given language. This notion includes not only oral speech,
but also written speech. In the broad meaning the notion of ‘speech’ also
includes ‘inner speaking’, i.e. thinking by means of language tools (words and
others), performed without pronouncing it.
Thus what we can see or hear, in the oral or in the written form, is always
a product of speech, namely something either pronounced or written by some
individual speaker or writer.
But why can the statement produced by a speaker or writer be correctly
understood by a listener or reader? Firstly, it is built of the elements, whose
form and meaning are familiar to them. Secondly, these elements are
combined into a meaningful whole according to certain rules, that are also
familiar to the reader or listener. This system of rules allows to build a
meaningful text and perceive its contents.
These elements of the statement and rules of combining them together
represent the languages used in the process of communication. Language of
this or that community is a system of elements (words, meaningful parts of
words, etc.) plus a system of rules of their functioning, common for the
language speakers, the rules to produce meaningful statements
Language is a system, phonological, lexical and grammatical, which lies
at the base of all speaking. It is the source which every speaker and writer has
to use to be understood by other users of the language.
Language differs from Speech as grammar rules differ from the statement
they are used in, or as words in the dictionary differ from their numerous uses
in various texts (Maslov).
5. Analysis and synthesis in languages. It is a common statement that
modern English is an analytical language, as distinct from modern Ukrainian,
which is synthetic one. Nowadays this statement is modified, and it sounds as
follows: English is “mainly analytical” and Ukrainian is “mainly synthetic”.
Analytical languages are the languages, whose grammatical and word-
forming meanings are mostly expressed by analytical means (split analytical
forms of the word, auxiliaries, word order).
9
 Analysis in a language (the word comes from Greek “dividing into parts”)
is a typological property, expressed in separated expression of the main
(lexical) and additional (grammatical, derivational) meaning of the word.
Analytical features of the languages are as follows:
1) morphologically indeclinable words and analytical (compound)
forms and constructions;
2) comparatively few grammatical inflections (case inflections in nouns,
adjectives and pronouns, and personal inflections in verbs);
3) a sparing use of sound alterations to denote grammatical forms;
4) a wide use of prepositions to denote relations between objects and to
connect words in the sentence;
5) a prominent use of word order to denote grammatical relations: a
more or less fixed word order.
Analytical constructions include the combination of the meaningful and
auxiliary words. According to their functions, analytical constructions can be
morphological, syntactic and lexical. Morphological analytical constructions
constitute one word-form, expressing some morphological category: tense (is
reading); aspect (буду читать); voice (is done); degree of comparison
(найбільш приємний) and others.
Syntactic analytical constructions form one and the same part of the
sentence. For example, a compound predicate: He started singing; an attribute:
чоловік великої волі.
Lexical analytical constructions express word-forming meanings: little
house, брати участь, жінка‐пілот.
As an auxiliary element within analytical constructions can be both a
formal word (articles, prepositions) or a notional word with lost semantics.
Analytical construction is a form of the language asymmetry. Being
semantically and functionally equal to a word it has a form of a word-
combination: their components can change position, include additional
elements, the construction can be shortened. The boundaries between
morphological, syntactic analytical constructions and two separate parts of
the sentence are delicate. Thus, буде робити is a morphological analytical
constructions, почне робити is a syntactic analytical constructions, while
почне робити are two parts of the sentence.
In the course of a language history some synthetic constructions are
substituted by analytical ones, e.g. declension forms are replaced by
prepositional-declensional and later on, by prepositional (if declension
system is destroyed). On the other hand, on the basis of some analytical
constructions, synthetic forms can appear: (ancient Russian “ходил есмь” –
“ходил”). Synthetic and analytical forms can co-exist within one and the same
paradigm (compare germ. anfangen and ich fange an; rus. никто and ни у
кого). Synthesis in language is a typological property of a language system
which consists in combination of several morphemes within one word. Beside
morphological synthesis there exists syntactical and word-forming synthesis.
10
The former consists in forming a part of the sentence by means of one word-
form, without formal words or word order. Compare synthetic (simple) and
analytical (complex) predicate, object, etc. Synthesis in word-formation
consists in expressing several meanings by one word (simple, derivative or
compound), whereas analytical forms express the same meanings with the
help of word-combinations: широкоплечий – широкий в плечах, to partake –
to take part.
The history of linguistic theory presents the examples of interpreting
analysis and synthesis as a reflection of the language progress. Linguists in
XIX century considered synthetic languages to be more developed and perfect
than analytical ones: analytical languages were formed as a result of breaking
up flexion systems. At the beginning of the XX century dominated another
viewpoint (O. Jespersen), according to which synthesis is more archaic form of
the language than analysis, all the languages gradually go from synthesis to
analysis. Nevertheless, synthesis and analysis in languages are not manifested
in pure form, any language represents the combination of these two features
of the language structure. In the course of a language development synthetic
forms and constructions can be replaced by analytical ones, and vice versa. In
different languages new analytical formations appear all the time, because
combination of words is the simplest and most clearly motivated method of
nomination.
Polysemy and synonymy in grammar
All languages seem to have polysemy on several levels. Like words
which are often signs not of one but of several things, a single grammatical
form can also be made to express a whole variety of structural meanings.
This appears to be natural and is a fairly common development in the
structure of any language. The linguistic mechanism works naturally in
many ways to prevent ambiguity in patterns of grammatical structure.
Orientation towards the context will generally show which of all the
possible meanings is to be attached to a polysemantic grammatical form.
It is sometimes maintained that in case of grammatical polysemy we
observe various structural meanings inherent in the given form, one of
them being always invariable, i. e. found in any possible context of the use
of the form. And then, if this invariable structural meaning cannot be traced
in different uses of the given form, we have homonymy. In point of fact, this
angle of view does not seem erroneous.
<…>
Most grammatical forms are polysemantic. On this level of linguistic
analysis distinction should be made between synchronic and potential
polysemy. Thus, for instance, the primary denotative meaning of the
Present Continuous is characterised by three semantic elements (semes):
a) present time, b) something progressive, c) contact with the moment of
speech. The three semes make up its synchronic polysemy.
(Rayevskaya, 45-46)
We next turn our attention to synonymy in grammar as immediately
relevant to the study of potential polysemy of grammatical forms discussed
above.
There is a system behind the development of grammatical synonyms in
any language. This is a universal linguistic feature and may be traced in
language after language. English shares these feature with a number of
11
 tongues, but its structural development has led to such distinctive traits as
merit attention. Observations in this area are most useful for insight into
the nature and functioning of the language.
The very concept of synonymy implies variation. It does not mean
however that we must include under grammatical synonyms absolute
parallelisms which are presented by different kind of grammatical doublets
such as, for instance, variant forms of degrees of comparison of adjectives:
clever — cleverer — the cleverest and clever — more clever — the most
clever; capable — capabler — the capablest and capable — more capable —
the most capable, etc., or, say, variation in forms observed in the plural of
nouns e. g.: hoofs — hooves; wharfs — wharves, etc.
(Rayevskaya, 50)
Issues for discussion
1. The notion of language. Give the reasons why language is considered to
be a system? What parts of the language system can you think of?
2. The objectives of the typology as a branch of linguistics study? Prove
that many languages can be subjected to the contrastive studies?
3. Give a definition of grammar. Explain the connection between the
grammar system and peculiarities of the lexical system of a language.
4. Explain the notions of the isomorphic and allomorphic features of
different languages.
5. Formulate the main objectives of the typological studies in grammar,
comment on each of them.
6. Formulate the criteria of choosing the units of different languages for
comparing.
7. Give the definitions of language and speech and say, what are the
differences between them and what they are manifested in. Give the name of
the scientist that was the first to have introduced the distinction between
language and speech.
8. Characterize analysis and synthesis in languages. Can we call English
an “analytical language” and Ukrainian a “synthetic language”? Why? State the
types of analytical constructions found in the language. Speak on the
differences in the grammatical structure of English and Ukrainian. Indicate
elements of synthesis and analysis.
9. Comment on the notions of polysemy and synonymy in grammar.

2. THE MAIN BRANCHES OF GRAMMAR. UNITS OF GRAMMAR

The field of grammar is often divided into two domains: morphology and
syntax.
1. Morphology (Greek: morphé –form, logos –learning) is a branch of
grammar dealing with regularities of functioning and development of the
language system that provides structuring and understanding of word-forms.
Morphology studies the grammatical classes and groups of words, their
grammatical categories and systems of forms (paradigms) in which these
12
categories actually exist. Units of language in general, and of grammar in
particular, form a hierarchy of interconnected elements, a rank scale. The
lowest grammatical unit on that scale is the morpheme. Every lower unit
forms part of a higher one.
The main unit of the morphological level is a morpheme, the smallest
structural unit, which has two-side nature. As any other language unit, except
phoneme, morpheme represents the unity of the form and meaning. The
morpheme is a stable succession of phonemes (their material form), while the
meaning of the morpheme, its semantics, is comprised by a number of
minimal meaningful elements, called semes.
The contrastive morphology deals with:
1) the specific traits of morphemes in languages under contrastive
research;
2) the classes of paradigms (both synthetic and analytical) pertaining to a
notional parts of speech and reflecting its paradigmatic variety;
3) the morphological categories and their manifestation in the contrasted
languages;
4) the parts of speech and their typological features.
2. Syntax (from Latin syntaxis, and earlier from Greek syn+tassein
“together + arrange”).
Syntactic units, in contradiction to morphological units do not represent
such linguistic elements that could be studied and differentiated by specific
material structure of their own. Here belong word-groups (phrases), parts of
the sentence, clause (sentence).
Sentence is a communicative unit, built according to the definite
grammatical (syntactic) pattern, which exists in the language in different
forms and modifications, performing its communicative functions and having
intonation of its own.
Morpheme is the smallest unit of grammar that has semantic meaning,
the smallest unit in word-formation and morphology, the smallest meaningful
part the word can be broken down.
Thus both roots and affixes are seen as morphemes. According to this
definition looked and fallen each consists of a Free morpheme + a Bound
morpheme (look+ed, fall+en).
Morphemes split into two main types: free and bound morphemes.
MORPHEME

13
 Free (root) morphemes are morphemes bearing the lexical meaning of
the words, their use does not depend on other morphemes. A morpheme is
free if it can stand alone, or bound if it is used exclusively alongside a free
morpheme.
So, free morphemes may be regular words (e.g.: boy, day, he, four, день,
кінь, річ, він, три) or they may constitute the lexical core of a word. Ex.:
boyhood, daily, fourth, денна, нічний, тричі, etc. In other words, root
morphemes in English, Ukrainian and other languages are not dependent on
other morphemes in a word.
Bound morphemes can not function independently: they are bound to
the root or to the stem consisting of the root morpheme and of one or more
affixal morphemes. E.g.:: days, spoken, fourteen, overcome, government,
дивно, розумом, дні, нашим), etc. Bound morphemes like ‐s, ‐en, ‐ teen, over‐,
‐ment, ‐о, ‐ом, ‐і, ~им in either of the two languages can not exist
independently, i.e. they are not free but always dependent on roots or stems
of their words.
Due to its historical development, English has also a much larger number
of morphologically unmarked words, than Ukrainian. Consequently, the
number of inflexions expressing the morphological categories is much smaller
in English than in Ukrainian. Moreover, a lot of notionals in English lack even
the affixes which can identify their lexico-morphological nature. Free root-
morphemed words, though fewer in Ukrainian, are still represented in all
lexico-morphological classes as nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. of both
contrasted languages. Ex:. arm, pen, boy, work, do, red, he, she, it, five, this, ten,
here, far, etc. Similarly in Ukrainian: ніс, лоб, чуб, ти, варт, хто, три, тут,
де, він, etc.
Free root morphemes in English and Ukrainian can also be functionals:
but, till, on, not, through, just (a moment), мов, геть, так, певне, може, ох,
дзень, гав, не, ні, від, на, під, etc.
Root morphemes in English can often form part of the stem, which is
especially characteristic of present-day Ukrainian, for example: workers,
friendliness, concerning, beautiful; робітництво, безмежність,
переодягнутися, переробивши, тепленько, теплесенько, etc
Affixal morphemes in the contrasted languages split into a) Derivational
affixes and b) inflexions.
Inflexional morphemes in the contrasted languages express different
morphological categories. The number of genuine English inflexions today is
only 14 to 16. They are noun inflexions, for example: ‐s (‐es), ‐en, ‐ren (boys,
watches, oxen, children); inflexions of the comparative and the superlative
degrees of qualitative adjectives: ‐er, ‐est (bigger, biggest); inflexions of
degrees of qualitative adverbs: ‐er/‐ier, ‐est/ ‐iest (oftener, oftenest; slowliei;
slowliest); the verbal inflexions: -s/-es, -d/-ed, -t, -n/-en; he puts/he watches;
she learned the rule (burnt the candle); a broken pencil. The inflexions of
absolute possessive pronouns: -s, -e: (hers, ours, yours, mine, thine). There are
14
also some genuinely English plural form inflexions of nouns with restricted
use. These are the plural form inflexions of kine (poetic for cows), fane
(archaic of foes), and shoen (archaic of shoes).
Apart from the genuine English inflexional morphemes there exist some
foreign inflexions borrowed and used with nouns of Latin, Greek and French
origin only. Among them are Latin inflexions -um - -a (datum – data, erratum –
errata, etc.); -us – і (focus – foci, terminus – termini); -a – ae (formula –
formulae); -us – a (generus – genera); -is – es (axis – axes, thesis – theses); -ix –
es (appendix – appendices); -ies – ies (series – series). The few pairs of Greek
inflexional oppositions in singular and plural are the following: ‐is ‐‐es
(analysis – analyses, basis – bases); -on – a (phenomenon – phe nomena); -ion –
ia (criterion – criteria).In French borrowings only the plural forms are
inflected, whereas in singular there are zero inflexions: 0 - s/x (beau –
beaus/beaux);0 – x (bureau – bureaux); 0 – s (monsieur – messieurs); 0 – es
(madam – madams).
The number of inflexions in Ukrainian by far exceeds their number in
English since every notional part of speech has a variety of endings. The latter
express number, case and gender of nominal parts of speech and tense, aspect,
person, number, voice and mood forms of verbs. For example: Петра,
Петрові, йому, всіма; червоний ‐ червоного ‐ червоному ‐ червоним, двоє ‐
двох ‐ двом ‐ двома; сонний – сонного сонному – сонним; читав ‐ читала ‐
читали, читатиму ‐ читати меш ‐ читатимете, etc. Because of the
difference in the structural nature of the contrasted languages, their
paradigms of the same notion als naturally differ, the Ukrainian paradigms
being much richer than the English ones. However in Old English the noun
paradigm included 9 different inflexional forms, the weak verbs paradigm had
10 forms, and the paradigm of adjectives - 13 synthetic (inflected) forms. The
variety of case inflexions of Ukrainian nouns is also predetermined by the
exist ence of four declensions, the first and the second of which have differ ent
case and number inflexions. This depends on the nouns belonging to the hard,
palatalised or to the mixed stem consonant type (e.g.: вода – води, учень –
учні, поле – поля, лоша – лошата, миша – мишею, доня – донею, etc.).
(Корунець)
5. The notions of grammatical category, meaning, form, paradigm.
Grammatical category is a system of opposed sets of grammatical forms
with homogeneous meanings. Such categorical features as generalized notion
of time, person, voice and corresponding forms constitute the essence of
grammatical category.
All grammatical categories are characteristic of one or more part of
speech. The number of opposed sets of grammatical forms can vary, thus for
instance, the category of gender in Ukrainian is manifested by the three-
gender system, expressing masculine, feminine and neuter. In binary
oppositions one member can be "marked" and the other "unmarked". The
problem of oppositions on the morphological level has not been completely
15
solved as yet and remains a source of constant interest in modem language
learning .
It is very important to remember that one of the principle features of
grammatical category is the unity of form and meaning within the system of
grammatical forms as they are language units that have two planes of
expression (plane of meaning and that of form). Grammatical categories
identifying the parts of speech are known to be expressed in paradigms. There
are two types of paradigm: that inflectional and analytical. In the former the
invariable part is the stem, in the latter the lexical element of the paradigm.
The so-called interparadigmatic homonymy resulting from the fact that the
root, the stem and the grammatical form of the word may be identical in
sound, is most frequent.
Grammatical meaning is a generalized meaning characteristic of a set of
words, word-forms, syntactic constructions which has its own regular
expression in the language. In morphology here belong general meanings of
parts of speech (thingness for nouns, process or state for verbs), as well as
particular meanings of word-forms and words as a whole opposed within one
and the same grammatical category. In syntax grammatical meanings express
different relations between elements of a phrase, clauses: meanings of
syntactic subject, object, local and temporal indicators, theme-rheme
relations.
Beside general and particular grammatical meanings words have their
own active potential, expressed, on the one hand, in its syntactic and lexical-
syntactic combinability (its intention, valency) and, on the other hand, in the
ability of words to absorb, condense and abstract semantic and grammatical
characteristics of their lexical-grammatical context (Лингвист.энц., 113)
Grammatical form is a language sign which represents a regular
expression of a grammatical meaning. Within a grammatical form there are
the following means of expression: affixes, phonemic alterations, stress,
functional words, word order, intonation. In morphology of the languages
characterized by word-changing morphological forms represent a set of
declining words of a particular part of speech, bearing a complex of
grammatical meanings or one and the same grammatical meaning. All forms
of the word constitute its paradigm. There are synthetic and analytical
morphological forms. An individual word found in one of its possible
grammatical forms is called a word-form.
Morphological paradigm is a set of forms of one and the same word, it is
characterized by 1) an invariable root morpheme, containing a lexical
meaning of the work-form and being the same for all the forms; 2) fixed set of
positions expressing different grammatical meanings; 3) unambiguous
correlation between each position and special inflexion to express it; 4) strict
order of the constituent parts.
Keeping this traditional classification of linguistic studies, we must
naturally recognise the affinities between the two parts of grammar. Syntax
16
bears an intimate relation to morphology because morphological devices are
greatly conditioned by syntactical arrangements. It is of great importance to
our subject to understand the constant reciprocal action of form and function.
These two should be studied in their relationships but none should be brought
to the front at the expense of the other. Morphology is inadequate alone,
because relatively few kinds of English words are subject to morphological
variation. Syntax alone will not do either partly because there are borderline
word-forms and phrases not indisputably assigned to any class.

Issues for discussion

1. Give definitions of the two branches of grammar. Explain, how are the
two branches of grammar connected with each other.
2. Give characteristics to the main units of morphology. Speak on the
paradigmatic and syntagmatic studies of morphology.
3. The morpheme as a minimal unit of morphology.
4. Explain the differences between root and bound morphemes.
Characterize the root morphemes.
5. Characterize the bound morphemes you know.
6. Give characteristics to the affixal morphemes in English and
Ukrainian, comment on the common and divergent features.
7. Inflexional morphemes in English and Ukrainian as the expression of
different morphological categories.
8. Explain the notions of grammatical category, meaning, form and
paradigm.

17
 PART I MORPHOLOGY
1. THE PART OF SPEECH PROBLEM. PARTS OF SPEECH IN ENGLISH AND
UKRAINIAN
Grammatically the bulk of words in any language is not homogeneous,
therefore it is only natural that people while studying language group them
according to definite criteria, so as to perceive language as a system, see
regularities it provides and learn subtle differences between its elements.
The term “part of speech” was developed in Ancient Greece and proves
that at that time no distinction was drawn between language as a system and
speech as manifestation of language. Now this term is accepted by
grammarians as conventional, traditional and is used to denote the lexical‐
grammatical classes of words correlating with each other on the basis of their
common their syntactic, morphological and semantic properties.
Other terms for "part of speech" are "word-class", “lexical-grammatical
word class” used by those scholars who suppose it important that the term
should reflect the essence of the notion. Classification of words into parts of
speech must naturally proceed from a set of criteria that can be consistently
applied to all lexical units of a given language. As soon as every word in a
language has a lexical meaning, form and performs certain functions in the
sentence it would be only natural to group the words into parts of speech
proceeding from:
1) a common meaning of a given class of words abstracted from the
lexical meaning of all the words belonging to this class;
2) a common paradigm, i.e. set of grammatical forms;
3) identity of syntactic functions.
The problem of dividing all the words in language into classes appeared
in ancient times. In the 4th century BC, Aristotle gave an idea of parts of
speech and singled out "name", “verb”, "article", “conjunction”, “sounds” ,
"syllable", “case”. The first to introduce the idea of 8 parts of speech system
was Aristarch of Samothrace in the 2nd century BC, they were: “name”
(including nouns, adjectives and numerals), “pronoun”, “verb”, “participle”,
“adverb”, "preposition", "conjunction", "interjection".
No matter how disputable the question of “parts of speech” is, the fact
that all the words are divided into notional and functional words is accepted
by most grammarians.
Notional parts of speech are those that are independent both
semantically and syntactically, i.e. can function on their own (noun, verb,
adjective, adverb, participle, numeral, pronoun, gerund /in English/, adverbial
participle /in Ukrainian/).
Functional parts of speech cannot function on their own, they are not
independent semantically and syntactically, their use is predetermined by the

18
functional part of speech they are attached to (preposition, conjunction,
particle, auxiliary verb, link‐verb, article /in English/).

All three criteria are to be taken into consideration, it would be

erroneous, for instance, to use only "lexical meaning" as the basis for the
definition of some word-classes, "function in the sentence" for others, and
"formal characteristics" for the third group. So, as the basis for the definition
of word-classes semantics, morphological characteristics and syntactical
features are to be regarded.
The hierarchy of criteria underlying the principle of singling out different
parts of speech is disputable. Traditionally, morphological properties are
treated as the basis. Still typological analysis singles out the parts of speech of
syntactical basis, that is according to the functions the words perform in the
sentence, while morphological peculiarities and semantic characteristics are
thought to be marginal. Thus, for instance, one of the characteristic features of
the noun in Ukrainian is its functioning as a head-word in a phrase like
"швидкий крок", while the verb is not found in such a construction, so
"швидкий йти" is impossible in the Ukrainian. It is not only the syntactic
function of this or that word which is important but also the frequency of the
word to be found in this very function. Thus, for instance, in Ukrainian, both
the verb and the noun can function as the subject (“Людина спить” (n),
“Стояти тут небезпечно" (v) ), Still for the noun the primary function is that
of the subject, while secondary one is that of the predicate, and for the verb,
the primary function is that of the predicate, while the secondary one is that of
the subject.
Syntactic functions are also very important in singling out classes of
functional words, for example, if the word can belong to just an individual

19
word or to a sentence as a whole (in English, the prepositions can belong to a
whole sentence, while the articles are correlated with an individual noun).
It is complicated to single out the pronouns and numerals on the basis of
this principle, for they are not homogeneous in the functions, so the can stick
to different classes of words, so they are often characterized as part of other
classes of words, for example, nouns-numerals “three”, “four” and adjectives-
numerals “first”, “third”.
Every part of speech is characterized by a particular system of
grammatical categories. Being expressed morphologically, the sets of
grammatical categories belong to all the words of this or that part of speech,
or most of them.
So, to find out what particular class a given word belongs to it is not
enough to look at one isolated word. In English inflexional endings cannot be
regarded as the exclusive property of a single part of speech. The ending ‐ed (‐
d), for instance, marks the verb, the participle II (worked, built etc.), but it may
be also added to nouns or other parts of speech and even word-groups to
form adjectives (kind‐hearted, striped, red‐haired, etc.); the inflexion ‐s
changes the noun into a plural and ‐s is also used to indicate the third person
singular in verbs, etc.
For the grammarians the problem of defining different parts of speech is
disputable. Modern grammarians claim that the criteria to differentiate
between parts of speech are grammatical form and syntactic function only,
while lexical meaning of this or that class of words is considered to be too
vague to rely upon in defining these classes. Taking "form" in rather a wide
sense, they characterise nouns, for instance, as possessing certain formal
characteristics which attach to no other class of words. These are the prefixing
of an article or demonstrative, the use of an inflexional sign to denote
possession and plurality.
Parts of speech are lexical-grammatical word-classes which are
characterized by a general abstract grammatical meaning expressed in certain
grammatical markers.
However not all grammatical classes have special markers for
grammatical categories, the range of word-classes capable of possessing
categorial paradigms is not universal and differs in various languages. For
instance, in Russian and Ukrainian adjectives, numerals, pronouns are
inflected in categories of case, number and gender, whereas in English, which
exposes an analytical structure, these word-classes are utterly devoid of any
grammatical markers with the exception of a few pronouns.
The problem of parts of speech is one that causes great controversies
both in general linguistic theory and in the analysis of separate languages.
The term “parts of speech”, though firmly established is not a very happy
one. A general definition of the principles on which the classification of parts
of speech is based becomes absolutely necessary.

20
 We cannot here go into the controversy over these principles that has
lasted for a considerable time now, and we will limit ourselves to stating the
principles of our classification and pointing out some difficulties inherent in it.
The principles on which the classification is based are three in number:
1) meaning; 2) from; 3) function. Each of these requires some additional
explanations.
1. By meaning we do understand not the individual meaning of each
separate word (its lexical meaning) but the meaning common to all the words
of the given class and constituting its essence. Thus, the meaning of the
substiveness is “thing-ness”. This applies equally to all and every noun and
constitutes the structural meaning of the noun as a type of word. D.Crystal,
though, criticizing the traditional definitions of parts of speech, based on the
semantic approach suggests that “the definitions found in traditional
grammars vary between authors, but they share a vagueness and
inconsistency of approach which has not endeared them to modern linguists.
Ch.Fries used the following verse L.Carrol to prove that lexical meaning is not
to be taken into account while differentiating between parts of speech:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Варкалось. Хливкие шорьки

Did gyre and gimble in the wade; Пырялись по наве,
All mimsy were the borogoves, И хрюкотали зелюки,
And the mome raths outgrabe. Как мюмзики в мове.

At the same time Russian linguist Shcherba who constructed a senseless

phrase: Глокая куздра штеко будланула бокра и кудрячит бокренка,
stressed the fact that thanks to the word forms and word order it is possible
to find sense even in meaningless words.

The definition of a noun as a word used for naming some person or thing,
is thought to be inappropriate, because it excludes many nouns, which could
not easily be described as ‘persons, things, places’, such as abstract qualities
and actions.”
2. By form we mean the morphological characteristics of a type of word.
Thus, the noun is characterized by the category of number (singular and
plural), the verb by tense, mood and others.
3. By function we mean the syntactic properties of a type of word. These
are subdivided into two: a) its method of combining with other words; b)
function of the words in the sentence.
Taking the verb as an example, we can state that, for example, a verb can
be combined with a following noun (to write letters) and also with a following
adverb (write quickly).
V.D. Arakin in his “Comparative typology of the English and Russian
languages” singles out the criteria, vital for comparing parts of speech in
different languages:
21
 1) Semantic criterion, which implies that this or that word belongs to
some notional category;
2) Morphological criterion, which implies that that this or that word
belongs to some class according to its morphological features. Thus, for
instance, case paradigm of a word characterizes it as a noun or and adjective;
3) Functional aspect is very important for identifying what part of speech
the word belongs to. This criterion is referred to as a syntactic one;
4) combinability of words;
5) word-building type.
Both in Ukrainian and English there are the following parts of speech:
noun, adjective, numeral, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, particle,
interjection
Only for English articles, auxiliaries are characteristic. In Ukrainian there
is the adverbial participle, not found in English.
However, though the parts of speech presented in the contrasted
languages are nearly the same, they have considerable differences. The main
difference consists in grammatical categories and means of expressing them
in the contrasted languages. For instance, in Ukrainian, a noun is
characterized by three grammatical categories: 1) case (declension paradigm
of 6 cases); 2) number (singular and plural); 3) grammatical gender
(masculine, feminine, neuter). As distinct from Ukrainian, the noun in English
is characterized by 3 grammatical categories: number (singular and plural),
case and definiteness/indefiniteness (definite and indefinite articles).

Issues for discussion

1. Explain the meaning of the term “parts of speech”.
2. Comment on the terms “parts of speech”, “word-classes”, “lexical-
grammatical classes of words” that identify the subject under consideration
and say, which of them are used by different scholars. Choose one term and
give reasons why it is the most appropriate one.
3. Prove that it is impossible to find out a particular class this or that
word belongs looking at an isolated word.
4. The criteria to differentiate between different the parts of speech and
divide all the words into the parts of speech.
5. Give the reasons why some grammarians consider meaning not to be a
good criterion for identifying the parts of speech. Give reasons why other
grammarians stick to the point that meaning, function and form should all be
taken into account to characterize the parts of speech.
5. Characterize the parts of speech singled out in English and Ukrainian.
Allomorphic features that can be observed in the English and Ukrainian part
of speech system.
6. State the difference between notional and functional words.
Characterize the functional words in the contrasted languages.

22
2. GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES OF THE NOUN
Grammatical categories of the noun.
Categories characterizing nouns in Categories characterizing nouns
English: in Ukrainian:

- Number (singular and plural); - Case (declension paradigm);

- Case (nominative and genitive); - Number (singular and plural);
- Definiteness and indefiniteness. - Gender (feminine, masculine and
neutre).

The category of number. As soon as the category of number is the only

morphologically expressed category common for the languages under
analysis, it would be only natural to look at it first.
The category of number expresses the quantitative relations, existing in
the real life and reflected in the conscience of native speakers, which have
morphological expression in corresponding morphological forms. Modern
English like most other languages singles out two numbers: singular and
plural. The meaning of singular and plural seems to be self-explanatory, that is
the opposition: one –more than one.
Both in Ukrainian and English the category of number is realized
synthetically: the use of zero and marked inflections.
Singular in English is expressed only by the zero inflection. Singular in
Ukrainian is expressed by the system of inflections characteristic of the nouns
of different declensions (four declensions in Ukrainian), which includes both
zero inflection and marked inflections.
The major allomorphic feature in the system of noun categories is the
dual number in Ukrainian (as well as in Russian): дуб – дуби – два дуби,
слово – слова – два слова.
Plural is expressed in Ukrainian by morphemes depending on the
declension the noun belongs to. In English plural can be formed by sound
interchange, which cannot be found in Ukrainian but this way of forming
plural form is not productive and cannot be treated as typological
characteristics of the English noun. Here we also find some words of foreign
origin that form plural with the help of some borrowed inflections: Latin and
Greek.
Typologically isomorphic are the classes of singularia and pluralia
tantum nouns, found both in English and Ukrainian. They have either singular
or plural meaning respectively.
There are certain semantic groups of singularia tantum nouns, presented
in both languages:

23
 1. Nouns denoting parts of the world: the North, the South-East,
північний захід, південний схід.
2. Names of materials: gold, silver, straw; золото, срібло, сіно…
3. Collective nouns: furniture, rubbish, hair, mankind; білизна,
птаство, волосся, професура, жіноцтво.
4. Abstract notions: courage, knowledge, advice, news; відвага,
знання, виховання.
Isomorphic semantic groups of pluralia tantum nouns are:
1. Summations nouns: trousers, shorts, scales; окуляри, ворота,
2. Names of remnants: scraps, sweepings, remnants; покидькию,
недоїдки
3. Names of some games: cards, darts, billiards; шахи, шашки, карти,
кеглі.
4. Some abstract and concrete notions: outskirts, commas, contents,
means; будні, злидні, хрестини.
5. Geographical names: Athens, Nethelands, Carpathians; Атени, Суми,
Карпати
As have already been mentioned, plural and singular nouns stand in
contrast as diametrically opposite. Instances are not few, however, when their
opposition comes to be neutralised. And this is to say that there are cases
when the numeric differentiation appears to be of no importance at all. Here
belong many collective abstract and material nouns. If, for instance, we look at
the meaning of collective nouns, we cannot fail to see that they denote at the
same time some plurality and a unit. They may be said to be doubly
countables and thus from a logical point of view form the exact contrast to
mass nouns: they are, in fact, at the same time singular and plural, while mass
words are logically neither. The double-sidedness of collective nouns weakens
the opposition and leads to the development of either Pluralia tantum, as in:
weeds (in a garden), ashes, embers, etc., or Singularia tantum, as in: wildfowl,
clergy, foliage, etc.
Compare the Ukrainian: кучері, гроші, дріжджі, сходи, зелень, листя,
дичина. Similarly in Russian: дрожжи, деньги, кудри, всходы, листва, дичь,
зелень. German: Eltern, Geschwister, Zwillinge –Pluralia tantum; das Geflügel,
das Wild, das Obst –Singularia tantum. Similar developments may be traced in
French: les pois, les épinards, les asperges.
In some cases usage fluctuates, and the two forms are interchangeable, e.
g. brain or brains: he has no brains or little brains; victuals is more common
than victual; oats than oat; similarly: His wages were high. How much wages
does he get? That is a fair wage. They could not take too much pains.
The dual nature of collective nouns is shown linguistically in various
ways: by the number of the verb or by the pronoun referring to it, as for
instance, 1) My family are early risers, they are already here. 2) My family is not
large. It is important to observe that the choice between singular and plural
depends on the meaning attached to the noun. Compare: We have much fruit
24
this year and The rich fruits of the heroic labour of Soviet people are visible from
all the corners of the earth.
Similarly: The football team is playing very well. The football team are
having bath and are coming back here for tea.
Some stylistic transpositions of singular nouns can be observed in
English in cases like the following: trees in leaf, to have a keen eye, blue of eye,
strong of muscle. Patterns of this kind will exemplify synecdoche –the simplest
case of metonymy in grammar.
Other "universals" in expressing plurality will be found in what may be
called "augmentative" plurals, i. e. when the plural forms of material nouns
are used to denote large amounts of substance, or a high degree of something.
This is often the case when we see the matter as it exists in nature. Such plural
forms are often used for stylistic purposes in literary prose and poetry, e. g.:
the blue waters of the Mediterranean, the sands of the Sahara Desert, the snows
of Kilimanjaro. Russian: синие воды Средиземного моря, пески Сахары, снега
Арктики.Ukrainian: Сині води Середземного моря, піски Сахари, сніги
Арктики. French: les eaux, les sablesю German: die Sände, die Wässer.
We find examples of the stylistic use of plural and singular in poetry:
«Еще в полях белеет снег,/А воды уж весной шумят.» (Тютчев)
«Люблю ее степей алмазные снега.» (Фет)
Plural forms of abstract nouns used for stylistic purposes may be traced
in language after language:
Ukrainian: «Іду я тихою ходою, / Дивлюсь –аж он передо мною, /
Неначе дива виринають, / Із хмари тихо виступають / Обрив високий,
гай, байрак». (Шевченко)
Russian: «Повсюду страсти роковые / И от судеб защиты нет.
(Пушкин)
«Отрады. Знаю я сладких четыре отрады.» (Брюсов)
The category of gender. The category of gender is characteristic of most
Indo-European languages. The nouns are grouped into types, based on the
kind of endings they have or on the way they pattern with other words. They
have an ability to assimilate the words dependent on it (adjectives, pronouns)
in form. These types are known as morphological (grammatical) gender
classes. In Russian and Ukrainian every noun has a seme of gender: masculine,
feminine or neuter. This category in Ukrainian is formal, except the nouns
denoting people or animals. The semes of gender, as well as the semes of case
and number are inherent in the meaning of the noun inflections, for example,
words неб‐ом and зірк‐ою have the semes of thing-ness, singular number,
instrumental case, and they differ only in gender, which is expressed by the
inflections –ом for masculine and –ою for feminine.
The category of gender in Ukrainian and Russian is characterized the
noun correlating in form with adjectives, ordinal numerals, possessive and
demonstrative pronouns and form free word-combinations. It should be
mentioned that in Ukrainian, as well as in Russian nouns are correlated in
25
gender with verbs in the past: Місяць з’явився на небі. Дівчина опинилась у
кімнаті.Grammatical gender in Ukrainian is formally expressed in suffixes:
zero morpheme usually signals the masculine gender, morphemes –а, -я, are
considered to belong to feminine nouns, ‐о, ‐e are for neuter. This feeling of
gender semes is so distinctive that borrowed words are referred by native
speakers to a certain gender according to the final phonemes: лото, кіно,
бюро acquired a neuter gender, thanks to Slavonic perception.
In Ukrainian there is a group of nouns of the common gender: писака,
задавака, стиляга, бідолаха, причепа, каліка, єхида, недоторка, замазура.
Morphologically, such nouns are differentiated by the sex of the person they
are used to denote. Formally this differentiation is manifested by the gender
inflections of adjectives, pronouns, etc. or just by the context. There is also a
double gender (masculine or neuter, feminine or neuter): the nouns with the
suffix –ище and ‐о. Formally ending –е usually signals the neuter gender, while
the initial motivating noun: вовчище, дубище, дівчище, річище, забудько,
непосидько, базікало, ледащо. The gender of the nouns expressing the names
of professions, such as геолог, інженер, професор is clear from the
components of the word-combination, or the context.
Thus, in Ukrainian, Russian, German and other languages there are three
grammatical genders –masculine, feminine, and neuter. In Italian, Spanish,
French, Danish –two genders (masculine and feminine), in Estonian, Finnish,
Japanese and Turkish languages no gender distinctions are made, but in the
Bantu language, as E. Sapir points out, there are about 42 genders realised
with the help various inflexions.
In present-day English no gender distinctions of the kind are possible, as
can be seen from the following sentences: The actor played ‐ the actress
played—the baby played; the actor plays – the actress plays – the baby plays.
The form of the verbal predicate, therefore, does not reflect the existence of
any gender distinction in the three above-given nouns. Compare in Ukrainian:
Актор грав ‐ актриса грала ‐ дитя грало, etc.
Absence of the morphological category of grammatical gender in English,
as could be already noticed, is also easy to be proved by the unchanged forms
of attributes: The great emperor lived long –Великий (m) імператор жив
довго. The great heroine lived long –Велика (f) героїня жила довго; The
great desire lived long –Велике (n) бажання жило довго. The adjective
"great" does not reflect any grammatical gender distinction of the English
head nouns "emperor", "heroine" or "desire" as it is in Ukrainian.
Nouns in Old English used to have the category of grammatical gender:
masculine, feminine and neuter. However the historic development of the
language resulted in the fact that the grammatical category of gender
vanished. But English has ways of identifying natural gender. We can
distinguish animate beings from inanimate, personal from non-personal
beings, males from females. It is chiefly done by the use of pronouns,

26
correlating with nouns i.e. inanimate nouns can be replaced only by it and
which, animate nouns make use of he/she, her/his, him/her and who.
Personal animate nouns refer to males or females, and pattern with he or
she, such suffix as –ess can also indicate the female. Non-persons, usually
animals can also express male or female sex lexically: bull/cow, horse/mare,
cock/hen.
Many nouns are given variable gender, depending on whether they are
thought of in an intimate way. The names of vessels and vehicles are usually
associated with feminine gender. So are the names of hotels and inns. The sun
which is strong and powerful is he, while the Earth, Paradise, are associated
with females. The countries are mostly perceived as feminine, as well as peace.
War and death are referred to as he. A strong male trend in personification is
in computing, where PCs are given male pet-names and pronouns.
The category of definiteness/indefiniteness (determination). Another
noun category is that of definiteness/indefiniteness, which is usually
expressed by articles that can be either a function word, as in English, French,
German, Greek, Arabic, or an affix, as in Nordic languages, Bulgarian and
others. Indefiniteness can be expressed by means of zero article (Bulgarian)
or by the indefinite article. In the languages where no articles are found this
category is expressed by other categories, for example, in Russian it can be
expressed by case: «выпил воду» (def.) - «выпил воды» (indef.).
Here we are going to speak about articles in English, because it is the only
formal sign of this category accepted by all the scholars. Although a great
number of philologists have treated the article both in English and in other
languages, it will be only fair to say that even the most essential points
concerning the theory of the articles still remain doubtful.
There are two approaches to the status of the article. From one point of
view, the group “article + noun” contains two word-forms, it is a peculiar type
of word-combination, then no “zero” article can exist, and the meaning of the
definite and indefinite articles is the meaning of two separate words. Another
viewpoint regards the group “article + noun” as an analytical form of the
noun.This view states that the use of the definite, indefinite and zero articles
mark a grammatical category. This category is called determination
(definiteness-indefiniteness). The question is whether the group “article +
noun” can be a form of the noun in the same way as, for example, the group
will speak. If we were to take that view, some nouns would have three forms,
two of them analytical, room, the room, a room; while other nouns would have
two forms: water, the water.
The definite, indefinite and zero articles have semantic structure of their
own, which predetermines their use with the nouns.
The semantic structure of the definite article:
1) seme of individualization, i.e. the noun determined by the definite
article is singled out of the class of similar objects;

27
 2) seme of uniqueness, signaling that the object determined by the article
is the only one: the sun, the earth;
3) seme of demonstration, which makes the definite article similar in
meaning with the demonstrative pronouns;
4) seme of generalization, i.e. the object is perceived as a generalized
definition of all the objects of the class (The horse is a domestic animal).
The semantic structure of the indefinite article:
1) seme of classification, i.e. the object is one of the similar objects of that
class;
2) seme of singleness, which signals that the identified object is one;
3) seme of novelty, i.e. the indefinite article points out that the
information about the noun it determines is new.
The meaning of zero article coincides either with the meaning of the
definite or that of the indefinite article.
The use of articles in the sentence is determined not only by the meaning
they express but also by a situation the referent of the noun modified by an
article is found in. Thus, the definite article serves as an indicator of the
information which is presented as the "facts already known", i.e. as the
starting point of the communication. In contrast to this, the indefinite article
or the zero article introduces the central communicative part of the sentence,
presenting "new facts". In the situational study of syntax the starting point of
the communication is called its "theme", while the central informative part is
called its "rheme".
The category of case. The case is a grammatical category of a nominative
part of speech (nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals), reflecting its syntactic
relation to other words in the sentence. The category of case is characteristic
of inflectional languages. From the point of view of the grammar the case
means the change of form of the word by adding or changing the case ending
or special affixes. In Ukrainian there are seven cases: nominal, dative,
accusative, instrumental, locative, vocative. Other Slavonic languages have
either seven cases (Polish, Czech, Serbian) or six (Russian, Slovak), or no cases
(Bulgarian). There is no case system in most European languages (except
German and Icelandic that have 4 case systems), while in English and the
Scandinavian languages have just nominative and genitive cases.
The nominative case is the principle case all other cases are formed from. It
expresses the agent of the action, usually the case of the subject of the sentence.
The genitive case (also called possessive case, second case) is the case that
marks a noun as modifying another noun. It often marks the noun as being the
possessor of another noun.
The accusative case is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of
a transitive verb. The English name "accusative" comes from the Latin accusativus,
which, in turn, is a translation of the Greek αιτιατική. This word may also mean
"causative", and this may have been the Greeks' intention in this name, but the sense
of the Roman translation stuck and it is used in some other modern languages as the
name of this case, for example in Russian (винительный).
The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to
whom something is given. For example, in "John gave Mary a book". The name is
derived from the Latin casus dativus, meaning "the case appropriate to giving"; this
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 was in turn modelled on the Greek ἡ δοτικὴ πτῶσις, from its use with the verb
διδόναι (didónai) –"to give".
The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is
the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an
action. The noun may be either a physical object or an abstract concept.
The prepositional case is a grammatical case that marks the object of a
preposition (also called locative case, for the objects of the prepositions often denote
location). This term can be used in languages where nouns have a declensional form
that appears exclusively in combination with certain prepositions.
The vocative case is used for a noun identifying the person (animal, object,
etc.) being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative
expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being
spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence.

The category of case in present-day English has always been disputable.

So was the question of expressing the case category. Some grammarians
considered present-day English to have two cases (O.Jespersen, V.Yartseva,
B.Rohovska, B.Khaimovich), others considered it to have four cases (G.Curme,
M.Deutshbein), and still other grammarians have been inclined to see in
English five, six or more cases.
The most common view on the subject is that nouns have only two cases:
the common case and the genitive or possessive case. The common case is
characterised by the zero suffix (child, boy, girl, student), the possessive case
by the inflection ‐'s (phonetic variants[-z] , [-s], [-iz]). The nominative case is
an unmarked and the genitive is a marked member of the opposition.
There are grammarians, O. Curme and M. Deutschbein, for instance, who
recognised 4 cases, namely nominative, genitive, dative and accusative: the
genitive can be expressed by the ‐'s inflection and the of-phrase, the dative by
the preposition to and word-order, and the accusative by word order alone.
E. Sonnenschein insists that English has a vocative case since we may use an
interjection oh before a name.
It is to be noted that the choice between the opposite viewpoints as to the
category of case in English remains a matter of linguistic approach. From the
viewpoint of inflectional morphology, which admits grammatical categories
expressed morphologically (by means of inflections), prepositions cannot be
treated as means of case system expression. It is not relevant to look at
English through the lattice of categories set up in Latin grammar.
Nevertheless in Modern English there are prepositional structures
denoting the same grammatical relation as the possessive case inflection or
word order distinguishing the accusative from the dative. These are such
phrases as "of‐phrase" and "to‐phrase", in which the prepositions of and to
function as grammatical indicators of the relations expressed by the cases.
It is important to remember that the grammatical content of the
possessive case is rather complex. Besides implying possession in the strict
sense of the term, it is widely used in other functions. Compare such patterns,
as:
a) my friend’s room (genitive of possession → the room of my friend)

29
 b) my friend's arrival (subjective genitive → the arrival of my friend)
c) the criminal's arrest (objective genitive → the arrest of the criminal)
d) a child's language (qualitative genitive → the childish language)
e) a week’s payment (genitive of measure → a weekly payment).
There is no formal difference between different types of possession but it
is clarified by linguistic or situational context. Thus, mother's care may mean
«любов матері», i.e. some individual love, and «материнська любов» in its
general sense. The meaning of the phrase may vary with the context. The
same is true of such uses as policeman’s duty, man’s philosophy, lawyer's life,
woman’s logics etc.
The genitive inflection is also used with the words associated with other
parts of speech (yesterday's rain, today's match, tomorrow's engagement).
The ‐'s inflection offers some peculiar difficulties of grammatical analysis
in idiomatic patterns with the so-called group-genitives, for instance: Mr.
what's‐his‐name's appearance, or They said it in a number of people's presence.
There are also patterns like "the man I saw yesterday's son" quoted by
H. Sweet. The 's belongs here to the whole structure noun + attributive clause.
Such group-genitives are not infrequent and seem to be on the increase in
present-day English.
It is interesting to note, in conclusion, that there is a change going on in
present-day English which runs counter to the general trend towards loss of
inflections, that is the spreading of 's-genitive at the expense of the of-genitive.
Until a few years ago, the genitive with 's was used in modern times mainly
with nouns which could be replaced (in the singular) by the pronouns he and
she, but not with nouns which could be replaced by the pronoun it: so that
people normally said the man's face and the woman's face, but the face of the
clock and the surface of the water. The 's-genitive was used in certain
expressions of time and distance (an hour's time), and could be used with
many nouns replaceable in the singular by it or they (the Government's
decision); as is well known, there was also a number of commonly used
phrases where the 's-genitive was used even though the noun was one which
could be replaced in the singular only by it (New Year's Day, the water's edge).
In recent years, however, the 's-genitive has come into common use with
nouns which are replaceable in the singular only by it. Here are a few
examples taken from reputable sources: resorts' weather → the weather of
seaside towns; human nature's diversity → the diversity of human nature; the
game's laws → the laws of the game.

Issues for discussion

1. Give characteristics to the noun as a part of speech. Characterize the
morphological features of the noun in English and Ukrainian, as well as
different types of nouns.

30
 2. Enumerate suffixes, typical of English and Ukrainian nouns.
Allomorphic features, found in morphological characteristics of the noun in
the contrasted languages.
3. Give characteristic to the grammatical categories of English and
Ukrainian nouns that are common and different for the languages in question.
4. Talk about the peculiarities of the expression of the category of
number in the languages under consideration. Explain the notion of number in
grammar.
5. Characterize singularia tantum and pluralia tantum nouns in the
contrasted languages.
6. Speak on the issue of the grammatical gender. The category of
grammatical gender in Ukrainian, the agreement of other parts of speech with
the noun in gender in the Ukrainian language.
7. Define the category of definiteness/indefiniteness expressed by
articles in English. Characterize the semantic structure of the indefinite,
definite and zero articles.
8. Characterize the category of case. Speak on the peculiarities of the
cases systems of the contrasted languages. Comment on the different
viewpoints concerning the number of cases in English.

3. GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES OF THE VERB

Morphological categories of the verbs in the contrasted languages are
tense, aspect, taxis, mood, person and number.
Though all the grammatical categories of the Verb are represented in
English and Ukrainian, there are considerable differences in their
manifestation in the languages.
The category of tense is a grammatical category of the verb reflecting
temporal localization of the action or state expressed by the verb. The
localization is correlated with real or imaginative "here and now". It is
expressed by opposition of tense forms of the verb, indicating if the action is
simultaneous, preceding or following the moment of speaking.
The category of tense serves to localize the action expressed by the verb
in time; grammemes of this category express different types of relation
between time of the action and moment of speaking, and sometimes between
the time of the action and some other moment, except the moment of
speaking (see relative tenses).
In Modern Ukrainian verb tense forms, if used directly, indicate that the
action coincides with the moment of speaking (“the Present Tense”), precedes
the moment of speaking (“the Past Tense”) or follows the moment of speaking
(“the Future Tense”). If the action is related to some other action (in sub-
clause), it usually correlates with the verb of the main clause: “Йому
здавалось, що у кімнаті хтось дихає”, i.e. the action of the sub-clause is
thought to be simultaneous with the action in the main clause, therefore the
31
present tense is used. If the action of the sub-clause is considered to follow
that of the main clause, the verb in the sub-clause is used in the future tense-
form: "Вони були впевнені, що він з’явиться". The present day Ukrainian
tense category is expressed by three tense forms for the imperfective verbs
and two tense forms for the perfective verbs (there is no Present Tense of the
perfective verbs). In Ukrainian it is hard to state the meaning expressed by the
Present Tense form, it does not come to just denoting the action, immediately
connected with the moment of speaking. In the English verb system the three
main divisions of time are represented by three tenses. Each of them may
appear in the common and in the continuous aspect.
Some doubts have been expressed about the existence of the future tense
in English. O. Jespersen discussed this question more than once. The reason
why Jespersen denied the existence of the future tense in English was that the
English future is expressed by the phrase "shall/will + infinitive", and the
verbs shall and will which make part of the phrase preserve, according to
Jespersen, some of their original meaning (shall: an element of obligation, and
will: an element of volition). Thus, in Jespersen's view, English has no way of
expressing "pure futurity", free from modal shades of meaning, i. e. it has no
form standing on the same grammatical level as the forms of the past and
present tenses.
Tense forms can be absolute, i.e. those which do not depend on the other
tense forms and determined by the moment of speaking: the present tense
form, denoting the action, taking place at the moment of speaking; the past
tense form, denoting the action, which took place before the moment of
speaking; and the future tense form, denoting the action after the moment of
speaking. Relative tense forms denote actions, regarded not in connection
with the moment of speaking but depend on other tense forms or time
indicators.
According to some researchers, the tense system of the English verb
includes two sets of forms: absolute tense forms (Indefinite) and relative
forms (Continuous and Perfect).
Aspect meanings, which do not have any morphologically expressed
forms should be observed within the tense system of the verb.
The use of tense forms can be stylistically marked. In this case the tenses
are used metaphorically, the speaker found in some other time plane, as if
looking closely at the past events (this use of past is called the “dramatic
past”): “I remember it as if it were yesterday: he comes in, takes the
newspaper and reads those horrible lines to me”. Another example of
metaphorical use of the tense forms is when some future actions are
anticipated by the speaker: “Ну, я пішов.”
Means of expressing the tense category are various, both analytical and
synthetic means are found in English and Ukrainian. Though in English
analytical forms prevail, while in Ukrainian they are few in number.

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 In Old Russian the category of tense was characterized by the greater
number of forms, than present-day Russian and Ukrainian which can be
accounted for by weakly developed aspect category. The category of tense in
ancient Russian included the following forms: the present tense – веду, ведеш,
ведеть; imperfect tense – ведяхъ, ведяше, which expressed a continuous or
repeated action in the past; aorist – ведохъ, веде, used to denote an immediate
action in the past; pluperfect – бях вела, бяше велъ; the simple future tense;
the pre-future tense, used to expressed an action, taking place before another
future action and correlating with it.
Later development of imperfective and perfective aspects resulted in
imperfect and aorist gradually disappearing from the language, while the
semantics of the perfect tense broadened, it began to denote the perfective
aspect if the verb has a prefix, and imperfective aspect, if the verb had no prefix.
In English we can trace a completely different picture. During the Old
English period there existed imperfective and perfective aspects, expressed
morphologically by verbal prefixes. The category of tense was presented by two
tense forms, those of present and past. The verbs split into two classes: the
verbs with vowel interchange and the verbs with dental suffixes. In the course
of the language development the category of aspect almost disappeared, which
resulted in the development of the tense category, which is represented by a
great number of tense forms.
The category of aspect is a lexical-grammatical category, characterizing
the process or action, expressed by the verb (if the action is repeated,
continuous, frequent, immediate, complete, incomplete, terminative, non-
terminative). These characteristics are expressed in different languages in
various morphological (morpho-syntactic) forms, therefore we can speak
about different sub-classes of aspect category.
In the Ukrainian language aspect distinctions are drawn according to the
relation of the action to its own limit, and two aspect forms are singled out,
perfective and imperfective aspects. The imperfective aspect expresses the
action in process, no limit implied – писати, говорити, малювати,
стрибати.
Perfective aspect expresses the action bounded by some limit, some
result of it is implied – написати, прийти, сказати, стрибнути.
The aspect system in Ukrainian is characterized by the correlated pairs of
perfective and imperfective verbs, close or similar in meaning: носити‐нести,
носив‐ніс.
Ukrainian has a special morphological system for expressing aspect
category, namely it is expressed by affixes, such as:
1) Suffixes –ів, ‐ув and interchange of vowels or consonants are used to
form imperfective verbs: зігрівати, показувати.
2) Suffix -ну‐, added to the verb stem is used to form perfective from
imperfective verbs: стрибнути.
3) Prefixes з‐, зі‐, по‐, за‐ and other: з’їсти, зірвати, побудувати,
занести.
4) Change of the stressed syllable: насипати – насипати.

33
 There are also pairs of verbs formed from different roots: брати –
взяти.
As far as the English language has no perfective/imperfective aspects,
and still the way how the action is going on is characterized morphologically,
we are to speak about different aspectual properties of the English verb in
comparison with the Ukrainian one.
Treating the category of aspect as characterizing the actions by their
behaviour and having certain morphological signs, Smirnitsky singled out two
aspects, common and continuous. Common aspect is expressed by zero ending
or –s in the Present, -ed ending or vowel interchange in the Past, shall/will +
verb forms in the Future and denotes the fact. Continuous aspect is expressed
by the verb to be in the corresponding tense form and –ing ending of the verb
and denotes the process.
NB! As distinct from Ukrainian aspect category, where all the verbs form
correspondent pairs of perfective and imperfective verbs with their own
morphological characteristics, presenting two correspondent sets of forms, in
English verbs of common and continuous aspect do not form such pairs, almost
any verb can appear in both common and continuous form.
So, it is obvious that there is no direct correspondence between English
and Ukrainian aspects, thus the English continuous aspect is not identical with
the Ukrainian imperfective. The relation between the two systems is not
simple. On the one hand, the English common aspect may correspond not only
to the Ukrainian perfective but also to the Ukrainian imperfective aspect; thus
he wrote may correspond both to написав and to писав. On the other hand,
the Ukrainian imperfective aspect may correspond not only to the continuous
but also to the common aspect in English: писав – wrote, was writing.
The category of taxis is a lexical-grammatical category characterizing
such relations between the actions as simultaneity, precedence, interruption,
etc. The notion of taxis was introduced by R.Yakobson. It characterizes the
action from the point of view of another action but not from the point of view
of the moment of speaking. As distinct from the category of tense, closely
connected with the fact of speaking (as well as other verb categories, such as
person, number, mood), the category of taxis does not reflect the fact of
speaking. Alongside the term “taxis” there are also other terms denoting the
same notion: “relative tense”, “time correlation”, “order”.
Taxis can be expressed by special means (morphological, syntactical,
morpho-syntactical, lexical), which are closely connected with the means
expressing tense and aspect categories. Taxis is found in every language, but it
can be called a grammatical category only for the languages that have a special
system of grammatical forms. Thus, for instance, in English it is expressed by
the system of perfect forms of the verb. They are the forms of relative time,
expressing the precedence of one action to the other.
In Ukrainian the verb category of taxis is expressed by means of
combination of tense-forms in complex sentences with sub-clauses of time, as
34
well as in sentences with homogeneous predicates and compound sentences if
such time indicators as «спочатку», «потім» are found in them.
The Modern English perfect forms have been the subject of a lengthy
discussion. The difficulties inherent in these forms are plain enough and may
best be illustrated by the present perfect. This form contains the present of
the verb to have and is called present perfect, yet it denotes an action which
no longer takes place, and it is (almost always) translated into Ukrainian by
the past tense, e. g. has written –написав, has arrived –приїхав, etc. The
position of the perfect forms in the system of the English verb is a problem
which has been treated in many different ways. Among the various views on
the essence of the perfect forms in Modern English the following three main
trends should be mentioned:
1. The category of taxis is a peculiar tense category. This view was held,
for example, by O. Jespersen.
2. The category of taxis is a peculiar aspect category. This view was held
by a number of scholars, including G. Vorontsova.
3. The category of taxis does not belong to the tense system or to the
aspect but a specific category different from both. This view was expressed by
L.Bloomfield, A. Smirnitsky, E.Koshmider.
Thus, the opposition between writes and wrote is that of tense, that
between wrote and was writing is that of aspect, and that between wrote and
had written is that of taxis. It is obvious that two oppositions may occur
together; thus, between writes and was writing there is an opposition of tense
and aspect; between wrote and will have written there is an oppositions of
tense and taxis, and between wrote and had been writing there is an
opposition of aspect and taxis. And, finally, all three oppositions may occur
together: thus, between writes and had been writing there are the oppositions
of tense, aspect, and taxis.
The category of voice is a morphological category of the verb, expressing
the subject-object relations.
In most languages the relation between the subject and the action is
expressed by personal inflexions of the verb; while relation between the
action and the object may be expressed by case correlation and other means,
due to the language typology.
On the basis of morphological means of expressing the voice, we can say
that the number of voices differs in various languages. In the Ukrainian
language the correlative pairs of active and passive verb forms are
characteristic of transitive verbs only. The category of transitivity is based on
the peculiarities of valency and meaning of the verb, so it should be treated as
a lexical-grammatical, not morphological category. Thus, transitive verbs have
correlative active and passive voice forms, the voice category being expressed
morphologically; while intransitive verbs have no correlative passive forms
and function as one-voice active verbs. However, if intransitive verbs develop
their meaning and obtain some semes of transitivity (i.e. require a direct
35
object), they have all the properties of transitive verbs, therefore can have
passive forms: to fly – to fly a plane; to run – to run a hotel.
In English some forms of the active voice find no parallel in the passive:
the forms of future continuous, present perfect continuous, past perfect
continuous.
Arakin V.D. suggests that the following voices should be singled out in the
Russian language: 1) active voice, expressed by syntactic structures, involving
transitive verbs and denoting the action directed at the direct object, expressed by
the accusative case without a preposition; 2) reflexive-middle voice
(morphological sign of it is the suffix –ся of the verbs), which can be divided into
sub-groups of reflexive verbs, when the subject and object coincide – одеваться,
обуваться; reciprocal-reflexive verbs, denoting the action performed by two
people, each of them being the doer and the recipient of the action – обниматься;
verbs with generally reflexive meaning, denoting the action concentrated on its
doer – обрадоваться; 3) passive voice (the suffix –ся and passive forms of
participles, derived from transitive verbs with the help of the suffixes –м, -н-, -т-
plus correspondent form of the verb быть): букет был собран недавно.
In English only active and passive voice are morphologically expressed. Some
researchers suppose reciprocal and reflexive voices to exist in English, but means
of their expression can not be called morphological, so they cannot be treated as
special forms of voice.
V.D. Arakin
The fact that the both languages have similar grammatical categories
does not prove their typological similarity. One should take into account their
distribution and functioning. If we compare the use of passive voice forms in
the contrasted languages, we will see that it differs considerably. Thus, for
instance, in English the passive forms are widely used when the action is
directed at the subject of the sentence, while in Ukrainian and Russian word
order is used in this case (the object in the accusative case is placed before the
predicate: this long bridge was built at the beginning of this century – цей
довгий міст побудували на початку сторіччя).
The Ukrainian verb in the active voice form functioning as the predicate
of the indefinite-personal sentences corresponds to the English passive verb
form: нам повідомили приємну новину – we were told good news. John was
given a good mark – Джону поставили гарну оцінку.
The category of mood is a morphological word-changing verb category,
which denotes the relation of the action to reality from the point of view of the
speaker.
The relations of the action to reality can be different: if the action is
thought to be real, we deal with the indicative mood, if it is considered to be
unreal, possible or impossible, desirable or probable, we talk about the
subjunctive mood. The imperative mood serves to express orders or requests.
The indicative mood in the contrasted languages denotes a real action,
taking place in the present or past, or which is to be performed in the future.
However means of expressing indicative mood differ in the languages under
analysis (see the categories of tense, aspect, taxis, voice).
36
 Much greater differences can be found in the system of the subjunctive
mood forms in English as compared to Ukrainian. In Ukrainian there is just
one mood, expressing unreality, called either subjunctive, or conditional or
suppositional. It is used to denote an action, thought to be unreal, desirable or
possible. It is formed by means of the past tense form of the verb and particle
би (б), which can both precede or follow the verb. The action can be referred
to the present, past or future: він би пішов; якби ви йому все розповіли.
As distinct from Ukrainian, in English there are 4 oblique moods:
subjunctive I (Be it as it is), subjunctive II (It is time we went home),
suppositional (It is only natural that we should do it) and conditional (To go
there would be unreasonable), expressed both synthetically and analytically.
The system of Oblique Moods in English, represented by the
abovementioned forms, functions in the set of sentence-patterns, used to
express different attitude of the speaker to the unreal action. The number of
sentence-patterns if large, and it is traditional use of this or that form of the
verb, which is important, not the meaning of the form.
Thus, for instance, in conditional sentences, expressing unreal condition,
we use the Subjective II in the conditional clause, while in the main clause we
find the Conditional Mood (If it didn’t rain, they would go for a walk).
In Old English the subjunctive mood was expressed by a special system of
forms with a special set of inflections, different from those of the indicative. In
the course of time, however, most of the inflections were lost, and the difference
between the forms of the subjunctive and those of the indicative has almost
disappeared. In Modern English there remain only two synthetic forms of the
old regular system of the subjunctive, which differ from the forms of the
indicative.
Кобрина с.61
The Subjunctive Mood was used extensively in Old English, as in classical
Latin and Modern German. As is known, since the Middle English period,
however, it has been slowly dying out, its place being taken by compound verb-
forms with auxiliaries (should, might, etc.). The only really firmly established
subjunctive form surviving in English in the nineteen-thirties was were; it was
(and still is normal for standard English to use were and not was in a "closed
conditional clause", as in If he were here, we should certainly be able to see him
(he is not here). There were other subjunctive survivals in sporadic use (as in if
it be so), but these all sounded a trifle literary and affected. During and after the
war <…> subjunctive forms increased in frequency, especially in the written
language; this seems to have begun in the language of administration, and
spread from there to the literary language. The forms used are third-person
singular ones without inflexion, as in I insist that he do it; it was essential that he
make a choice (where do is used instead of does or shall do, and make instead of
should make). Sentences of this type (especially the first) are also sometimes
heard in speech. It is extremely unlikely, however, that there is going to be any
serious long-term revival of the subjunctive forms; the present development is
probably only a passing tendency. If it has any long-term significance, this is
likely to be not a revival of the subjunctive, but an eroding away of the third-
singular inflexion; by accustoming people to forms like he do and he make these

37
 usages may prepare the way for the ultimate disappearance of he does and he
makes.
Rayevskaya N. pp.110‐111.

The main controversy and difficulty in the mood system of the English
language is that it has no special form of expressing subjunctive (no particle,
no morphological means of its own). It results in the use of existing analytical
and synthetic forms of the verb to express unreal, desirable action, some
supposition or intention. Thus, the forms of the Subjective II coincide with
those of the Past Indefinite and Past Continuous (if the action is referred to
the present) and the Past Perfect and Past Perfect Continuous (if the action is
referred to the past):
It is time he were here! Oh, if only they were going home now! (present)
I wish she had not said a word to them.
The Conditional Mood coincides in form with the Future-in-the-Past and
modal verbs would and could plus Infinitive.
To speak to them would be to waste time.
He could have done it long ago.
The Suppositional Mood has the same form as the Future-in-the-Past and
the modal verb should plus Infinitive.
The request is that the students should bring their papers by the 1 March.
So we can see that there is no straightforward mutual relation between
meaning and form.
There is another peculiar complication in the analysis of mood. The
question is, what verbs are auxiliaries of mood in Modern English? The verbs
should and would are auxiliaries expressing unreality (whatever system of
moods we may adopt after all). But the question is less clear with the verb
may when used in such sentences as Come closer that I may hear what you say
(and, of course, the form might if the main clause has a predicate verb in a past
tense). Is the group may hear some mood form of the verb hear, or is it a free
combination of two verbs, thus belonging entirely to the field of syntax, not
morphology? The same question may be asked about the verb may in such
sentences as May you be happy! where it is part of a group used to express a
wish, and is perhaps a mood auxiliary. We ought to seek an objective criterion
which would enable us to arrive at a convincing conclusion.
Imperative mood is used to express will, request, order, command, and
encouragement. The main seme of the imperative mood is “incentive” or
“prohibition”. In Ukrainian the paradigm of the imperative mood contains
analytical and synthetic forms, derived from the present tense verb stem (for
imperfective aspect verbs) and from the present and future tense forms (for
perfective aspect verbs). The simple forms of the indicative mood are the
second person singular: бери, неси, знай; and first and second persons
plural: робімо, ходімо, знаймо, знайте. The simple forms are directed at
encouraging the addressee to do something, while the first person singular
38
form implies that the speaker is also encouraged to do something. Analytical
forms of the third person singular and plural are formed with the help of the
particle хай (нехай) and the present tense form of the verb (imperfective
aspect) and present/future tense forms (perfective aspect): Хай нап’ються
донесхочу ниви! Нехай я заплачу. Хай ми на них подивимось.
In Ukrainian the category of mood has person and number
characteristics. The second person singular and plural has the synthetic forms
of читайте, пишіть, in English there is only one form for singular and plural:
read, write, etc. The form of the first person plural, addressed both to one and
to several interlocutors, can be expressed in two ways in Ukrainian: if the verb
is perfective, the form of the imperative mood is synthetic (підемо, візьмемо,
скажімо); whereas if the verb is imperfective, this form is expressed
analytically and synthetically (будемо писати, будемо читати,
читатимемо, робитимемо, зароблятимемо). These forms in Ukrainian
correspond to the one analytical form in English: let us read, let us go. The
imperative form of the third person singular and plural is expressed
analytically in Ukrainian and English: let him come – хай він прийде.
Beside the main seme of “incentive”, the indicative mood in Ukrainian has
the semes of “condition”: знайди він цього листа, все було б краще and the
seme of “supposition”: хоч вбий, не розумію.
The categories of person, number and gender. The category of person is a
grammatical word-changing category of the verb, expressing the relation of
the subject (of the action, process, quality) to the speaker. As soon as the
category has a regular expression of verb forms, often in combination with
personal pronouns, it is considered to be an explicit category.
Some forms of person can have an impersonal (Розвидняється),
indefinite-impersonal one (Його не розуміють), generalized-personal (Що
посієш, те й пожнеш) meaning. The category of person in connected with
other verb categories, such as the category of tense, aspect, mood, voice.
The category of number, expressing the quantitative characteristics of
different phenomena, depends on the number of the noun or pronoun in the
function of the subject of the sentence. In Ukrainian the agreement of the
subject with the predicate in person, number and gender is mandatory (the
morphological paradigm according to the conjugation of the verb). English,
being mostly analytical with the destroyed inflection system, is characterized
by sporadic agreement of the subject with the predicate in person and
number. The ways to express this agreement are: the ending –s for the third
person singular in the Present Indefinite, the Past Indefinite form were of the
verb to be for the plural, the Present Indefinite of the verb to be (am for the 1st
person singular, is for the 3rd person singular and are for the plural forms and
2nd person singular).
The category of gender is characteristic of the Ukrainian verb only and
alongside with the categories of person and gender is included into the
morphological word-changing paradigm of every verb.
39
 One must bare in mind that in English the system of tense-aspect forms is
one for all the grammatical categories, including tense, aspect and taxis, as
well as voice, person, number. The two forms “has been writing” and “has
written” represent two forms of one and the same verb to write.
As far as Ukrainian is concerned, the category of aspect is represented by
a set of the opposed word-forms, i.e. one and the same verb cannot change
from perfective to imperfective, it can be of either perfective aspect or
imperfective. Therefore, the category of aspect is not a word-changing
category but the characteristic feature of the individual verb, so to express the
same idea in Ukrainian we will need the following:

where “wrote” and “has written” are two forms of one and the same verb
“to write”.

where “пишу” and “написав” are two different verbs, the first is
imperfective, while the second is perfective.

40
 Issues for discussion.
1. Define the category of tense, characterize the ways it is expressed in
English and Ukrainian.
2. Speak on the problem of aspect and describe its expression in the
contrasted languages. Explain the tense and aspect systems in English and
Ukrainian from the diachronic point of view.
3. Give your reasons proving or contradicting the following statement:
The category of taxis is found in English only. To be persuasive, bear in mind
the following questions: What does the category of taxis express? What are
the formal signs of the category of taxis in English? Are there formal signs of it
in Ukrainian? Can this category be expressed in a non-morphological way?
4. Tell about the notion of conjugation. The categories of person, number
and gender in Ukrainian. Allomorphic features of the contrasted languages as
far as these categories are concerned.
5. Characterize the category of voice in general, and in English and
Ukrainian in particular.
6. Tell about the category of mood in English and Ukrainian, the
morphological means of expressing the category.

4. THE NON‐FINITE FORMS OF THE VERB (VERBALS)

The non-finite forms of the verb, also called verbals are special forms of
the verb that have a double nature, they combine the features of the verb with
those of the noun or adjective and adverb. As soon as the verbals differ a lot
from the verbs, they are sometimes singled out into an individual class of
words, still they do not have specific characteristics of their own (their
categories coincide with those of the verb, while the functions in the sentence
are the same as those of nouns and adjectives), which proves that they cannot
form an individual class of words.
The verbals in English are represented by the infinitive, the gerund, the
participle and in Ukrainian there is the infinitive, the participle and the
adverbial participle. So allomorphic are the gerund in English and the
adverbial participle in Ukrainian.
The forms of the infinitive in both languages represent allomorphic
features. Thus, the English infinitive is always distinguished by its identifier
"to" (to come, to be asked, to be doing), whereas the Ukrainian infinitive is
characterized by the suffixes -ти, -ть, -тись, -тися (бігти, везти, сісти,
їхать, сіять). In Ukrainian every verb has just one form of the infinitive,
while in English we find a paradigm of six analytical forms baring specific
grammatical meaning (to do, to be doing, to have done, to have been doing, to
be done, to have been done).
Specifically Ukrainian is the diminutive infinitive formed by suffixes:
спатки, спатоньки, спатусі, спатусеньки, купці, купоньки, сістоньки,
їстоньки.
41
 Lexically non-finites do not differ from finite forms. Grammatically the
difference between the two types of forms lies in the fact that non-finites may
denote a secondary action or a process related to that expressed by the finite
verb.
Non-finites possess the verb categories of voice, perfect, and aspect.
They lack the categories of person, number, mood, and tense.
None of the forms have morphological features of non-verbal parts of
speech, neither nominal, adjectival or adverbial. In the sphere of syntax,
however, non-finites possess both verbal and non-verbal features. Their non-
verbal character reveals itself in their syntactical functions. Thus, the
infinitive and the gerund perform the main syntactical functions of the noun,
which are those of subject, object and predicative. Participle I functions as
attribute, predicative and adverbial modifier; participle II as attribute and
predicative. They cannot form a predicate by themselves, although unlike non-
verbal parts of speech they can function as part of a compound verbal
predicate.
Syntactically the verbal character of non-finites is manifested mainly in
their combinability. Similarly to finite forms they may combine with nouns
functioning as direct, indirect, or prepositional objects, with adverbs and
prepositional phrases used as adverbial modifiers, and with subordinate
clauses.
Non-finites may also work as link verbs, combining with nouns,
adjectives or statives as predicatives, as in: to be/being a doctor (young,
afraid). They may also act as modal verb semantic equivalents when
combined with an infinitive: to have/having to wait, to be able/being able to
stay. So the structure of a non-finite verb group resembles the structure of any
verb phrase.
All non-finite verb forms may participate in the so-called predicative
constructions, that is, two-component syntactical units where a noun or a
pronoun and a non-finite verb form are in predicative relations similar to
those of the subiect and the predicate: I heard Jane singing; We waited for the
train to pass; I saw him run, etc.
So, verbals make up a part of the verb system, and have some features in
common with the finite forms, and in so far as they are singled out amid the
forms of the verb, they must have some peculiarities of their own.
Let us have a look at the system of verbal categories and state which of
them are expressed in the English and Ukrainian verbals. In English none of
the verbals has any category of person, number and mood, while in Ukrainian
the participles have the categories of number, and gender (стрибаючий,
стрибаюча, стрибаючі).
Still the greatest interest present the categories of aspect, tense, taxis and
voice which are explicitly presented in both languages. In Ukrainian the
category of aspect is represented in the system of non-finite forms of the verb
in the same way as in the system of the finite verbs, that is by the set of
42
opposed perfective and imperfective verbs.
The infinitive (бути ‐ бувати, ходити ‐ заходити, замислюватися ‐
замислитися). The participle (будувавший ‐ побудувавший). The adverbial
participle (розмовлявши ‐ порозмовлявши).
In the English infinitive, we find an opposition between two sets of
forms: (to) speak—(to) be speaking
(to) have spoken–(to) have been speaking,
As soon as the continuous infinitive is opposed to the indefinite infinitive,
we come to the conclusion that the infinitive has the category of aspect, i.e
there is a distinction between indefinite and continuous aspect. As the
continuous verb forms the continuous infinitive expresses some process in
contrast to the fact expressed by the indefinite infinitive. Still there is a great
difference between continuous-indefinite in the system of the finite verb and
continuous-indefinite in the system of the English infinitive forms. The
category of aspect is very often correlated with the category of taxis. Compare
the following examples:
He may read the book (in future).
He may be reading the book (now).
It is a common knowledge that the indefinite infinitive in many cases
expresses the action following the action of the main verb, while to express
the action simultaneous with that of the main verb, the continuous infinitive is
mostly used.
The category of aspect is not so clearly represented in other non-finite
forms of the verb, though sometimes the forms of the continuous gerund and
continuous participle I are found in fiction: Catherine had no leisure for speech,
being at once blushing, tying her gown, and forming wise resolutions with the
most violent dispatch. (J. Austen). The use of the continuous participles seems
to be a means of giving prominence to the fact that the actions indicated were
actually happening at that very moment. It speaks of potential for such forms
to be introduced to the language system.
The category of tense and taxis. The category of tense is mostly
represented by the Ukrainian imperfective participles and adverbial
participles that have present and past tense forms (діючий‐діявший, діючи‐
дявши). In English verbals have no tense category.
As far as the time relations are concerned the relative, not absolute time
can be expressed by the English verbal, so the category of taxis is widely
represented by the infinitive, gerund and participle of the English verb.
In the infinitive, we find the following oppositions:
to speak – to have spoken
to be speaking – to have been speaking,
and in the gerund and the participle the oppositions
speaking –having spoken
being spoken –having been spoken
We can see the opposition of two forms in each case, one of which is
43
unmarked (the first column), while the other is marked (the second column
have + past participle). If we turn to the meaning of the second-column forms,
we shall find that they express precedence, whereas the first-column forms do
not express it. Once again we see that in each pair one item is unmarked both
in meaning and in form whereas the other (the perfect) is marked both in
meaning (expressing precedence) and in form (consisting of the pattern "have
+ past participle").
So, the category of taxis is universal in the Modern English verb system: it
is found in all forms of the English verb, both finite and non-finite, except the
imperative.
The category of voice. As well as the finite forms of the verb, the verbals
have a distinction between active and passive, both in English and Ukrainian,
as will readily be seen from the following oppositions:
to read – to be read
to have read –to have been read reading
being read ‐ having read—having been read
руйнуючий – зруйнований
пишучий ‐ написаний
Comparing the English and Ukrainian voice systems for verbals we can
see that in English the infinitive, participle and gerund have both active and
passive forms, while in Ukrainian it is only the participle that can be either
active or passive, still it is represented by more than one form of each verb
(gender and number distinctions are found here: написаний роман, написана
книга, переказане оповідання, зшиті речі, etc).
To sum up, then, what we have found out concerning the categories in the
verbals, we can say that all of them have the categories of correlation and
voice; the infinitive, in addition, has the category of aspect. None of the verbals
has the categories of tense, mood, person, or number in English.
So, allomorphism is observed in the categorical meanings of the infinitive
and the participle. The infinitive in Ukrainian has no perfect (perfective)
passive form, no continuous aspect form, no perfect active and perfect passive
forms of the Participle, that are pertained to present-day English (to have
slept, to be sleeping, to have been seen; having been asked/having asked, even to
have been being asked, etc).
The gerund and the adverbial participle represent allomorphic verbals in
English and Ukrainian respectively. As a result, they can not be contrasted in
any way. The gerund has both verbal and noun characteristics, the former
being those of tense and voice (asking ‐ being asked, having asked ‐ having
been asked) and it can take an object, as the verb can: I like reading books, the
gerund can also be modified by an adverb: Going quickly never tires him. The
noun characteristics of the gerund find their expression in its functions in the
sentence as subject, object, the predicative part, the attribute, and as an
adverbial modifier of manner. For example, as subject and predicative:
Deciding is acting. (Saying). As object: He won't stand beating. As an attribute:
44
She found an opportunity of taking him away. As adverbial modifiers: The
Mouse shook its head impatiently wothout opening its eyes. (L. Carroll) The
rain poured down without ceasing. (Maugham) On arriving at the garden
entrance, he stopped to look at the view. (Galsworthy) The gerund can also be
a complex subject, a complex object and other complex parts of the sentence
(e.g.: His being ill is unknown to me. That was his being ill that spoiled
everything. I know nothing of his being ill), etc.
The Ukrainian adverbial participle, whether active or passive, or non-per-
fective present and perfective past, remains an indeclinable verbal form
(несучи, працюючи, слухаючи)
The functions of the infinitive and the participles in the sentence gen-
erally coincide in both languages. Allomorphic for the Ukrainian language are
some syntactic functions typical of the English participles and infinitives,
which may form with some classes of verbs (for example, those of the physical
and mental perceptions) complex parts of the sentence. These parts of the
sentence are completely alien to Ukrainian:
He was seen to go/going home. We heard him sing/singing. He wants me
to be reading. The lesson (being) over, the students went to the reading‐hall.
Each of these secondary predication complexes, with the exception of the
for-to-infinitive construction, has a subordinate clause or incomplete sentence
equivalent in Ukrainian: Бачили, як він ішов/коли він ішов додому. Ми чули,
як він співає/ співав. Після того/оскільки заняття закінчилося, студенти
пішли до читальної зали.

Issues for discussion.

1. Tell about the verbals, found in English and Ukrainian, isomorphic and
allomorphic.
2. The ways to render the gerund into Ukrainian, the equivalents of the
adverbial participle, to translate it into English.
3. Tell about the forms of the English verbals. Compare them with
Ukrianian verbals.
4. Speak on the double nature of the infinitive, participle I, participle II,
adverbial participle and gerund?
5. Describe the functions, the verbals perform in the sentence, compare
their use in English and Ukrainian.
6. Give characteristics of the verbals as far as their grammatical
categories are concerned.

5. ADJECTIVE, NUMERAL, PRONOUN, ADVERB, STATIVE

The adjective is a major part of speech, traditionally defined as a
describing word or 'a word that tells us something about a noun‘. In modern
grammar Adjective is usually defined in more grammatical terms. Formally, a
45
central adjective meets four grammatical conditions: it can 1) be used
attributively in a noun phrase (an old man); 2) follow be or another link verb
and occur alone in a predicative position (He looks old); 3) be premodified by
intensifying words such as very (He is very old); 4) have comparative and
superlative degree forms (an older person, the most extraordinary).
But not all adjectives pass all these tests.
The adjective is a part of speech denoting non-procession feature of the
subject, event, or another feature expressed by a noun. The adjective can
denote either an absolute feature of the subject regardless of other subjects,
events or features, or a relative feature, characterizing the subject by its
relation with another subject, event or feature.
The adjective as a part of speech cannot be called a universal category,
this class of words, is not distinctly specified, in many languages the adjective
is not considered to be an individual part of speech with morphological and
syntactic characteristics of its own.
This class of words is correlated with the referents through the modified
noun, so it always depends on it semantically. The link of the adjective with
the modified noun is expressed through either attributive relations, when a
noun phrase is formed with the adjective in the function of the attribute, or
predicative relations, when the adjective functions as a part of the compound
nominal predicate, linked to the modified noun by means of a link-verb.
Traditionally two groups of adjectives are singled out: descriptive
adjectives and relational adjectives.
The grammatical categories characterizing adjectives differ in various
languages, their number depends on the language type and the way of
description. In English and Ukrainian the adjective is characterized by the
category of grading, i.e. all descriptive adjectives have degrees of comparison.
The category of grading is expressed by the positive, the comparative and
the superlative degree markers. The way of grading in the contrasted
languages may be synthetic or analytical. The use of the synthetic way of
grading is restricted in English mostly to base adjectives and the adjectives ‐
able, ‐er, ‐ow, ‐y (big – bigger – the biggest; long – longer – the longest; young –
younger – the youngest, narrow – narrower – the narrowest; happy – happier –
the happiest; clever – cleverer – the cleverest) and the two-syllable adjectives
with the concluding stressed syllable (polite – politer ‐ the politest). In
colloquial emphatic speech base and disyllabic adjectives may be graded in
the analytical way too (The roar grew more loud). The analytical forms of
grading are more often employed in English than in Ukrainian (important –
more/less important – the most/the least important; interesting – more/less
interesting – the most/the least interesting).
In Ukrainian the synthetic way of grading is more often used. It is formed
by means of the suffixes ‐іш‐/‐ш ‐ and the prefixes най‐, щонай‐ or якнай‐
(добрий – добріший – найдобріший/ якнайдобріший).
The comparative or the superlative (or both) degrees of some Ukrainian
46
adjectives, as was already shown above, may be formed analytically by means
intensifying adverbs більш/менш, найбільше, багато/набагато, значно,
куди (більш/менш значний, багато/набагато важливіший, значно
багатший). Of isomorphic nature in the contrasted languages is the existence
of suppletivity (good – better – the best; bad – worse – the worst; little – less –
the least; добрий – кращий – найкращий; поганий ‐ гірший – найгірший;
гарний – кращий – найкращий).
Some groups of adjectives in the contrasted languages have no grading.
They are a) adjectives denoting a constant feature of the noun referent (blind
–сліпий, deaf –глухий, barefooted –босий, nude –голий); b) some colour
adjectives (lilac –бузковий, lemon –лимонний, cream –кремовий, ruby –
яскраво‐червоний, chestnut –темно‐коричневий; c) adjectives expressing the
intensive property with the help of suffixes or prefixes (bluish, reddish,
yellowish; синявий, синюватий, жовтуватий, жовтісінький, здоровенний,
злющий, прегарний, супермодний); d) limiting descriptive adjectives which
single out or determine the type of things or persons (previous, middle, left,
childless, medical, dead); e) adjectives with comparative and superlative
meaning (former, inner, upper, junior).
It is important to stress that the adjective in Ukrainian is a declinable
class of words, which has the categories of gender, number and case and agree
with the modified noun in all these categories which is expressed by the
morphological paradigm marked by individual inflections. It is the main
allomorphic featured of the Ukraianian adjective as compared to the English.
In English if there are several premodifying adjectives to one headword
they have definite positional assignments. Generally, descriptive adjectives
precede the limiting ones, as in a naughty little boy, a beautiful French girl, but
if there are several of each type, adjectives of different meanings stand in the
following order:
Table 1
The order of the adjectives modifying one and the same noun

Judgement Size Colour Form Age Limiting Noun

adjective
wonderful huge pale blue Thin young Greek
horrid small bright red round ancient left
nice tiny yellow square

The functions of adjectives in the sentence, those of attribute and

predicative, are common in the contrasted languages. In English he adjective
can form a part of a predicative construction (non-verbal objective and
absolute nominal predicative constructions), then it performs a func tion of
the part of the complex object or the part of the adverbial modifier, which is
not found in Ukrainian.
The Numeral is a part of speech that have a common implicit lexical-
47
grammatical meaning of quantity (two, ten, twenty‐one, два, десять,
двадцять один) or order of some objects (the first, the tenth ‐ перший,
десятий). The syntagmatic properties of numerals are characterised in the
contrasted languages by the identical combinability of numerals a) with nouns
(four days, the first step; чотири дні, перший крок); b) with pronouns (all
three, some five or so; всі три, якихось п'ятеро з них); с) with numerals (two
from ten, one of the first, the second of the ten; два від п'яти, один із перших,
другий з‐поміж п'яти); d) with adverbs (the two below/ahead, двоє спереду);
е) with the infinitive (the first to соте/to read; перша співати, другий
відповідати), etc.
In the sentence the numeral performs the same function as the noun
(cardinal numerals) and adjective (the ordinal numerals), i.e. it can be subject
(Four are present), object (I like the second), attribute (It is my second trip), a
simple nominal predicate (the two there; їх десять там) and the adverbial
modifier (they marched three and three; вони йшли по три).
All numerals in the contrasted languages fall into two subclasses:
cardinal and ordinal. Cardinal numerals in both languages denote number:
three, five, ten, twenty-one, etc. три, п'ять, десять, двадцять один. Ordinal
numerals denote order of persons or objects and are used in English with the
definite article: the third, the fifth, the tenth, the twenty‐first, the one hundred
and twenty‐third, etc. The main allomorphic feature of numerals (like other
nominals) consists in morphological/categorial endings that most numerals
have in Ukrainian, being a declinable class of words. They have number, case
and partly gender distinctions. For example, the category of case: двадцять,
двадцяти, двадцятьом, двадцятьма; number: третій – треті; gender:
перший ‐ перша ‐ перше.
All other cardinal numerals have a common form for masculine and
feminine genders and an individual form of the neuter gender, for instance:
три жінки, три чоловіки, but троє дітей; п'ять дубів/ лип and п'ятеро
курчат, even п'ятеро хлопців/дівчат An exception makes the category of
gender of the cardinal numerals один and два which have three gender
distinctions (один, одна, одне; два, дві, двоє).
Pronoun. In the category of person English makes distinction between
three classes of personal pronouns denoting respectively the person (s)
speaking (first person); the person (s) spoken to (second person) another
person(s) or thing(s) — third person.
Person distinctions are naturally closely related to the category of number.
There is no formal distinction of persons in plural, e. g.: we speak, you speak,
they speak. There is no distinction of number in the 1st and 2nd persons
either.
In point of fact, the binary opposition speak :: speaks in all English verbs,
except the modal auxiliaries expresses the relation: 3rd person singular or
any other person of both numbers. The exception to the patterns of

48
conjugational variants is also the verb to be, whose paradigm is unique and
includes five distinct finite forms: am, is, are, was, were.
Archaic verb-forms in ‐t or ‐st are generally associated with the old
Like in other provinces of grammar, attention must be drawn to the use of
pronominal forms in transposition. The affective value of such "metaphors"
may be traced in many, if not all, modern languages. The first to be mentioned
in English is the use of the pronouns we, you and they in patterns where they
are synonymous with the formal generic one.
The so-called "editorial" we (Lat. pluralis modestial) is well known, for
instance, as used in many modern languages by authors of scientific papers,
monographs or articles in a newspaper, etc. Examples are hardly needed.
With reference either to an unspecified person or to people in general we
may also use the pronoun they. It is important to observe that in spoken
English you implies reference to the speaker or those with whom he identifies
himself, they — reference to people with whom the speaker does not identify
himself, e. g.: No tree, no shrub, not a blade of grass, not a bird or beast, not even
a fish that was not owned. And once on a time all this was jungle and marsh and
water, and weird creatures roamed and sported without human cognisance to
give them names... Well! They had got it under, kennelled it all up, labelled it,
and stowed it in lawyers' offices. (Galsworthy)
They used as a generic pronoun usually refers to some persons unknown
and is often highly emotional denoting that the speaker dissociates himself
and the person addressed from the situation, e. g.:
The pronoun they with reference to indefinite persons is sometimes used
with demonstrative force, e. g.:
They must hunger in winter that will not work in summer. (proverb)
The shift of the pronominal form expresses a shift in the speaker's attitude
and tone. Here again we must say that this recurrent feature is not specifically
English. Other languages present similar phenomena.
In Russian and Ukrainian the generic use of verb-forms in the 2nd person
singular and plural without a pronominal indicator is a well known stylistic
device, e. g.:
Сонце! Сонце! Це тебе, довічний світе, стріваючи, вітає земля...
Прокинулась світова мати, показала нам личенько красне... Ви почуваєте,
що ви частина того світу, невеличка цяточка його живого тіла,
непримітний куточок його безмірної душі (П. Мирний).
The adverb is an class of words expressing the quality or state of an
action, the circumstances in which the action proceeds, or a degree of some
other quality. Adverbs in English and Ukrainian are indeclinable, they have
some common, as well as some divergent features in their morphological
structure and partly in their syntactic functions.
From this definition it is difficult to define adverbs as a class, because
they comprise a most heterogeneous group of words, and there is
considerable overlap between the class and other word classes. They have
49
many kinds of form, meaning and function. Alongside such undoubtful
adverbs as here, now, often, seldom, always, there are many others which also
function as words of other classes. Thus, adverbs like dead (dead tired), clear
(to get clear away), clean (I've clean forgotten), slow, easy (he would say that
slow and easy) coincide with corresponding adjectives (a dead body, clear
waters, clean hands). Adverbs like past, above are homonymous with
prepositions.
Qualitative adverbs in both contrasted languages may be used in the
comparative and superlative degrees. They are formed with the help of
synthetic or analytical means. Synthetic means are suffixes -er, ‐est in English
and ‐ше, ‐іше, ‐ній in Ukrainian. Unlike English, however, in Ukrainian prefixes
are also used to form the superlative degree of qualitative adverbs (най‐,
щонай‐, якнай‐): найшвидше, найцікавіше, якнайшвидше, щонайменше,
щонайбільше.
The analytical means include auxiliary words (adverbs, particles): more,
most, still more, less, least, still less in English and their equivalent adverbs and
particles in Ukrainian (often – oftener/more often – oftenest/most often – less
often – still more/less often, slowly – more slowly – less/ least slowly, ясно –
ясніше – найясніше – більш/менш ясно – найбільш/ найменш ясно; ясно–
ще ясніше/трохи ясніше – набагато ясніше). The suffix ‐ій/‐чій is used to
form the comparative degree of the adverbs хутко –хутчій, мерщій.
A separate group in both languages constitute suppletive adverbs, whose
grading is generally achieved by synthetic means, eg: well, better, best; bad,
worse, worst; little, less, least; far, further, furthest, etc. There are fewer of such
adverbs in Ukrainian: добре, краще, найкраще; погано, гірше, найгірше;
гарно, краще, найкраще.
The specific feature of many Ukrainian qualitative adverbs is their ability
to take diminutive suffixes (‐еньк‐, ‐есеньк‐, ‐юсіньк‐, ‐очк‐, ‐ечк‐) and become
diminutive: гарно –гарненько –гарнесенько –гарнюсінько –гарнюньо).

Issues for discussion

1. Explain the reason why the adjective is not considered to be an

individual part of speech by some grammarians.
2. Tell how the category of grading is expressed in English and Ukrainian;
what types of adjectives you know and which of the types can have
degrees of comparison?
3. Compare the use of analytical and synthetic means of grading in English
and Ukrainian.
4. Speak on the numeral as a part of speech; tell what categories the
numerals have in English and Ukrainian.

50
 PART II SYNTAX

INTRODUCTION. Syntax is 1) a system of rules and means of creating

speech units characteristic of a language; 2) a branch of grammar studying the
process of speech formation: combinability and word-order; general
peculiarities of the sentence as a separate language unit, and those of the
statement as the part of a text.
The syntax as a branch of linguistics studies the language mechanisms
that make it possible to form speech units by means of language elements
(words, word-forms, word-combinations, sentences). It studies the formation
of speech expressions (statements, characterized by certain intonation that
can be included into a text). The syntax also studies and formulates the rules
of speech formation.
The syntax is divided into three parts:
1) The syntax of the phrase, also called Minor Syntax . It studies the
combinability of words (syntactic valency), ways of their realization
(agreement, government, parataxis (примыкание). It also studies the
relations they express (attributive, complementary).
2) The syntax of the sentence, also called Major Syntax. It studies the
inner structure and communicative types of the sentence (statement,
question, inducement), predicativity and modality; semantics and synonymic
transformations (replacement of a clause by a participial construction); the
simple and composite sentence as an integral predicative and poly-predicative
unit; the ways and means to form the relations within the complex and
compound sentences (coordination and subordination). Word-forms and
phrases are observed as parts of the sentence.
3) The syntax of the text. It studies the modifications the syntax
undergoes in the process of text formation; the rules of adopting a sentence to
the context (inversion, ellipsis, meta-text parenthetic words, such as
‘however’, ‘therefore‘ and others) and to the situation (addressing and
authorization).
Syntactic systems of the English and Ukrainian languages can undergo
syntactic analysis for they have both isomorphic and allomorphic features and
phenomena to study. The principal isomorphic features of the of these are
predetermined, as will be shown in this section, by several factors, the main of
which are the following: 1) by common in both languages classes of syntactic
units which are word-groups, sentences and various types of suprasyntactic
units; 2) by generally common paradigmatic classes and types of these
syntactic units; 3) by isomorphic and allomorphic types and means of
syntactic connection in them; 4) by mostly isomorphic syntactic processes
taking place in their word-groups and sentences; 5) by identical syntactic
relations in word-groups and sentences of both contrasted languages; 6) by

51
common functions performed by different parts of speech in word-groups and
sentences.
The allomorphic features and phenomena at the syntactic level find their
expression in the following: 1) in the existence of various qualitative and
quantitative differences in some paradigmatic classes of word-groups and
sentences; 2) in some types of word-groups; 3) in the unequal representation
of different means of syntactic connection; 4) in the existence of different
ways of expressing predication; 5) in the difference in the structural forms of
some English parts of the sentence; 6) in the means of joining some
subordinate clauses to the main/principal clause, etc.
All these features characterize respectively the syntactic constants of the
syntactic level, i. e. the syntactic processes, the syntactic relations, the
syntactic connections in word-groups and sentences being themselves
constants of this language level. (Korunets)

1. PHRASE
A phrase/word-group is a syntactic construction which typically contains
more than one word, but which lacks the subject-predicate structure usually
found in a clause. The grammatical description of phrases is sometimes called
"minor syntax", in distinction to "major syntax" studying the sentence and its
textual connections.
The word-group in both contrasted languages consists of two or more
grammatically connected notional parts of speech expressing some content.
Word-groups in English and Ukrainian may be: 1) syntactically free
combinations of words like to learn much, to learn hard, to learn quickly, to
learn well, to learn there/here, etc. or 2) idiomatically bound (constant)
collocations, i. e. unchanged for the given sense word-combinations as to have
dinner/supper, to take measures, to throw light, Hobson's choice, etc.
Free word-groups or word-combinations exist alongside of prepositional
phrases which are often considered even to be of the same nature as the
idiomatic word-groups. Genuine syntactically free word-groups, unlike
prepositional phrases, are used to name actions (quick reading), objects (a
new hat), state of objects (the house ablaze), number or quantity (two thirds,
the first three); also they may give characteristics of an action (singing well,
going quickly, arriving first –новий капелюх, йому/Миколі страшно, дві
третіх, перші три, швидко йти, гарно читати).
Common features are also observed in the structural forms of word-
groups in the contrasted languages. They are:
1.Simple word-groups which consist of two immediate components /ICs/
connected with the help of one grammatical means (synthetic or analytical):
this book –these books, to see her; to read well; nice flowers; cotton yarn, people
of rank; ця книжка – ці книжки, бачити її; гарно читати, дуже добре,
зайти у фойє, вийти з метро.
52
 2.Word-groups of complicated structure and grammatical form, i. e. with
two ways of grammatical connection of their components or expressing
different grammatical relations, e.g.: writing and reading letters (co-ordinate
and analytical forms of connection), these books and magazines (synthetic and
co-ordinate connection), to see Mike driving a car (analytical and predicative)
–ці книжки та журнали, застати двері зачиненими, бачити когось у
метро, носити кімоно останньої моди.
There are also structurally more complicated free word-groups in both
languages, eg: those long sentences for you to analyze and translate –ті довгі
речення тобі для аналізу й перекладу. In this English word-group and its
Ukrainian semantic equivalent one can identify different grammatical
relations: a) attributive (those long sentences) and predicative (sentences for
you to analyze).
Since present-day English is mainly analytical by its structure, the
predominant means of its grammatical connection in word-groups are
analytical. They are syndetic (prepositional) and asyndetic (syntactic
placement). These two forms of analytical connection are very often of equal
semantic relevance, as a result of which they are often interchangeable, as in
the following substantival word-groups:

Syndetic connection Asyndetic connection

production of sugar cane sugar cane production
books at the institute library the institute library books

Phrases are traditionally classified into types based on the most

important word they contain: if this is a noun, for example, the phrase would
be called a noun phrase‐, if an adjective* an adjective phrase, and so on. Six
word classes - nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and prepositions -
are found as the identifying elements (or heads) of phrasal constructions.
However, there are considerable differences between the syntactic
patterns which can occur within each type of phrase, ranging from the very
limited possibilities of pronoun phrases to the highly variable patterns found
within noun phrases.
The difference between the phrase and the sentence is a fundamental
one. A phrase is a means of naming some phenomena or processes, just as a
word is. Each component of a phrase can undergo grammatical changes in
accordance with grammatical categories represented in it, without destroying
the identity of the phrase. For instance, in the phrase write letters the first
component can change according to the verbal categories of tense, mood, etc.,
and the second component according to the category of number. Thus, writes
a letter, has written a letter, would have written letters, etc., are grammatical
modifications of one phrase.
The sentence is a unit with every word having its definite form. A change
in the form of one or more words would produce a new sentence.
53
 The phrase has no intonation, just as a word has none. Intonation is one
of the most important features of the sentence, distinguishing it from the
phrase. To differentiate between the grammatical study of phrase and its
lexicological study one should keep in mind that grammar has to study the
aspects of phrases which spring from the grammatical peculiarities of the
words making up the phrase, and of the syntactical functions of the phrase as
a whole, while lexicology has to deal with the lexical meaning of the words
and their semantic groups.
In order to understand the nature of phrases as level-forming units we
must take into consideration their status in the larger lingual units built up by
them. These larger units are sentences. It is within the sentence that any
phrase performs its level-determined function (being used as a notional part
of the sentence). On the other hand, any notional word, not only the phrase,
can be used in the role of an individual part of the sentence, such as subject,
object, predicate, etc.
Types of Phrase in English and Ukrainian. According to relations between
their components all word-groups in the contrasted languages split into the
following three types:
1) phrases of coordination
2) phrases of subordination;
3) secondary predication phrases .
1. Phrases of coordination in English and Ukrainian are comprised by
components, equal in rank, which are connected either syndetically or
asyndetically, e.g.: books and magazines; to read, translate and retell; neither
this nor that, книжки й журнали; читати, перекладати й переказувати, ні
те й ні се. Phrases of coordination may include several components of equal
rank, though not necessarily of the same lexical-grammatical nature, e.g.:
(They were) alone and free and happy in love. (Abrahams).
Such and the like phrases in both languages perform the function of
homogeneous parts of the sentence, e.g:
There they were: stars, sun, sea, light, darkness, space, great waters.
(Conrad) – Тут ними були: зірки, сонце, море, світло, темінь, простір,
великі води.
According to the structure of the components and their number, phrases
of coordination may be simple and extended. Simple phrases consist of two
components only, eg: Pete or Mike, he and she, all but me; Петро чи Алекс,
читати й писати, ми з тобою.
Extended phrases of coordination consist of structurally complicated
components: to speak about literature, to analyze it stylistically – говорити
про літературу, аналізувати її стиль.
2. Phrases of subordination in all the languages consist of two parts: a
head word, which is the nucleus of the phrase, and of one or more
complements. They may be either a single notional word or a group of words,
functionally equal to it and having the function of a notional word, e.g: my
54
book, his "oh", her house and garden, the film "Some like it hot", John’s car, etc.
Among the existing classifications of word-groups the morphological
(paradigmatic) classification remains one of the most embracing. It is based
on the lexical-grammatical nature of the head component or on its functional
substitute. As a result, the following paradigmatic classes of word-groups can
be singled out in English and Ukrainian:
Noun phrase, in which the mainly attributive complements may be in
pre-position or in postposition to the noun head. Their way of connection is
analytical in English and synthetic in Ukrainian, though not without
exceptions.
The noun phrase is the main construction which can appear as the
subject, object, or complement of a clause. It consists essentially of a noun or
nounlike word which is the most important constituent of the phrase: a fat
cat, the horses in the stable, the poor, ten Chinese. Sometimes the noun appears
alone or accompanied by one or more other constituents, some of which are
themselves fairly complex syntactic units in their own right. As a result, noun
phrases are more varied in their construction than any other kind of phrase in
English.
The parts of a noun phrase. No matter how complex a noun phrase is, it
can be analysed into one or more of the following fourconstituents:
• The head is the most important constituent, around which any other
constituents cluster. It is the head which controls any agreement with other
parts of the sentence. Thus we have His new book is interesting alongside His
new books are interesting, and Thegirlin the garden saw it herself alongside
The boy in the garden sa w it himself. do not take one), but most noun phrases
do, and the commonest determiners {the and a) are among the most frequent
words in the language.
The determiner can be the centre of its own cluster of words which share
in the expression of quantity. In the present approach, those which appear
before the determiner are called (logically enough) predeterminers. Those
which immediately follow the determiner, preceding any adjectives which
may occur, are called postdeterminers; they are chiefly the numerals (my three
fat cats, the second big party) and a few other quantifying words (such as
many and several).
• The premodification comprises any other words appearing between the
determiner and the head noun-mainly adjectives or adjective-like words. In
the phrase those lovely old French wooden spoons, everything between those
and spoons is said to 'premodify' the noun. (In some grammars, the notion of
premodification is broader, and includes everything in the noun phrase which
appears before the head, including the determiner and its satellites.)
• The postmodification comprises everything which appears in the phrase
after the head. The chief types are prepositional phrases (the car in the
garage), finiteі clauses (the film that I saw), and nonfinite phrases (the new car

55
parked outside). Adverbs and adjectives are also sometimes used to
'postmodify' the noun, as in the journey home and something different.
GROWING NOUN PHRASES
Buns are for sale
The buns are for sale
All the buns are for sale
All the currant buns are for sale
Not quite all the currant buns are for sale
Not quite all the hot buttered currant buns are for sale
Not quite all the hot buttered currant buns on the table are for sale
Not quite all the hot buttered currant buns on show on the table are for sale
Not quite all the many fine interesting-looking hot buttered home-made currant buns
which grandma cooked on show on the table are for sale

Predeterminer Determiner Postdeterminer Premodification Head Postmodification

Not quite all the many fine…currant buns which…table

Verb Phrase is also characterised in English and Ukrainian by some

isomorphic and allomorphic features. The structural types of verb phrases are
common for the languages:
1) with simple objective or adverbial complements;
2) with extended or expanded complements;
3) with simple or extended objective and adverbial complements.
In both languages one can find verb phrases with pre-posed and
postposed complements.
Simple verb phrases with a transitive verb as a head-word contain nouns,
adjectives, numerals or adverbs as subordinate elements, e.g.: to like books, to
receive four, to love her, to prefer blue (to red), to love it to be asleep; любити
книжки, отримати четвірку, кохати її, любити синє, щиро любити,
почуватися краще, etc.
Prepositions are found both in English and Ukrainian verb phrases, e.g.:
to speak of somebody, to divide by two; говорити про когось, ділити на два
(на двоє).
Ukrainian has no equivalents, however, for the combinations of a verb
with a gerund. Such phrases as to sit reading, to like reading are characteristic
of the English language; while it is only in Ukrainian that we find the
combination of a verb with an adverbial participle, e.g.: читати, стоячи; іти,
співаючи; співаючи, іти. The adverbial participle is usually rendered into
English by means of the participle.
It should be pointed out, however, that unlike English, most of Ukrainian
complements and adverbial adjuncts have no fixed position in the word-
group, e.g.: слухати музику – музику слухати, гарно співати – співати
гарно.

56
 Allomorphism is observed in the nature of some complements (gerundial,
infinitival, participial) which often form predicative complexes in English
verbal word-groups, eg: to wait for them to come (Verb plus For-to-Infinitive
Construction); to rely on Bob's reading the article (Verb plus Gerundial
Construction); to see the boy playing tennis (Verb plus Participial
Construction)..
Adjective Phrase. Due to the restricted combinability of different
notionals with the adjectival head, this paradigmatic class of word-groups has
a much smaller number (and varieties) of structural models. The most
productive and usual in English and Ukrainian are the following simple and
extended models with different dependent components.
Allomorphic, і. е. pertaining to English only are adjectival word-groups
with gerundial complements, for instance: worth reading (being read); worth
reading the book; proud of Pete/ him being decorated, proud of his having been
invited.
Apart from the non-existence of gerundial complements, Ukrainian
adjectival word-groups are characterised by some other features of their own.
Among these, for example, is the free location of most of adjectival and
complements adjuncts which is absolutely impossible in English. Ex.: дуже
добра –добра дуже; радий чути –чути радий; значно молодший за мене –
за мене значно молодший, добрий до всіх ‐ до всіх добрий.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to change the order or position of any
immediate constituent as in the word-groups like багато молодший, ніж
вона but not ніж вона, багато молодший, though the pattern can not be
considered completely ungrammatical for a predominantly synthetic
language, like Ukrainian either.
Ukrainian head adjectives, however, express the morphological
categories of number, case and gender which is impossible in English. E.g.:
гарний зовні, гарна зовні, гарні зовні; гарної/гарній зовні, гарною зовні;
добрий/добрим до всіх; рідна/рідної для нас, etc.
Pronoun Phrases in the contrasted languages have some general
features in common. Thus, most often the heads are indefinite, negative and
mostly demonstrative pronouns, and much rarer personal and reflexive
pronouns. The usually common adjuncts in both languages are pronouns,
prepositional nouns, adjectives or adjective phrases, infinitives, verb phrases
and subordinate clauses. The most common place of these adjuncts is
postposition, though in Ukrainian they may be used in preposition as well.
Besides, Ukrainian pronouns are all declinable. E.g.: ми всі –нас усіх –нам
усім –нами всіма; хто з учнів –'кого з учнів –кому з учнів/з них.
Pronoun phrases are formed according to some common structural
patterns in both languages. A characteristic feature of Ukrainian pronoun
phrases is their considerably free position within the pattern which is never
possible in English, e.g.: щось нове –нове щось, нічого казати –казати
нічого, дехто з учнів –з учнів дехто.
57
 Adverb Phrase can be headed by adverbs or by adverbial phrases in
both contrasted languages. The complements may be expressed by adverbs or
by adverbial (usually prepositional) phrases used in preposition as well as in
postposition to the head adverb. This position, i.e. placement is
predetermined by the meaning of the adjunct and by its structural form, the
structurally complicated adjuncts having usually a fixed position even in
Ukrainian word-groups. This is not so with simple adjuncts which may change
their place in Ukrainian under the influence of some type of stress.
There is, therefore, a complete coincidence in the form of structural
models of adverbial word-groups in the contrasted languages. Allomorphism
can be observed only in the placement of some Ukrainian components which
can be free in Ukrainian as in далеко звідси ‐ звідси далеко or the use of the
English once a year corresponding to the Ukrainian prepositional word-
groups of the same meaning раз на рік/ раз на весь рік.
• Pronoun phrases are restricted to a small number of constructions,
and tend not to be recognized as a productive type in English. Examples
include Silly me!, You there!, she herself, we all, nearly everyone, and such
relative clause constructions as those who knew Fred .. .They are usually
analysed as a minor type of noun phrase.
• Adverb phrases are typically found as short intensifying
expressions, such as terribly slowly and very happily indeed Also common
are such time phrases as quite often and very soon, and constructions of the
type as quickly (as I could).
• Adjective phrases are usually combinations of an adjective and a
preceding intensifier, such as very happy and not too awkward. Other types
include cold enough and a wide range of constructions which complement
the adjective, such as easy to please'and loath to do it.
• Verb phrases display very limited syntactic possibilities: a main
verb preceded by up to four auxiliaries (p. 207), as in may have gone and
won't have been listening. However, this limitation does not prevent the
verb phrase from expressing a wide range of meanings to do with time,
mood, and manner of action.
• By contrast, noun phrases allow an extremely wide range of
syntactic possibilities, from such simple constructions as the hat to such
complex phrases as not quite all the fine new hats which were on sale. They
need to be described separately (see right).
• Prepositional phrases are combinations of a preposition plus a noun
phrase: in the back garden, beneath the hedge. They typically perform the
role of adverbial in a clause: I saw it in the garden = I saw it there. They
are also adjectival: the linguist with the red beard.
D.Crystal (p.222)

3. Predicative Word-Groups. Unlike the previous two types of word-

groups, i.e. the co-ordinate and subordinate word-groups, the extensively
used in English predicative word-groups are not found in present-day
Ukrainian. Completely isomorphic, naturally, are primary predication word-
groups, which are singled out in the sentence and comprise the subject and

58
the predicate. For example: The student works hard. The book was published
last year. Студент багато працює. Книжка була опублікована торік.
The syntactic interdependence between the components The stu dent and
works, The book and was published remains unchanged when the predicative
word-group is singled out of the sentence. So are the syntagmatic relations
between the components reflected by the verb works (The student works and
was published (the book) –Студент працює. Книжка опублікована була.
Secondary predication. In Modern English there are several ways of
expressing secondary predication. One of them is what is frequently termed
the complex object: I saw him run, We heard them sing. Let us take the first of
these sentences for closer examination. The primary predication in this
sentence is between the subject I and the predicate saw. I is the doer of the
action expressed by the predicate verb. But in this sentence there is more
predication, that between him and run: the verb run expressed the action
performed by him. This predication is obviously a secondary one: him is not
the subject of a sentence or a clause, and run is not its predicate. The same can
be said about all the sentences given above.
On the syntactic function of the group him run (or of its elements) views
vary. The main difference is between those who think that him run is a
syntactic unit, and those who think that him is one part of the sentence and
run is another. If the sentence is taken as a syntactic unit, it is very natural to
call it a complex object: it stands in an object relation to the predicate verb
saw and consists of two elements. If, on the other hand, the phrase him run is
not considered to be a syntactic unit, its first element is an object, and its
second element is conveniently termed the objective predicative.
The choice between the two interpretations remains arbitrary and
neither of them can be proved to be the only right one. In favour of the view
that the phrase is a syntactical unit a semantic reason can be put forward. In
some cases the two elements of the phrase cannot be separated without
changing the meaning of the sentence. H.Sweet, discussing these phenomena,
referred to the sentence I like boys to be quiet, which, as he pointed out, does
not imply even the slightest liking for boys. Still, the fact that the two elements
of the construction cannot be separated is not a proof of the syntactic unity of
the phrase.
If we state in each case two separate parts of the sentence, this will add to
our list of secondary parts of the sentence one more item: the objective
predicative. It can be expressed by an infinitive, a participle (I saw him
running), an adjective (I found him ill), a stative (They found him asleep),
sometimes an adverb, and a prepositional phrase.
This type of secondary predication brings the sentence closer to a
composite one. O.Jespersen has proposed the term “nexus” for every
predicative grouping of words, no matter by what grammatical means it is
realized. He distinguishes between a “junction”, which is not a predicative
group of words (reading man) and “nexus”, which is a predicative complex
59
(the man reads). If this term is adopted, we may say that in the sentence I saw
him run there are two nexuses: the primary one I saw and the secondary him
run.
The absolute constructions. Another type of secondary predication may
be seen in the so-called absolute construction. This appears, for instance, in
the following example. The preliminary greetings spoken, Denis found an empty
chair between John and Jenny and sat down. Here the phrase The preliminary
greetings spoken constitutes an absolute construction. The term absolute is
here used in the original sense of the Latin absolutus, that is, absolved, free,
independent.
Participles are the most widely used types of predicative element in the
absolute construction. The subject part of an absolute construction is som
etimes represented by a noun or phrase.
The absolute construction expresses what is usually called accompanying
circumstances – something that happens alongside of the main action. This
secondary action may be the cause of the main action, or its condition, but
these relations are not indicated by any grammatical means. The position of
the absolute construction before or after the main body of the sentence gives
only a partial clue to its concrete meaning. Thus, for example, if the
construction denotes some secondary action which accompanies the main one
without being either its cause or its condition, it always follows the main body
of the sentence; if the construction indicates the cause, or condition, or time of
the main action, it can come both before and after the main body of the
sentence.
Thus the grammatical factor plays only a subordinate part in determining
the sense relations between the absolute construction and the main body of
the sentence.
The stylistic colouring of this construction should also be noted. It is
quite in this respect from the constructions with the objective predicative,
which may occur in any sort of style. The absolute construction is, as we have
seen, basically a feature of literary style and unfit for colloquial speech. Only a
few more or less settled formulas such as weather permitting may be found in
ordinary conversation. Otherwise colloquial speech practically always has
subordinate clauses where literary style may have absolute constructions.
The construction can have no participle, then the predicative relation of
the other word to the noun or pronoun within the construction is made clear
by the context:
He stood in a patch, his hands behind him, his face in shadow.
Phrases, or word combinations are built according to certain patterns,
which are filled by different lexical material in speech.
The phrase is a combination of two or more notional words on the basis
of some syntactic connection, performing a nominative function, i.e. its
function is to name a subject, phenomenon, process, action.

60
 One of the main features of the phrase is a syntactic connection between
its parts.
A word-combination formed on the basis of a subordinate connection can
be characterized by the following interrelated features: 1) character of
syntactic relations – attributive, objective, adverbial, 2) way of expressing
syntactic relations – agreement, government, adjoining, 3) position of the
subordinate word in relation to the core word - preposition or postposition.
Combination of these properties, regarded as a system, can lie in the
basis of the definition of the word-combination as a unit of contrasted
analysis.
The word-combination is regarded to as a two-(sometimes three-)
component pattern, performing a nominative function, arranged on the basis
of subordinate connection with stable combination of syntactic relations,
expressed morphologically or by means of the word order.
Types of connection within the word-group.
Agreement. Two words are said to agree in their grammatical forms
when the form of a dependent word is determined by the form of a head word.
In English head word and dependent words usually agree in number and
sometimes case:
I bought books at Mr.Smith’s, the bookseller’s.
The repetition of the inflection of a head word in its adjunct word is
called concord.
Still in most cases in English there is no concord: green trees, the trees
became green.
In highly inflected concord-languages such as Ukrainian, dependent
words agree in number, gender and case, if the head-word is a noun and
adjunct words are adjectives and pronouns.
Government. When a word assumes a certain grammatical form through
being associated with another word, the modified word is said to be governed
by the other one, and the governing word is said to govern the grammatical
form in question. Thus, in a day’s work, day’s is covered by work, and work
itself is said to govern the genitive case. So also in I see him, him is governed by
the verb and the verb is said to govern the objective case of the personal
pronoun he.

Issues for discussion

1. The object of syntactic studies. Give isomorphic syntactic features of
English and Ukrainian.
2. Characterize the main syntactic units from the point of view of their
structure. Explain the difference between the phrase and the sentence.
3. Characterize the main kinds of phrases. Describe the type of phrase,
widely used and well-developed in both languages?
4. Give definitions of the phrases of coordination, phrases of subordination
and predicative phrases.
61
 5. Explain the notion of secondary predication in English.
6. Give characteristics of the types of connection within the phrase.

2. SENTENCE

The sentence is one of the main syntactic units opposed in this system to
the word (or word-form) and phrase by the form, meaning and function. In the
broad sense of the word, the sentence is an utterance (an extended syntactic
structure or even a single word), which can be considered to be an informative
massage to be perceived by ear or eye.
Sentence is a communicative unit, built according to the definite
grammatical (syntactic) pattern, which exists in the language in different
forms and modifications, performing its communicative functions and having
intonation of its own. It is probably the most familiar of all grammatical terms.
We are introduced to it in our early school years, if not before, and it quickly
becomes part of our linguistic awareness. We imagine we speak in sentences,
and we teach children to write in them, making sure that they put in all the
periods. It might therefore be thought that sentences are easy things to
identify and define.
Traditionally, the sentence is defined as ‘a complete expression of a single
thought’. Unfortunately, this notional approach is too vague to be much help.
There are many sentences which seem to express a single thought, but which
are not complete, by traditional standards:
Lovely day! Taxi! Tennis?
There are some other sentences which are complete, but express more
than one thought:
For his birthday, Ben wants a bike, a computer game, and a visit to the
theme park.
The formal approach to grammar by contrast, tries to avoid these kinds
of difficulty by describing the way in which sentences are contrasted – the
patterns of words they contain.
Sentences are constructed according to a system of rules, known by all
the adult mother-tongue speakers of the language and summarized in
grammars. A sentence formed in this way is said to be grammatical.
Sentences are the largest structural constructions to which the grammar
rules apply. This means that before we can satisfactorily carry out the task of
identifying sentences, we need to know something about grammatical
analysis. Once we have worked our way through a good English grammar, we
know what the possible sentences are, because the grammar has told us.
The sentence is approached from different angles, i.e. from the viewpoint
of logic or meaning, of phonetic criteria or style, and of grammar.
The principle property of the sentence differentiating it from all the other
language units is its predicativity, i.e. reference to speech situation; it means
62
that the sentence is a piece of communication, completing an idea by itself.
The study of the sentence belongs to Major Syntax, which studies
linguistic units of communicative value. Major Syntax focuses on the rules
according to which words or word-combinations are actualized in speech, i.e.
used as parts of predicative units, units of communication integrated into a
given situation and expressing the purposeful intention of the speaker in the
form of sentences.
In terms of meaning, the sentence is defined as the expression of a
complete thought. But this sounds disputable because completeness is rather
relative and depends largely on the purpose of the speaker or writer, as well
as on the context, both linguistic and situational.
The problem of classification of sentences is a highly complicated one,
and we will first consider the question of the principles of classification, and of
the notions on which it can be based.
From the viewpoint of their role in the process of communication
sentences are divided into four types, grammatically marked: declarative,
interrogative, imperative, exclamatory sentences. These types differ in the
aim of communication and express statements, questions, commands and
exclamations respectively. These types are usually applied to simple
sentences. In a complex sentence the communicative type depends upon that
of the main clause.
Dickens was born in 1812.
Come and sit down!
What do we do next?
Ти завжди так робиш?
Павло вже приніс те, що обіцяв?
A declarative sentence contains a statement which gives the reader or the
listener some information about various events, activities or attitudes,
thoughts and feelings. Statements form the bulk of monological speech, and
the greater part of conversation. A statement may be positive (affirmative)
or negative. Grammatically, statements are characterized by the subject-
predicate structure with the direct order of words. They are mostly two-
member sentences, although they may be one-member sentences. Statements
usually have a falling tone; they are marked by a pause in speaking and by a
full stop in writing.
In conversation, statements are often structurally incomplete, especially
when they serve as a response to a question asking for some information, and
the response conveys the most important idea. Thanks to their structure and
lexical content, declarative sentences are communicatively polyfunctional.
Thus, besides their main function as information-carriers, statements may be
used with the force of questions, commands and exclamations.
Interrogative sentences contain questions. Their communicative function
consists in asking for information. They belong to the sphere of conversation
and only occasionally occur in monological speech.
63
 All varieties of questions may be structurally reduced to two main types,
general questions (also called “yes-no” questions) and pronominal
questions (otherwise called “special” or “wh” - questions). Both are
graphically identified by a question mark. The two main types have a number
of structural and communicative modifications.
Sentences belonging to the different types differ from each other in some
grammatical point. Thus, interrogative sentences are characterised by a
special word order. In interrogative sentences very few modal words are
used, as the meanings of some modal words are incompatible with the
meaning of an interrogative sentence. It is clear that modal words expressing
full certainty, such as certainly, surely, naturally, etc., cannot appear in a
sentence expressing a question. On the other hand, the modal word indeed,
with its peculiar shades of meaning, is quite possible in interrogative
sentences, for instance, Isn't so indeed? (Shakespeare).
Imperative sentences also show marked peculiarities in the use of modal
words. It is quite evident, for example, that modal words expressing
possibility, such as perhaps, maybe, possibly, are incompatible with the notion
of order or request. Indeed, modal words are hardly used at all in imperative
sentences.
The notion of exclamatory sentences and their relation to the three
established types of declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences
presents some difficulty. On the one hand, every sentence, whether narrative,
interrogative, or imperative, may be exclamatory at the same time, that is, it
may convey the speaker's feelings and be characterised by emphatic
intonation and by an exclamation mark in writing. This may be seen in the
following examples: Bat he can't do anything to you! (R. West). On the other
hand, a sentence may be purely exclamatory, that is. it may not belong to any
of the three types classed above. This would be the case in the following
examples: "Well, fiddle‐dee‐dee!" said Scarlett. (M. Mitchell) Oh, for God's sake,
Henry! (Idem)
From the point of view of their structure, sentences can be:
1. Simple or composite (compound and complex).
2. Complete or incomplete (elliptical).
3. Two‐member (double-nucleus) or one‐member (single-nucleus).
These three classifications are based on different approaches to the
structural organisation of sentences and reflect its different aspects. The
difference between the simple sentence and the composite sentence lies in the
fact that the former contains only one subject-predicate unit and the latter
more than one. Subject-predicate units that form composite sentences are
called clauses.
Honesty is the best policy. (one subject-predicate unit)
Still waters run deep. (one subject-predicate unit)
You can take a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink (two
subject-predicate units, or two clauses)
64
 You never know what you can do till you try. (three subject-predicate
units, or three clauses)
The difference between the compound and complex sentences lies in the
relations between the clauses that constitute them. Complete and incomplete
(or elliptical) sentences are distinguished by the presence or absence of word-
forms in the principal positions of two-member sentences. In a complete
sentence both the principal positions are filled with word-forms.
When did you arrive? I came straight here.
In an incomplete (elliptical) sentence one or both of the main positions
are not filled, but can be easily supplied as it is clear from the context what is
missing. Elliptical sentences are typical of conversational English.
Cheerful, aren’t you?
Ready?
Could’ve been professional.
Wrong again.
One-member and two-member sentences are distinguished by the
number of principal parts (positions) they contain: two-member sentences
have two main parts - the subject and the predicate, while one-member
sentences have only one principal part, which is neither the subject nor the
predicate.
Two‐member sentences:
The magpie flew off.
We are going to my house now.
One‐member sentences:
An old park.
To live alone in this abandoned house!
The relations between the two classifications should now be considered.
A simple sentence can be either declarative, or interrogative, or
imperative. But things are more complicated with reference to composite
sentences. If all the clauses making up a composite sentence are declarative,
the composite sentence as a whole is of course declarative too. And so it is
bound to be in every case when all the clauses making a composite sentence
belong to the same type of communication. Sometimes, however, composite
sentences are consist of clauses belonging to different types of
communication. In this case it may be problematic to state the communicative
type of the composite sentence as a whole.
Actual division of the sentence. By actual division we mean dividing a
sentence into two sections, one of which contains that which is the starting
point of the message –"the theme", and the other –the new information for
which the sentence has been spoken or written –"the rheme".
The two terms are Greek in origin: "theme" comes from the Greek root
the- "to set", "to establish" and means "that which is set or established". The
term "rheme" is derived from the root rhe- "to say" or "tell" and means "that
which is said or told about".
65
 Between the theme and the rheme are positioned intermediary, tran-
sitional parts of the actual division of various degrees of informative value
(these parts are sometimes called "transition"). The theme of the actual
division of the sentence may or may not coincide with the subject of the
sentence. The rheme of the actual division, in its turn, may or may not
coincide with the predicate of the sentence either with the whole predicate
group or its part, such as the predicative, the object, the adverbial.
Thus, in the following sentences of various emotional character the
theme is expressed by the subject, while the rheme is expressed by the
predicate:
Max bounded forward. Again Charlie is being too clever! Her advice can't be
of any help to us.
In the first of the above sentences the rheme coincides with the whole
predicate group. In the second sentence the adverbial intro-ducer again can
be characterized as a transitional element, i.e. an element informationally
intermediary between the theme and the rheme, the latter being expressed by
the rest of the predicate group. The main part of the rheme-the "peak" of
informative perspective-is rendered in this sentence by the intensified
predicative too clever. In the third sentence the addressee object to us is more
or less transitional, while the informative peak, as in the previous example, is
expressed by the predicative of any help.
In the following sentences the correlation between the nominative and
actual divisions is the reverse: the theme is expressed by the predicate or its
part, while the rheme is rendered by the subject:
Through the open window came the purr of an approaching motor car.
Who is coming late but John! There is a difference of opinion between the
parties.
Historically, the theory of actual division of the sentence is connected
with the logical analysis of the proposition. The principal parts of the
proposition, as is known, are the logical subject and the logical predicate.
These, like the theme and the rheme, may or may not coincide, respectively,
with the subject and the predicate of the sentence. The logical categories of
subject and predicate are prototypes of the linguistic categories of theme and
rheme. However, if logic analyses its categories of subject and predicate as the
meaningful components of certain forms of thinking, linguistics analyses the
categories of theme and rheme as the corresponding means of expression
used by the speaker for the sake of rendering the informative content of his
communications.
Any part (or parts) of the sentence can be either the theme or the rheme
of the sentence, depending on the context or situation:
The book (theme) is on the table (rheme): answers to the question ‘Where
is the book?’
A book (rheme) is on the table (theme): answers to the question 'What is
on the table?'
66
 Compare in Ukrainian:
Книга (theme) на столі (rheme): answers to the question ‘Where is the
book?’
На столі (theme) книга (rheme): answers to the question 'What is on the
table?'
The actual division of the sentence is opposed to its formal-grammatical
division into the parts of the sentence. The components of the actual division
of the sentence can be singled out by means of:
- the intonation (type of stress, pauses);
- by word order, usually, in Ukrainian the theme is placed in the beginning,
while the rheme is found in the end;
- In English we differentiate between the theme and the rheme by the use of
the definite and indefinite articles (the indefinite article usually introduces
new information, i.e. the rheme, while the definite article represents the
theme of the sentence);
- by the use of limiting adverbs;
- by rheme stressing constructions (It is… that…);
- by context.
If the logical stress is shifted in the sentence, the actual division of it is
also altered. In Ukrainian the direct ‘theme – rheme’ order prevails and is
considered to be progressive, objective and non-emphatic, the reverse ‘rheme
– theme’ order is thought to be regressive, subjective, emphatic.
The initial position of the rheme can also be accounted for by the
necessity to preserve its positional contact with the previous sentence,
rhythm, a speaker's wish to say the most important thing first.
The actual division of the sentence finds its full expression only in a
concrete context of speech, therefore it is sometimes referred to as the
"contextual" division of the sentence. This can be illustrated by the following
example:
Mary is fond of poetry.
In the sentence, if we approach it as a stylistically neutral construction
devoid of any specific connotations, the theme is expressed by the subject, and
the rheme, by the predicate. This kind of actual division is "direct". On the
other hand, a certain context may be built around the given sentence in the
conditions of which the order of actual division will be changed into the
reverse: the subject will turn into the exposer of the rheme, while the
predicate, accordingly, into the exposer of the theme.
"Isn't it surprising that Tim is so fond of poetry?"‐"But you are wrong. Mary
is fond of poetry, not Tim."
The actual division in which the rheme is expressed by the subject is to
be referred to as "inverted".
The close connection of the actual division of the sentence with the
context in the conditions of which it is possible to divide the informative parts
of the communication into those "already known" by the listener and those
67
"not yet known" by him, gave cause to the recognized founder of the linguistic
theory of actual division J. Mathesius to consider this kind of sentence division
as a purely semantic factor sharply opposed to the "formally grammatical" or
"purely syntactic" division of the sentence (in our terminology called its
"nominative" division).
One will agree that the actual division of the sentence will really lose all
connection with syntax if its components are to be identified solely on the
principle of their being "known" or "unknown" to the listener. However, we
must bear in mind that the informative value of developing speech consists
not only in introducing new words that denote things and phenomena not
mentioned before; the informative value of communications lies also in their
disclosing various new relations between the elements of reflected events,
though the elements themselves may be quite familiar to the listener. The
expression of a certain aspect of these relations, namely, the correlation of the
said elements from the point of view of their immediate significance in a given
utterance produced as a predicative item of a continual speech, does enter the
structural plane of language. This expression becomes part and parcel of the
structural system of language by the mere fact that the correlative informative
significance of utterance components are rendered by quite definite,
generalized and standardized lingual constructions. The functional purpose of
such constructions is to reveal the meaningful centre of the utterance (i.e. its
rheme) in distinction to the starting point of its content (i.e. its theme).

Issues for discussion.

1. Give as many definitions of the sentence as you can. What aspects of the
sentence are underlined in each of them?
2. Give classifications of the sentence you know. Name the types of
sentences 1) according to their communicative purpose; 2) according to
their structure.
3. State the difference between the one-member sentences and elliptical
sentences.
4. Explain the notion of actual division of the sentence. Formulate the main
points, differentiating the actual division of the sentence in English and
Ukrainian.
5. Give the parameters that help identify the actual division of the
sentence.

68
3. PARTS OF THE SENTENCE
All parts of the sentence in the contrasted languages have both
isomorphic functional meaning and lexical-grammatical nature. Common is
also the traditional subdivision of them into the main parts (the subject and
predicate) and the secondary parts (the object, attribute, adverbial modifier)
of the sentence.
Structurally, the parts of the sentence in the contrasted languages are
characterized by isomorphic features in the main. The common types of the
parts of the sentence are 1) simple, i.e. expressed by a single word-form
(synthetic or analytical); 2) extended or expanded, expressed by a subordinte
or co-ordinate word-group; 3) clausal, expressed by a clause within a complex
sentence.
The English parts of the sentence have two structural typed not found in
Ukrainian, they are 1) complex parts of the sentence, expressed by verbal and
non-verbal predicative constructions; 2) formal subject and object.

I. The main parts of the sentence. The subject and the predicate are
considered to be interdependent parts of the sentence. They are bearers of
predication forming the sentence. Predicative connection is a mandatory type
of the connection in forming a sentence as a communicative unit. Predication
underlying the relations of the subject and the predicate is called primary
predication, it includes the arrangement an utterance out of the syntactic
components, in order to form a communicative unit correlated with reality.
The predicative connection is characterized by the fact that its components
are equal in rank. Such a connection is called coordination/interdependence.
Syntactic connections are expressed by means of: morphological means, word
order, intonation, functional words and others.
The reason for calling the subject and the predicate the main parts of the
sentence and distinguishing them from all other parts which are treated to be
secondary parts of the sentence, is as follows. The subject and the predicate
constitute the backbone of the sentence: without them the sentence would not
exist at all, whereas all other parts may or may not be there, and if they are
there, they serve to define or modify either the subject or the predicate, or
each other.
The definition of the subject would, then, be something like this. The
subject is one of the two main parts of the sentence. It denotes the object of
reality whose action or characteristic is expressed by the predicate. It is not
dependent on any other part of the sentence. It may be expressed by different
parts of speech, the most frequent ones being: a noun in the common case, a
personal pronoun in, the nominative case, a demonstrative pronoun
occasionally, a substantivised adjective, a numeral, an infinitive, and a gerund.
It may also be expressed by a phrase or a clause.

69
 The structural forms, common for the subject in the contrasted languages
are simple subject, extended, expanded. In English there are also formal and
complex forms of the subject
Both in English and Ukrainian the subject is expressed by: nouns,
pronouns, numerals, adjectives, adverbs, infinitive, participle, clause. Still,
some ways of expressing the subject are found only in English:
-indefinite pronouns one, you, they, expressing an indefinite doer of the
action. They say I am like my father;
‐ impersonal pronoun it: It was very dark, by means of the formal there;
‐ For-to-infinitive predicative construction;
- Gerundial predicative construction.
Speaking about the Russian grammar, Arakin distinguishes between one-
component and two-component types of the subject, both in English and
Russian.
One-component subject is expressed by one notional part of speech. This
type of the subject splits up into two sub-types: the sub-type of the subject
which agrees with the predicate, and the sub-type of the subject which does
not agree with the predicate.
The subject of the first sub-type is expressed by:
1) a noun. Both in Russian and English there exists an agreement in
number, but in Russian even if the subject expressing a single object is in
plural it agrees with the predicate in plural either: санки покатились под
гору. In English there is a group of nouns with the plural meaning which have
a singular form, which require a predicate either in the singular or in the
plural form: audience, crew, family.
2) pronoun;
3) substantivized adjective. In Russian there is an agreement of such a
predicate in number. While in English it is important that the adjectives used
with the definite article express plurality: blind – the blind, poor – the poor.
Subject of this group requires a predicate expressed by the plural form of the
verb;
4) present or past participle, functioning as a noun (Танцующие
выглядели счастливо, в отличие от стоящих у колонны. Осужденный
был молод и у всех вызывал сочувствие).
5) numerals (subject expressed by ordinal numerals are characteristic of
Russian and Ukrainian, but not English).
The subject of the second sub-type (which does not agree with the
predicate) is expressed by:
1) infinitive;
2) ordinal numerals in English;
3) gerund in English.
The two-component subject is a subject that consists of two permanent
members, which cannot function independently. They are subjects expressed
by attributive word-groups (in the contrasted languages) and in English there
70
are subjects expressed by the formal there and noun or adjective which follow
the predicate: there was a lengthy pause or by the formal it and infinitive or
gerund that follows the predicate. It is useless to talk to him.
The predicate is the main part of the sentence and its organizing centre,
for the object and nearly all adverbial modifiers are dependent on it. The
predicate can be considered from the semantic or from the structural point of
view. According to the meaning of its components the predicate can denote an
action, a state, a quality, process, an attitude to some action or state,
expressed by the subject.
The main features of the predicate are common in the contrasted
languages. (in Korunets)
Arakin, comparing the English and Russian predicates, singles out the
one-component and two-component types of the predicate.
One-component predicate is expressed by a finite form of the verb.
Two-component predicate contains two obligatory components. This
type splits up into two sub-types according to the components it contains: 1)
predicate consisting or a linking verb and predicative, 2) predicate consisting
or a finite form of the verb and infinitive.
1. the Nominal predicate sub-type is presented by some models
depending on the part of speech the predicative is expressed by:
V + N (in the nominative case)
V + N (in the instrumental case)
V + A (this sub-type of the predicate in English is characterized by a great
number of linking verbs – to look, grow, fall, go, turn, and so on and
corresponds to a one-component predicate in Russian and Ukrainian).
V + Ngen (он был высокого роста). This model corresponds to the
English predicate expressed by the model V + A, or V + A + N (my brother was
of a strong character).
2. Compound predicate sub-type, according to the researcher, includes
the predicates consisting of the verb and infinitive.
Kobrina distinguishes between the simple and compound types of
predicate.
The simple predicate split into two groups:
- simple verbal predicate, which can be expressed by a finite form of the
verb, by a verb phrase (to have a look, to take a move, to make a remark),
phrases denoting various kinds of actions (to get rid of, to take part in, to make
up one’s mind).
- Simple nominal predicate expressed by a noun or an adjective or a
verbal. It does not contain any link verb. It shows the incompatibility of the
idea expressed by the subject and that expressed by the predicate, thus in the
meaning of the simple nominal predicate in English there is an implied
negation.
He a gentleman! – Ну какой же он джентльмен!
Fred, a priest! – Чтобы Фред был священником!
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 Nick, dishonest! – Ник нечестный? Не может быть!
Such an old lady to come so far! – Чтобы такая пожилая леди пришла
издалека!
Simple nominal predicate can be expressed by a noun, an adjective, an
infinitive or infinitive phrase, a participle or participial phrase.
The compound predicate consists of two parts: the notional and the
structural. The notional part can be expressed by a noun, an adjective, a
stative, an adverb, a verbal, a phrase, a predicative complex, a clause. The
structural part is expressed by a finite verb (a phrasal verb, a modal verb, a
verb expressing attitude, intention, planning etc) or a link verb. The
researcher distinguishes between the compound verbal predicate and
compound nominal predicate. The compound verbal predicate is of two types:
compound verbal phasal predicate and compound verbal modal predicate.
The compound verbal phasal predicate denotes the beginning, duration,
repetition or end of the action. It consists of a phasal verb and an infinitive or
gerund. According to its first component can be a phasal verb of the beginning,
duration, repetition and cessation of the action. The compound verbal modal
predicate consists of a modal part and an infinitive (or a gerund). The modal
part is expressed by a modal verb, a modal expression (to be able, to be
willing, to be going), an attitudinal verb (to like, to mean, to plan, to try, to
mind, to want). The compound verbal predicate of double orientation consists
of two parts, the first part is finite verb which denotes the attitude to,
evaluation of, or comment on, the content of the sentence expressed by the
speaker or somebody not mentioned in the sentenced. The second parts
denotes the action, performed by the person/non-person expressed by the
subject.
He is said to be looking for a new job.
The plane is reported to have been lost.
The compound nominal predicate consists of the link verb and the
predicative. The predicative can be expressed by a noun, an adjective, a
pronoun, a numeral, a verbal, a verbal phrase, a prepositional phrase, a
stative, an indivisible group of words, a clause.
There is also the compound nominal double predicate and other mixed
types of the predicate that combine the elements of different types, such as
the compound modal verbal nominal predicate, the compound modal phasal
predicate and others.

II. The secondary parts of the sentence in the contrasted languages are
the object, the attribute, the adverbial modifier, the paranthesis.
1. The Object. The general implicit morphological nature, the syntactic
function and the nomenclature of the secondary parts of the sentence are
generally isomorphic in the contrasted languages. Allomorphic features are
observed, as a rule, in the structural forms of some types of English objects,
attributes and adverbial modifiers, though some Ukrainian secondary parts of
72
the sentence are also characterised by divergent features of their own. The
secondary parts of the sentence in the contrasted languages are as follows:
The object which has in English and Ukrainian both isomorphic and
allomorphic features. Common, for example, is the functioning of the object as
a "subjective complement" (G.G.Pocheptsov), eg: She was invited by me: вона
була запрошена мною.
As to its structural forms, the object in both contrasted languages may be:
a) simple: I thought that the bank rented it. (F. King) А я думав, що банк
позичив їх (гроші). Then she heard music. (S. Hill) Потім вона почула
музику. ...he called "Hsst" several times. (Galsworthy) Він кілька разів
повторював "ц‐с‐с ". b) Simple prepositional: He was afraid of this. (Hailey)
Він не думав про це. "May I speak to Lucy?" "Можна звернутися до Люсі?" с)
Extended (expressed by a subordinate word-group): "I do so dislike the
summer crowds." (S. Hill) Мені так надокучають юрби людей влітку. In his
book he had drawn some pretty nasty characters. (Ibid.) У своїй книжці він
змалював кілька вельми неприємних персонажів. d) Expanded objects
(expressed by the co-ordinate word-groups): The other two women continued
to discuss the gas and electricity bills. (F. King) ...the car brought his father and
mother home. (Galsworthy) These structural types of object have their
equivalents in Ukrainian: Дві інші жінки обговорювали рахунки за газ та
електрику. Машина привезла його батька й матір додому. Though the
first of the expanded objects in Ukrainian (рахунки за газ та
електроенергію) may also be treated as the expanded prepositional object,
since it is preceded by the preposition. Consequently, the nomenclature of
some subtypes of the object may also be enlarged in the contrasted languages.
Apart from the aforenamed there are also other common types of the
object/adjective complement in the contrasted languages.
The first to be named are the following traditionally distinguished ones:
1) the direct non‐prepositional or prepositional (in English) object. For
example: "He could make the money easy". (Snow). "I have heard of it..." (Ibid.)
Він міг легко заробити гроші. Я це/про це чув. Не went to Oxford, studied
engineering and played rugger. (D. Garnett) Він поїхав до Оксфорда, вивчав
машинобудування і захоплювався регбі.
The simple object may be expressed in English and Ukrainian by different
nominal parts of speech or their functional equivalents. Eg: He was describing
the sufferings of the unemployed (J. London) Він описував страждання
безробітних. Her laugh cut Soames to the quick. (Galsworthy) її сміх зачепив
Сомса за живе. Fleur flung back her hair. (Ibid.) Флер відкинула назад свою
косу. Nelson had asked Mary's father's consent. (D. Garnett) Нельсон
попросив згоди батька Мері. She called out "Hullo!" (Ibid.) Вона вигукнула
"Алло!"
Note. The verbs to ask, to answer, to take, to envy, to hear, and to forgive
take two direct objects in English, which is not so in Ukrainian. For example:
They scared him, (Johnny) and asked him many questions. (Saroyan) Вони
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залякували його і задавали йому багато запитань (допитували). In this
sentence both pronouns, him and the word-group (extended object) many
questions are direct objects in English whereas in Ukrainian the second object
him (йому) is indirect. Direct in both languages is also the cognate object, eg:
Taras Shevchenko lived a hard life. .. .Clare slept the sleep of one who has spent
a night in the car. (Galsworthy) Клер спала сном людини, що провела ніч у
машині. Napoleon fought several successful battles. Наполеон виграв/
виборов не одну успішну битву.
The prepositional object in the contrasted languages, as has been pointed
out, is preceded/introduced by the preposition. For example: It smelt not of
vomit, but of food. (D. Garnett) She felt cold in nothing but her nightdress and
the light wrap, and with the shiver of cold she felt fear. (Ibid.) Вона ні в що не
мерзла, але в нічній одежині та легенькій фантині і від дрижаків та від
холоду їй було лячно. "І must not panic", she said to herself. (Ibid.) "Я мушу
тримати себе в руках,"- сказала вона сама до себе.
As can be observed, not all English prepositional objects have
prepositional equivalent in Ukrainian (e.g.: it smelt not of vomit). Other
prepositional objects, however, are declinable in Ukrainian (E.g.: with the
shiver of cold big дрижаків/дриґоління, від холоду, в одежині). No
morphological expression of the syntactic dependence is observed in the so-
called addressee object (as termed by Prof. G.G.Pocheptsov) to herself which
corresponds to the indirect object собі, though it may be conveyed as an
indirect prepositional object as well (e.g.: сказала вона сама до себе, про
себе).
One more peculiar feature of the English prepositional object is that the
preposition may sometimes be split from the object itself, e.g: …My car a 1960
Morrts Oxford... that I have been so proud of. (B. Hanville) Or in such an
example: Who do they (children) belong to? (Maugham) Котрої з них
вони/Вони котрої з них?
The indirect object in both languages has an indirect case form which is
expressed in English only by the personal pronoun in the objective case and
by the interrogative and relative pronoun who. Eg: I know they told me that.
(Ibid.) Це вони мені сказали. The doctor gave me pills to take tranquillisers.
(Ibid.) Лікар дав мені пігулки для заспокоєння. Не handed her the paper.
(Dreiser) Він передав їй папірець. The Ukrainian indirect object may also be
a noun, any pronoun or numeral (e.g.: дати щось комусь, Петрові, Марії,
двом/обом). Or in the following Ukrainian sentences: Він послав Ганні
книжку. Він послав книжку Ганні/дня Ганни. Гамір не давав дитині
(дітям) спати. Hence, all English notionals with no morphological expression
of indirect case forms can be called "indirect objects" only conventionally. E.g.:
I sent Ann a book/ I sent a book to/for Ann. He sent nobody anything. Such
morphologically amorphous words as nobody, nothing and even nouns which
do not reflect any morphological category by their form can express their
relations only through their syntactically predetermined placement. Taking all
74
this into consideration, i.e. the absenсe of any morphological expression of
indirect cases in almost all English notionals (except the objective case form of
the personal pronouns me, him, her, them, us) and the relative/ interrogative
pronoun whom, it would be typologically more expedient to use also the term
"complements" instead of the tradition term "object".
Apart from the above-mentioned subtypes of the direct object in the
contrasted languages, two more structural forms of it are to be singled out.
These are: 1) the clausal object/expressed by the object subordinate clause:
"You're always telling me how good you are". (I. Shaw) Ти завжди
повторюєш мені, яка ти добра. Or "I suppose she's been telling you that I'm a
selfish brute." (J. Сагу) "Гадаю, вона вам сказала, що я жахливий егоїст".
The formal object is an allomorphic feature/phenomenon pertained to
the English language only. This object is expressed by the formal pronoun it
which has an implicit meaning, as can be seen in the following sentences: On
Saturday she would clean it, wash it, and air it. (J.K. Jerome) which means in
Ukrainian the following: По суботах вона прибирала, мила й провітрювала
(всі кімнати, приміщення). І found it impossible to utter the next word.
(Kahler) У мене не було жодної змоги сказати хоч слово. We can walk it
very quickly. Ми швидко пройдемось (туди).
The complex object is not a completely allomorphic feature for Ukrainian
either, though some of its structural forms are alien to it. These are, for
instance, the objective with the infinitive, the objective with the present
participle or the gerundial complexes/constructions, which have nouns or
subordinate clauses for their equivalents in Ukrainian. For example: "Oh! If I
could only see him laugh once more." (M. Twain) She had expected him to be
more sympathetic. (Ibid.) I heard someone weeping. (D. Greene) I hear him
calling her name. (Fitzgerald) "It's no good your flying in temper." (Maugham)
Apart from these there are some isomorphic or similar complexes, which are
observed in both languages. There are cases "like It would be better for us to
leave him." (O. Wilde) There was need for him to be economical. (London):
Було б краще для нас залишити його. У нього настала необхідність
економити. These English complexes have structurally different equivalents
in Ukrainian: either the prepositional object (для нас) or the direct object
(залишити його). In the second sentence (for him to be economical) the
equivalent is again different in Ukrainian: у нього (prepositional object) and
to be economical becomes an attribute in Ukrainian (потреба бути
економним).
The term "inversion" has sometimes been used to denote an unusual
position of a secondary part of the sentence, that is, of an object or an
adverbial modifier. That, however, is undesirable, since it might lead to
misunderstandings and seriously hamper the study of word order. To
illustrate our point, let us compare the following two sentences: This he knew
very well, and, A pretty paradise did we build for ourselves. (Thackeray, quoted
by Poutsma) In both sentences the object stands at the beginning, which is not
75
its usual place. After this, in the first sentence, come the subject and the
predicate in their normal order for a declarative sentence, whereas in the
second sentence the predicate comes before the subject. It is natural to say
that in the first sentence there is no inversion, while in the second sentence
there is one. Now, if we were to use the term "inversion" for every case of the
object occupying an unusual place, we should have to say that in the first
sentence also there is inversion in some sense, which would certainly lead to
confusion. We will therefore not apply the term "inversion" to a secondary
part of the sentence.
It is well known that the usual place of the object is after the predicate,
and if there are two objects in a sentence, their order is fixed: if they are both
non-prepositional, the indirect object comes first and the direct object next; if
one of the objects is prepositional, it comes after the non-prepositional. The
tendency to place the object immediately after the predicate verb should not
however be taken as an absolute law. Some other part of the sentence often
does come in between the predicate verb and its object.
This intervening phrase will probably in most cases be a loose part of the
sentence, as in the following extracts: At the age of eight Ferdinando was so
large and so exuberantly healthy that his parents decided, though reluctantly, to
send him to school. (Huxley) In the visitors' book at Crome Ivor had left,
according to his invariable custom in these cases, a poem. (Idem) In the former
example the phrase though reluctantly introduces some shade of meaning,
weakening the effect of the verb decided, and it could not conveniently come
at any other place in the sentence. In the latter example the rather extended
phrase according to his invariable custom in these cases might have come
between the subject Ivor and the predicate had left. The sentence would then
run like this: In the visitors' book at Crome Ivor, according to his invariable
custom in these cases, had left a poem. The effect of the original text, with the
loose part separating the object from the predicate, appears to be that of
postponing the mention of the poem and thus creating some tension since the
words immediately following the predicate fail to make clear what it was that
he left in the visitors' book.
An object may also be separated from the predicate by several
intervening elements of the sentence. This is the case, for example, in the
following passage: He recognised suddenly in every face that passed him the
reflection of what appeared a similar, lonely, speechless concern not with the
station and the mechanics of arriving, departing, meeting someone, or saying
good‐bye, but with something more vital still and far beneath such minor
embassies. (Buechner) Owing to the adverbial modifier suddenly and the
prepositional object with the attributive clause belonging to it, in every face
that passed him, the direct object the reflection (with the other parts of the
sentence belonging to it) is at a considerable distance from the predicate
recognised. However, no misunderstanding is to be feared here, as there is no
other noun that might be taken for the direct object in the main clause: the
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only noun that does come in here is the noun face, but it is too obviously
connected with the preposition in that introduces it (along with its attribute
every) to be taken for a direct object. This example, and many others of a
similar kind, show that the principle "the object is bound to come immediately
after the predicate verb" does not always hold good.
Quite the same sort of thing is seen in our next example, taken from the
same novel: He seemed to see in each figure that hurried by a kind of
indifference to all but some secret, unexpressed care having little to do with
their involving context. (Buechner) Besides the role of rheme that belongs to
the object in the sentence, there is another factor which may have been
responsible for the order of words: the group centred around the object kind
(or kind of indifference) is rather long, and placing it immediately after the
predicate, before the phrase in each figure that hurried by, would result in a
rather awkward rhythmical pattern of the sentence.
A non-prepositional object can be separated from the predicate even by
two secondary parts, as in the following example: She arose and turned on a
lamp to read the letter again. He told and told well in it a little story. (Buechner)
Here both the adverbial modifier well and the prepositional object in it
intervene between the predicate and the non-prepositional object.
An object may also be separated from the predicate by a parenthesis and
a clause of time: She had seen, of course, when she spoke, only Tristram.
(Buechner)
2. The attribute. The attribute in both languages functions as an adjunct
to a noun head in a word-group. The categorial meanings of English and
Ukrainian adjuncts differ considerably, however, since English adjuncts can
not express gender, case and only rarely number as in the example with the
demonstrative pronouns this/that+Nsing ‐ these/those + Nplur; such a + Nsing -
such+ Nplur, many a+ Nsing- many+ Nplur
Almost all Ukrainian attributive adjuncts, however, mostly agree with the
head noun in gender, case, and number. These adjuncts are: adjectives,
numerals, pronouns, participles: гарний день, мій брат, перше літо,
працююча зміна, засіяне поле, моя батьківщина, etc.
Each of these and other adjuncts has also case endings: гарного дня,
гарному дневі, гарним днем, (при) гарному дневі; мого брата, моєму
братові, моїм братом, мій брате; першому дневі, першим днем, etc.
But there are some non-declinable adjuncts in Ukrainian as well, e.g.:
Number 17 was on the second floor. (Christie) Номер 17 був на третьому
поверсі. Similarly in: Палата 17, у палаті 17, etc.
The adjunct "17" does not agree in gender (like in English) with its head
word "number"'/номер, палата № 17). There is also no syntactic agreement
in English, and sometimes in Ukrainian (if there are the adverbial, infinitival
and some phrasal adjuncts), e.g.: George was the first to recover, the then
government, sugar cane production, a to‐be‐or‐not‐to‐be question, the sentence
below, books to read, the House of Commons debate, etc. Similarly there is no
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syntactic agreement of adverbial and infinitival adjuncts with their noun
heads in Ukrainian either, e.g.: шлях наліво, бажання виграти, спроба
виправдатись.
Some adverbial adjuncts in English may be post-posed, eg: A voice inside
said. (Maugham) But: In the light of after events... (Fox).
Both in English and Ukrainian prepositional adjuncts and adjunct clauses
are found, e.g.: There were only two houses of any importance in King's Abbot.
My friend of whom I spoke was a young man... (Christie) Біля шарабанів коні
в хомутах. (Головко) Мій приятель, про якого я казав... Isomorphic are also
noun adjuncts as in the sentence I heard Joanie's voice (Maugham) - Я чув
голос Джоані (or Джоанін голос).
Characteristic of English only are adjuncts expressed by a)clusters of
nouns like sugar cane production; b) statives: Miss Ackroyd saw her uncle alive
at a quarter to ten. (Christie); c) gerund, gerundial phrase or consrtuction:
"You have not spoiled my pleasure in meeting you, Mr. Gray". (Wilde); d) of the
contextual adjuncts expressed by articles having a lexical meaning in the text:
The thought was fire in him. (London) "I want the Dorian Gray I used to
paint..." (Wilde) Ця думка пекла його вогнем. Я хочу мати справу з тим
Доріаном Ґреєм..., якого я малював...".
The position of an attribute before or after its head word largely depends
on its morphological type. An attribute consisting of a prepositional phrase
can only come after its head word. As to adjectival attributes, their usual
position is before their head word, but in some cases they follow it. Let us
consider a few examples of this kind. Darkness impenetrable and immovable
filled the room. (J. Austen) It has been long noticed that adjectives with the ‐ble
suffix are apt to come after the noun they modify. This may be partly due to
their semantic peculiarity: they are verbal in character, expressing as they do
the possibility (or impossibility) for the person or thing denoted by the head
word to undergo the action denoted by the stem from which the adjective in ‐
ble is derived (in our example these stems are: penetr‐, e.g.: the verb penetrate,
and move respectively). This should not be taken to mean that adjectives of
this type are bound to follow their head word, but the peculiarity of their
meaning and structure makes it possible for them to do so. Postposition also
occurs in certain stock phrases, such as from times immemorial, the best goods
available, cousin german, etc., which are specially studied in lexicology. Apart
from these cases, postposition of an attribute is possible in poetic diction and
is a distinctive stylistic feature. Compare, for example, Byron's lines: Adieu,
adieu! my native shore / Fades o'er the waters blue, or again, Enough, enough,
my yeoman good, / Thy grief let none gainsay. Nowhere but in poetry would
such phrases with postpositive attributes as the waters blue, or my yeoman
good be possible.
An attribute expressed by an adverb (which does occur, though not too
often) may come before its head word. Thus, the adverb then used as an
attribute, as in the sentence She was of the tallest of women, and at her then
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age of six‐and‐twenty... in the prime and fulness of her beauty (Thackeray) can
only be prepositive, and besides it always stands between the definite article
and the noun. It may be noted that the adverb then, when used in this manner,
is an opposite of the adjective present, which occupies a similar position in
such contexts as the present state of affairs.
3. The adverbial modifier. There are several ways of classifying adverbial
modifiers: (1) according to their meaning, (2) according to their
morphological peculiarities, (3) according to the type of their head word.
Of these, the classification according to meaning is not in itself a
grammatical classification. For instance, the difference between an adverbial
modifier of place and one of time is basically semantic and depends on the
lexical meaning of the words functioning as adverbial modifiers. However, this
classification may acquire some grammatical significance, especially when we
analyse word order in a sentence and one semantic type of adverbial modifier
proves to differ in this respect from another. Therefore the classification of
adverbial modifiers according to their meaning cannot be ignored by syntactic
theory.
Classification according to morphological peculiarities, i. e. according to
the parts of speech and to phrase patterns, is essential: it has also something
to do with word order, and stands in a certain relation to the classification
according to meaning.
Classification according to the element modified is the syntactic
classification proper. It is of course connected in some ways with the
classification according to meaning; for instance, an adverbial modifier can
modify a part of the sentence expressed by a verb only if the type of meaning
of the word (or phrase) acting as modifier is compatible with the meaning of a
verb, etc.
A complete classification of adverbial modifiers according to their
meaning, i. e. a list of all possible meanings they can have, is impossible to
achieve, and it would serve no useful purpose. A certain number of meanings
can be found quite easily, such as place, time, condition, manner of an action,
degree of a property, etc., but whatever list we may compile along these lines,
there are bound to be special cases which will not fit in. For instance, in the
sentence “I saw him at the concer”t it is hard to tell whether the adverbial
modifier at the concert expresses place or time.
As to the classification according to morphological peculiarities, it can
probably be made exhaustive, although some of the morphological types are
met with very seldom indeed.
The most usual morphological type seems to be the adverb. This is
testified, among other things, by the fact that the very term for this part of the
sentence is derived (in English, and also, for instance, in German) from the
term "adverb". In some grammar books the two notions are even mixed up.
Occasionally an author speaks of adverbs, where he obviously means
adverbial modifiers. 1
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 Another very frequent morphological type of adverbial modifier is the
phrase pattern "preposition + noun" (also the type "preposition + adjective +
noun" and other variations of this kind). This type of adverbial modifier is one
of those which are sometimes indistinguishable from objects, or rather where
the distinction between object and adverbial modifier is neutralised.
A noun without a preposition can also in certain circumstances be an
adverbial modifier. To distinguish it from an object, we take into account the
meanings of the words, namely the meaning of the verb functioning as
predicate, and that of the noun in question. It must be admitted, though, that
even this criterion will not yield quite definite results, and this means that the
decision will be arbitrary, that is, the distinction between the two secondary
parts is neutralised here, too. Let us consider, for instance, the function of the
noun hour in a sentence like They appointed an hour and in a sentence like
They waited an hour. Since the noun is the same in both cases, the distinction,
if any, can only be due to the meaning of the verb in its relation to that of the
noun. In the first sentence we will take the noun hour as an object –on the
analogy of many other nouns, which can also follow this particular verb (e. g.
appoint a director), and which can all be made the subject of this verb in a
passive construction (e. g. A director has been appointed). In the second
sentence, things are different, as the verb wait can only be followed by a very
few nouns without a preposition (e. g. Wait a minute), and a passive
construction is impossible. This appears to constitute an essential difference
between the two.
A very frequent morphological type of adverbial modifier is the infinitive
or an infinitive phrase. This is especially true of the adverbial modifier of
purpose, which may be expressed by the infinitive preceded by the particle to
or the phrase in order to. However, we cannot say that every infinitive or
infinitive phrase acting as a secondary part of the sentence must necessarily
be an adverbial modifier of purpose, or indeed an adverbial modifier of any
kind.
Let us compare the following two sentences: I wanted to read the
advertisement, and I stopped to read the advertisement. From a purely
structural point of view there would seem to be no difference between the
two sentences. It is the meanings of the verbs want and stop which lie at the
bottom of the difference. If we consider this experiment to be a grammatical
proof we can say that the difference in the functions of the infinitive in the two
sentences is grammatical. If we deny this the conclusion will be that the
distinction between the two secondary parts is neutralised here too.
There are also cases when the infinitive is an adverbial modifier, but not
one of purpose.: Denis woke up the next morning to find the sun shining, the sky
serene. (Huxley) It is clear from the lexical meanings of the words woke up and
find that the infinitive as adverbial modifier does not indicate the purpose of
the action but the circumstances that followed it (Denis woke up and found
the sun shining).
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 Roughly speaking, in summing up the relations between the semantic and
the morphological types of adverbial modifiers, we may say that some general
statements on their relations can be made: for example, an adverbial modifier
of place can never be expressed by an infinitive; an infinitive can express
either an adverbial modifier of purpose, or one of subsequent events, etc. No
straightforward law about correspondences between the two classifications is
possible.
An adverbial modifier cannot modify a part of the sentence expressed by
a non-verbal noun; in other words, a secondary part modifying a part
expressed by a noun cannot be an adverbial modifier.
The position of adverbial modifiers in the sentence is known to be
comparatively more free than that of other parts. However, there is some
difference here between types of modifiers. Those which are most closely
linked with the part of the sentence they modify are the ones that denote the
frequency or the property of an action. They come between the subject and
the predicate, or even inside the predicate if it consists of two words –an
auxiliary and a notional verb, or two elements of a compound predicate.
We cannot, however, say either that adverbial modifiers of these types
cannot stand elsewhere in the sentence, or that adverbial modifiers of other
types cannot occupy this position. Occasionally an adverbial modifier of
frequency will appear at the beginning of the sentence. Occasionally, on the
other hand, an adverbial modifier of another type appears between subject
and predicate: Catherine, for a few moments, was motionless with horror. (J.
Austen) Now Meiklejohn, with a last effort, kicked his opponent's legs from
under him... (Linklater). The more usual position of the adverbial modifiers of
time and place is, however, outside the group "subject + predicate +
object",that is, either before or after it. Which of the two variants is actually
used depends on a variety of factors, among which the rheme plays an
important part. If the main stress is to fall, for instance, on the adverbial
modifier of time, i. e. if it contains the main new thing to be conveyed, this
adverbial modifier will have to come at the end of the sentence, as in the
following extract: "Only think, we crossed in thirteen days! It takes your breath
away." "We'll cross in less than ten days yet!" (Fitch) If, on the other hand, the
main thing to be conveyed is something else, the adverbial modifier of time
can come at the beginning of the sentence. It would, however, be wrong to say
that the adverbial modifier, when not bearing sentence stress, must come at
the beginning. It can come at the end in this case, too, and it is for the
intonation to show where the semantic centre of the sentence lies. This may
be seen in sentences of the following type: Fleda, with a bright face, hesitated a
moment. (H. James)
The position of adverbial modifiers of time and place has also to be
studied in the light of this general problem. An adverbial modifier can also
occupy other positions in the sentence; thus, the auxiliary do of the negative
form can be separated from the infinitive by a rather lengthy prepositional
81
group acting as a loose secondary part of the sentence, which is probably best
classed as an adverbial modifier of cause: He was perhaps the very last in a
long line of people whom Steitler at this time did not, for an equally long line of
reasons, want to see, but, half perversely, half idly, he turned his steps in the
direction of his friend's room. (Buechner) This may be counted among cases of
"enclosure", with one part of a sentence coming in between two elements of
another part.
An adverbial modifier also comes in between two components of the
predicate in the following sentence: ...he was acting not happily, not with an
easy mind, but impelled to remove some of the weight that had for months, even
through the excitement over Katherine, been pressing him down. (Snow) The
analytical form of the past perfect continuous tense had been pressing is here
separated by the intervening adverbial modifiers, for months and even through
the excitement over Katherine, which come in between the two auxiliaries had
and been. This does not in any way impede the understanding of the sentence,
as the verb had does not in itself give a satisfactory sense and either a verbal
(to complete an analytical verb form) or a noun (in the function of a direct
object) is bound to follow. So there is some tension in the sentence. Analytical
forms admit of being thus "stretched" by insertion of adverbial modifiers.
However, they do not admit insertion of any objects, and this maybe another
objective criterion for distinguishing between the two kinds of secondary
parts of the sentence. Objects can, as is well known, be inserted between
elements of an analytical verb form in German, and they could also appear in
this position in earlier English, namely in Middle English and even in
Shakespeare's time. Compare the line from "Hamlet": Mother, you have my
father much offended, which would not be possible in present-day English.)
The usual statement about adverbial modifiers of time always coming
either at the beginning or at the end of a sentence, and outside the subject-
predicate group anyway, is much too strict and is not borne out by actual
usage. Here are some examples of adverbial modifiers of time coming either
between the subject and the predicate, or within the predicate, if it consists of
more than one word: Bessie, during that twenty‐four hours, had spent a night
with Alice and a day with Muriel. (Cary) Sir Peregrine during this time never
left the house once, except for morning service on Sundays. (Trollope) In the
first of these examples the adverbial modifier of time is separated by commas
from the rest of the sentence, and so must be accounted a loose secondary
part of it. But in the second example a similar adverbial modifier, with the
same preposition during, is not separated by commas, so the looseness does
not appear to have any essential significance here. In our last example the
adverbial modifier on each day in the first clause comes between the two
elements of the predicate verb form, while in the second clause a similar
modifier, on each evening, stands before the subject. The reason for the
position of the adverbial modifier in the first clause (where it might also have
stood at the beginning of the clause) probably is, that the subject of the clause,
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his grandson, represents the theme, whereas the adverbial modifier, on each
day, belongs to the rheme, together with the predicate and all the rest of the
clause,
We may also compare the following sentence: She had not on that
morning been very careful with her toilet, as was perhaps natural. (Trollope)
Here the adverbial modifier of time also comes in between two elements
making up the analytical form of the link verb. The variant On that morning
she had not been very careful with her toilet... would certainly also be possible,
but there would probably be some greater emphasis on the adverbial
modifier, which would have tended to represent the theme of the sentence, as
if the sentence were an answer to the question: What happened on that
morning? Standing as it does within the predicate, the adverbial modifier is
more completely in the shade. The adverbial modifier of time also stands
between the subject and the predicate in the following sentence: But I saw
that he was distracted, and he soon jell quiet. (Snow) In this example, too, it
remains in the shade.
As a contrast to these sentences we can now consider one in which the
adverbial modifier of time stands at the beginning and is marked off by a
comma, so that it is apparently a loose modifier: Three days later, I was
surprised to be rung up by Charles. (Snow) Now in this case it could not come
in between the elements of the predicate, probably because it announces a
new situation (not on the day described so far, but three days later) and this
new element of the situation cannot be brought out properly if the part of the
sentence containing it is left in the shade, as it certainly would be between the
elements of the predicate.
This is also seen in the sentence, In a few minutes she returned, her eyes
shining, her hair still damp. (Snow) The adverbial modifier in a few minutes
could not possibly come between the subject and the predicate. It might have
come after the predicate, and would in that case have been more strongly
stressed, as if the sentence were an answer to the question, When did she
return? That is, the adverbial modifier of time would have represented the
rheme, or at least part of it. As it stands in the original text, the adverbial
modifier rather makes part of the theme, but it is not so completely in the
shade as an adverbial modifier standing between the subject and the
predicate (or within the predicate, for that matter) necessarily is.
4. Direct address and parentheses. The position of these parts of the
sentence is probably more free than that of all other parts. Thus, a direct
address can come in almost anywhere in the sentence, as will be seen from the
following few examples: "Child, I'll try." "Oh, bat, Dotty, we can't go." "Look
here, Renny, why don't you come and work for me?" "Her smelling salts,
Scarlett!" "What does that mean, Mr Kennedy?" (all from M. Mitchell) "Instantly,
Lieutenant, instantly." (Shaw)
Much the same may be said about parentheses. Some types of
parenthesis usually come in between two constituent parts of the predicate:
83
this is especially true of parentheses expressed by modal words, such as
perhaps, probably, certainly, doubtless, and by the phrases no doubt, without
doubt, in fact.
However, a parenthesis may also refer to one part of the sentence only,
and is then bound to come before that part, e. g. "Tell me," she added with
provoking and yet probably only mock serious eyes and waving the bag towards
Roberta, "what shall I do with him?" (Dreiser) Here the parenthesis probably
belongs to the attribute only mock serious, and it would have to go if that
attribute were dropped.

Issues for discussion.

1. Characterize the parts of sentence in the contrasted languages as whole,

from the point of view of their structure, ways of expression and
meaning.
2. The main parts of the sentence, the types of the subject found in English
and Ukrainian, allomorphic features you can think of.
3. The ways of expression of the predicate in the contrasted languages.
Speak of the types of the predicate in English and Ukrainian.
4. The nomenclature of the secondary parts of the sentence in the
contrasted languages. Give the definitions of all the secondary parts of
the sentence.
5. Characterize the object in English and Ukrainian. Define the direct,
indirect object, complex object. State the allomorphic features of the
object in the languages under study.
6. Describe the features of the attribute in the contrasted languages.
7. Characterize the adverbial modifier from the point of view of its types
and ways of expression in English and Ukrainian.

4. COMPOSITE SENTENCE
A composite sentence in English and Ukrainian, like in all other
languages, contains two or more primary predication centres mostly
represented by as many corresponding clauses. The structural types of the
composite sentence are identified on the ground of the syntactic reflection
(and connection) of its predicate parts which are not always distinctly
identified. Thus, common in the syntactic systems of English and Ukrainian
are sentences that are semantically intermediate between simple extended on
the one hand and composite sentences on the other.
The absence of almost all the secondary predication constructions in
Ukrainian makes it impossible to obtain direct correlative transforms of some
simple and composite sentences. Hence, English compound sentences may
have complex sentences for their equivalents in Ukrainian, e.g.: He leaned far
84
out of the window and he saw the first light spread – Він висунувся далеко з
вікна і помітив, що почали пробиватися перші промені.
Because of the objective with the infinitive construction in the
second/succeeding English clause of the compound sentence above the
Ukrainian equivalent of it can be only an object subordinate clause.
Within a composite sentence clauses may be joined by means of
coordination or subordination, thus forming a compound or a complex sentence
respectively.
Coordination is a way of linking grammatical elements to make them
equal in rank.
Subordination is a way of linking grammatical elements that makes one of
them dependent upon the other (or they are mutually dependent).
A compound sentence may contain coordinate clauses extended by
subordinate clauses, and the resulting structure is a compound-complex
sentence.
A complex sentence may contain subordinate clauses joined by means of
coordination, the resulting structure being a complex sentence with
homogeneous subordinate clauses.
A compound sentence consists of two or more clauses of equal rank
which form one syntactical whole in meaning and intonation. Clauses that are
parts of a compound sentence are called coordinate, as they are joined by
coordination.
Coordinate clauses may be linked together with or without a connector; in
the first case they are joined syndetically: Yesterday i bought a penny fiddle and
put it to my chin to play, but I found its strings painted, so I threw my fiddle
away.
In the second case they are joined asyndeticaily: Humpty Dumpty sat on a
wall / Humpty Dumpty had a great fall; / All the king’s horses, and all the king’s
men / Cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again.

1. Compound sentences consist of clauses joined together by

coordinating conjunctions. These are very few: and, but, or, for, yet, so
(compare the chapter on conjunctions, p. 158). Concerning some of them
there may be doubts whether they are conjunctions (thus, yet may also be
supposed to be an adverb), and concerning the word for it may be
doubtful whether it is co-ordinating or subordinating. The meanings of the
conjunctions themselves are of course a question of lexicology. What
concerns us here is the type of connection between the clauses in a
compound sentence.
There has been some discussion about the degree of independence of
the clauses making up a compound sentence. The older view was that they
were completely independent of each other. It was supposed that these
clauses were nothing but independent sentences with a co-ordinating
conjunction between them indicating their semantic relations. Lately,
85
however, the opinion has been expressed that the independence of the
clauses, and especially of the second clause (and those which follow it, if
any) is not complete, and that the structure of the second and following
clauses is to some extent predetermined by the first. This view was put
forward in the Academy's Grammar of the Russian language. It is pointed
out here that the word order of the second clause may be influenced by the
connection it has with the first, and that the verb forms of the predicates in
co-ordinated clauses are frequently mutually dependent. Part of this is
more significant for the Ukrainian language with its freer word order
than for the English, but a certain degree of interdependence between the
clauses is found in English, too.
It should be noted that the co-ordinating conjunctions differ from each
other in definiteness of meaning: the conjunction but has an adversative
meaning which is so clear and definite that there can hardly be anything in
the sentence to materially alter the meaning conveyed by this conjunction.
The meaning of the conjunction and, on the other hand, which is one of
"addition", is wide enough to admit of shades being added to it by the
meanings of other words in the sentence. This will be quite clear if we
compare the following two compound sentences with clauses joined by this
conjunction: The old lady had recognised Ellen's handwriting and her fat
little mouth was pursed in a frightened way, like a baby who fears a scolding
and hopes to ward it off by tears. (M. Mitchell)
2. Complex sentences. Their structure and types. There is much more to
be said about the complex sentence than about the compound. This is due to
several causes, which are, however, connected with one another.
For one thing, the semantic relations expressed by subordination are
much more numerous and more varied than with co-ordination: all such
relations as time, place, concession, purpose, etc. are expressly stated in
complex sentences only.
Then again, the means of expressing subordination are much more
numerous. There is here a great variety of conjunctions: when, after, before,
while, till, until, though, although, albeit, that, as, because, since; a number of
phrases performing the same function: as soon as, as long as, so long as,
notwithstanding that, in order that, according as, etc. Besides, a certain
number of conjunctive words are used: the relative pronouns who, which, that,
whoever, whatever, whichever, and the relative adverbs where, how, whenever,
wherever, however, why, etc.
We may note that the boundary line between conjunctions and relative
adverbs is not quite clearly drawn. We shall also see this when we come to the
adverbial clauses introduced by the word when and those introduced by the
word where. Historically speaking, conjunctions develop from adverbs, and
one word or another may prove to be in an intermediate stage, when there are
no sufficient objective criteria to define its status.
Types of complex sentences. The notions of declarative, interrogative,
86
and imperative sentence, and also that of exclamatory sentence appear to be
applicable to some types of complex sentences as well. For instance, if the
main clause of a complex sentence is interrogative or imperative, this implies
that the complex sentence as a whole is also interrogative or imperative
respectively. A few examples will suffice to illustrate our point. Why couldn't
she sense now that he was outside and come out? (Dreiser) The main clause
Why couldn't she sense now . .. and come out? is clearly interrogative, and this is
enough to make the whole complex sentence interrogative, though the
subordinate clause that he was outside (an object clause) is certainly not
interrogative, and should, if anything, be termed declarative. This, it may be
noted in passing, is an additional proof that the clause that he was outside is a
subordinate clause: its type of communication is irrelevant for the type of
communication to which the sentence as a whole belongs, while the type of
the clause Why couldn't she sense .. . and come out? is decisive for it.
The same will be found to be the case in the following example: But who
is to guarantee that I get the other sixty‐five, and when? (Dreiser) This is a
slightly more complicated case. The main clause of course is who is to
guarantee, and it is interrogative. The subordinate clause is that I get the other
sixty‐five, and it is followed by the words and when, which will probably be
best described as an elliptical second subordinate clause, whose full text
would run, and when I shall get it (which is an indirect question). It might also
be described as a detached adverbial modifier added on to the subordinate
clause that I shall get the other sixty‐five. Be that as it may, the fact remains
that the interrogative main clause But who is to guarantee.. .? is enough to
make the entire sentence interrogative, no matter to what type the
subordinate clause or clauses belong.
Now let us take a complex sentence with an imperative main clause:
Never you mind how old she is. (Shaw) The main clause never you mind is
imperative and that is enough to make the whole sentence imperative as well.
Types of subordinate clauses. Above we defined a complex sentence as
a sentence containing at least one subordinate clause. Any classification of
complex sentences is therefore bound to be based on a classification of
subordinate clauses. This will accordingly be our next task.
The problem of classifying subordinate clauses is one of the vexed
questions of syntactic theory. Several systems have been tried out at various
times, and practically each of them has been shown to suffer from some
drawback or other. Some of the classifications so far proposed have been
inconsistent, that is to say, they were not based on any one firm principle of
division equally applied to all clauses under consideration.
We will first of all point out what principles of classification are possible
and then see how they work when applied to Modern English. It is quite
conceivable that a sort of combined principle will have to be evolved, that is,
one principle might be taken as the ruling one, and the main types established
in accordance with it, and another principle, or perhaps other principles,
87
taken as secondary ones and applied for a further subdivision of clauses
obtained according to the first principle.
It might also prove expedient to have two different classifications
independent of each other and based on different principles.
As we proceed to point out the various principles which may be taken as
a base for classification, we shall see that even that is a matter of some
difficulty, and liable to lead to discussion and controversy.
The first opposition in the sphere of principles would seem to be that
between meaning, or contents, and syntactical function. But this opposition is
not in itself sufficient to determine the possible variants of classification. For
instance, under the head of "meaning" we may bring either such notions as
"declarative" (or "statement") and "interrogative" (or "question"), and, on the
other hand, a notion like "explanatory". Under the head of "function" we may
bring either the position of a clause within a complex sentence, defined on the
same principles as the position of a sentence part within a simple sentence, or
(as is sometimes done) on the analogy between a clause and a part of speech
performing the same function within a simple sentence. Besides, for certain
types of clauses there may be ways of characterising them in accordance with
their peculiarities, which find no parallel in other clauses. For instance,
clauses introduced by a relative pronoun or relative adverb may be termed
"relative clauses", which, however, is not a point of classification.
In order to obtain a clearer idea of how these various principles would
work out in practice, let us take a complex sentence and define its subordinate
clauses in accordance with each of these principles. Let the sentence be this: It
was unreal, grotesquely unreal, that morning skies which dawned so tenderly
blue could be profaned with cannon smoke that hung over the town like low
thunder clouds, that warm noontides filled with the piercing sweetness of
massed honeysuckle and climbing roses could be so fearful, as shells screamed
into the streets, bursting like the crack of doom, throwing iron splinters
hundreds of yards, blowing people and animals to bits. (Mitchell) Let us first
look at the two subordinate clauses introduced by the conjunction that: (1)
that morning skies. .. could be profaned with cannon smoke, (2) that warm
noontides.. , could be so fearful. From the point of view of meaning they may be
called declarative clauses, or subordinate statements, as they contain
statements which are expressed in subordinate clauses. From the point of
view of function they may be termed, if we consider them as something
parallel to parts of a simple sentence, either appositions to the impersonal it
which opens the sentence, or subject clauses, if we take the view that the it is
merely an introductory subject, or a "sham" subject, as it is sometimes called.
If, last not least, we wish to compare the clauses to the part of speech which
might perform the corresponding function in a simple sentence, we may call
them noun clauses, or substantive clauses, which is a very usual way of
treating them in English school grammars.
Now let us turn to the clause coming after the noun skies of the first
88
subordinate clause: which dawned so tenderly blue. From the viewpoint of
meaning this clause can also be said to be declarative, or a subordinate
statement. It may also be termed a relative clause, because it is introduced by
a relative pronoun and has a relative connection with the noun skies (or the
phrase morning skies). From the functional point of view it may be called an
attributive clause, and if we compare it to the part of speech which might
perform the corresponding function in a simple sentence, we may call it an
adjective clause, which is also common in English school grammars. The same
considerations also apply to the clause that hung over the town like low
thunder clouds; it is evident from the context that the word that which opens
the clause is a relative pronoun (without it the clause would have no subject).
Now we take the last subordinate clause: as shells screamed into the streets,
bursting like the crack of doom, throwing iron splinters hundreds of yards,
blowing people and animals to bits. This again would be a declarative clause or
a subordinate statement, and from the viewpoint of function it may be termed
an adverbial clause, as it corresponds to an adverbial modifier in a simple
sentence. More exactly, it might be termed an adverbial clause of time. Now,
for the last item, if we compare it to the part of speech performing the
corresponding function in a simple sentence, we might term it an adverb
clause, which, however, is too close to the term "adverbial clause" to be of
much use in distinguishing the two notions.
To sum up these various possibilities, we have, for the first two clauses,
the following terms: declarative clause, or subordinate statement; apposition
clause, or subject clause; noun clause. For the second two clauses: declarative
clause, or subordinate statement; attributive clause; adjective clause. For the
clause coming last: declarative, or subordinate statement; adverbial clause of
time; adverb clause.
The next question is, what are we to make of all this variety of possible
treatments, and what classification, or what classifications of subordinate
clauses should be accepted as the most rational?
It is perhaps best to start with the last of the enumerated views, viz. that
which draws a parallel between subordinate clauses and parts of speech.
There is little to be said in favour of this view. The strongest argument here is
probably the fact that in Modern English a clause may sometimes be treated
like a noun, namely when it is introduced by a preposition, as, for instance, in
the following sentence: But after the initial dismay he had no doubt as to what
he must do. (Linklater)
This seems practically the only feature which shows some likeness
between clauses of the given kind and nouns as such. As for the rest, the
analogy is merely one of function: clauses and parts of speech resemble each
other only in so far as both of them can perform certain functions in the
sentence, viz. that of subject, object, or attribute. This kind of similarity can
hardly be said to be a sufficient ground for classifying clauses according to
parts of speech. The term "noun clause", for example, can only mean "a clause
89
which performs in a complex sentence one of the functions which a noun can
perform in a simple sentence". In a similar way, the term "adjective clause"
would mean "a clause which performs in a complex sentence one of the
functions that an adjective can perform in a simple sentence". This treatment
of clauses does not appear to have any serious foundation, and the only
consideration in favour of it, that of clauses sometimes being introduced by
prepositions (as if they were nouns), is not strong enough to prove the case.
We will therefore not adopt the classification of subordinate clauses based on
comparing them with parts of speech.
Now let us consider the principle according to which declarative and
interrogative clauses (or subordinate statements and subordinate questions)
are given as types. This principle has certainly something to say for itself. The
difference between the subordinate clauses in the following two sentences
viewed from this angle is clear enough: However, she felt that something was
wrong. (M. Mitchell) Thereafter, when they talked it over, they always wondered
why they had failed to notice Scarlett's charms before. (Idem) It may
accordingly be adopted as a criterion for the classification of subordinate
clauses. It has a weak point, however, and this is that not every clause will fit
into either of these categories. For instance, the subordinate clause in the
following sentence cannot naturally be termed either a declarative or an
interrogative clause: If he had been destitute and she had had money she would
have given him all he wanted. (R. West) The clause if ... money expresses
condition, it neither asserts anything nor does it ask any question. There are,
of course, a number of clauses of a similar kind. It would appear, therefore,
that the distinction between declarative and interrogative clauses
(subordinate statements and subordinate questions) applies to certain types
of clauses only and cannot be made a general principle of classification.
The term "relative clause" may very well be applied to any clause
introduced by a relative pronoun or relative adverb.
O. Jespersen devotes several chapters of his book "A Modern English
Grammar" to relative clauses. In accordance with his general view that
elements of language may be divided into primaries, adjuncts, and subjuncts,
he treats the syntactical functions of subordinate clauses as falling under
these heads: "relative clauses as primaries" and "relative clause adjuncts". 1
From the viewpoint of function the subordinate clauses of these types are
of course quite different, yet they may be all termed "relative clauses". This
makes it evident that the notion "relative clause" is not a notion of syntactic
function, since it cuts right across syntactical divisions.
It is also evident that the term "relative clause" cannot be an element of
any system: the clauses which are not relative do not make any kind of
syntactical type which might be put on the same level as relative clauses: what
unites them all is merely the fact that they are non-relative.
Thus the notion of "relative clauses", which is doubtless useful in its
limited sphere, as a description of a certain type of subordinate clauses
90
characterised by a peculiarity they all share, is useless as an element of a
general classification of clauses. In that respect it is no better than
"declarative" or "interrogative" clauses.
There remains now the classification of subordinate clauses based on the
similarity of their functions with those of parts of the sentence, namely the
classification of clauses into subject, predicative, object, attributive, adverbial,
appositional, and parenthetical clauses. In this way the general parallelism
between parts of a simple sentence and subordinate clauses within a complex
sentence will be kept up; however, there is no sufficient ground for believing
that there will be complete parallelism in all respects and all details: on the
contrary, it is most likely that differences between the two will emerge
(especially in the sphere of adverbial modifiers and adverbial clauses).
Subordinate clauses may well be expected to have some peculiarities
distinguishing them from parts of a simple sentence. 1
In studying the several types of subordinate clauses, we will compare
them with the corresponding parts of a simple sentence, and point out their
peculiarities, and the meanings which are better rendered by a subordinate
clause than by a part of a simple sentence. With this proviso we proceed to
examine the various types of clauses.

Issues for discussion.

1. Describe the structural types of sentence in English and Ukrainian.
2. Characterize the main parts of the sentence in the contrasted
languages, the structural types and ways of expression of the
subject and the predicate.
3. Give characteristics to the secondary parts of the sentence, the
isomorphic and allomorphic features of the object, attribute and
adverbial modifier.
4. Typology of the composite sentence in the contrasted languages.
Compound sentence in English and Ukrainian.
5. Characterize the complex sentence, the main types of subordinate
clauses in the languages under analysis.

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 TEST 1

1.Contrastive grammar studies languages comparing them with the purpose of

establishing:

a)their isomorphic grammatical features

b)their isomorphic and allomorphic features
c)their allomorphic features
d)peculiarities of their phonetic systems

2.Find the false statement:

a) language is the system, phonological, lexical and grammatical
b) speech is the manifestation of language, its use by various speakers and writers
c)grammar is found both in language and speech
d) grammar belongs to the sphere of language only

3. Isomorphic features are:

a) opposite features of the languages
b)divergent features of the languages
c)common features of the languages
d) features of all the existing languages

4. Which of the following does not characterize analytical language organization:

a) morphologically indeclinable words and analytical (compound) forms and
constructions
b) comparatively few grammatical inflections
c)well-developed declension system
d) strict word-order

5.The main branches of grammar are:

a) phonology and syntax
b) morphology and syntax
c)morphology and synthesis
d) analysis and synthesis

6.Free morphemes are:

a) suffixes and prefixes
b)root morphemes
c)inflectional morphese
d) all morphemes

7.Morphology does not study:

a) word-changing forms
b) means of expressing grammatical meanings
c)parts of the sentence
d) parts of speech

8.Language units can undergo contrastive study if they obtain:

a) functional similarity, ability to combine general and particular features, ability to
represent a whole class

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 b) functional similarity, disability to combine general and particular features, ability
to represent a individual words
c) functional peculiarities, ability to combine general and particular features, ability
to represent a whole class
d) no similar features

9. Grammatical category is a system of opposed grammatical forms with

homogeneous … :
a) parts of the sentence
b) inflections
c)meanings
d) morphological features

10. Grammatical meaning is a generalized meaning characteristic of a set of words,

word-forms, syntactic constructions which has its own regular expression in the language:
a) the definition has three wrong statements
b) the definition is incorrect
c)the definition concerns the grammatical paradigm
d) the definition is correct

11.The parts of speech present some difficulty for grammarians because:

a) every language has its own parts of speech
b) some grammarians consider it unnecessary to divide words into parts of speech
c)different parts of speech perform different functions in the sentence
d) some grammarians think it unnecessary to take into account the generalized
meaning of the parts of speech

12.Morphological categories of the noun are:

a) gender, number, case, mood
b) number, gender, case, definiteness/indefiniteness, voice
c)degrees of comparison, number, gender, case
d) number, gender, case, definiteness/indefiniteness

13 . Find the correct statement:

a)in English and Ukrainian the category of grammatical gender is manifested
morphologically
b) in Ukrainian the category of grammatical gender is manifested, while in English it
is not found
c)both in English and in Ukrainian the noun has no category of gender
d) both in English and Ukrainian only the noun has a category of gender

14.The lexical-grammatical nature of the nouns in the contrasted languages is:

a)suppletivity
b) substantivity
c)supposition
d) subordination

15.Singularia tantum nouns have

a)only plural
b)only singular
c)singular and plural
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 d) no number category

16.The following is not found in English:

a)double number
b)singularia tantum
c)pluralia tantum
d) collective nouns

17.According to some grammarians the group “article+noun” is thought to be an

analytical form. They consider that:
a)zero article does not exist
b)zero article modifies the attribute
c)zero article exists and has its own semantic structure
d) articles and nouns are individual lexemes

18. The seme of classification is characteristic of:

a)the indefinite article
b)the demonstrative pronouns
c)the definite and zero articles
d) the indefinite pronouns

19.The category of case is disputable in English because:

a)the declension system is well-developed in English
b)”’s” is a sign of the genitive case
c)there is no well-developed inflection system in English
d) the category of case does not exist

20.In Ukrainian there are

a) 4 genders
b)1 gender
c)2 genders
d)3 genders

21.Terminative verbs denote actions:

a)directed at some limit
b)directed at no limit
c)in process
d)performed by the subject

22.Which of the following are not categories of the verb:

a)aspect and voice
b)number and person
c)number and case
d)mood and voice

23.Ukrainian verbs are characterized by:

a)perfective and imperfective aspects
b)perfect tense forms
c)indefinite aspect
d)past perfective aspect

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 24.In English the category of aspect is regarded as a part of:
a)the mood category
b)the tense category
c)the voice category
d)the person category

25.Perfective/Imperfective in Ukrainian and Common/Continuous in English:

a)coincide completely
b)have partial correspondence
c)have nothing in common
d)belong to different spheres of knowledge

26.Perfective verbs in Ukrainian have:

a)present, past and future forms
b)past and future forms
c)present and future forms
d)past and present forms

27. Absolute tense forms are:

a)those which do not express any time reference
b) those which do not depend on the other tense forms and are determined by the
moment of speaking
c) those which are regarded not in connection with the moment of speaking but
depend on other tense forms or time indicators
d)those which are both determined by the moment of speaking and depend on other
tense forms or time indicators

28.Passive voice is possible to form only if the verb is:

a)durative
b)terminative
c) transitive
d)reflexive

29.The category of voice is represented in:

a)English and Ukrainian
b)English only
c)Ukrainian only
d)in English but it is not expressed morphologically

30.Find an incorrect statement:

a)active is always rendered from English into Ukrainian with the help of active
b) passive is always rendered from English into Ukrainian with the help of passive
c)active is never rendered from English into Ukrainian with the help of passive
d) active can sometimes be rendered English into Ukrainian with the help of passive

31.Unreal action is denoted in English by means of:

a)Subjunctive I, Subjunctive II, Conditional and Suppositional Moods
b) Subjunctive I, Subjunctive II, Conditional and Superstitious Moods
c)Suppositional Mood
d)Conditional and Surreptitious Moods

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 32.The category of mood is a morphological word-changing category, characterizing
the verb forms and denoting:
a)the relation of the action to the time of speaking
b)the relation of the subject and the object of the action
c)the connection between past and future
d) the relation of the action to the reality

33. Imperative mood is not used to express:

a)will
b)request
c)command
d)unreal condition

34. In the sentence: “будь он поумнее, все было бы гораздо лучше” the imperative
mood expresses the semes of:
a)request and command
b)order and will
c)wish and dream
d)incentive and condition

35. Which category denotes the relation of the action to the moment of speaking,
regarded as a starting point?
a) the category of case
b) the category of aspect
c)the category of tense
d) the category of voice

TEST 2
1. All parts of the sentence are divided into:
a)strong and weak
b)main and secondary
c)functional and notional
d)main and auxiliary

2.The subject and predicate:

a)are interdependent parts of the sentence
b)are secondary parts of the sentence
c)are not connected
d)are not found in English

3.The subject in English and Ukrainian can be expressed by:

a) noun, pronoun, gerund
b)finite form of the verb, noun, participle
c)gerund, pronoun, numeral
d)noun, pronoun, numeral, clause

4.The subject in Ukrainian cannot be expressed by:

a)numeral
b)pronoun
c)noun
d)gerund
96
5.The following types of the parts of the sentence are found only in English:
a)simple
b)compound
c)clausal
d)complex and formal

6.Complex object cannot be expressed by:

a)For-to-Infinitive construction
b)Objective Infinitive construction
c)Gerundial construction
d)Infinitive phrase

7.Compound nominal predicate in English consists of:

a)auxiliary verb and predicative
b)link verb and predicative
c)modal verb and infinitive phrase
d)link verb and infinitive phrase

8.In English predicative cannot be expressed by:

a)noun
b)modal verb
c) adjective
d)participle

9.Primary predication relations are found in:

a)the subject-object group
b)the subject-predicate group
c)the subject-attribute group
d)the predicative construction

10.Secondary predication relations are found in:

a)the predication construction
b) the subject-predicate group
c)the predicate-object group
d)the subject-attribute group

11.The simple predicate can be of two types:

a)complex and formal
b)verbal and nominal
c)compound and complex
d)verbal and attributive

12.The compound verbal predicates cannot be:

a)modal
b)phasal
c)of double orientation
d)predicative

13.The object in Ukrainian cannot be expressed by:

a)noun phrases
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 b)formal pronoun
c)substantivised adjective
d)pronoun

14.The attribute in the contrasted languages can:

a) only postmodify the word it depends on
b)both premodify and postmodify the word it depends on
c) only premodify the word it depends on
d)not modify the word it depends on

15.The following verbs require the use of the direct object:

a)intransitive
b)transitive
c)terminative
d)durative

16.Compound sentences consist of:

a)the main clause and subordinate clause
b) the main clause and extended clause
c)equal subordinate clauses
d)clauses, equal in rank

17.What clauses can be introduced by the formal it?

a)attributive
b)subjective and objective
c)adverbial
d)predicative

18.In the contrasted languages the following types of the adverbial modifier are not
found:
a)the adverbial modifier of time
b)the adverbial modifier of replacement
c)the adverbial modifier of manner
d)the adverbial modifier of attendant circumstances

19.The predicative is:

a)the nominal part of the compound nominal predicate
b)the verbal part of the compound verbal predicate
c)the verbal part of the compound nominal predicate
d)the nominal part of the compound verbal predicate

20.What type of the predicate consists of the link verb and predicative?
a)compound verbal phasal predicate
b)compound nominal predicate
c)compound verbal predicate of double orientation
d)simple nominal predicate

21.Sentences of what communicative type express questions?

a)affirmative
b)interrogative
c)imperative
98
d)exclamatory

22.Syndetic connection means:

a)the use of no conjunctions and conjunctive words to join the sentences
b)the use of conjunctions and conjunctive words to join the sentences
c)the use of prepositions to join the sentences
d) the use of pronouns to join the sentences

23.The composite sentence can contain:

a)one main clause and one subordinate clause
b)two equal clauses
c)any number of clauses
d)limited number of clauses

24.The composite sentences are characterized by the use of:

a)one subject-predicate group
b)more than one subject-predicate group
c)two predicative word-groups
d)primary and secondary predication word-groups

25.Adverbial clauses can be of the following types:

a)conditional, of time, attributive
b)conditional, of time, of manner
c)conditional, of concession, attributive
d)attributive, objective, conditional

26.Subject clause performs the function of:

a) the object of the main clause
b) the subject of the main clause
c) the attribute of the main clause
d) the predicative of the main clause

27.The subject of the sentence cannot be expressed by:

a)pronoun
b)subject clause
c)for-to-infinitive construction
d)predicative clause

28.The head-word of the noun phrase is:

a)pronoun
b)noun
c)verb
d)adverb

29.The secondary predication word-groups contain:

a)subject and predicate
b)predicative complexes
c)noun and adjective
d)subject and object

30.Prepositional word-groups consist of:

99
a)verb with preposition
b)noun with preposition
c)pronoun with preposition
d)adverb with preposition

31.Word-groups can be:

a)simple and compound
b)extended and non-extended
c)simple and complex
d)compound and complex

32.Composite sentences in the contrasted languages are:

a)complex and exclamatory
b)compound and complex
c)simple and compound
d)simple and complex

33.Adverbial modifier of manner characterizes:

a)the subject
b)the object
c)the attribute
d)the action of the predicate verb

34.Syntax studies:
a)the structure of the word
b)the structure of the sentence
c)the morphemes
d)the texts

35.Minor syntax studies:

a)the text
b)the word-groups
c)the sentences
d)the words

100
 READINGS

Homer C. House, Susan E. Harman.

Descriptive English Grammar
(from Homer C. House and Susan E. H.srman, Descriptive English
Grammar, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1950, pp. 16-19.)
Parts of speech are the divisions into which words are classified
according to their functions in a sentence. Most grammarians recognize eight
parts of speech in classifying all the words in the language which are used in
connected discourse. Each part of speech has a special use (or part) in the
make-up of the sentence of which it is a unit. The noun (the name of a person,
place, or thing), the pronoun (a word substituting for a noun), and the
adjective (a word qualifying a noun or pronoun) are generally associated with
or thought to belong to the subject of the sentence or to substantives
belonging to or relating to the subject. The verb (a word asserting action,
being, or state of being) and the adverb (when a modifier of the verb) are felt
to belong to the predicate of the sentence. The preposition ('a word placed
before1 to show relation between words) and the conjunction <…> show
relationship or connect units within the sentence. The interjection (an
ejaculation, an exclamation) is used to show emotion.
The same word may belong to more than one part of speech, the
classification depending upon the use of the word, not upon its form. Love
may be a noun (Love rules the court), or a verb (Love your enemies). In may be
a preposition (Duncan is in his grave), or an adverb (Come in). For may be a
preposition (He came/ar the money), or a conjunction (Let another be judge,
for I wish to enter the contest).
A group of words (phrase or clause) may serve as a single part of speech.
The infinitive phrase, for example, may be a noun (To lie is wrong), or an
adverb (He came to see me), or an adjective (I have an ax to grind). The gerund
is always a verbal noun and the entire phrase of which it is a part is frequently
used for a noun (I enjoy playing baseball; I cannot approve of your going
away). Clauses may be used as nouns (I know that you are my best friend), as
adverbs (I go when I am invited), or as adjectives (I like the suit that you gave
me).
One part of speech may sometimes be converted into another by
changing its form. An adjective by the addition of ‐ness or ‐ty may become a
noun (sweetness, purity). Some nouns may become adjectives by adding ‐ful
(hopeful, cheerful), or -v (milky, fishy), or ‐ed or ‐d (talented, diseased); or by
adding other similar suffixes. The adjective may serve as a noun by ellipsis
(The good die young; Take the bitter with the sweet). Some adjectives may
become verbs by the addition of-en (whiten, blacken, sweeten, thicken), or
adverbs by the addition of ‐ly (slowly, rapidly). The noun or pronoun in the
101
possessive case may have the function of an adjective (The boy's hat; My coat).
Other conversions of a similar nature will be treated more fully in the chapters
devoted to the different parts of speech.
Usage is a term employed by linguists to classify speech habits or
language peculiarities, to show what is or has been practiced at a given time
by a stated group of users of a language. The term is frequently qualified to
give us such expressions as historical usage, Modern English usage, standard
usage, current usage, British and American usage, and so forth. The laws and
rules of grammar are not always based upon historical facts or upon logic (as
in mathematics and chemistry), but on current standard usage established by
cultured and educated people whose influence is considered important.

Otto Jespersen.
The Philosophy of Grammar.
(from Otto Jespersen, The Philosophy of Grammar, London: George Allen
& Unwin, 1924, pp-17-29.)
82-83
CHAPTER I: LIVING GRAMMAR
Speaker and Hearer
The essence of language is human activity – activity on the part of one
individual to make himself understood by another, and activity on the part of
that other to understand what was in the mind of the first. These two
individuals, the producer and the recipient of language, or as we may more
conveniently call them, the speaker and the hearer, and their relations to one
another, should never be lost sight of if we want to understand the nature of
language and of that part of language which is dealt with in grammar. But in
former times this was often overlooked, and words and forms were often
treated as if they were things or natural objects with an existence of their own
– a conception which may have been to a great extent fostered through a too
exclusive preoccupation with written or printed words, but which is
fundamentally false, as will easily be seen with a little reflexion.
If the two individuals, the producer and the recipient of language, are
here spoken of as the speaker and the hearer respectively, this is in
consideration of the fact that the spoken and heard word is the primary form
for language, and of far greater importance than the secondary form used in
writing (printing) and reading. This is evidently true for the countless ages in
which mankind had not yet invented the art of writing or made only a sparing
use of it; but even in our modern newspaper-ridden communities, the vast
majority of us speak infinitely more than we write. At any rate we shall never
be able to understand what language is and how it develops if we do not
continually take into consideration first and foremost the activity of speaking
and hearing, and if we forget for a moment that writing is only a substitute for
speaking. A written word is mummified until someone imparts life to it by
transposing it mentally into the corresponding spoken word.
102
 The grammarian must be ever on his guard to avoid the pitfalls into
which the ordinary spelling is apt to lead him. Let me give a few very
elementary instances. The ending for the plural of substantives and for the
third person singular of the present tense of verbs is in writing the same ‐s in
such words as ends, locks, rises, but in reality we have three different endings,
as seen when we transcribe them phonetically [endz, toks, raiziz]. Similarly
the written ending –ed covers three different spoken endings in sailed, locked,
ended, phonetically [seild, lkt, endid]. In the written language it looks as if
the preterits paid and said were formed in the same way, but differently from
stayed, but in reality paid and stayed are formed regularly [peid, steid],
whereas said is irregular as having its vowel shortened [sed]. Where the
written language recognizes only one word there, the spoken language
distinguishes two both as to sound and signification (and grammatical
import), as seen in the sentence “There [] were many people [].”
Quantity, stress, and intonation, which are very inadequately, if at all,
indicated in the usual spelling, play important parts in the grammar of the
spoken language, and thus we are in many ways reminded of the important
truth that grammar should deal in the first instance with sounds and only
secondarily with letters.
Formulas and Free Expressions
If after these preliminary remarks we turn our attention to the
psychological side of linguistic activity, it will be well at once to mention the
important distinction between formulas or formular units and free
expressions. Some things in language – in any language – are of the formula
character; that is to say, no one can change anything in them. A phrase like
"How do you do?" is entirely different from such a phrase as "I gave the boy a
lump of sugar." In the former everything is fixed: you cannot even change the
stress, saying "How do you do?" or make a pause between the words, and it is
not usual nowadays as in former times to say "How does your father do?" or
"How did you do?" Even though it may still be possible, after saying, "How do
you do?" in the usual way to some of the people present, to alter the stress and
say, "And how do you do, little Mary?" the phrase is for all practical purposes
one unchanged and unchangeable formula. It is the same with "Good
morning!," "Thank you," "Beg your pardon," and other similar expressions.
One may indeed analyze such a formula and show that it consists of several
words, but it is felt and handled as a unit, which may often mean something
quite different from the meaning of the component words taken separately;
"beg your pardon," for instance, often means "please repeat what you said, I
did not catch it exactly"; "how do you do?" is no longer a question requiring an
answer, etc.
It is easy to see that' 'I gave the boy a lump of sugar1' is of a totally
different order. Here it is possible to stress any of the essential words and to
make a pause, for instance, after "boy," or to substitute "he" or "she" for "I,"

103
"lent" for 'gave," "Tom" for "the boy," etc. One may insert "never" and make
other alterations. While in handling formulas memory, or the repetition of
what one has once learned, is everything, free expressions involve another
kind of mental activity; they have to be created in each case anew by the
speaker, who inserts the words that fit the particular situation. The sentence
he thus creates may, or may not, be different in some one or more respects
from anything he has ever heard or uttered before; that is of no importance
for our inquiry. What is essential is that in pronouncing it he conforms to a
certain pattern. No matter what words he inserts, he builds up the sentence in
the same way, and even without any special grammatical training we feel that
the two sentences
John gave Mary the apple,
My uncle lent the joiner five shillings,
are analogous, that is they are made after the same pattern. In both we
have the same type. The words that make up the sentence are variable, but the
type is fixed.
<…>
Building up of Sentences
Apart from fixed formulas a sentence does not spring into a speaker's
mind all at once, but is framed gradually as he goes on speaking. This is not
always so conspicuous as in the following instance. I want to tell someone
whom I met on a certain occasion, and I start by saying: "There I saw Tom
Brqwn and Mrs. Hart and Miss Johnstone and Colonel Dutton. . . ." When I
begin my enumeration I have not yet made up my mind how many I am going
to mention or in what order, so I have to use and in each case. If, on the other
hand, before beginning my story I know exactly whom I am going to mention,
I leave out the ands except before the last name. There is another
characteristic difference between the two modes of expression:
1. There I saw Tom Brown, and Mrs, Hart, and Miss Johnstone, and Col
onel Dutton.
2. There I saw Tom Brown, Mrs. Hart, Miss Johnstone, and Colonel
Dutton.
namely that in the former I pronounce each name with a falling tone, as if
I were going to finish the sentence there, while in the latter all the names
except the last have a rising tone. It is clear that the latter construction, which
requires a comprehensive conception of the sentence as a whole, is more
appropriate in the written language, and the former in ordinary speech. But
writers may occasionally resort to conversational style in this as well as in
other respects. Defoe is one of the great examples of colloquial diction in
English literature, and in him I find (Robinson Crusoe, 2. 178) "our God made
the whole world, and you, and l, and all things,” – where again the form "I"
instead of me is characteristic of this style, in which sentences come into
existence only step by step.

104
 Many irregularities in syntax can be explained on the same principle, e.g.
sentences like “Hee that rewards me, heaven reward him” (Sh.). When a
writer uses the pronoun thou, he will have no difficulty in adding the proper
ending ‐ st to the verb if it follows immediately upon the pronoun; but if it
does not he will be apt to forget it and use the form that is suitable to the you
which may be at the back of his mind. Thus in Shakespeare (Tp. 1.2. 333)
"Thou stroakst me, and made much of me." Byron apostrophizes Sulla (Ch. H.
IV. 83): "Thou, who didst subdue Thy country's foes ere thou wouldst pause to
feel The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the due of hoarded vengeance . . .
thou who with thy frown Annihilated senates . . . thou didst lay down," etc. In
Byron such transitions are not uncommon,
In a similar way the power of if to require a subjunctive is often
exhausted when a second verb comes at some distance from the conjunction,
as in Shakespeare (Him. V. 2. 245), "If Hamlet from himself be tane away, And
when he's not himselfe, do's wrong Laertes, Then Hamlet does it not"; (Meas.
III. 2. 37) "If he be a whoremonger, and comes before him, he were as good go
a mile on his errand"; Ruskin: "But if the mass of good things be inexhaustible,
and there are horses for everybody, – why is not every beggar on horseback?";
Mrs. Ward: "A woman may chat with whomsoever she likes, provided it be a
time of holiday, and she is not betraying her art."

Henry Sweet. A New English Grammar

(from Henry Sweet, A New English Grammar, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press,
1892, pp. 176-84.)
68
CHANGES IN LANGUAGE
The most important fact in the history of language is that it is always
changing Words, parts of words -– inflections, derivative elements, etc. -–
word-groups and sentences are always changing, both in form and meaning:
the pronunciation of words changes, and their meaning changes; inflections
change both in form and meaning; word-groups and sentences change their
form in various ways – by altering the order of their words, by changes of
stress and intonation – and are liable to change their meaning also, so that the
meaning of the word-group or sentence can no longer be inferred from that of
the words of which it is made up. These changes are inevitable.
Sound changes (phonetic changes, changes of pronunciation) are
inevitable, because all speech sounds are the result of certain definite actions
or positions of the organs of speech – tongue, lips, etc.; and the slightest
deviation from the position which produces a sound alters that sound. Thus
the vowel-sound expressed by o in no is produced by drawing back the tongue
and narrowing the lip-opening; and if we draw back the tongue still more and
raise it so as to make the mouth-passage narrower, and at the same time
narrow the lip-opening by bringing the lips closer together, the sound passes
by degrees into the u in rule; while if we open the lips and widen the mouth-
105
passage, the sound of o passes into that of the a in father. Now in uttering a
sound it is as impossible always to hit exactly the same position of the organs
of speech as it would be always to hit the mark exactly in shooting with a bow
or a gun. For this reason children never reproduce exactly the sounds they
learn by imitation from their parents; and even when this deviation is so slight
as to escape notice, it is liable to be increased in after-life by carelessness and
laziness of pronunciation. But the initial deviation is often so marked that it
can be expressed in writing, as when children in trying to imitate the sound of
() in thin make it into (f). We call sound-changes due to the tendencies of the
organs of speech – such as the change of (o) into (u) or (a) – organic sound-
changes; and we call changes due to defective imitation – such as that of ()
into (f) – imitative sound changes. Organic and imitative sound-changes are
both the result of something in the sound itself, and are therefore included
under the common designation internal sound-changes. External sound-
changes, on the other hand, have nothing to do with the nature of the sound
changed, but are the result of the influence of other words associated in some
way – generally by similarity of meaning – with the words containing that
sound, as in the change of spake into spoke by the influence of spoken .
The meanings of words change because the meaning of a word is always
or less vague, and we are always extending or narrowing (generalizing or
specializing) the meanings of the words we use – often quite unconsciously.
Thus, in the present English the meaning of the word morning has been
extended to include what in Scotland is still called the forenoon, the word
morning, originally denoting the time of day just after sunrise; but as the sun
rises at different times at different seasons of the year, the distinction
between morning and forenoon was always liable to be confused. We have an
example of narrowing the meaning of a word in the modern English use of
deer to signify one special kind of wild animal, while in Old English the word –
in the form dēor – meant "wild animal in general," being applied to foxes,
wolves, etc., as well as deer; Shakespeare still uses the word in its older and
more general meaning:
But mice, and rats, and such small deer
Have been Tom's food for seven long year. (King Lear)
Of these processes, extension is the more important, especially that kind
of extension known as metaphor, by which we use the name of a material
object or an attribute to express some more abstract idea suggested by the
original meaning of the word, as when we call a sly man a fox, or say that the
sun is the source of light and heat on the analogy of source of a river, thus using
the familiar word source to express the more abstract idea of "cause" or
"origin." So also when we speak of a bright idea or dark schemes. It was mainly
by the help of metaphor that primitive man was able to enlarge his originally
scanty stock of words so as to find an expression for each new idea as it arose
in his mind.

106
 The use and meaning of inflections changes in the same way. Thus the
genitive case in Modern English has not the same functions as in Old English.
So also with derivative elements, etc.
Linguistic changes often take the form of the loss of sounds, sound-
groups, parts of words, and complete words. By phonetic change a sound may
be so weakened as to become almost inaudible, so that its.dropping is almost
inevitable. Sounds and syllables may be dropped because they are superfluous
– because the word is intelligible without them, as when examination is
shortened to exam. Words may drop out of sentences for the same reason.
But sounds may be added to words, and words added to sentences by
external influences.
Most of these changes of form and meaning are gradual in their operation
– especially the internal sound-changes – so that most of them are carried out
unconsciously by those who speak the language, and are therefore beyond
their control. The speakers of a language cannot prevent it from changing; all
they can do is to retard the changes. These changes are the result of natural
tendencies of the organs of speech and of the human mind, and are therefore
to a great extent uniform in their operation. Thus if one child in a community
says (fruu) instead of through, we expect other children to do the same,
because if one child finds it easier to pronounce (f) than (), other children
will probably find it easier too. So also if one man gets into the habit of using a
word which originally meant "wild animal" in the sense of "deer," because
deer are the most important wild animals in the place where he lives, it is
natural to expect that most of his neighbours will get into the same habit. Even
when different changes of the same sound, etc. are made by different speakers
of the community, one change will generally get the upper hand, either from
having the majority of speakers on its side, or because it is more convenient or
easier to carry out.
A NEW ENGLISH GRAMMAR, Part II, pp.120 – 122. (H.Sweet, A New
English Grammar, Logical and Historical, Part II, Oxford, 1898)
GERUND
2328. In the combination possessive + gerund, as in I do not like his
coming here so often, the oblique case may be substituted for the possessive,
so that the gerund becomes a present participle: I do not like hime coming here
so often. The difference – if any – appears to be that in the former construction
the logical emphasis is on the possessive, in the latter on the verb. But there
seems also to be a tendency to give up the latter construction altogether, as if
it were a mere variation of I do not like him to come here so often. In the
following examples we could hardly alter the possessives: in honour of its
being Christmas day| when metal came into use, men were able to make their
knives much longer, without their being afraid of their breaking. In the Last
sentence the their could be omitted but not changed into them.

107
 2329. SO also the genitive in who told you of your wife’s being there? May
be made into the common case – of your wife being there. In such
constructions as I cannot accept the notion of school‐life affecting the poet to
this extent the common case is preferred to the genitive.
2330. Although the ing‐form after the objective or common case is
formally a participle, we certainly do not feel that coming in I do not like him
coming here modifies him in the same way as it does in I saw him coming:
coming in the former sentence is, in fact, a half-gerund.
2331. As we have seen, we recognize the gerund element in the former
sentence by our instinctive tendency to regard him coming as a substitute for
his coming. It is important to note that the absence of a distinction between
common case and genitive in the plural often makes it impossible in the
spoken language to distinguish between gerund and half-gerund, as in to
prevent the ladies leaving us, I generally ordered the table to be removed
(Goldsmith), where the purely orthographic alteration of ladies into ladies’
would make leaving into a full gerund.
2332. But leaving in this sentence could also be made into a full gerund
by making it into from leaving . In pardon me blushing we could in the same
way either change me into my or insert for.
2333. Indeed, there seems little doubt that the colloquial half-gerund in
such causal constructions as she caught cold sitting on the damp grass | he
tears his clothes climbing trees have arisen through dropping a preposition.
2334. The half-gerund in these last two examples can easily be made into
a full participle by a mere change of order, though the result will be a very
stilted literary form – she, sitting (or having sat) on the damp grass, caught
cold.
2335. In several of the other half-gerund constructions the participle can
be substituted by a change of construction. Thus I enjoy being here suggested I
feel enjoyment while being here.
2336. The constructions which most resist this change are those which
also allow the substitution of a possessive or genitive for the preceding
objective or common case, For the change of I do not like him coming here into
I do not like him whem coming here – when he comes here involves a distinct
change of meaning.

FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE.
Course in General Linguistics
p.114-
CHAPTER 111: THE OBJECT OF LINGUISTICS
Definition of Language
What is both the integral and concrete object of linguistics? The question
is especially difficult; later we shall see why; where I wish merely to point up
the difficulty.
108
 Other sciences work with objects that are given in advance and that can
then be considered from different viewpoints; but not linguistics. Someone
pronounces the French wordrtw "bare": a superficial observer would be
tempted to call the word a concrete linguistic object; but a more careful
examination would reveal successively three or four quite different things,
depending on whether the word is considered as a sound, as the expression of
an idea, as the equivalent of Latin nudum, etc. Far from it being the object that
antedates the viewpoint, it would seem that it is the viewpoint that creates the
object; besides, nothing tells us in advance that one way of considering the
fact in question takes precedence over the others or is in any way superior to
them.
Moreover, regardless of the viewpoint that we adopt, the linguistic
phenomenon always has two related sides, each deriving its values from the
other. For example:
1. Articulated syllables are acoustical impressions perceived by the ear,
but the sounds would not exist without the vocal organs; an n, for example,
exists only by virtue of the relation between the two sides. We simply cannot
reduce language to sound or detach sound from oral articulation; reciprocally,
we cannot define the movements of the vocal organs without taking into
account the acoustical impression.
2. But suppose that sound were a simple thing: would it constitute
speech?
No, it is only the instrument of thought; by itself, it has no existence. At this
point a new and redoubtable relationship arises: a sound, a complex
acoustical-
vocal unit, combines in turn with an idea to form a complex physiological-
psychological unit. But that is still not the complete picture.
3. Speech has both an individual and a social side, and we cannot conceive
of one without the other. Besides:
Speech always implies both an established system and an evolution; at
every moment it is an existing institution and a product of the past. To
distinguish between the system and its history, between what it is and what it
was, seems very simple at first glance; actually the two things are so closely
related that we can scarcely keep them apart. Would we simplify the question
by studying the linguistic phenomenon in its earliest stages – if we began, for
example, by studying the speech of children? No, for in dealing with speech, it
is completely misleading to assume that the problem of early characteristics
differs from the problem of permanent characteristics. We are left inside the
vicious circle.
From whatever direction we approach the question, nowhere do we find
the integral object of linguistics. Everywhere we are confronted with a
dilemma: if we fix our attention on only one side of each problem, we run the
risk of failing to perceive the dualities pointed out above; on the other hand, if
we study speech from several viewpoints simultaneously, the object of
109
linguistics appears to us as a confused mass of heterogeneous and unrelated
things. Either procedure opens the door to several sciences – psychology,
anthropology, normative grammar, philology, etc., which are distinct from
linguistics, but which might claim speech, in view of the faulty method of
linguistics, as one of their objects.
As I see it there is only one solution to all the foregoing difficulties: from
the very outset we must put both feet on the ground of language and use
language as the norm of all other manifestations of speech. Actually, among so
many dualities, language alone seems to lend itself to independent definition
and provide a fulcrum that satisfies the mind.
But what is language [langue]? It is not to be confused with human
speech [language], of which it is only a definite part, though certainly an
essential one. It is both a social product of the faculty of speech and a
collection of necessary conventions that have been adopted by a social body to
permit individuals to exercise that faculty. Taken as a whole, speech is many-
sided and heterogeneous; straddling several areas simultaneously – physical,
physiological, and psychological – it belongs both to the individual and to
society; we cannot put it into any category of human facts, for we cannot
discover its unity.
Language, on the contrary, is a self-contained whole and a principle of
classification. As soon as we give language first place among the facts of
speech, we introduce a natural order into a mass that lends itself to no other
classification.
One might object to that principle of classification on the ground that
since the use of speech is based on a natural faculty whereas language is
something acquired and conventional, language should not take first place but
should be subordinated to the natural instinct.
That objection is easily refuted.
First, no one has proved that speech, as it manifests itself when we speak,
is entirely natural, i.e. that our vocal apparatus was designed for speaking just
as our legs were designed for walking. Linguists are far from agreement on
this point. For instance Whitney, to whom language is one of several social
institutions, thinks that we use the vocal apparatus as the instrument of
language purely through luck, for the sake of convenience: Men might just as
well have chose gestures and used visual symbols instead of acoustical
symbols. Doubtless h' thesis is too dogmatic; language is not similar in all
respects to other social institutions; moreover, Whitney goes too far in saying
that our choice happened to fall on the vocal organs; the choice was more or
less imposed by nature. But on the essential point the American linguist is
right: language is a convention and the nature of the sign that is agreed upon
does not matter. The question of the vocal apparatus obviously takes a
secondary place in the problem of speech One definition of articulated speech
might confirm that conclusion. In Latin, articulus means a member, part, or
subdivision of a sequence; applied to speech, articulation designates, either
110
the subdivision of a spoken chain into syllables or the subdivision of the chain
of meanings into significant units; gegliederte Sprache is used in the second
sense in German. Using the second definition, we can say that what is natural
to mankind is not oral speech but the faculty of constructing a language, i.e. a
system of distinct signs corresponding to distinct ideas.
Broca discovered that the faculty of speech is localized in the third left
frontal convolution; his discovery has been used to substantiate the
attribution of a natural quality to speech. But we know that the same part of
the brain is the center of everything that has to do with speech, including
writing. The preceding statements, together with observations that have been
made in different cases of aphasia resulting from lesion of the centers of
localization, seem to indicate: I. that the various disorders of oral speech are
bound up in a hundred ways with those of written speech; and 2. that what is
lost in all cases of aphasia or agraphia is less the faculty of producing a given
sound or writing a given sign than the ability to evoke by means of an
instrument, regardless of what it is, the signs of a regular system of speech.
The obvious implication is that beyond the functioning of the various organs
there exists a more general faculty which governs signs and which would be
the linguistic faculty proper. And this brings us to the same conclusion as
above.
To give language first place in the study of speech, we can advance a final
argument: the faculty of articulating words – whether it is natural or not – is
exercised only with the help of the instrument created by a collectivity and
provided for its use; therefore, to say that language gives unity to speech is
not fanciful.
<…>
119
To summarize, these are the characteristics of language:
1. Language is a well-defined object in the heterogeneous mass of speech
facts. It can be localized in the limited segment of the speaking-circuit where
an auditory image becomes associated with a concept. It is the social side of
speech, outside the individual who can never create nor modify it by himself;
it exists only by virtue of a sort of contract signed by the members of a
community. Moreover, the individual must always serve an apprenticeship in
order to leam the functioning of language; a child assimilates it only gradually.
It is such a distinct thing that a man deprived of the use of speaking retains it
provided that he understands the vocal signs that he hears.
2. Language, unlike speaking, is something that we can study separately.
Although dead languages are no longer spoken, we can easily assimilate their
linguistic organisms. We can dispense with the other elements of speech;
indeed, the science of language is possible only if the other elements are
excluded.
3.Whereas speech is heterogeneous, language, as defined, is
homogeneous. It is a system of signs in which the only essential thing is the
111
union of meanings and sound-images, and in which both parts of the sign are
psychological.
4.Language is concrete, no less than speaking; and this is a help in our
study of it. Linguistic signs, though basically psychological, are not
abstractions associations which bear the stamp of collective approval – and
which added to gether constitute language – are realities that have their seat
in the brain. Besides, linguistic signs are tangible; it is possible to reduce them
to conventional written symbols, whereas it would be impossible to provide
detailed photographs of acts of speaking [actes de parole]; the pronunciation
of even the smallest word represents an infinite number of muscular
movements that could be identified and put into graphic form only with great
difficulty. In Language, on the contrary, there is only the sound-image, and the
latter can be translated into a fixed image. For if we disregard the vast number
of movements necessary for the realization of sound-images in speaking, we
see that each sound-image is nothing more than the sum of a limited number
of elements or phonemes that can be called up by a corresponding number of
written symbols. The very possibility of putting the things that relate to
language into graphic form allows dictionaries and grammars to represent it
accurately, for language is a storehouse of sound- images, and writing is the
tangible form of those images.

Edward Sapir.
Language
p.122
CHAPTER IV: FORM IN LANGUAGE
Grammatical Processes
The question of form in language presents itself under two aspects. We
may either consider the formal methods employed by a language, its
"grammatical processes," or we may ascertain the distribution of concepts
with reference to formal expression. What are the formal patterns of the
language? And what types of concepts make up the content of these formal
patterns? The two points of view are quite distinct. The English word
unthinkingly is, broadly speaking, formally parallel to the word reformers,
each being built up on a radical element which may occur as an independent
verb (think, form), this radical element being preceded by an element (un‐, re‐)
that conveys a definite and fairly concrete significance but that cannot be used
independently, and followed by two elements (‐ing, ‐ly, ‐er, s) that limit the
application of the radical concept in a relational sense. This formal pattern –
(b) + A + (c) + (d) – is a characteristic feature of the language. A countless
number of functions may be expressed by it; in other words, all the possible
ideas conveyed by such prefixed and suffixed elements, while tending to fall
into minor groups, do not necessarily form natural, functional systems. There
is no logical reason, for instance, why the numeral function of ‐s should be
formally expressed in a manner that is analogous to the expression of the idea
112
conveyed by ‐ly. It is perfectly conceivable that in another language the
concept of manner (‐ly) may be treated according to an entirely different
pattern from that of plurality. The former might have to be expressed by an
independent word (say, thus unthinking), the latter by a prefixed element (say,
plural‐reformer). There are, of course, an unlimited number of other pos-
sibilities. Even within the confines of English alone the relative independence
of form and function can be made obvious. Thus, the negative idea conveyed
by un‐ can be just as adequately expressed by a suffixed element (‐less) in such
a word as thoughtlessly. Such a twofold formal expression of the negative
function would be inconceivable in certain languages, say Eskimo, where a
suffixed element would alone be possible. Again, the plural notion conveyed
by the ‐s of reformers is just as definitely expressed in the word geese, where
an utterly distinct method is employed. Furthermore, the principle of
vocalic change (goose‐geese) is by no means confined to the expression of the
idea of plurality; it may also function as an indicator of difference of time (e.g.,
sing‐sang, throw‐threw). But the expression in English of past time is not by
any means always bound up with a change of vowel. In the great majority of
cases the same idea is expressed by means of distinct suffix (die‐d, work‐ed).
Functionally, died and sang are analogous; so are reformers and geese.
Formally, we must arrange these words quite otherwise. Both die‐d and re‐
form‐er‐s employ the method of grammatical elements; both sang and geese
have grammatical form by virtue of thefact that their vowels differ from the
vowels of other words with which they are closely related in form and
meaning (goose; sing, sung)
Every language possesses one or more formal methods for indicating the
relation of a secondary concept to the main concept of the radical element.
Some of these grammatical processes, like suffixing, are exceedingly
widespread; others, like vocalic change, are less common but far from rare;
still others, like accent and consonantal change, are somewhat exceptional as
functional processes. Not all languages are as irregular as English in the
assignment of functions to its stock of grammatical processes. As a rule, such
basic concepts as those of plurality and time are rendered by means of one or
other method alone, but the rule has so many exceptions that we cannot safely
lay it down as a principle. Wherever we go we are impressed by the fact that
pattern is one thing, the utilization of pattern quite another. A few further
examples of the multiple expression of identical functions in other languages
than English may help to make still more vivid this idea of the relative
independence of form and function.
<…>
Of all grammatical processes affixing is incomparably the most frequently
employed. There are languages, like Chinese and Siamese, that make no gram-
matical use of elements that do not at the same time possess an independent
value as radical elements, but such languages are uncommon. Of the three
types of affixing – the use of prefixes, suffixes, and infixes – suffixing is much
113
the commonest. Indeed, it is a fair guess that suffixes do more of the formative
work of language than all other methods combined. It is worth noting that
there are not a few affixing languages that make absolutely no use of prefixed
elements but possess a complex apparatus of suffixes. Such are Turkish,
Hottentot, Eskimo, Nootka, and Yana. Some of these, like the three last
mentioned, have hundreds of suffixed elements, many of them of a
concreteness of significance that would demand express-ion in the vast
majority of languages by means of radical elements. The reverse case, the use
of prefixed elements to the complete exclusion of suffixes, is far less common.
A good example is Khmer (or Cambodgian), spoken in French Cochin-China,
though even here there are obscure traces of old suffixes that have ceased to
function as such and are now felt to form part of the radical element.
A considerable majority of known languages are prefixing and suffixing at
one and the same time, but the relative importance of the two groups of
affixed elements naturally varies enormously. In some languages, such as
Latin and Russian, the suffixes alone relate the word to the rest of the
sentence, the prefixes being confined to the expression of such ideas as
delimit the concrete significance of the radical element without influencing its
bearing in the proposition. A Latin form like remittebantur "they were being
sent back" may serve as an illustration of this type of distribution of elements.
The prefixed element re-"back" merely qualifies to a certain extent the
inherent significance of the radical element mitt‐ "send," while the suffixes ‐
eba‐, ‐M‐, and ‐ur convey the less concrete, more strictly formal, notions of
time, person, plurality, and passivity.
It is not always, however, that we can clearly set off the suffixes of a lan-
guage as a group against its prefixes. In probably the majority of languages
that use both types of affixes each group has both delimiting and formal or
relational functions. The most that we can say is that a language tends to
express similar functions in either the one or the other manner. If a certain
verb expresses a certain tense by suffixing, the probability is strong that it
expresses its other tenses in an analogous fashion and that, indeed, all verbs
have suffixed tense elements. Similarly, we normally expect to find the
pronominal elements, so far as they are included in the verb at all, either
consistently prefixed or suffixed. But these rules are far from absolute. We
have already seen that Hebrew prefixes its pronominal elements in certain
cases, suffixes them in others. In Chimariko, an Indian language of California,
the position of the pronominal affixes depends on the verb; they are prefixed
for certain verbs, suffixed for others.
It will not be necessary to give many further examples of prefixing and
suffixing. One of each category will suffice to illustrate their formative
possibilities. The idea expressed in English by the sentence/ came to give it to
her is rendered in Chinook (Wishram dialect) by i‐n‐i‐a‐l‐u‐d‐am. This word –
and it is a thoroughly unified word with a clear-cut accent on the first a –

114
consists of a radical element, ‐d‐"to give," six functionally distinct, if
phonetically frail, prefixed elements, and

Charles C. Fries.
The Structure of English
(from Charles C. Fries, The Structure ofEnglish, New York: Harcourt, 1952,
pp. 65-86.)
162
CHAPTER V: PARTS OF SPEECH
A number of examples given in the preceding chapter were used to
demonstrate the fact that, in English, some type of structural ambiguity
results whenever an utterance consists of certain important form-classes or
parts of speech without clear markers. The markers that distinguish these
important parts of speech in English are therefore of primary importance in
our description of the patterns of the devices that signal structural meanings –
a description which will be made in terms of the selection of these parts of
speech and the formal arrangements in which they occur. What parts of
speech, then, can we – or, rather, must we – recognize in English for a basic
description of our utterances, and what are the special markers of these parts
of speech?
All the conventional school grammars deal extensively with the "parts of
speech," usually given as eight in number, and explained in definitions that
have become traditional. It has often been assumed that these eight parts of
speech – noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction,
interjection – are basic classifications that can be applied to the "words" of all
languages1 and that the traditional definitions furnish an adequate set of
criteria by which to make the classification.
As a matter of fact our common school grammars of English have not al-
ways used eight parts of speech. Some have named ten, making the "article"
and the "participle" separate classes.2 Some have included the "adjective"
under the name "noun" and have given as subclasses of "nouns" the "noun
substantive" and the "noun adjective."3 Others have insisted that "interjec-
tions" are not "parts of speech" but "sentence words." Some of the early Greek
grammarians recognized only three parts of speech, ονομα (names), ρημα
(sayings), and ουνδεσμοι (joinings or linkings). The Latin grammarian, Varro
distinguished four parts of speech: 1. words with cases (nouns), 2. Words with
tenses (verbs), 3. words with both cases and tenses (participles), 4. Words
with neither cases nor tenses (particles). The current conventional
classification of words into the particular eight parts of speech now common
seems to have begun with Joseph Priestley and to have been generally
accepted in the grammars since 1850. We cannot assume without question
that the eight parts of speech thus inherited from the past will be the most
satisfactory or the essential I gasification of the form-classes of present-day
115
English, but will instead examine new the functioning units in our collection of
utterances, with a view to establishing the minimum number of different
groups needed for a basic description of (he signals of the most important
structural meanings.
Unfortunately we cannot use as the starting point of our examination the
traditional definitions of the parts of speech. What is a "noun," for example?
The usual definition is that "a noun is the name of a person, place, or thing."
But blue is the "name" of a color, as is yellow or red, and yet, in the expressions
a blue tie, a yellow rose, a red dress we do not call blue and yellow and red
"nouns." We do call red a noun in the sentence this red is the shade I want. Run
is the "name" of an action, as is jump or arrive. Up is the "name" of a direction,
as is down or across. In spite of the fact that these words are all "names" and
thus fit the definition given for a noun they are not called nouns in such ex-
pressions as "We ran home," "They were looking up into the sky," "The acid
made the fiber red." The definition as it stands – that "A noun is a name" –
does not furnish all the criteria necessary to exclude from this group many
words which our grammars in actual practice classify in other parts of speech.
In the expressions a blue tie, a yellow rose, a red dress, the words blue,
yellow, and red, in spite of the fact that according to their meanings they are
"names" of colors, are called "adjectives," because the adjective is defined as
"A word that modifies a noun or a pronoun." A large part of the difficulty here
lies in the fact that the two definitions —- the definition of the noun and the
definition of the adjective – are not parallel. The one for the noun, that'' a
noun is a name," attempts to classify these words according to their lexical
meanings; the one for the adjective, that "an adjective is a word that modifies a
noun or a pronoun," attempts to classify the words according to their Junction
in a particular sentence. The basis of definition slides from meaning to
function. For the purposes of adequate classification, the definitions of the
various classes must consider the same kind of criteria.
Even with the usual definition of an adjective the criteria are not always
consistently applied. Many grammars will not classify boy's as an adjective in
the boy's hat, nor his as an adjective in his hat, in spite of the fact that both
these words, boy's and his "modify" the word hat, and thus fit the definition.
Boy's is usually called "noun in the possessive case," and his, a "possessiv
noun," or a "pronoun in the possessive case." Here again, criteria that are not
included in the definition – in this case certain formal characteristics – are
used in practice to exclude from the classification items that fit the definition.
The conventional definitions do not provide the necessary criteria. Our
second problem is to discover just what the criteria are that the users of the
language actually employ to identify the necessary various form-class units
when they give and receive the signals of structural meaning.
You will remember Alice's experience with the poem of the Jabberwocky:
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
116
 All mimsy were the borogoves
And themome raths outgrabe. . . .
"Somehow [she said], it seems to fill my head with ideas – only I don't ex-
actly know what they are!"
What are the "ideas" she gets and how are they stimulated? All the words
that one expects to have clearly definable meaning content are nonsense, but
any speaker of English will recognize at once the frames in which these words
appear.
Twas ___, and the __ y ______s
Did _ ___ and ____ in the ____ ;
All __ __y were the__ s,
And the ____ s___________
The "ideas" which the verse stimulates are without doubt the structural
meanings for which the framework contains the signals. Most of these
nonsense word have clearly marked functions in frames that constitute
familiar structural patterns. These "ideas" seem vague to the ordinary speaker
because in the practical use of language he is accustomed to dealing only with
total meanings to which lexical content contributes the elements of which he
is conscious.
For the Jabberwocky verse certain familiar words of the frame in which
the nonsense appeared furnished important clues to the structures; but such
clues are often unnecessary. One need not know the lexical meaning of any
word in the following:
1. Woggles ugged diggles
2. Uggs woggled diggs
3. Woggs diggled uggles
If we assume that these utterances are using the structural signals of
English, then at once we know a great deal about these sequences. We would
know that woggles and uggs and woggs are ' 'thing'' words of some kind; that
in each case there is more than one of these "things," and that they at some
time in the past performed certain "actions"; and that these actions were
directed toward other "things," diggles, diggs, and uggles.
As speakers of English, given the three utterances above, we should not
hesitate to make such new utterances as the following:
4. A woggle ugged a diggle
5. An ugg woggles diggs
6. A diggled woggle ugged a woggled diggle
We would know that woggles and uggs and woggs are "thing" words, in
sentences 1,2,3, because they are treated as English treats "thing" words – by
the "positions" they occupy in the utterances and the forms they have, in
contrast with other positions and forms. We would know that ugged and
woggled and diggled are "action" words in these same sentences because they
are treated as English treats "action" words – by the "positions" they occupy

117
and the forms they have, in contrast with the positions and forms of the other
"words."
We would make the new utterances 4, 5, 6 with confidence because in
these we simply proceed to continue to treat the various units of the
utterances in accord with the formal devices which constitute the grammar of
English. For all of this it has not been necessary to know the meaning of a
single word. As native speakers of English we have learned to use certain
formal clues by which we identify the various kinds of units in our structures.
The process is wholly unconscious unless some failure attracts attention; –
just as unconscious as our responses to sight clues with the muscular
adjustments of balancing when we walk.
The game of baseball, again, may provide a more satisfactory illustration.
Like any other game that results in "winners," baseball consists of a system of
contrastive patterns which give significance to an infinite variety of specific
actions- The "strike" is one of the basic patterns. One cannot really play
baseball without being able to recognize and deal with a "strike" immediately,
unconsciously, as a conditioned reflex. One cannot define a strike with any
simple statement that will furnish much help to a beginner. It is true that all
strikes are the "same" in baseball. But that "sameness" is not physical identity;
it is not even physical likeness with an area of tolerance. All strikes are alike in
baseball only in the sense that they have the same functional significance. We
cannot then hope to find in strikes physical boundaries of an objective
likeness common to all. We can only enumerate the very diverse kinds of
contrasts that constitute the criteria for determining whether any particular
throwing by a pitcher is to be assigned to the pattern of a strike for the batter,
i.e.:
1.Did the ball pass over the plate or not?
2.If the ball passed over the plate was it, in height, between the shoulders
and the knees of the particular batter?
3.If the ball passed outside or inside the plate, or was higher than the
shoulders or lower than the knees of the particular batter then "at bat," did
the batter attempt to hit it with his bat and miss?
4. If the batter hit the ball and it fell to the ground outside the playing
"diamond," did the batter have less than two strikes against him?
5. If the batter hit the ball very slightly so that the ball did not rise above
the level of his head, and if the batter already had two strikes against him, did
the catcher catch and hold the ball?
A part of speech in English, like the strike in baseball, is a functioning pat-
tern. It cannot be defined by means of a simple statement. There is no single
characteristic that all the examples of one part of speech must have in the
utterances of English. All the instances of one part of speech are the "same"
only in the sense that in the structural patterns of English each has the same
functional significance.

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 This does not mean that in analyzing our sentences we must first
determine the function of a word and then assign it the name of one of the
parts of speech. Each part of speech like the strike in baseball is marked off
from other parts of speech by a set of formal contrasts which we learn to use
unconsciously as we learn our language. The patterns of our parts of speech as
functioning units are complex just as the patterns of the game of baseball are
complex.
<…>
We concluded that the signals of structural meaning in English consisted
primarily of patterns of arrangment of classes of words which we have called
form-classes, or parts of speech. We have assumed here that all words that
could occupy the same "set of positions" in the patterns of English single free
utterances must belong to the same part of speech. We assumed then that if
we took first our minimum free utterances as test frames we could find all the
words from our materials that would fit into each significant position without
a change of the structural meaning. It was not necessary for us to define the
structural meaning nor to indicate the structural significance of any particular
"position"; we simply had to make certain whether with each substitution, the
structural meaning was the same as that of our first example or different from
it.6 After using the minimum free utterances we tested the resulting lists in the
"positions" that appeared in the single free utterances that were not minimum
but expanded in various ways.

H.Poutsma
A Grammar of Late Modern English

THE PASSIVE VOICE

2. As has already been stated <…>, the logical object if a sentence may be
made its grammatical subject. This is mostly done by a change in the form of
the predicate, effected, in English, by combining a form of the verb to be with
the past or passive participle. This combination is called the passive voice of
the verb. <…>
6. The verb to be is also joined to the past participle of a translitive verb to
express a state which is the result of the action. In this case its grammatical
function is that of a copula, while the participle has retained its original
character of an adjective. Such a sentence as The bottle is broken is,
accordingly, ambiguous, and its exact meaning can only appear from the
combination to be + past participle, when there is an adjunct denoting
particulars of the action. Compare His bills are paid regularly every month,
with His bills are paid, so that he owes nothing now. <…> To obviate the
ambiguity resulting from the two-fold application of to be, certain verbs that
more or less partake of the character of copulas, such as to feel, to stand, may
be used to advantage when no passiveness is intended. <…>

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 7. Also copulas of the third kind, i.e. such as are used to express the
changing of a state into another, are not unfrequently combined with a past
participle to form a construction that bears a strong resemblance to the
passive voice. Naturally the participle is not so entirely devoid of adjectival
characteristics in these combinations as it is in a pure passive voice. Instances
with to get are quite common, especially in colloquial style; to become and to
grow being far less frequent in this function. <…>
THE MIDDLE OR REFLEXIVE VOICE
1. <…>it has been observed that the meaning of the Greek medium is
normally expressed [in English] by means of reflexive or, less frequently,
reciprocal pronouns. <…> In this chapter the combinations with the reflexive
and reciprocal pronouns will be viewed exclusively as expedients to denote
genus or voice.
Function of the Reflexive Voice.
2. The English reflexive voice has two markedly different functions,
according to the significance of the reflexive pronoun (or its substitute) it
contains.
a) This pronoun may have the full significance of an ordinary non-
prepositional object, or of the substantival constituent of a prepositional
object or adverbial adjunct, occupying a particular position only in so far as it
denotes the same person or this as the subject.
He got into bed, covered himself up warm and fell asleep.
In the case of the pronoun representing a single non-prepositional object
the verb may be styled transitive reflexive.
b) The pronoun, although fulfilling syntactically the function of a
non-prepositional object, is practically devoid of semantic significance,
inasmuch as it does not indicate that the activity expressed by the verb is
directed to the person or thing denoted by the subject or any other person or
thing. The verb is, therefore, semantically an intransitive <…> as in Did you
enjoy yourselves at the party? <…> It may, accordingly, in this case be termed
intransitive reflexive. <…>
8. The use of the reflexive pronoun suggesting some self-otiginated
activity on the part of what is indicated by the subject, it is not to be wondered
at that there is a tendency to drop it when, as is frequently the case with
lifeless things, such an activity is not thought of or is ot of the question. This
tendency is particularly strong in English <…>.
16 a)The fact that the construction with the reflexive pronoun
represents an action as both originated and undergone by what is indicated
by the subject naturally leads to a similarity in the functions of the reflexive
and the passive voice <…>.
a) T is especially with non-personal subjects that the reflexive voice
often approaches o the passive voice. Thus it is difficult to think of any activity
originated by the thing indicated by the subject in reading such sentences as:
The convulsion soon exhausted itself.
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 The trouble about Hugh resolved itself into nothing of any importance, and
settled itself very easily.
19. A passive meaning may also not seldom be observed in verbs that
have thrown off the reflexive pronoun and have, consequently, become
intransitive. Thus we find it more or less distinctly in the verbs used in:
Her eyes filled with tears.
The worst of it was that I knew I should not eat anything when an
opportunity offered.

Noam Chomsky.
Syntactic Structures
p.192
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences
are constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given
language has its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a
device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under
analysis. More generally linguists must be concerned with the problem of
determining the fundamental underlying properties of successful grammars.
The ultimate outcome of these investigations should be a theory of linguistic
structure in which the descriptive devices utilized in particular grammars are
presented and studied abstractly, with no specific reference to particular
languages. One function of this theory is to provide a general method for
selecting a grammar for each language, given a corpus of sentences of this
language.
The central notion in linguistic theory is that of "linguistic level." A lin-
guistic level, such as phonemics, morphology, phrase structure, is essentially a
set of descriptive devices that are made available for the construction of
grammars; it constitutes a certain method for representing utterances. We can
determine the adequacy of a linguistic theory by developing rigorously and
precisely the form of grammar corresponding to the set of levels contained
within this theory, and then investigating the possibility of constructing
simple and revealing grammars of this form for natural languages. We shall
study several different conceptions of linguistic structure in this manner,
considering a succession of linguistic levels of increasing complexity which
correspond to more and more powerful modes of grammatical description;
and we shall attempt to show that linguistic theory must contain at least these
levels if it is to provide, in particular, a satisfactory grammar of English.
Finally, we shall suggest that this purely formal investigation of the structure
of language has certain interesting implications for semantic studies.

CHAPTER II: THE INDEPENDENCE OF GRAMMAR

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 2.1. From now on I will consider a language to be a set (finite or infinite)
of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of
elements,. All natural languages in their spoken or written form are languages
in this sense, since each natural language has a finite number of phonemes (or
letters in its alphabet) and each sentence is representable as a finite sequence
of these phonemes (or letters), though there are infinitely many sentences.
Similarly, the set of "sentences" of some formalized system of mathematics
can be considered language. The fundamental aim in the linguistic analysis of
a language L is to separate the grammatical sequences which are the
sentences of L from the ungrammatical sequences which are not sentences of
L and to study the structure of the grammatical sequences. The grammar of L
will thus be a device that generates all of the grammatical sequences of L and
none of the ungrammatical ones. One way to test the adequacy of a grammar
proposed for L is to determine whether or not the sequences that it generates
are actually grammatical, i.e., acceptable to a native speaker, etc. We can take
certain steps toward providing a behavioral criterion for grammaticalness so
that this test of adequacy can be carried out. For the purposes of this
discussion, however, suppose that we assume intuitive knowledge of the
grammatical sentences of English and ask what sort of grammar will be able
to do the job of producing these in some effective and illuminating way. We
thus face a familiar task of explication of some intuitive concept – in this case,
the concept "grammatical in English," and more generally, the concept
"grammatical."
Notice that in order to set the aims of grammar significantly it is
sufficient to assume a partial knowledge of sentences and non-sentences. That
is, we may assume for this discussion that certain sequences of phonemes are
definitely sentences, and that certain other sequences are definitely non-
sentences. In many intermediate cases we shall be prepared to let the
grammar itself decide, when the grammar is set up in the simplest way so that
it includes the clear sentences and excludes the clear non-sentences. This is a
familiar feature of explication. A Certain number of clear cases, then will
provide us with a criterion of adequacy for any particular grammar. For a
single language, taken in isolation, this proves only a weak test of adequacy,
since many different grammars may handle the clear cases properly. This can
be generalized to a very strong condition, however, if we insist that the clear
cases be handled properly for each language by grammars all of which are
constructed by the same method. That is, each grammar is related to the
corpus of sentences in the language it describes in a way fixed in advance for
all grammars by a given linguistic theory. We then have a very strong test of
adequacy for a linguistic theory that attempts to give a general explanation for
the notion "grammatical sentence" in terms of “observed sentence,” and for
the set of grammars constructed in accordance with such a theory. It is
furthermore a reasonable requirement, since we are interested not only in
particular languages, but also in the general nature of Language. There is a
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great deal more that can be said about this crucial topic, but this would take us
too far afield.
2.2 On what basis do we actually go about separating grammatical
sequences from ungrammatical sequences? I shall not attempt to give a
complete answer to this question here, but I would like to point out that
several answers that immediately suggest themselves could not be correct.
First, it is obvious that the set of grammatical sentences cannot be identified
with any particular corpus of utterances obtained by the linguist in his field
work. Any grammar of a language will project the finite and somewhat
accidental corpus o observed utterances to a set (presumably infinite) of
grammatical utterances. In this respect, a grammar mirrors the behavior of
the speaker who, on the basis of a finite and accidental experience with
language, can produce or understand an indefinite number of new sentences.
Indeed, any explication of the notion "grammatical in L" (i.e., any
characterization of “grammatical in L” in terms of “observed utterance of L”)
can be thought of as offering an explanation for this fundamental aspect of
linguistic behavior.
2.3 Second, the notion “grammatical” cannot be identified with
“meaningful” or “significant” in any semantic sense. Sentences (1) and (2) are
equally nonsensical, but any speaker of English will recognize that only the
former is grammatical.
1. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
2. Furiously sleep ideas green colorless.

Similarly, there is no semantic reason to prefer (3) to (5) or (4) to

(6), but only (3) and (4) are grammatical sentences in English.
3. Have you a book on modern music?
4. The book seems interesting.
5. Read you a book on modern music?
6. The child seems sleeping.
Such examples suggest that any search for a semantically based
definition “grammaticalness” will be futile. We shall see, in fact, that there are
deep structural reasons for distinguishing (3) and (4) from (5) and (6); but
before we are able to find an explanation for such facts as these we shall have
to carry the theory of syntactic structure a good deal beyond its familiar
limits.
2.4 Third, the notion “grammatical in English” cannot be identified in any
way with the notion “high order of statistical approximation of English.” It is
fair to assume that neither sentence (1) nor (2)(nor indeed any part of these
sentences) has ever occurred in an English discourse. Hence, in any statistical
model for grammaticalness, these sentences will be ruled out on identical
grounds as equally “remote” from English. Yet (1), though nonsensical, is
grammatical, while (2) is not.

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 Charles J. Fillmore
Toward a Modern Theory of Case

(from Modern Studies in English, eds. D. A. Reibel and S. A. Schane,

Engiewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, 1969, pp. 361-75. Reprinted with
permission of Prentice-Hall and the Project on Linguistic Atlas, The Ohio State
University Research Foundations.)
I. In Chapter 2 of his book Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Chomsky
points out the essentially relational nature of such grammatical concepts as
subject (of a sentence) and object (of a verb, or of a predicate phrase) as
opposed to the categorial nature of such notions as verb or noun phrase. The
important distinction is there drawn between grammatical relations or
grammatical functions the one hand, and grammatical categories on the other
hand.
The distinction can be captured in formal grammars, according to
Chomsky, by introducing category symbols as constituent labels in the phrase
structure rules of the base component, and by defining the grammatical
relations as in fact relations among category symbols within the underlying
phrase-markers provided by the base. Thus sentence, noun phrase, and verb
phrase, for example, are provided as category symbols by the base, while the
notion subject is defined as a relation between a noun phrase and an
immediately dominating sentence, the term object as a relation between a
noun phrase and an immediately dominating verb phrase.
My purpose in this essay is to question the deep-structure validity of the
notions subject and object, and also to raise doubts about the adequacy of
Chomsky's proposals for formally reconstructing the distinction between
grammatical categories and grammatical functions. My inquiry will lead to a
proposal which renders unnecessary the distinction in English grammar
between noun phrase and preposition phrase, and to the suggestion that
something very much like grammatical case plays a role in the groundwork of
grammars that is much less superficial than is usually recognized.
I begin my argument by asking, concerning such expressions as in the
room, toward the moon, on the next day, in a careless way, with a sharp knife,
and by my brother, how it is possible in grammars of the type illustrated in
Aspects to reveal both the categorial information that all of these expressions
are preposition phrases and the functional information that they are
adverbials of location, direction, time, manner, instrument, and agent
respectively. Instead ot having a category label Time, it ought to be possible– if
Chomsky's proposal's adequate – to recognize that a preposition phrase
whose head is a Time noun has the syntactic function Time Adverbial within
the constituent which immediately contains it.

124
 It seems impossible to provide both types of information in a natural way
for reason that there may be several adverbial expressions in a simple
sentence, e are ordering restrictions among these, and if they all start out with
the same category, Preposition Phrase, there is no known device by which the
further expansion of this category can be constrained according to the
permitted order of adverbial types in a single sentence.
Most of the sample phrase structure rules for English that I have seen
recently have introduced categorially such terms as Manner, Frequency,
Extent, Location, Direction, etc. In these grammars, for the constituents
mentioned, either the strictly categorial information is lost, or else it is
rescued by having nonbranching rules which rewrite each of these adverbial-
type categories as preposition Phrase. In any case the formal distinction
between relations and categories is lost, and the constraints on the further
expansion of these preposition phrases that depend on the types of adverbials
they manifest need to be provided, as suggested above, in ways that have not
yet been made clear.
Other grammars that I have seen contain rules allowing more than one
preposition phrase in the expansion of a single category. In the abbreviated
form of these rules, each of these preposition phrases is independently
optional. Difficulties in establishing the constraints on expanding these
categories just in case more than one was chosen remain as before, and two
new technical difficulties arise. If there are two independently optional
preposition phrases in the expansion of Verb Phrase, then we get the same
result by skipping the first and choosing the second as we do by choosing the
first and skipping the second. The first technical difficulty, then, is that
different choices in the base do not correspond (o differences in the structure
of sentences, The second is that now the syntactic relation preposition‐phrase‐
under‐verb‐phrase is not unique in a verb phrase just in case more than one
preposition phrase has been chosen.
The obvious alternative within the present conception of grammar is to
introduce new structure in such a way that whenever a sentence contains
more than one preposition phrase, they are all under immediate domination
of categories of different types. If the number of distinct types of preposition
phrases is large, this solution differs from providing separate category labels
for each adverbial only by greatly increasing the constituent-structure
complexity of sentences.
With these difficulties understood, I should next like to ask whether two
of the grammatical functions which Chomsky accepts – namely subject and
object – are in fact linguistically significant notions on the deep structure level.
The deep structure relevance of syntactic functions is with respect to the
projection rules of the semantic theory. The semantic component recognizes
semantic features associated with lexical elements in a string and projects
from them the meaning of the string in ways appropriate to the syntactic
relations which hold among these elements. It is my opinion that the
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traditional subject and object not to be found among the syntactic functions to
which semantic rules must be
Consider uses of the verb open. It seems to me that in sentences (1) and
(2)
1. The door will open.
2. The janitor will open the door.
there is a semantically relevant relation between the door and open that
is the same in the two sentences, in spite of the fact that the door is the subject
of the so-called intransitive verb and the object of the so-called transitive
verb. It seems to me, too, that in sentences (3) and (4)
3. The janitor will open the door with this key.
4. This key will open the door.
the common semantically relevant relation is that between this key and
open in both of the sentences, in spite of the fact that this key superficially is
the subject of one of the sentences, the object of a preposition in the other.
In naming the functions of the nominals in these sentences, that of the
janitor we might call Agentive; and that of this key, Instrumental. The
remaining function to find a name for is that of the subject of an intransitive
verb and the object of a transitive verb: a term we might use for this function
is Objective. None of these functions, as we have seen, can be identified with
either subject or object.
If we allow ourselves to use these terms Objective, Instrumental, and
Agentive, we might describe the syntax of the verb open as follows: it requires
an Objective, and tolerates an Instrumental and/or an Agentive. If only the
Objective occurs, the Objective noun is automatically the subject. If an
Instrumental either the Objective or the Instrumental noun may be the
subject, as seen in the sentences (5) and (6).
5. This key will open the door.
6. The door will open with this key.
If an Agentive occurs, an Instrumental noun cannot be the subject, but, if
it occurs, it must appear in a preposition phrase after the Objective, as in (7).
7 The janitor will open the door with this key.
Objective noun can be made subject even if the sentence contains
Instrumen-and Agentive elements, just in case the verb is capable of assuming
its passive , _ The instrumental and Agentive expressions, in this case, contain
their appropriate prepositions, as in (8) and (9).
8. The door will be opened with this key.
9. The door will be opened by the janitor.
In the case of two syntactic functions – Instrumental and Agentive – the
noun phrase is preceded by a preposition just in case it has not been made the
subject of the sentence. When we add to our consideration the many cases
where object nouns are also marked by prepositions as in such sentences as
(10)
10.She objects to me.
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 11.She depends on me.
and when, further, we see that even in cases like open, the Objective has
a preposition associated with it in certain nominalizations, as in (12)
12.The opening of the door by the janitor with this key
we see that an analysis of syntactic functions in English requires a
general account of the role of prepositions in our language.
The verb open, fortunately, is not unique in governing syntactic relations
that are not identifiable with subjects and objects. Other verbs that behave in
similar ways axe advance, bend, bounce,break, burn up, burst, circulate, close,
connect, continue, crumple, dash, decrease, develop, drop, end, enter (contest),
e*pand, hang, hide, hurt, improve, increase, jerk, keep away, keep out, move,

pour, repeat, retreat, rotate, run, rush,shake, shift, shine, shrink, sink, slide, sPill,
spread, stand, start, starve, stir, stretch, turn, twist, wake up, wind, withdraw.
My interpretation of these words is that they have a certain amount of
freedom with respect to the syntactic environments into which they can be
inserted – a freedom which I assume can be stated very simply.

David Crystal
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language

15 WORD CLASSES
Traditional grammars of English, following an approach which can be
traced back to Latin (§13), agreed that there were eight parts of speech in
English: the noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction,
and interjection. Some books paid separate attention to the participle; some
additionally mentioned the article. But none was in any doubt that the
definition of the parts of speech was an essential first step in learning about
English grammar.
Why is it necessary to talk about parts of speech at all? The main reason
is to be able to make general and economical statements about the way the
words of the language behave. It is only a matter of common sense to
generalize, when we notice that a set of words all work in the same way. In a
simple case, we observe such sentences as
It is in the box. It is near the fence. It is on the horse. It is by the table. It is
under the car. It is for the book and note the identity of structure. In each
instance, there is an item preceding the which seems to have the same sort of
function, expressing some kind of proximity relationship between zV
(whatever that is) and the following words. Rather than talk about each of
these items individually, it makes sense to group them together into a single
category. Latin had words with the same function, which the grammarians
called prepositions (from prae+positio 'placing in front' - that is, in front of a
noun), and modern English grammars have happily continued to use the term.

127
 Modern grammarians are happy because this is one of the areas where
Latin and English grammar seem to behave in a similar way. The notion of
preposition is a particularly useful one for describing English (p. 213).
However, there is less happiness when people try to apply the old part-of-
speech labels to English words that do not have a clear counterpart in Latin
(such as the, shall, or the to in to go), or when they use definitions of the parts
of speech that prove difficult to work with. Indeed, when linguists began to
look closely at English grammatical structure in the 1940s and 1950s, they
encountered so many problems of identification and definition that the term
part of speech soon fell out of favour, word class being introduced instead.
Word classes are equivalent to parts of speech, but defined according to
strictly linguistic criteria.

THE TRADITIONAL DEFINITIONS

The definitions found in traditional grammars vary between authors, but
they share a vagueness and inconsistency of approach which has not
endeared them to modern linguists. Aset of definitions and examples (from
Nesfield, 1898: see p. 197) is given below, along with a note of the chief
difficulties they present to anyone wanting to make a precise description of
English grammar. The general intent behind the traditional definitions is clear
enough; but several are insufficiently general to apply to all instances, and the
lack of forma! detail about their morphology (§14) or syntax (§16) makes
them difficult to apply consistently.
NOUNS: CASE
There are only two cases left in Modern English (p. 21): a common case,
where the noun has no ending at all, and the genitive. The genitive is formed
by adding an ‐s to the singular form of the noun. In writing, this appears with a
preceding apostrophe (p. 283, the 'apostrophe s): the cat's food. With most
plural forms, an -sending "is already present, so the written form just adds a
following sign (the ^apostrophe'): the cats'food. Inafew irregular plural
instances, sis used (as in the men's books). In speech, there is no difference in
pronunciation between cat's and. cats'.
The chief meaning of the genitive case is possession: the cat's food. But
the case is used to express several other meanings too. The notion of origin is
present in the traveller's story. There is description in a summer's day. A
period is measured in three months'leave. And the form can express the idea of
the noun either doing the action or receiving the action: in the hostage's
application, the hostage is the one who applies; in the hostage's release, the
hostage is the one who is released,
There is a close similarity between a noun in the genitive case and the
same noun preceded by of (the of genitive)‐, the ship's name = the name of the
ship. The choice is largely based on factors of gender and style. Personal nouns
and the higher animals (p. 209) tend to take the genitive ending; inanimate
nouns take the of genitive. Thus we find Hilary's book rather than *the book
128
ofHilary,but a part of the difficultyrather than *the difficulty's part. The genitive
case is also used with many nouns of special human relevance (my life's aim,
the body's needs). But the of form is used for titles {The Duke of Kent) - always
allowing for cases of contrived informality {England's Queen).

THE ABERRANT APOSTROPHE

The apostrophe was introduced into English from French in the 16th
century (p. 68), and became widespread during the 17th; but there was much
uncertainty about its use, even until the middle of the 19th century. Not only
did tt mark the omission of letters (as in can't), it was often used before a
plural ending, especially when the noun was a loan word ending in a vowel (as
in the two comma's, which even today many people feel 'needs' an
apostrophe). By the 18th century, it was being regularly used as a genitive
marker in the singular, representing (according to the most likely theory) the
omission of the letter e from the ending of the former genitive case -es (p. 44).
Later, the usage extended to the genitive plural, but even at the beginning of
the 19th century there was inconsistency over whether constructions such as
the girls' dresses should contain an apostrophe (because no letter was being
'left out').
Later that century, printers and grammarians tried to lay down rules
saying when the apostrophe should be used. Unfortunately, with such a long
period of varying usage to consider, the rules which they devised were
arbitrary and incomplete, and it proved impossible to establish a totally
logical set of principles. For example, the apostrophe was allowed to mark
possession in nouns (girl's) but not in pronouns (hers), and even this rule had
exceptions (one's).
Around the turn of the century, the apostrophe began to be dropped from
the names of many British banks and large businesses {e.g. Lloyds, Harrods).
Today in the UK, it is almost always omitted in shop signs, placards, and
other notices. It varies greatly in place names: St Ann's Bay in Jamaica
contrasts with St Anns Bay'm Cape Breton Island, according to the Britannica
Atlas. The bias is definitely towards omission: of the several hundred names of
the St Anns type in the Britannica, two-thirds have no apostrophe. In shopping
centres we find ladies wear and Mans shop. On the other hand, the 1993 New
York City subway map gives St. Patrick's Cathedral and Grant's Tomb.
Many modern sign-writers and typographical designers leave the
apostrophe out because they think it looks fussy and old-fashioned; and in
most cases its omission causes no ambiguity, as the context makes it clear
whether the s ending refers to number or case, and whether it expresses a
singular or a plural genitive meaning. However, there are undoubtedly many
occasions when the availability of the apostrophe expresses a valuable written
distinction, and there is strong pedagogical pressure on children to maintain
its use, especially in the USA.

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 As a result of changing attitudes and practices, some people nowadays
feel unsure about the correct use of the apostrophe, and add it before
anything they sense to be an -s ending, such as a plural or a third person
singular: *We sell fresh pie's, *Everyone tike's our chips. These usages are
universally condemned by educated writers, but the uncertainty is
understandable, given the long and confused history of this punctuation mark
in English (see further, p. 283).

PRONOUNS: CASE
Personal pronouns (p. 210) have a genitive form, as have nouns, but they
also have an objective form, which nouns no longer have. This form is chiefly
used when the pronoun is the object of a clause (as in Hesawme) and when it
is governed by a preposition (as in He gave it to me). The term objective
reflects this function, and replaces the older term accusative, favoured by
traditional grammar (p.192), which was more appropriate for Latin. Similarly,
when a pronoun is the subject of a clause, it is said to be in the subjective
(formerly, nominative) case.
Five pronouns show this distinction: I/me, we/us, he/him, she/her, and
they/them. Who also has an objective form (whom) as well as a genitive form
(whose = 'of whom/which'). The other pronouns have genitive forms, too,
traditionally described as the possessive pronouns: my(mine), our(s), his,
her(s), its, their(s)
GOODNESS GRACIOUS I!
The objective case has long been a focus of prescriptive discontent (p.
194).
• In certain contexts, it is used where the Latin-influenced grammatical
tradition recommends the subjective:
Who's there? It's me.
She's as tali as him.
Ted and me went by bus.
These usages attract varying degrees of criticism in a formal setting. Me
as a single-word reply is now used by almost everyone, and attracts little
comment (despite the publicity it received in the song sung by Peter Sellers
and Sophia Loren in the film TheJyliltionaireness). The Xand me type of
construction, however, is often criticized, especially when speakers reverse
the normal ' order of politeness, and put the pronoun first: Me and Ted went
by bus.
Ironically, as a result of the long-standing criticism of me and other
objective forms, there is now a widespread sensitivity about their use, and
this has led people to avoid them, even in parts of the clause where their use
would be grammatically correct:
Between you and l...(p. 194) He asked Mike and I to do it.
• There is also uncertainty over the correct form in sentences such as It's
no use my/me asking her. Older grammars analyse words like asking as 'verbal
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nouns', or gerunds, and insist on the use of the possessive pronoun (my, etc.)
or the genitive form of a noun: John's asking me. Modern grammars do not use
the term gerund: asking in this example would be analysed as a verb (the ‐ing
form, p. 204), as can be seen from the way it takes an object, him. The
possessive is the preferred usage in a formal style, especially if the item is a
pronoun or a short, personal noun phrase. The alternative is more common in
informal styles.

SOME NEW WORD CLASSES

When we look carefully at the way words behave in sentences, the
differences can strike us as much as the similarities. Many words, indeed, turn
out to be unique. For example, there is no other word in the language which
has exactly the same formal properties as house, with its idiosyncratic way of
forming a plural (p. 200). Likewise, there are features of the formal behaviour
of children, good, lightning, say, will, and do (all identified in §14) which no
other word in the language shares. Idiosyncrasies of this kind are usually
disregarded when dealing with word classes. House is still classified as a noun,
albeit a slightly individual one.
This approach brings to light several important groups of words in
English which are syntactically so distinctive that they demand separate
recognition - which means finding a new name for them. Here are three
examples of these 'new' word classes.
• Determiners A group of words which can be used instead of the and a in
the noun phrase, expressing such notions as quantity, number, possession,
and deftnite-ness. Examples include some, much, that, and my. Traditional
grammars would call these adjectives.
• Conjuncts A group of words whose function is to relate (or 'conjoin')
independent grammatical units, such as clauses, sentences, and paragraphs.
Examples include however, meanwhile, otherwise, and namely. Traditional
grammars would call these adverbs.
• Auxiliaries A group of words whose function is to assist the main verb in
a clause to express several basic grammatical contrasts, such as of person,
number, and tense. Examples include have, can, do, and was. Traditional
grammars sometimes recognized these as a separate class of 'defective verbs'.

Rick Harrison
Verb Aspect
Verbs exhibit various changes in human languages; some tongues inflect
their verbs to indicate tense (past, present, future); some inflect verbs to
indicate the person and number of the subject and/or object; and some have
special forms to indicate “moods” such as commands (imperatives),
conditional or hypothetical statements, and so forth. An element of verb
mechanics that seems to be neglected by many language designers is aspect.

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 (If you are not interested in invented languages but rather came here
hoping to understand aspect in natural languages, read on! You will see that
constructed languages provide some of the clearest examples of certain
aspects.)
Aspect refers to the internal temporal constituency of an event, or the
manner in which a verb’s action is distributed through the time-space
continuum. Tense, on the other hand, points out the location of an event in the
continuum of events.
Be advised that many of the verb forms which are traditionally called
“tenses” in grammar books and foreign language text-books are actually
aspects; the traditional terminology is misleading. The distinctions between
she read that book, she used to read such books, and she was reading that book
when I entered the room are aspectual distinctions rather than differences of
tense.
Also be aware that there is no widespread agreement on terminology
with regard to aspect. Among linguists, different people use the same terms in
different ways; for example, the aspect which is properly called “perfect” is
often called “perfective,” and this can lead to confusion when discussing
languages that mark both a perfective-imperfective and a perfect-nonperfect
opposition.
Not all languages have inflections or special words to mark aspect, but
most languages have ways to express the meanings which are embedded in
the aspectual categories. (Bulgarian has a very rich set of aspectual inflections,
but some dialects of German have very few.) When explicit inflections or
particles are not available to indicate aspect, languages will use less elegant
methods, often involving idiomatic set phrases, such as “used to” which marks
the past tense form of the habitual aspect in English. In many natural
languages, we find verb forms that combine both aspect and tense, e.g. the
Spanish imperfect Juan leía, “Juan was reading, Juan used to read,” which
combines the past tense and imperfective aspect.
Perfective and imperfective
In the sentence she was singing when I entered, the verb “entered”
presents its action as a single event with its beginning, middle, and end
included; this is an example of the perfective aspect. The verb “was singing,”
on the other hand, refers to an internal portion of her singing, without any
reference to the beginning or end of her singing; this is an example of
imperfective aspect. In other words, the perfective treats a situation as a
single shapeless whole, similar to the concept of a “point” in geometry, while
the imperfective looks at the situation from the inside out and admits the
possibility that the situation has a temporal shape. “Situation” refers to
anything that can be expressed by a verb: a “state” (a static situation that will
remain the same unless something changes it), an “event” (a dynamic
situation considered as a complete, single item) or a “process” (a series of
dynamic transactions viewed in progress).
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 A few examples, provided by Comrie1, might help us to clarify the
perfective-imperfective distinction. “In French the difference between il régna
(Past Definite) trente ans and il régnait (Imperfect) trente ans ‘he reigned for
thirty years’ is not one of objective or subjective difference in the period of the
reign; rather the former gathers the whole period of thirty years into a single
complete whole, corresponding roughly to the English ‘he had a reign of thirty
years,’ i.e. one single reign, while the second says rather that at any point
during those thirty years he was indeed reigning... Similarly in Ancient Greek,
we find the Aorist (perfective past) in ebasíleuse déka éte ‘he reigned ten
years,’ or rather ‘he had a reign of ten years,’ to bring out the difference
between this form and the Imperfect (imperfective past) ebasíleue déka éte ‘he
reigned for ten years,’ or more explicitly ‘he was reigning during ten years.’”
Habitual and progressive
The imperfective aspect can be sub-divided into habitual and continuous
aspects. The habitual aspect refers to a situation that is protracted over a long
period of time, or a situation that occurs frequently during an extended period
of time, to the point that the situation becomes the characteristic feature of
the whole period. An example of the habitual aspect in the past tense is, the
neighbor’s dog used to wake me up by barking every morning. A present-tense
example would be I (usually) ride the bus home from work. We must be careful
to avoid two common misconceptions about the habitual. First, the habitual is
not the same thing as the iterative or frequentative aspect, which merely
refers to something that happens several times without being the foremost
characteristic of a period of time (e.g. he coughed over and over again, then
recited his poem). Second, the past habitual does not necessarily imply that the
condition is no longer true; it is perfectly reasonable to say Erik used to be a
member of the Volapük League, and he still is.
The continuous aspect encompasses the progressive aspect.
Progressivity is a special type of imperfectivity which emphasizes that an
action is in progress; often this is mentioned to provide a background or
frame of reference for some other situation. An example of the progressive
aspect is English John is singing, Spanish Juan está cantando, Italian Gianni sta
cantando, Icelandic Jon er að syngja, Irish tá Seán ag canadh.
Some behaviors of the progressive in English are relatively strange
compared to other languages. One example of this is the use of the progressive
to indicate a more temporary situation than is indicated by the basic form of
the verb, e.g. the Sphinx stands by the Nile versus Mr. Smith is standing by the
Nile, or I live at 123 Main Street (semi-permanently) versus I’m living at 123
Main Street (temporarily). English generally does not use progressive forms of
verbs of passive perception; the phrase *you aren’t hearing seems odd in
English, but the Portuguese counterpart você nao está ouvindo is perfectly
acceptable. However, these verbs do take the progressive in English when
referring to counterfactual perception, as in you aren’t hearing voices from
beyond the grave again, are you? Also note that English environmental verbs,
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such as “to rain” and “to snow,” almost always occur in the progressive form
when they are in the present tense, but some related languages (e.g. Icelandic)
never use the progressive form of the corresponding verbs. If you are trying to
design a neutral auxiliary language for international communication, you must
be careful to exclude these anglo-centric, unpredictable uses of the
progressive aspect from your design.
Perfect (retrospective) and prospective
Unlike most aspects, the perfect does not tell us anything about the
internal temporal constituency of a situation. Instead, it indicates the
continuing relevance of a past situation. In other words, the perfect expresses
a relation between two points on the continuum of events. Linguists are not
unanimous in classifying the perfect as an aspect rather than as a tense. An
example of the perfect, from English: I have lost the book (perfect) versus I lost
the book (non-perfect). The perfect can indicate a relation between a state in
the past and an even earlier event, e.g. John had read the book; it can express a
relation between a past event and the present state, e.g. John has read the
book; and it can express a relation between a future state and an event that
occurs prior to it, e.g. John will have read the book.
English often uses the perfect to express a situation that started in the
past and continues into the present, e.g. we have lived here for a long time.
Many other languages use the present tense in such sentences: French
j’attends depuis trois jours, German ich warte schon drei Tage, Russian ja zhdu
uzhe tri dnja ‘I have been waiting for three days.’
Because the term “perfect” is likely to be confused with “perfective,” and
because its counterpart is called “prospective,” I would suggest that
“retrospective” is a better name for this verb form.
The perfect verb form expresses a relation between a situation and some
event that happened before it. In some languages we also find a prospective
form which relates a state to some event that happens after it. In English the
prospective is indicated by phrases such as “to be about to” and “to be on the
point of,” as in John is about to resign from his job. In the “redneck” dialect of
American English, the prospective is marked by the phrase “fixin’ to,” e.g. I was
fixin’ to drive to work when I noticed a tornado comin’ toward the trailer park.
Aspects that mark the duration and stages of a situation
“Let’s start at the beginning.” Some languages can indicate the beginning
of a situation with markers for an aspect called inceptive (also known as
ingressive, commencative, initiative, etc.). For example, if a language has a
verb that means “to be located inside something,”2 the inceptive aspect form
of that verb would mean “to enter, to go into, to begin to be located inside
something.” Having an affix to mark the purely inceptive aspect3 would enable
a language to derive many common verbs from a small number of roots. For
example, “to know” plus the inceptive aspect marker means roughly the same
thing as “learn, discover, begin to know,” and “to have” plus the inceptive

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marker means “to acquire, to begin to have.” Many of the most frequently used
verbs in English are merely inceptive variants of other common verbs.
The inchoative aspect indicates the beginning of a state (as opposed to a
process or activity). Keep in mind that many of the conditions which are
expressed by the copula and an adjective in English, such as “to be blue” or “to
be large,” are expressed by stative verbs in some other languages. The
inchoative aspect of “to be blue” means “become blue, turn blue,” and the
inchoative form of “to be large” would mean “become large, get big.”
Esperanto marks the inchoative with -ig^-, as in li bluig^is, ‘he turned blue.’
(Unfortunately this Esperanto affix also has some other meanings; it is not
semantically pure.)
The counterpart of the inceptive is the cessative (also called cessive,
egressive or terminative), which indicates that a situation is ending. The
cessative form of “to be located inside” would mean “to go out of, to no longer
be located within,” and the cessative form of “to have” would mean “to lose, to
cease having.”
Some students of the Slavic languages believe there is an aspect that
means “being at or near the middle-point of a process;” this corresponds to
the English set phrase “right in the middle of...” as in I was right in the middle
of taking a bath when the telephone rang. I have seen this aspect called
“transkursive Aktionsart” in German publications, but I do not know its
English name. “Transcursive” does not seem very accurate.
The artificial language Lojban has two aspects pertaining to activities that
are temporarily suspended: the pausative (indicated by de’a) and the
resumptive (marked by di’a). Examples:4 mi pu de’a citka le mi sanmi, ‘I
stopped eating my meal for a while; there was a pause in my eating of my
meal’; mi pu di’a citka le mi sanmi, ‘I resumed eating my meal; I went back to
eating my meal.’
Some languages mark a punctual aspect; this indicates situations that
are instantaneous, i.e. they do not have any duration5. In Russian there are
many verbs marked with the suffix -nu which are inherently punctual, e.g.
kashljanut’ ‘cough,’ blesnut’ ‘flash.’
Some linguists say there is a durative aspect indicating that a situation
occupies a specified amount of time. Comrie gives the Russian example ja
postojal tam chas ‘I stood there for an hour.’
The delimitative aspect indicates that the situation lasts for a brief
period. Sentences such as let’s take a little walk and he talked a bit about the
war contain this aspect, although English lacks an affix or inflection to mark it
and therefore must use vague phrases which could also have other meanings.
The perdurative indicates that a situation lasts for a long period,
perhaps longer than expected, for example conflict between Esperantists and
Idists rages on and on. It is possible to make a distinction between the
perdurative and a protractive aspect which means “for a much longer period
of time than is normally implied by the root verb, perhaps indefinitely.” By
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having a marker for this aspect, a language can convert the verb “to have” into
a verb that means “to keep, to retain, to go on having,” and the verb “to be
located at” can be converted to a verb that means “to remain, to stay, to linger
at.”
Lojban uses za’o to mark another aspect which Lojbanists call
superfective; this identifies an activity that continues beyond its natural
ending point, e.g. le xirma pu za’o jivna bajra, literally ‘the horse [past tense]
[superfective aspect] compete-type-of run,’ loosely ‘the horse kept on running
the race after the race was over.’
The iterative aspect indicates that an action is done repeatedly, many
times, over and over again. (Esperanto’s ‐ad‐ sometimes has this meaning, as
in pafado and frapadi.) Some linguists call the iterative “frequentative,” while
others distinguish the frequentative from the iterative by saying that the
frequentative indicates an action done often, with high frequency. To increase
the usefulness of a marker for these aspects, an artificial language can add an
affix that means “regularly, rhythmically, at predictable intervals” and another
that means “intermittently, irregularly, at unpredictable intervals.”
The semelfactive aspect indicates that there is only one “stroke” of a
normally iterative situation, e.g. a single knock at the door. The simulfactive
indicates that a normally time-consuming or multi-stage situation is
compressed, and occurs “all at once” or “in one fell swoop.”
Mental aspects
The experiential aspect emphasizes the idea that a person has had the
experience of doing something at least once prior to the time mentioned.
There is more to the experiential aspect than the dry fact that something
happened; the subject of an experiential verb is almost always a being which
is capable of ‘having an experience.’ English doesn’t have a single distinct
marker for this aspect, so we turn to Mandarin Chinese for examples; the
experiential is marked by the suffix ‐guo in the neutral tone: ni chi‐le yúchì
méi‐you ‘did you eat the shark’s fin?’ versus ni chi‐guo yúchì méi‐you ‘have you
ever eaten (ever had the experience of eating) shark’s fin?’, likewise wo méi qù
hen duo guójia ‘I did not visit many countries (during a certain trip or period
of time)’ versus wo méi qùguo hen duo guójia ‘I haven’t visited (have never had
the experience of visiting) many countries.’
Indicating that action is performed in an intentional manner might be
classified as an aspect, although some might call it a modality. Adding the
intentional aspect to the verb “to see” produces a word that means roughly
the same thing as “to look at,” and adding the intentional to the concept “be
aware of” produces the concept “pay attention to.”
The counterpart of the intentional is, of course, the unintentional or
accidental. If we start with a verb that means “to hold something in one’s
hand,” add the cessative marker to create a verb meaning “cease to hold,” and
then add the unintentional marker, we now have a verb that roughly equals
the English expression “to drop or let go of something (accidentally).”
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Similarly, if our artificial language has a verb meaning “to be in a sitting
position,” we can add the inceptive aspect marker to create a verb meaning “to
begin to sit,” and then we can add the unintentional aspect marker to create a
word that corresponds to the English phrase “to (accidentally) fall on one’s
butt, to fall on your arse.”
Tamil has an aspectual verb (vai, ve‐) which indicates an aspect of future
utility. Its meaning is something like “doing X for future use” or “considering
the future consequences of the action.” Here are two examples:6 tanniirek
kuticcu veppoom, ‘we will tank up on water, i.e. we will drink a lot of water
now in order to avoid being thirsty in the near future’; pooliiskitte edeyaavadu
olari vekkaadee ‘don’t go blabbing things to the police (because doing so might
get you into even more trouble later).’
Aspects indicating distribution
The distributive aspect indicates that an action occurs in a “one-after-
another” manner. An example, from Russian: on zaper vse dveri ‘he locked all
the doors’ (non-distributive) versus on pozapiral vse dveri ‘he locked all the
doors individually, one by one.’
Alternation (doing X, then doing Y, then X, then Y and so forth – or two
agents taking turns performing an action) could also be treated as a quasi-
aspect in the design of a new language.
The generic aspect occurs in broad, general statements such as
“squirrels live in trees.” Old Vorlin’s suffix ‐ur, which usually marked nouns
that indicate a broad concept as opposed to a specific example of the concept,
could also be used as a verb infix to mark the generic aspect: ful foburo hom,
‘birds (generally) fear humans.’ The generic aspect is called the “universal
tense” in some language descriptions.
Aspects of degree or intensity
The completive aspect indicates total completion of an activity, i.e. doing
a process to the maximum possible degree. English examples: eat it all up
(completive) versus eat (some of) it (non-completive); the fuel was used up
versus the fuel was (perhaps only partly) used. The counterpart to this might
be called the incompletive aspect; it indicates that the action was only partly
completed or the verb’s object was partially affected.
The intensive, moderative, and attenuative aspects indicate the
intensity of a situation. For example, when a liquid is moving in the
moderative aspect, we use the verb “flow,” in the attenuative we say “trickle,”
and in the intensive we use words like “gush” and “flood.” Similarly, when
something emits light in the attenuative aspect we use verbs such as
“glimmer” or “glow,” in the moderative we say “shine,” and in the intensive we
say “glare.” An artificial language could derive these sets of closely related
words from single roots using aspect markers, thus simplifying the task of
learning the vocabulary.7
It is also possible to create an aspectual distinction for the concept
expressed by the musical term crescendo, indicating an increase in intensity or
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degree; a few linguists have called this the evolutive aspect. Perhaps there is
also an opposite decrescendo aspect.
Finally, an experimental suggestion: Marking the concept of “almost” or
“just one step short of” with an aspectual affix would enable a language to
convert “burn” to “smolder,” “believe” to “suspect,” etc.
Conclusion
If you want to design a language that is very expressive and able to derive
a large number of related words from a relatively small inventory of roots,
building a good system of aspect markers is essential. The ability to create
these words by predictable derivation results in a vocabulary that has
internally-defined meanings and is less vulnerable to misuse than an a
posteriori lexicon taken from “recognizable” sources.

notes
1 Bernard Comrie’s book Aspect (Cambridge University Press, 1976, ISBN
0-521-29045-7) gives a good introduction to aspect, and is the source of some
of the examples used here.
2 Many of the relationships that are expressed by prepositions in English
and its relatives are expressed by verbs in some other languages.
3 Esperanto’s prefix ek‐ indicates an aspect of commencement and/or
brevity.
4 Drawn from material in the reference grammar (now at lojban.org).
5 Some observers will object that these very brief actions do occupy
several milli-seconds, and their duration could be measured with the right
equipment. That’s not the point; human languages express the perceptions of
ordinary people, not of machines and technophiles.
6 From The role of metaphor in the grammaticalization of aspect in Tamil
by Harold F. Schiffman.
7 Vorlin’s infixes ‐oz‐, ‐ez‐, and ‐ig‐, indicate the intensive, moderative and
attenuative aspects, respectively. These affixes can also indicate the density or
concentration of a substance or thing, as in bomoza ‘having a dense tree
population’ versus bomiza ‘having few trees.’

Angela Downing, Peter Loche.

English Grammar. A University Course.
MODULE 5
SUBJECT AND PREDICATOR. SUMMARY
1 The Subject is the syntactic function identified by the features of
position, concord, pronominalisation and reflection in question tags.
Semantically, almost all participant roles can be associated with the subject.
Cognitively, it is that element which has the highest claim to function as Topic
in a specific clause in context. Syntactically, it is prototypically realised by a
NG, but can also be realised by a wide variety of groups and clauses.
2 The Predicator is the syntactic function that determines the number
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and type of Objects and Complements in a clause. It is identified syntactically
by position and concord. It is associated with a number of semantic domains.
5.1 THE SUBJECT (S)
5.1.1 Semantic, cognitive and syntactic features
A. Semantic and cognitive features
The Subject is that functional category of the clause of which something is
predicated. The prototypical subject represents the primary participant in the
clause and has the strongest claim to the cognitive status of Topic – who or
what the clausal message is primarily about (see 28.4). This means that in
basic clauses (that is: finite, active, declarative clauses) of ‘doing’, the subject
aligns with the semantic function of Agent, the one who carries out the action.
If there is an agent in the event expressed by such a clause, that element will
be the subject.
However, the subject can be associated with almost every type of
participant role. The following examples illustrate some of the possible roles
aligned with the subject:
Jones kicked the ball into the net. (Agent )
The ball was kicked into the net. (Affected in a passive clause)
Tom saw a snake near the river. (Experiencer in a mental process) (see
17.1)
The secretary has been given some chocolates. (Recipient in a passive
clause)
Semantic roles are treated in Chapter 4, Topic and Theme in Chapter 6.
B. Syntactic features
The Subject is that syntactic function which, in English, must be present
in declarative and interrogative clauses, but is not required in the imperative.
In discourse, when two or more conjoined clauses have the same subject, all
but the first are regularly ellipted.
He came in, sat down and took out a cigarette.
A clear and easy criterion is the question tag. The Subject is that element
which is picked up in a question tag (see 23.8) and referred to anaphorically
by a pronoun:
Your brother is a ski instructor, isn’t he? Susie won’t mind waiting a
moment, will she?
The Subject is placed before the finite verb in declarative clauses, and in
wh-interrogative clauses where the wh-element is Subject (see 23.6):
Unfortunately, everyone left early. Who came in late last night?
It is placed after the finite operator (the first element of the VG, 2.5.2)
in yes/no interrogative clauses, and in wh-interrogative clauses in which the
wh-element is not Subject (see 23.6):
Are you pleased with the result?
Did everyone leave early?
What film did you see last night? (What film is Object)
When did Sylvia get back? (When is Adjunct)
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 When pronouns are used, the pronominal forms – I, he, she, we and they –
are used to realise subject function, in contrast to the objective forms me, him, her,
us and them, which are used for Objects. You and it are the same for both.
Possessive forms may stand as subject:
Yours was rather difficult to read. Jennifer’s got lost in the post.
Subjects determine the concord of number (singular or plural) and
person with the verb. Concord is manifested only in those verb forms that
show inflectional contrast:
The librarian/he/she/has checked the book.
The librarians/I/you/we/they have checked the book.
Where is my credit card? Where are my credit cards?
With verb forms that show no number or person contrast – such as had,
in the money had all been spent – we can apply the criterion of paradigmatic
contrast with a present form such as has (the money has all been spent).
When the Subject is realised by a collective noun, concord depends on
how the referent is visualised by the speaker:
The committee is sitting late. (seen as a whole)
The committee have decided to award extra grants. (seen as a number of
members)
Subjects determine number, person and gender concord with the
Subject Complement, and of reflexive pronouns at Cs, Oi and Od:
Jean and Bill are my friends.
She cut herself (Od) on a piece of broken glass.
Why don’t you give yourself (Oi) a treat?
5.1.2 Realisations of the Subject
Subjects can be realised by various classes of groups and clauses:
A. Nominal Groups – That man is crazy
Nominal groups are the most prototypical realisation of subject, as they
refer basically to persons and things. They can range from simple heads (see
45.3.1) to the full complexity of NG structures (see 50.1):
Cocaine can damage the heart as well as the brain.
The precise number of heart attacks from using cocaine is not known.
It is alarming.
B. Dummy it – It’s hot
This is a non-referential or semantically empty use of the pronoun it,
which occurs in expressions of time, weather and distance, such as:
It’s nearly three o’clock.
It’s raining.
It is six hundred kilometres from Madrid to Barcelona.
Syntactically, English requires the presence of a subject even in such
situations, in order to distinguish between declaratives and interrogatives:
Is it raining? How far is it from here to Barcelona?

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 There is no plural concord with a NG complement, as would occur in
Spanish counterparts, for example: Son las tres. Son seiscientos kilómetros a
Barcelona.
C. Unstressed there – There’s plenty of time
Unstressed there (see 19.3; 30.4) fulfils several of the syntactic criteria
for subject: position, inversion with auxiliaries and repetition in tag phrases;
but unlike normal subjects it cannot be replaced by a pronoun. Concord, when
made, is with the following NG:
There was only one fine day last week, wasn’t there? There were only two fine
days last week, weren’t there?
Concord with the following NG is made in writing, but not always in
informal spoken English with the present tense of be, and is never made when
the NG is a series of proper names:
How many are coming? Well, there’s Andrew and Silvia, and Jo and Pete.
*There are Andrew and Silvia and Jo and Pete.
Because of the lack of concord and pronominalisation, unstressed there
can be considered as a subject ‘place-holder’ or ‘syntactic filler’, rather than a
full subject, since the unit following the verb is clearly the notional subject. For
its function as a presentative device, see 30.4.
The following comment on Monte Carlo by J. G. Ballard in The Week
illustrates some of the syntactic features and realisations of the Subject (see
exercise).
Have you ever been to Monte Carlo?1 It’s totally dedicated to expensive
shopping.2 You go to these gallerias and walk past a great temple to ultra-
expensive watches, then another to ultra-expensive clothes.3 It’s quite
incredible4 - you see the future of the human race there.5 There is a
particularly big galleria, which never has anyone inside it.6 It’s five or six
floors of cool, scented air, with no one in it.7. I thought to myself - is this
supposed to be heaven?8 And I realised that, no, it’s not heaven9 It’s The
Future.10
D. Prepositional phrase and Adverbial group as subject – Now is the time
These function only marginally as subject and usually specify meanings of
time or place, but instrumental meanings and idiomatic manner uses can also
occur.
Will up in the front suit you? (PP of place) Before midday would be
convenient. (PP of time) By plane costs more than by train. (PP of means)
Just here would be an ideal place for a picnic. (AdvG of place)
Slowly/gently does it! (AdvG of manner)
E. Adjectival head – the poor
The Adjectival Group as such does not function as subject. However,
certain adjectives – preceded by a definite determiner, normally the definite
article, and which represent either (a) conventionally recognised classes of
people, as in The handicapped are given special facilities in public places, or

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(b) abstractions – can function as heads of (non-prototypical) NGs (see 51.5).
The latter type is illustrated in this extract from a book blurb:
This novel plunges the reader into a universe in which the comic, the tragic,
the real and the imagined dissolve into one another.
F. Embedded clauses (see 3.6.3)
Clauses can realise every element or function of clause structure except
the predicator. Cognitively, this means that we as speakers encode, as the
main elements of clauses, not only persons and things but facts, abstractions
and situations. Both finite and non-finite clauses are available for embedding
but not every clause function is realised by all types of clause. The main types
were outlined in Chapter 1. Here five of the relevant one(s) are referred to
when describing the realisations of subject, objects and complements.
There are two main types of embedded finite clause: that‐clauses and
wh‐clauses, the latter being either indirect interrogative clauses or nominal
relative clauses. They are illustrated in the following examples, where they all
realise the subject element.
That he failed his driving test surprised everybody. (that-clause)
Why the library was closed for months was not explained. (wh-interrogative)
What he said shocked me. (wh-nominal relative clause)
That‐clauses at subject are used only in formal styles in English. In
everyday use they are more acceptable if they are preceded by the fact. The
that-clause thus becomes complement of a NG functioning as subject:
The fact that he failed his driving test surprised everybody. (NG)
A more common alternative is to extrapose the subject that-clause, as in
It surprised everybody that he failed his driving test, explained in G. below.
Wh‐interrogative clauses express indirect questions. They do not take
the inversion characteristic of ordinary interrogatives, however; so, for
instance, *Why was the library closed for months was not explained is not
acceptable.
Nominal relative clauses also have a wh- element, but they express
entities and can be paraphrased by ‘that which’ or ‘the thing(s) which’ as in:
What he said pleased me = ‘that which’/the things which he said pleased me.
Non‐finite clauses at Subject are of two main types, depending on the
VG they contain: to‐infinitive, which can be introduced by a wh-word, and ‐
ing clauses. (The third non-finite clause type, the -en clause, is not used in this
way.) The ‘bare’ infinitive is marginally used:
To take such a risk was rather foolish. (to-inf. clause) Where to leave the dog
is the problem. (wh- + to-inf. clause) Having to go back for the tickets was a
nuisance. (-ing clause) Move the car was what we did. (bare infinitive clause)
To-infinitive and -ing clauses at subject can have their own subject; bare
infinitive clauses cannot. A to-infinitive clause with its own subject is
introduced by for:
For everyone to escape was impossible. (For + S + to-inf.)
Sam having to go back for the tickets was a nuisance. (S + ing-cl.)
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 The pronominal subject of an -ing clause can be in the possessive or the
objective case. The objective form is the less formal:
Him/his having to go back for the tickets was a nuisance.
G. Anticipatory it + extraposed subject – It was silly to say that
Subjects such as that he failed to pass the driving test and for everyone to
escape sound awkward and top-heavy, especially in spoken English. The
derived structure with ‘anticipatory it’ is now generally preferred, as it is
much easier to encode and the pronoun it is the ‘lightest’ possible subject
filler:
It surprised everybody that he failed his driving test. It was impossible for
everyone to escape.
Here the that-clause or the to-infinitive clause is extraposed (see 30.5),
that is, placed after the Od (everybody) or Cs (impossible). The initial subject
position is filled by the pronoun it. Extraposition is commonly used in both
speech and writing, especially when the subject is long and heavy, and is
better placed at the end of the sentence, in accordance with the informational
and stylistic principle of ‘end-weight’ (see 30.3.2).
Extraposed subjects frequently occur as the complement of a noun or
adjective in SPCs structures, as in the following illustrations:
It’s easy to forget your keys. (To forget your keys is easy)
It’s a pity (that) you are leaving the firm. (That you are leaving the firm is a
pity)
It is time he stopped fooling around.
Notice that, for the apparently extraposed clause that follows It is (high)
time, there is no corresponding pattern with the clause in initial position (*That
he stopped fooling around is high time).
Likewise, the clause following it + verbs of seeming (seem, appear) and
happening (happen, turn out), is obligatorily extraposed:
It seems that you were right after all. (*That you were right after all
seems.)
It so happened that the driver lost control. (*That the driver lost control
happened.)
Pronouns account for a high percentage of subjects in the spoken
language, as can be seen in the following recorded dialogue about the mini-
skirt. Several other types of subject are also illustrated in the main and
embedded clauses of this text, including two different functions of it:
Q. What about the mini-skirt itself? What was the origin of that?
A. That1 started in the East End of London. Mary Quant2 picked it up and
then a lot of other designers3 did too. I4 think again it5 was reaction against the
long skirts of the 1950s. It6 was smart to get much, much shorter. I7 think that,
partly, it8 was fun to shock your father and older people, but it9 was also a
genuinely felt fashion, as we10 can see by the fact that it spread nearly all over
the world. I 11 think it12 is a lovely look, long leggy girls. The fact that fat legs

143
are seen, too,13 is just bad luck. But I14 still don’t think that the mini‐skirt15 is
going to disappear for some time. I 16 think girls17 just love the feeling.
1demonstrative pronoun; 2proper noun; 3NG; 4pronoun; 5pronoun:
6anticipatory it + to-infinitive; 7pronoun; 8anticipatory it + to-infinitive;

9pronoun; 10pronoun; 11pronoun; 12anticipatory it + NG; 13the fact + that-

clause; 14pronoun; 15NG; 16pronoun; 17NG
(Janey Ironside in Artists Talking: Five artists talk to Anthony Schooling)
5.2 THE PREDICATOR (P)
We use the term Predicator for the clause element present in all major
types of clause, including the imperative clause (in which the subject is not
usually present in English).
The predicator is the clause function that largely determines the
remaining structure of the clause, by virtue of being intransitive, transitive or
copular.
As seen in 4.1, the predicator may constitute the whole of the predicate,
as in The plane landed, or part of it, as in The plane landed on the runway.
The predicator is identified by position in relation to the subject.
The predicator function is realised by both finite (e.g. waits) and non-
finite (waiting) lexical and primary verbs.
Functionally, finiteness is often carried by an auxiliary verb – such as is,
was – to specify tense (past/present) and voice (be + -en), and is then followed
by the predicator (is making, was made). For the Finite–Subject relation in
interrogative structures, see Chapter 5.
Semantically, the predicator encodes the following main types of
‘process’:
• material processes of ‘doing’ with verbs such as make, catch, go;
• mental processes of ‘experiencing’, with cognitive verbs of perception
(e.g. see), cognition (know), affectivity (like) and desideration (hope); and
• relational processes of ‘being’ with verbs such as be and belong.
These, and certain subsidiary types, are discussed in Chapter 4.
Phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs are discussed in this chapter (as
clause element) and in Chapter 8 (as regards meaning).
The following passage about the Valley of the Kings shows the Predicator
function in both finite and non-finite clauses (see exercise):
It [the Valley of the Kings] lies about six hundred kilometres south of
Cairo, the present-day capital of Egypt, near the Nile.1 Across the river is the
city of Luxor,2 once called Thebes and one of the greatest capitals of the ancient
world.3 This dusty, dried-up river valley is the most magnificent burial ground
in the world.4 During the second millennium B.C., Egyptian workers quarried a
series of tombs beneath this valley,5 decorating them with mysterious
predictions of the underworld6 and filling them with treasures.7 There, with
infinite care and artistry, they laid out the mummified and bejewelled bodies
of their rulers8 and surrounded them with their belongings,9 making the valley
one of the greatest sacred sites in history.10
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 (Gerald O’Farrell, The Tutankamun Deception)

Greenbaum Sidney.
English Grammar
c.35-36
The Study of Grammar
Scholars researching into grammar can draw on a number of sources for
their data. One obvious source is examples of actual use of the language. The
examples may be collected to investigate a particular point; for instance,
negative constructions in English {/ don't have any money, I have, no money,
I think it's not right, I don't think it's right). These may be collected systematically
(for example by reading through a set of newspapers) or casually (by noting
examples that one reads or hears) or by a combination of these two
approaches. For the voluminous Oxford English Dictionary some 800 voluntary
readers supplied citations on slips from their casual reading, which were added
to the citations that were more systematically collected from specified early
works. Scholarly grammarians in the first half of this century (such as Otto
Jespersen, cf n. 1) amassed enormous numbers of citation slips for their
research.
The recent availability of increasingly powerful small computers has
promoted the creation of large corpora (collections of electronic texts) that are
distributed internationally, providing data for researchers that were not
involved in their compilation. A corpus may be limited in its scope (say, to
dramatic texts or runs of particular newspapers) or it may attempt a wide
coverage. Some English corpora now run into many millions of words. A few
contain transcriptions of the spoken language, material that is not easily
obtainable by individual researchers. Some corpora are annotated for
grammatical or other features of the language, enabling researchers to retrieve
such information as well as specified words or combinations of words. Corpus
linguistics has become a major area of linguistic research. Studies in computer
corpora have resulted in numerous publications.
Corpus studies have obvious attractions for linguists who are not native
speakers of the language, since they can be confident that their material is
reliable. Those who are native speakers still find it useful to check corpora for
their generalizations. Corpora are essential for studies of varieties of language,
since differences between varieties are generally exhibited in the relative
frequencies with which particular linguistic features occur.
It may be a matter of chance whether relatively uncommon constructions
or language features appear in even a very large corpus in sufficient
quantities – or at all – to provide adequate evidence. Linguists can supplement
corpus data by drawing on their own knowledge of the language. Indeed, it has
been common practice among theoretical linguists in the last thirty years to rely
solely on data drawn from introspection. They use their knowledge of the
language to create a set of samples for their own investigation, and evaluate
145
the samples for acceptability, similarities of meaning, and ambiguities, and
draw on their intuitions for decisions on grammatical structure.
Linguists may be biased or unsure in their judgements. It has been a
common practice to consult the judgements of others, often native informants
who would not know the purpose of the investigations. Some linguists have
devised elaborate elicitation procedures under controlled conditions, asking
large groups of informants for their judgements or requiring them to perform
specified tasks. For example, when 175 British informants were asked to
complete a sentence beginning / badly, most of them used either need (65 per
cent) or want (28 per cent), indicating that these were the favourite verbs
when the intensifier badly was in pre-verb position. In another experiment,
eighty-five American informants were asked to use probably with the sentence He
can not drive a car; 70 per cent of them positioned it before the auxiliary can,
evidence that this is its normal position in a negative sentence.
From time to time there are public debates about the teaching of grammar
in schools. Educational fashions change, and after a period of over twenty-five
years since the formal teaching of grammar was abandoned in most state
schools there have been recent calls in both Britain and the United States for the
reintroduction of grammar teaching as part of a return to basics'.
There are sound arguments for teaching about language in general and the
English language in particular. An understanding of the nature and functioning
of language is a part of the general knowledge that we should have about
ourselves and the world we live in. In this respect, linguistics deserves a place at
all levels of the curriculum at least as much as (say) history, geography, or biology.
For language is the major means by which we communicate with others and
interact with them, and our attitudes to our own variety and the varieties of
others affect our image of ourselves and of others. Linguistics is a central
discipline that has bearings on many other disciplines: psychology, sociology,
anthropology, philosophy, literature, and computer science. Vocational
applications are found in areas as diverse as the teaching of foreign languages,
speech therapy, and information technology.
Study of the English language can help students develop their ability to
adjust their language appropriately to different contexts. They should be aware
of the expectations that standard English is the norm for public writing, and they
will need to learn to adopt the conventions for public writing in grammar,
vocabulary, spelling, and punctuation.

Загнітко А.П.
Теоретична граматика української мови. Морфологія.
С.173 - 176
3. ГРАМАТИЧНА КАТЕГОРІЯ ВІДМІНКА
Граматична категорія відмінка займає центральне місце в
характеристиці граматичної системи таких класів слів, як іменники,
146
прикметники, числівники, займенники. В основі відмінкових відношень
знаходяться відношення між предметами і явищами об’єктивної
дійсності. Наприклад, кількість, міра речовини може бути виражена
родовим відмінком: склянка молока, пачка чаю, кілограм цукру.
Просторові відношення можуть реалізовуватись у місцевому відмінку: в
саду, в класі, на полі тощо.
Категорія відмінка виявляється також на різних рівнях мови. В
українській мові значення відмінків формально вираженні не тільки в
закінченнях, але й в прийменнику, який взагалі вважається додатковим,
але абсолютно необхідним засобом. Завдяки прийменниковому та
безприйменниковому вживанню форм, українська мова має
надзвичайно досконалу і розвинену систему визначення
найрізноманітніших відношень реальної дійсності. Так, знахідко вий
відмінок без прийменника має значення прямого об’єкта: зробив стіл,
вишиваю рушник, співаю пісню. Але прийменник у поєднанні із знахідним
відмінком може вказувати на найрізноманітніші просторові відношення:
на стіл, за стіл, через стіл, повз стіл, під стіл; в гору, на гору, під гору,
через гору, за гору і под.
Типи відмін визначаються із системи протиставлених відмінкових
флексій з урахуванням протиставлення іменників за родами. Особливу
увагу треба звернути на відмінювання слів типу сани, ворота, окуляри і
командуючий, хворий, Перші мають парадигму тільки множини, пор.:
дріжджі, дріжджів, дріжджам, дріжджі та ін. Вони знаходяться поза
відмінами, тому що позбавлені граматичного значення роду і
повторюють у своїй парадигмі особливості відмінювання різних типів,
наприклад: сани—саней (коней); радощі – радощів (хлопців) і под. Слова ж
прикметникового походження (хворий, черговий, учительська,
майбутнє) утворюють прикметниковий тип відмінювання в системі
іменника як частини мови (пор.: учительська, учительської,
учительській і под.), об’єднуючи вісімдесят п’ять слів [47].
Граматичне значення відмінків виступають перш за все як
синтаксичні: вони свідчать про підрядні зв’язки між словами (приїзд
делегатів – суб’єктні відношення, читання книжки – об’єктні
відношення, доручити товаришу – відношення непрямого об’єкта із
значенням особи, різати ножем – відношення засобу). Отже категорія
відмінка є категорією синтаксичною, тобто спрямована із
синтагматичного рівня у парадигматичний, обидва рівні міцно
взаємодіють, динаміка одного викликає зміну іншого.
Відмінкова форма іменника визначає його синтаксичні функції –
організаторів предикативної основи речення (головні члени речення –
підмет і присудок) і поширювачів словосполучення і речення.
Відмінкова форма іменника являє собою «синтаксичну» форму слова,
тому що значення, які нею реалізуються, визначаються у
словосполученні і реченні.
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 Іменник у формі називного відмінка може бути синтаксично
незалежною формою, але, функціонуючи в різноманітних синтаксичних
умовах, вона набуває специфічного значення, зумовленого контекстом.
Саме тут відбувається видимий процес витворення вторинних функцій
окремої граматичної форми. Наприклад, вказуючи на існування,
наявність чого-небудь, іменник у називному відмінку виконує функцію
головного члена номінативного речення: Зима. На фронт, на фронт!
(В.Сосюра).
Іменник у називному відмінку може бути не пов’язаним
синтаксично з реченням. Він може викликати у свідомості мовця
уявлення про певне явище або предмет, а в реченні з приводу названого
явища чи предмета висловлюється певне судження, наприклад: Київ…
Скільки з цим словом пов’язано… [Слово. – 1994. – 16 квітня]. Така
функція іменника називається «номінативним уявленням».
<…>
В умовах синтаксичного контексту форма називного відмінка
іменника й інші форми (дієслів, імен) можуть бути взаємозалежними. Ця
взаємозалежність виявляється на рівні речення. Іменник функціонує як
організатор предикативної основи у двоскладному реченні разом із
взаємозалежним словом, яке може бути також іменником у називному
відмінку, наприклад: Я простий сіроокий хлопчика ‐ син своєї нової землі
[Стельмах, 1962, 2, с.506]; Щастя – це друзі хороші, шана людська. Руки
твоєї роботящі – ось твоє щастя. [О.Підсуха]. Але функцію присудка
може виконувати іменник не тільки в називному відмінку, але й у формі
непрямих відмінків. Типовою, стилістично нейтральною формою є
орудний відмінок, пор.: він був лікар, він був лікарем. Наприклад, Іван
Франко був видатним письменником і вченим. Такі взаємозамінювані
залежні форми називаються варіативними, вони розвивають
граматичну синоніміку і можуть бути протиставлені одна одній
стилістично і за смислом, пор.: Він був учитель / Він був учителем / Він
як учитель. Наприклад, Працювати чесно стало обов’язком кожного
трудівника і Працювати чесно – обов’язок кожного трудівника і под.
Називний предикативний позначає Щось постійне, позачасове,
незмінне. Характеристика, позначувана присудком, уявляється як
постійна, основна життєва необхідність (Він був художник, Він буде
художник). Орудний предикативний позначає щось обмежене в часі, яке
підлягає змінам (Він був художником – тепер у нього, можливо, інша
професія). Доказом того, що орудний предикативний виражає тимчасову
ознаку, служить його вживання із зв’язками стати, ставати, зробитися:
Він став справжнім майстром.
Іменник у предикативній функції, поєднуючись із словами як, ніби,
позначає Ознаку, яка не є основною для певного предмета або особи, що
має значення уподібнення: Він був учитель, а прийшов до нас як
інспектор.
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 Функції непрямих відмінків іменників завжди розглядаються як
залежні елементи словосполучення або другорядні члени речення.
Так, форми родового, давального, знахідного, орудного відмінків без
прийменника найчастіше бувають зв’язаними. Вони поширюють слово у
словосполученні, вони заплановані, передбачені стрижневим словом і
залежать від нього: любити брата, розв’язати проблему, зустріти друга,
прилетіти літаком. Поза сполуками слів форми брата, проблему,
літаком не вживаються. Синтаксична форма місцевого відмінка може
поширювати не окремий член речення: У Монголії клімат
континентальний, На дворі звечоріло. Такі зовнішні поширювачі мають
значення місця, часу, причини, мети і зв’язані з предикативним ядром
вільним приєднанням: Сьогодні, о другій годині, в актовому залі
відбудуться збори. Їх самостійність в українській мові підтверджується і
тим, що вони можуть бути вичленовані із складу речення. Наприклад:
Він приїхав недавно. В понеділок. Так позиційне й інтонаційне
вичленовування форми слова або сполучення пов’язане з
інформаційним навантаженням і сприяє витворенню самостійного
висловлювання. У структурі простого речення виділяють два типи
поширювачів: внутрішні і зовнішні. Поширювачі в детермінантній
позиції (легко вичленовувані з речення) належать до зовнішніх.

С.211-213
4. ЛІНГВІСТИЧНА ПРИРОДА ВИДОВИХ ЗНАЧЕНЬ ДІЄСЛОВА
У лінгвістичній літературі вид дієслова тлумачиться то як
словотвірна категорія [418, т.1, с.584], то як словозмінна [400, с.1-56;
312; 514, с.54], або підкреслюється її суперечливий характер [222, с. 2;
130, с.115]. «Цілком очевидно, - зазначає І.Г.Милославський, - що видові
кореляції не виражаються за допомогою закінчень, це сфера дії суфіксів
та префіксів. Лексикографічна практика також схиляється до
висвітлення корелятивних за видом дієслів як самостійних словникових
статей. Таким чином, з якого б боку не розглядали видову кореляцію – з
боку регулярності утворення, з боку засобів оформлення, з боку
практичної презентаціях у словниках, - вид виступає як словотвірна
категорія» [336, С.158]. Пов’язані словотвірними відношеннями дієслова
доконаного і недоконаного виду послідовно відмінні своїми
граматичними якостями: сполучуваністю і складом парадигм, тобто
вони характеризуються різними співвідношеннями синтагматичних і
парадигматичних сем у їх структурі. Корелятивність твірної і похідної і
похідної видових форм намагаються підтвердити наявністю спільного
семантичного інваріанта, в межах якого відбувається лексична і
морфологічна деривація [418, Т.1, с. 584].
Вид є морфологічною категорією із складною семантичною
структурою, вказуючи на яку Б.Комрі підкреслює: «Види – це різні
способи представлення (viewing) внутрішнього часового
149
структурування ситуації» [569, с.332-336]. Така дефініція перегукується
з думкою О.М.Пєшковського про те, що семантика виду описується
перевожно покликанням на перебіг у часі або розподілом у часі дії [384,
с.105]. Поряд з цим існує вказівка на комплексність (цілісність) дії,
репрезентовані формами доконаного і недоконаного виду [419, т.1,
с.215]. Безперечно, будь-яка ситуація існує і розгортається в часі, що
послідовно відбивається семантикою часових форм. Видова семантика
відносно незалежна від часової і перетинається в синтагматиці. Вид
пов'язаний з внутрішньою темпоральністю дії, стану, час
характеризується дейктичною темпоральною локалізацією дії або стану.
У цьому плані важливим є розмежування зовнішнього і
внутрішнього часу. Вся ситуація взагалі міститься у зовнішньому часі,
тобто розташовується щодо моменту мовлення: до, одночасно з ним,
після нього. Часові стосунки всередині самої ситуації становлять її
внутрішню темпоральність і виражається граматичне значення
доконаного і недоконаного виду. Взаємодія зовнішнього і внутрішнього
часу багатомірна і відбивається у функціональних і формально-
парадигматичних зв’язках (з цим пов’язана втрата особливих форм
імперфекта, плюсквамперфекта, аориста у давньоруській мові і
становлення єдиної форми минулого часу). Опозиція зовнішнього і
внутрішнього часу відображає нетотожність семантики часових і
видових форм у системі мови і системі мовлення. Виступаючи засобом
маніфестації зв’язку двох або більше ситуацій (пор. більшу смислову
складність окремих форм недоконаного виду, за А.Вежбицькою),
граматичне значення виду є засобом сигніфікативного вираження
ситуації. Внутрішній час пов'язаний з ознакою
комплексності/некомплексності дії з її послідовною диференціацією
щодо «точечності» і «лінійності». Опозиція зовнішнього/внутрішнього
часу пов’язана з різним статусом мовця. Дейктичний, орієнтацій ний і
векторний зміст часових форм пов’язаний з позицією спостерігача, який
послідовно здійснює зовнішнє членування перебігу дії щодо моменту
мовлення. Семантика виду відповідає онтологічно позиції діяча – двох
поглядів на її перебіг як на неподільне ціле (доконаний вид) і як на
членовану величину (недоконаний вид) [312].
Основу категорії виду становить двочленна опозиція
цілісності/нецілісності дії, її маркованим компонентом є форми
доконаного виду (цілісність). Форми недоконаного виду виступають
немаркованими і позначають дія як необмежену, безвідносно щодо її
цілісності, чим і мотивується їх подвійне вживання. Вони можуть
позначити нецілісну (Батько читає газети) і цілісну (Батько уже
обідав) дії.
Вид належить до центрально-периферійних категорій дієслова,
інколи його кваліфікують як основну дієслівну морфологічну категорію
[356, с. 122], мотивуючи це унікальністю видовий значень, які
150
охоплюють всі без винятку форми. Подібне тлумачення вимагає свого
уточнення, оскільки семантика виду є супровідною в частиномовній
приналежності дієслівних лексем. Вид посідає особливе місце в
підсистемі морфологічних категорій українського дієслова в силу своєї
фузійності, пов’язаності з лексико-семантичними властивостями дієслів
і окремої парадигми засобів вираження (суфікси і префікси),
спрямованістю в словотвір у морфологічній і лексичній деривації.
Зв’язки граматичного значення виду із семантикою дієслова
надзвичайно міцні, підтвердженням цього є розмежування лексичного
значення слова за допомогою грамем виду, пор. колоти/розколоти
дерево сокирою – колоти/заколоти ворога шпагою – колоти/уколоти
хлопця голкою; бити/побити дитину – бити/розбити ворога і под. У цих
умовах вид не може членувати всю дієслівну лексику на два протилежні
класи і виражати одне слово у двох формах: «Оскільки видове
протиставлення відбувається як в межах однієї лексеми, так і між
різними лексемами, дієслівний вид варто визнати граматичною
категорією змішаного типу, почасти словозмінною, почасти
класифікаційною» [64, С.77] Очевидно, є всі підстави погодитись з
твердженням Д.Пайара про те, що «обидва види позначають певний
спосіб локалізації процесу в межах семантичного універсаму, який
заданий предикативним відношенням» [375, с.270]. Тим самим
відбивається відмінність статусу мовця щодо семантики виду і часу,
репрезентованого у предикативному відношенні.
Співвідносність виду з дієслівною лексемою свідчить про
віртуальний характер його грамем.
Поняття внутрішнього часу співвідноситься з кількісним виміром
дії і репрезентується на віртуальному рівні мовного знака. Що засвідчує
когнітивність видової семантики. Участь грамем виду в розмежуванні
лексичних значень і закріплення лексем за окремим значенням відбиває
класифікаційний (переважно класифікуючий) статус морфологічної
категорії виду. Кваліфікація виду як «граматичної категорії з переважно
інтерпретативною семантикою» [58, с.47-50, 465, с.5] ґрунтується на
висвітленні участі грамем виду у структурі речення-висловлення,
констатації їх ролі в реалізації темпоральності, таксису і спрямоване в
синтагматику. Ядерним у структурі категорії виду дієслова є семантико-
парадигматичних компонент, співвіднесений з морфологічною і
лексичною деривацією, який і визнає корелятивність/некорелятивність
морфологічної категорії виду, місце perfective й imperfective tantum у
видовій семантиці.

Теорія сучасного синтаксису.

159 -162
XI.3.1. Бінарність актуального членування речення.

151
 Визначення основи повідомлення і ядра повідомлення стало
визначальним чинником розмежування теми і реми. Найпоширенішими
щодо актуального членування речення є терміни: тема/рема, дане/нове,
ядро/основа, топік/коментар, предмет мовлення/його ознака.
Засоби вираження комунікативності – порядок слів, частки.
Здебільшого ремо твірні інтенції приписують дієслову як
регулярному виразнику у слов’янських мовах присудка, а іменник-
підмет кваліфікують за виразник теми. Тема висловлення
характеризується трьома диференційними ознаками: 1) вихідний пункт
висловлення [Ковтунова 1976, С.6]; 2) актуально менш значуща, ніж
рема; 3) частина речення, яка відома і зумовлена попереднім контекстом
(носій «даного»).
Для реми притаманні такі три диференційні ознаки: 1) містить те,
що повідомляється про тему; 2) актуально значуща, ніж тема, постає
репрезентантом основного змісту повідомлення і є комунікативним
центром висловлення; 3) виступає носієм "нового".
Здебільшого в реченнєвій структурі тема передує ремі: Осінній ліс /
був легкий і прозорий від жовтневого листя (Є.Гуцало). Сонячний день /
млосно дихав свіжим теплом свіжої ріллі, і дзвінкоголосі жайворонки /
дружним хором славили весну (С. Добрянський)…
Висловлення не може бути без реми, яка становить його
комунікативний центр. Наявність же теми в ньому – необов’язкова.
Тематична частина висловлення може й бути експліцитно не
вираженою, якщо відома з контексту, пор.: Цвітуть соняшники / Озвучені
бджолами, чомусь схожі для мене на круглі кобзи. (Є.Гуцало). Можливі
також висловлення з нульовою темою, весь склад яких утворює одну
рему. Вони повідомляють про подію, не виділяючи вихідного пункту
повідомлення. Такі висловлення називають нерозчленованими: Гуляє
вітер, літає сніг. Ідуть люди. Фронт мовчав, стрільби не було, був тільки
скрегіт заліза по каменю (О.Гончар).

ХІ.3.3. Засоби вираження актуального членування речення.

Основний засіб вираження актуального членування речення – це
порядок слів та інтонація (міцне розташування фразового наголосу).
Обидва засоби діють разом, тому їх можна об’єднати і називати
комплексним засобом вираження актуального членування речення. У
кодифікованій літературній мові фразовий наголос автоматизований
(на кінець речення завжди падає, наголошуючи останню синтагму).
Відповідно до цього й організований порядок слів: спочатку іде тема,
потім - рема (щоб виділити рему). В.Матезіус називав такий порядок слів
об’єктивним. В експресивному мовленні порядок слів видозмінюється,
модифікується і такий порядок слів називається суб’єктивним.
Автоматизм фразового наголосу інколи порушується, внаслідок чого
наголошується не кінцева синтагма, а початкова синтагма або синтагма
152
в середині речення. Отже, рема завжди виділяється фразовим
наголосом: автоматизованим за об’єктивного порядку слів та
неавтоматизованим за суб’єктивного порядку слів.
Той чи інший порядок слів і місце фразового наголосу, що
виражають актуальне членування речення, називаються лінійно-
динамічною структурою речення. Додатковими засобами актуального
членування речення відзначаються тема або рема. Посилює актуальне
виділення теми наявність постпозитивної частки ж: Тієї ж ночі / сніг
пішов (Н.Білоцерківець); або обмежувально-препозитивних часток
тільки, лише: Лиш де‐ні‐де / прокинеться пташка (М.Коцюбинський).
Виділенню реми сприяють постпозитивні або препозитивні часки
не, ні та ін.: Хлопець написав листа / не у Львів. У Львів написав листа / не
хлопець. У Львів хлопець написав / не лист.

ХІІ. СУБ΄ЄКТНО-ОБ΄ЄКТНІ ВІДНОШЕННЯ У СТРУКТУРІ РЕЧЕННЯ

С.180 – 181.
ХІІ.3. Місце предиката-дієслова у структурі речення. Семантична
структура речення багатьма лінгвістами визначається щодо дієслова,
яке вміщує граматику речення у прихованому (імпліцитному) вигляді.
Механізм такого тлумачення розкрив С.Д. Кацнельсон: "Сферу
граматичної семантики можна визначити по-різному, залежно від того, з
якого боку ми до неї підійдемо. Відштовхуючись від системи свідомості,
її можна визначити як формальний бік процесів змістового мислення.
Наближаючись до неї з боку мови, ми виявимо, що цю сферу утворюють
семантичні функції граматичних форм (курсив наш – А.З.) і категорійних
ознак лексичних значень" [Кацнельсон 1972, с.118]. Властивість бути
членом певних предикатних відношень і властивість бути визначальним
компонентом валентних відношень і властивість бути визначальним
компонентом валентних відношень тут збігаються.
На синтаксичному рівні предикат визначається у змістовому плані
як організувальний центр речення, який відкриває певну кількість
синтаксичних позицій і відповідних для них функцій. Хоча такі категорії,
як підмет, додаток, обставина, означення, є синтаксичними (мовними),
вони також установлюють зв'язок з мисленням. <…> Синтаксична
структура не може бути механічно виведеною з логіко-семантичної
структури і навпаки. Синтаксична структура характеризується власною
семантикою, яка являє собою набір синтаксичних позицій, і формою, що
презентується відповідними певній синтаксичній позиції класами слів.
Семантико-синтаксичний аналіз, у межах якого компоненти-синтаксеми
характеризуються диференційними семантико-синтаксичними
ознаками, тобто семантичними ознаками, визначуваними з урахуванням
синтаксичних зв’язків [Вихованець 1983, с.8], складає семантичну
інтерпретацію формально-граматичної структури речення. Семантико-
синтаксичних підхід дає можливість врахувати синтагматику і
153
парадигматику речення, встановивши інваріантний комплекс
синтаксем, що зазнає мовленнєвої модифікації в конкретному
висловленні.
<…>
Предикативна структура речення, в якій активними компонентами
є дієслово й іменник, підпорядковує собі всі вторинні елементи
периферійного речення – означення, напівпериферійного плану, напр.,
факультативний другорядний член обставина (…). Елементарна
семантична структура речення включає найбільш необхідні
компоненти, що програмуються віртуальною семантичною структурою
дієслова. Основою предикативного зв’язку є взаємодія категорійних
значень відмінка й особи дієслова. Дієслово «програмує» позицію
називного відмінка, поза ним не реалізується предмет. Іменник вимагає
від дієслова відповідної особи, яка виступає ієрархічно вершиною в
структурі комунікативного акту.
Позиція називного відмінка є формою презентації підмета і
спеціалізованого формою вираження суб’єкта, до якої прилягають усі
інші форми, зокрема форми давального, орудного, кличного та ін. Щодо
називного відмінка особові форми корелюють і відображають особову
спеціалізацію називного, відповідно реалізуючи форму 1-ої, 2-ої, 3-ої
особи однини чи множини.

Левицький А.Е., А.В. Сингаївська, Л.Л. Славова

Вступ до мовознавства
С.14 - 15
Порівняльне мовознавство виникло на початку 19 ст. (роботи
Ф.Бокка, Р.К.Раска, Я. Ґрімма, О.Х.Востокова та ін.).
У. Шлейхер розглядав розвиток мови з точки зору біологічних ідей
Ч.Дарвіна і близько підійшов до співставлен-ня біологічної еволюції і
передачі мовної інформації у часі. Він запропонував модель
послідовного поділу індоєвропейської прамови, хоча пізніше в ній було
знайдено багато недоліків.
У кінці 19 ст. популярності набув так званий молодогра-матизм —
напрямок у європейському мовознавстві, який виник у Німеччині в 70-х
рр. 19 ст.
Молодограматики заперечили вчення Вільгельма фон Гум-больдта про
внутрішню форму мови, обумовлену національним духом народу,
вчення А. Шлейхера про мову як природній організм і звернулися до
дослідження мовних явищ на основі без посереднього спостереження й
індуктивного методу.
Молодограматизм відрізнявся поглядом на мову як на індивідуально-
психологічне явище, яке виражається мовними засобами.
Молодограматики виділили фонетику як самостійний розділ

154
мовознавства і підняли етимологію і порівняльно-історичну граматику
індоєвропейських мов до рівня точної науки. Їхніми слабкими
сторонами є суб’єктивно-психологічне розуміння природи мови і
недооцінювання необхідності вивчення зв’язків з суспільством,
поверхневий характер історизму.
У роботах Ф. де Соссюра використовувався метод внутрішньої
реконструкції, тобто системний аналіз однієї мови, на відміну від
зовнішньої реконструкції, яка ґрунтується на порівнянні кількох мов.
На основі (перш за все) порівняльно-історичних зіставлень 70-х рр.
19 ст. Ф. де Соссюр і І.О. Бодуен де Куртене приходять до встановлення
принципів дослідження мови (насамперед, її звукової сторони) як
системи. Дослідження вчених Казанської лінгвістичної школи,
представниками якої був І.О. Бодуен де Куртене та його учні, заклали
основи фонології і морфології.
Незалежно один від одного І.О. Бодуен де Куртене і Ф. де Соссюр
прийшли до протиставлення двох аспектів лінгвістичної науки: 1)
синхронії як аспекта лінгвістичного дослідження, що передбачає
вивчення стану певної мови у даний конкретний невеликий відрізок
часу, протягом якого мова начебто не змінюється; 2) діахронії як
протилежного синхронії аспекту дослідження, спрямованого на
вивчення мови чи її явищ і елементів у процесі їхнього історичного
розвитку.
Ф. де Соссюр наполягав на рішучому протиставленні двох аспектів
лінгвістичної науки і при цьому надавав перевагу синхронії.
Ф. де Соссюр і американець Ч. Пірс незалежно один від одного
визначили місце мови серед інших систем знаків і місце
мовознавства серед семіотичних дисциплін. Ф. де Соссюр сформулював,
що лінгвістика є лише частиною загальної науки “семіотики” як науки
про різні знакові системи, що використовуються у людському
суспільстві для передачі інформації. Він виділив три основні властивості
мовних знаків: довільність, лінійний характер позначаючого та
змінність; вказав на те, що мовний знак об’єднує в собі матеріальне і
ідеальне.
Учення Ф. де Соссюра про мовну систему знаків стало основою
структурної лінгвістики, яка сформувалася у II чверті 20 ст. Принципи
структурної лінгвістики були розроблені вченими празької
лінгвістичної школи (М.С. Трубецькой, Р.О. Якобсон, В. Матезиус та ін.).
Вони доповнили традиційну генеалогічну класифікацію мов
групуванням мов у мовні союзи.
Найбільш абстрактним напрямом структурної лінгвістики була
глосематика (Л. Єльмслєв), яка була близькою до математичних теорій
мови. Американська структурна лінгвістика сформувалась під впливом
Ф. Боаса, який розробив методи точного опису індіанських мов Північної
Америки. Роботи Л. Блумфілда (1887–1949) заклали основу
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дескритивної лінгвістики, яка відображала специфіку суспільно-історич-
них, філософських, мовних умов розвитку науки про мову в США. Це
привело до розповсюдження теорії позитивізму, прагматизму та
біхейвіоризму, до виникнення традиції вивчення мов корінного
населення Північної Америки, а також зробило актуальними практичні
проблеми, пов’язані з вивченням різнорідних груп емігрантів у США.
Яскравим представником дескритивної лінгвістики був З. Гарріс, який
намагався описати мову лише на основі дослідження можливих сполу-
чень мовних елементів один з одним. Інший напрямок стратегії
лінгвістики представляли Е. Сепір і К.Л. Пайк, які вивчали мову у більш
широкому контексті соціальної психології і теорії людської поведінки.
У 50–60 рр. 20 ст. виникла генеративна лінгвістика (під впливом ідей
Н. Хомського), вона базувалась на описі мови у

С.18 – 19
ОСНОВНІ ПРОБЛЕМИ ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ МОВИ
Мова і мислення. Притаманність мові мислетворчої функції свідчить
про взаємопов’язаність і взаємозумовленість мови і мислення. Проте
ототожнювати одне з одним — означає не бачити специфічних ознак, а
розривати їх — означає допускати самостійне існування мислення без
мови. Мова — це суспільне явище. Мова існує та змінюється разом з
розвитком суспільства. Мова — це інструмент, за допомогою якого
відбувається обмін думками.
Мислення — це психофізичний процес відображення мозком людини
дійсності в поняттях, судженнях та умовиводах. Розрізняють логічне,
абстрактне, технічне та образне мислення. Сутність мови полягає у тому,
що вона бере участь у всіх видах мислення. Думки формуються завдяки
слову і в слові. Будь-яка думка має знайти своє словесне вираження, що
свідчить про те, що мова і мислення пов’язані між собою, але не тотожні.
З одного боку, немає слова, словосполучення, речення, які б не виражали
думки, але, з іншого боку, мова не то-тожня мисленню, а лише один з
найголовніших його інструментів. Мова — матеріальна, а мислення —
ідеальне. Ми мислимо для того, щоб пізнати і зрозуміти, а говоримо для
того, щоб передати наші думки, почуття та побажання.
Мова і мовлення. Ф. де Соссюр розробив вчення про мову і мовлення
в своїй книзі “Kурс загальної лінгвістики”. За його визначенням: “Мова
— це система взаємопов’язаних між собою знаків”. Будь-яка зміна в мові
викликає зміни в її системі.
Мова — це знакова система. Знаками мови є всі ті мовні одиниці
(звуки, букви, морфеми), які розподіляються між собою за функцією та
місцем у системі мови. Лінгвістичними знаками є ті, що виконують в
мові функцію номінації. За визначенням Ф. де Соссюра, знак — це буква,
морфема, слово, словосполучення, речення.

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 Мова — це система одиниць спілкування і правил їхнього
функціонування, тобто, мова — це інвентар (словник) і граматика, які
існують у потенційній можливості.
Мовлення — конкретно застосована мова, засоби спілкування в їхній
реалізації.
Під мовленням розуміють сам процес говоріння і результат цього
процесу. Якщо мова — це система, вона статична, то мовлення — це
процес говоріння і результат.

МОВА МОВЛЕННЯ
Загальне явище. Загальне (мова) Конкретне (індивідуальне). Притаманне
реалізується в конкретному (мовлення) кожній конкретній особистості у певний
часовий відрізок.

Мова — явище стабільне. Норми мови Мовлення — динамічне. У мовленні люди

(орфоепічні, орфографічні, граматичні, можуть припускатись помилок.
лексичні) є відносно стабільними. У
мові немає помилок, у ній усе правильно.
Мова — нелінійна. У мові всі звуки, слова, Мовлення — лінійне. Мовлення роз-
словоформи існують одночасно. На гортається в часі. Для того, щоб
відміну від мовлення, мова має ієрархічну вимовити якусь фразу, потрібен певний
будову. часовий проміжок, тому що слова
вимовляються послідовно одне за одним.

Структура мови — це будова мови в її ієрархічній співвідносності, за

якою елементи нижчих рівнів закономірно використовуються для
будови одиниць вищого рівня: на базі звуків утворюються частини
мови, а з слів — речення. Водночас структура мови — це і спосіб
поєднання взаємозумовлених одиниць, своєрідних у кожній мові.
Елементи кожного рівня (фонетичного, морфологічного, лексичного,
синтаксичного) пов’язані системно. На відміну від структури, що
становить собою склад і внутрішню організацію єдиного цілого, розгля-
дуваного з боку цілісності, під системою розуміють сукупність
взаємопов’язаних елементів, що утворюють більш складну єдність,
розглядувану з боку елементів, з боку її частин.

Вінтонів Михайло
Актуальне членування полі предикативних складних речень

Різноаспектне вивчення багатокомпонентних складних речень дало

змогу виокремити один із різновидів цих структур – поліпредикативні
складні речення. У лінгвістиці поняття полі предикативного речення
тлумачать неоднозначно. Залежно від того, який принцип організаціх
речення взято за основу, виокремлюють і відповідні різновиди полі
предикативних речень. Дехто з лінгвістів, визнаючи семантичну
157
самостійність окремих дієслівних словоформ або напівпредикативних
конструкцій, кваліфікують структурно прості речення на зразок
Василько сидів долі та м΄яв мак до куті (М. Коцюбинський); Яким стояв,
сумно схиливши голову (М. Коцюбинський) як поліпредикативні
(Золотова Г.А. Коммуникативная грамматика русского языка /
Г.А. Золотова, Н.К. Онипенко, М.Ю. Сидорова. – М.: Институт русского
языка им. В.В. Виноградова РАН, 2004. – 544с.). Інші вчені до полі
предикативних зараховують тільки ті структури, що складаються з двох
і більше предикативних частин, напр.: Василько стояв, сумно схиливши
голову (М. Коцюбинський); Йому видалось, що в маленьких вікнах
блимнув вогонь (М. Коцюбинський) (Мишланов В.А. Русское сложное
предложение в свете динамического синтаксиса: автореф.дис. …д-ра
филол.наук: 10.02.01 / Перм.гос.ун-т. – Пермь, 1996. – 39с.). Деякі вчені
наголошують, що поліпредикативні структури можуть формуватися й
одним типом зв΄язку за умови, що змінюється характер цього зв΄язку,
напр.: І раптом теплі небесні води густо злетіли на ниви в тінях сизої
хмари, але сонце зараз десь близько засвітило веселку, і дощ перестав
(М. Коцюбинський); Так було тепло, самотньо і лячно у віковічній тиші,
яку беріг ліс, що діти чули власне дихання(М. Коцюбинський). За іншим
підходом, під поліпредикативними складними реченнями мають на
увазі один із різновидів багатокомпонентних складних речень,
утворений на основі різнотипного синтаксичного зв΄язку, напр.: Хтось
бачив, що десь ізвисока він летів, ніби з самих небес, і хоч міг би й на
Улинівку полетіти чи на Озера, але ж вибрав чомусь Тернівщину при
байраці… (О.Гончар).
Саме різноаспектне вивчення багатокомпонентних структур й
уможливило виокремлення різновидів полі предикативних складних
речень. На нашу думку, до полі предикативних складних речень слід
зараховувати структури, виділювані з-поміж багатокомпонентних
складних речень із різнотипним зв΄язком, що складаються з трьох і
більше предикативних частин, перебувають у неоднакових семантико-
синтаксичних відношеннях, мають два й більше рівнів членування.
Намає сумніву в тому, що основне членування тільки одне, воно
належить усій конструкції загалом і формується провідною структурною
схемою, яка визначає тип конструкції, кількість частин основного
членування, категорійне значення, типову належність усієї полі
предикативної конструкції, тобто її зарахування до складносурядних,
складнопідрядних чи безсполучникових складних речень (Уханов Г.П.
Стоение сложных полипредикативных предложений (основные понятия
/ Г.П. Уханов // Сложные элементарные и полипредикативные
предложения. – Калинин, 1983. – С.17-24).
<…>
Таким чином, зовнішній рівень – це провідний структурний рівень
організації речення в поєднанні з основними семантичними
158
відношеннями між його частинами, блоками, компонентами. Речення, у
яких на зовнішньому рівні виявляється обов’язковий сурядний зв΄зок,
слід зараховувати до полі предикативних складносурядних речень.
<…>
Специфіка провідного зв΄язку на зовнішньому рівні членування
визначає особливості розташування комунікативно важливих
елементів. Частини допоміжного рівня членування не можуть
самостійно виконувати окреме комунікативне завдання й входять до
складу рематичних або тематичних компонентів. Напр.: Ліна // Якось
вхопила стружку в нього з‐під ніг, 2а вона // виявилась така гаряча, 3що
аж пальці попекла... (О.Гончар). Між першою та другою предикативними
частинами наявне лінійне актуальне членування, яке протиставлене
багатоступеневому актуальному членуванню компонентів другої та
третьої предикативних частин. Тема (Т) першого рівня у першій та
другій предикативних частинах виражена підметами Ліна (Т), вона (Т),
рема – групою присудка – якось вхопила стружку в нього з‐під ніг (Р) і
складнопідрядним реченням виявилась така гаряча, що аж пальці
попекла... (Р). Відповідно до додаткового смислового навантаження на
другому рівні виділяємо тему нульову (Т20) і рему (Р2) що аж пальці
попекла… За умови перерахування об’єктів, процесів, фактів, а також у
тих випадках, коли є однорідні члени речення, пов’язані взаємними
відношеннями уточнення, їх також виокремлюють як самостійні
рематичні компоненти.
Комунікативна схема наведеного висловлення така:

Т1 // Р1, а Т1 // Р1

Т2 (0) // Р2

<…>
Отже, Багатокомпонентні складні речення – конструкції більш
високого рівня, ніж елементарні складні речення, їхня наявність
зумовлена певними комунікативними намірами. Поліпредикативні
складні речення – це окремий різновид БКСР, утворений поєднанням
трьох і більше предикативних частин, різнорідних семантико-
синтаксичних відношень між частинами, блоками, компонентами, який
обов’язково має основний і другорядний (або другорядні) рівні
членування. Структура цих речень формується всіма видами
синтаксичного зв΄язку , але в різних комбінаціях: сурядним, підрядним і
безсполучниковим.

159
 Маслов Ю.С.
Очерки об аспектологии
Семантическое определение вида:
Глагольный вид указывает «как протекает во времени или как
распространяется во времени»(А.М.Пешковский) обозначенное
глаголом «действие» (явление, событие, ситуация, состояние,
положение дел и т.д.). Т.о., вид связан с понятием времени, но в отличие
от категории глагольного времени он имеет дело не с дейктической
темпоральной локализацией обозначаемого «действия», а с его
внутренней темпоральной структурой как она понимается говорящим.
Вид отражает «оценку» говорящим временной структуры самого
действия. Не будучи, следовательно, дейктической категорией, вид
принадлежит, однако, к категориям субъективно-объективным,
«преимущественно интерпретационным» (Бондарко А.В. Теория
морфологических категорий. – Л., 1976. – с.47), устанавливающим тот
угол зрения, под которым рассматривается в формах языка объективная
внеязыковая действительность.
Семантическое определения вида является общим определением
аспектуального значения и относится не только к виду, но и вообще к
аспектуальности.
Тем не менее не следует искать более узких семантических
формулировок, например, связывать это понятие с идеей предела
действия или с противопоставлением линеарность:точечность,
курсивность:комплексность и т.п.
Конкретный перечень аспектуальных значений, воплощаемых в
категории вида в разных языках, еще не выделен лингвистическим
исследованием. КВ характеризуется не только многообразием внешних
форм своего выражения, но и значительным многообразием
внутреннего содержания
Видовая категория характеризуется бинарностью.
КВ следует отграничивать от категории времени и от категории
таксиса. Термин «таксис» был предложен Р.О. Якобсоном (Шифтеры,
глагольные категории и русский глагол // Принципы типологического
анализа языков различного строя. – М., 1972. – с.101). «Таксис
характеризует сообщаемый факт по отношению к моменту сообщения».
При этом прежде всего имеется в виду хронологические соотношения
(одновременность, предшествование, следование), но также и
логические связи между действиями.
В речи аспектуальные, темпоральные и таксисные значение тесно
переплетаются друг с другом, выступая как компоненты комплесного
семантического целого.
Б. Отграничение вида от прочих элементов аспектуальности.
О виде уместно говорить только применительно к таким языкам, в
которых те или иные аспектуальные значения (т.е. значения,
160
относящиеся, …, к протеканию и распределению глагольного действия
во времени) получают открыто (или чисто) грамматическое выражение,
т.е. в значительной части глагольной лексики выступают как
противопоставление словоформ одного глагола (9-10).
Синтаксические сочетания с аспектуальным значением.
1)глагол+обстоятельства, указывающие на характер протекания и
распределения во времени глагольного действия (наречия
продолжительности, кратности, мгновенности и др.): писал долго, писал
до утра, писал часто, ежедневно, писал дважды.
2)сочетание финитных и нефинитных форм в составе одного
предиката, если нет симптомов превращения одного из глаголов во
вспомогательный, например, сочетания с глаголами «фазовости», с
глаголами, обозначающими «иметь обыкновение» (начал писать, бросил
писать, остался сидеть).
Глагольный вид как ГК существует не во всех языках. Но
аспектуальные значения представлены повсюду. (14)
В. Содержание некоторых видовых оппозиций.
Оппозиция совершенный-несовершенный вид (перфектив-
имперфектив) в русском и др.славянских языках.
Реальная основа – противопоставление
достигнутость:недостигнутость внутреннего предела глагольного
действия. Но на уровне категориального значения – совершенный вид,
будучи «сильным» членом оппозиции (семантически маркированным)
изображает действие в его неделимой целостности, а несовершенный
вид как «слабый» (немаркированный и экстенсивный) член оппозиции
оставляет признак целостности:нецелостности невыраженным.
Уже Л.П.Размусен в своем определении значения СВ и НСВ отмечал
и то, что здесь названо «реальной основой» этой оппозиции, и то, что мы
квалифицируем как ее «категориальное значение», причем он сочетал
эти два момента как моменты (исторической или логической)
последовательности. (О глагольных временах и об отношении их к
видам в русском, немецком и французском языках // Журнал
Министерства народного просвещения. – 1891.- Т.275, с.379).
- несовместимость СВ со словами, указывающими на отдельные
фазы в протекании действия;
- с помощью форм СВ любое событие (мгновенное или длительное)
представляется так, что мысль не выделяет его фазы;
- неделимая целостность – непроцессность действия. (15-16).
Оппозиция прогрессив:непрогрессив в английском, испанском,
португальском и др. языках.
Английский прогрессив, образующий свои формы во всех временах,
обладает более узким видовым значением, чем имперфект в
французского и др. языков. Хотя на протяжении последнего столетия
произошло некоторое расширение семантического спектра английского
161
прогрессива, но все же его категориальное значение должно быть
определено как процессность, соединенная со специфической
конкретностью, «сиюминутностью» действия, с его приуроченностью к
определенному моменту или отрезку времени, четко выделяемому
среди ряда других моментов или отрезков. Сочетание указанных
семантических компонентов и отражено в одном из русских терминов
для прогрессива – «конкретно-процессный» вид, перекликающийся с
названием одного из частных видовых значений славянского
имперфектива. Прогрессив обозначает «частное действие, протекающее
в течение определенной единицы времени», наблюдаемое в
«динамическом процессе его развития», «в его поступательном
движении» (Иванова И.П. Вид и время в английском языке. – Л., 1961. –
с.68), хотя на это основное значение наслоились и некоторые
добавочные.
Формы, которым противопоставлен прогрессив, т.е. формы
непрогрессива обладают очень широким, нейтральным аспектуальным
значением, и должны трактоваться как «общий вид».
Противопоставленные прогрессиву формы настоящего времени
выступают в значении абстрактного, повторительного,
«вневременного» настоящего, но иногда используются и в «актуальном
настоящем», т.е. при указании на действие или состояние, наличное в
момент речи: My head aches. (22-23)
Дополнительные значения:
- временное действие;
- регулярное действие (в пределах периода);

Введение в языкознание
СИНТАКСИС
§ 193. Синтаксис был определен выше (см. § 148) как
грамматическое учение о связной речи, о единицах более «высоких», чем
слово. Синтаксис начинается там, где мы выходим за пределы слова или
устойчивого сочетания слов, где начинается связная речь с ее свободной
комбинацией лексических единиц в рамках переменного
словосочетания и предложения. Конечно, эпитет «свободная» не
означает отсутствия правил. Комбинация лексических единиц
осуществляется по определенным законам и моделям, изучение
которых и составляет задачу синтаксиса. «Свобода» состоит в
непредусмотренности кон-кретного лексического наполнения этих
моделей, в том, что все синтаксические модели принадлежат языку
только как абстрактные модели, а их конкретное наполнение той или
иной лексикой бесконечно разнообразно и относится к речи. Правда, и
на других уровнях языка мы различаем абстрактное (языковое) и
конкретное (речевое). Но, например, слово железнодорожный
принадлежит русскому языку не одной только моделью, по которой оно
162
построено, но и всем своим индивидуальным составом морфем, тогда
как любое, даже самое простое предложение (Солнце взошло) и любое
переменное словосочетание (высокое дерево) принадлежат языку лишь
как модель построения, а то, что в этой модели использованы именно
эти, а не какие-либо другие слова, есть факт речи, определяемый
содержанием данного высказывания, намерением и задачей
говорящего. В компетенцию синтаксиса входит рассмотрение и
однословных предложений вроде Пожар!, так как в них к лексическому и
грамматическому значениям, заключенным в данной словоформе,
присоединяется специфически синтаксическое грамматическое
значение, выраженное интонацией предложения.
а) Предложение и словосочетание
§ 194. Центральным понятием синтаксиса является предложение –
основная ячейка, в которой формируется и выражается человеческая
мысль и с помощью которой
осуществляется речевое общение людей.
Специфика предложения по сравнению с «нижестоящими»
языковыми единицами
заключается в том, что оно есть высказывание, оно
коммуникативно. Это значит, что оно
1) соотнесено с определенной ситуацией и 2) обладает
коммуникативной установкой на
утверждение (или отрицание), на вопрос или на побуждение к чему-
либо.
Коммуникативность предложения конкретизируется в
синтаксических категориях модальности и времени. Эти последние
выражаются в глагольных формах наклонения и времени, а также
(особенно при отсутствии глагола) с помощью интонации, модальных
слов, слов, обозначающих локализацию во времени.
По своей структуре предложения очень разнообразны. Они могут
реализоваться с помощью одного слова (Пожар! Воды! Светает. Иду!
Великолепно! Домой?), в частности аналитической формы слова (По
коням! Буду рад!), но чаще реализуются с помощью более или менее
сложного сочетания слов.
§ 195. От слова однословное предложение внешне отличается
интонацией. По содержанию же между словом “пожар” и однословным
предложением “Пожар!” - громадное различие. Слово пожар есть просто
название определенного класса реальных явлений (и соответствующего
понятия), способное в речи обозначать и каждое отдельное явление
этого класса. Предложение “Пожар!” – уже не просто название, а
утверждение о наличии данного явления, т. е. пожара, в данной
конкретной ситуации, в данный момент времени, утверждение,
сопровождаемое также теми или иными эмоциональными
коннотациями и т. д. Аналогичным образом словоформа воды есть
163
название известного вещества, поставленное в определенное
отношение к другим словам потенциального контекста. Предложение
Воды! есть просьба, требование, побуждение к реальному действию в
данной конкретной ситуации.
Взяв однословные предложения, содержащие собственно
глагольную форму (Иду! Иди! Пришел? Светает. Светало.), мы
обнаружим, что здесь различие между предложением и
соответствующим словом (словоформой) более тонкое. Все эти
словоформы уже и сами по себе содержат указание на наклонение, а при
изъявительном наклонении – и на время; они предикативны, т. е.
предназначены быть либо сказуемым, либо, при отсутствии в
предложении других членов, целым предложением. И все же различие
между словоформой и предложением, состоящим из одной этой
словоформы, есть и здесь. Можно сказать, что слово иду (также светало
и т. д.) лишь потенциально соотнесено с любой подходящей ситуацией,
тогда как предложение Иду! (Светало и т. д.) реально соотнесено с
какой-то ситуацией, действительной или вымышленной, имеющей или
имевшей место в определенный момент времени, в определенной точке
пространства и т. д. Словоформа иди выражает побуждение, но
побуждение, потенциально обращенное к любому собеседнику, а
предложение Иди! – побуждение, реально обращенное к определенному
адресату, в определенной ситуации, в определенный момент времени,
притом конкретизированное (интонацией) как просьба, настойчивое
требование, категорический приказ и т. д. Слоформа пришел не
выражает ни утверждения, ни вопроса, а предложения Пришел? и
Пришел!, в зависимости от интонации, выражают либо вопрос, либо
утверждение. Ту же картину мы имеем и в отношении неглагольных
предикативов (Жарко. Пора! и т. п.), только в этих случаях формы
наклонений (кроме изъявительного) и времен (кроме настоящего)
являются аналитическими.
§ 196. Предложение, реализуемое сочетанием слов, чаще всего
обладает предикативной структурой, т. е. содержит либо
предикативную словоформу («Солнце взошло», «Летят журавли», также
с неглагольным предикативом «Здесь жарко»), либо, и без подобной
формы, два четко соотнесенных главных члена – подлежащее и
сказуемое (Он – студент университета. Снег бел. Факт налицо). Всюду
здесь уже сама конструкция свидетельствует о том, что перед нами
предложение. И все же по-настоящему эти конструкции становятся
предложениями благодаря интонации, с которой они произносятся (ср.
«Солнце взошло» с повествовательной и «Солнце взошло?» с
вопросительной интонацией). Наряду с этим и сочетания слов, не
обладающие предикативной структурой и нормально не являющиеся
предложениями (белый снег, писать письма, ты и я), могут, как и
отдельное непредикатнвное слово (пожар и т. д.), становиться
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предложениями, но лишь в более специальных условиях, например в
контексте других предложений (ср. начало «Двенадцати» Блока:
«Черный вечер. Белый снег. Ветер, ветер! На ногах не стоит человек»), в
назывных предложениях (названиях литературных произведений и т.
п.), в диалоге (Что ты будешь делать вечером? – Писать письма).
Становясь предложением, такое сочетание (как и отдельное
непредикативное слово, становящееся предложением) получает ту или
иную коммуникативную установку, связь с определенной ситуацией, а в
плане выражения – соответствующую интонацию.
§ 197. Некоторые языковеды, подчеркивая различие между
сочетаниями, содержащими предикативное слово, и сочетаниями,
такого слова не содержащими, предпочитают обозначать термином
«словосочетание» только последний вид сочетаний. Уместнее
представляется, однако, другая точка зрения: словосочетание
определяется как любое соединение двух или более знаменательных
слов, характеризуемое наличием между ними формально выраженной
смысловой связи. Словосочетание может совпадать с предложением или
быть частью предложения, а предложение, как сказано, может
реализоваться в виде снабженного той или иной интонацией
словосочетания, ряда связанных между собой словосочетаний или
отдельного слова (также отдельного знаменательного слова,
сопровождаемого служебным, например Придешь ли?). Языковеды,
изымающие все предикативные словосочетания из объема понятия
«словосочетание», разумеется, определяют словосочетание иначе.
Например, они включают в свои определения указание на «назывную
функцию», на то, что словосочетание «служит обозначением единого,
хотя и расчлененного понятия».
б) Синтаксические связи и функции. Способы их формального
выражения
§ 198. Синтаксической связью мы называем всякую формально
выраженную смысловую связь между лексическими единицами
(словами, устойчивыми словосочетаниями), соединившимися друг с
другом в речи, в акте коммуникации. Обычно
выделяют два главных типа синтаксической связи – сочинение и
подчинение. Примеры сочинительной связи слов: стол и стул; я или ты;
строг, но справедлив. Для сочинительной связи характерна
равноправность элементов, что проявляется в возможности
перестановки без существенного изменения смысла (хотя при союзах и,
или первое место в сочетании обычно обладает большим «весом», чем
второе: ср. жена и я - я и жена). При сочинении связанные элементы
однородны, функционально близки; обычно не отмечается, чтобы один
из них как-то изменял свою грамматическую форму под влиянием
другого.

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 Примеры подчинительной связи: ножка стола, подушка из пуха,
пуховая подушка, читаю книгу, читаю вслух. Здесь отношения
неравноправные: один элемент (ножка, подушка, читаю) является
главенствующим, определяемым (в широком смысле), другой элемент
(...стола, ...из пуха, пуховая, ...книгу, ...вслух)—подчиненным, зависимым,
определяющим, уточняющим значение первого.
Элементы здесь либо вообще нельзя поменять ролями (например, в
читаю книгу, читаю вслух), либо нельзя поменять ролями без коренного
изменения смысла (пух из подушки имеет другое значение, чем подушка
из пуха, ср. брат учителя и учитель брата). В русском и во многих других
языках выбор грамматической формы подчиненного слова (если оно
многоформенное) обычно диктуется формой или фактом наличия слова
главенствующего. Впрочем, как мы увидим, маркировка
подчинительной связи может даваться и в главенствующем слове.
Некоторые лингвисты называют словосочетания с подчинительной
связью синтагмами.
Спорным является вопрос о характере связи между подлежащим и
сказуемым. К нему мы вернемся ниже (см. § 205).
В связной речи синтаксические связи взаимно переплетаются,
причем подчинение используется шире и играет более существенную
роль в организации высказывания, чем сочинение.
§ 199. Синтаксической функцией данной единицы (слова,
устойчивого словосочетания) называется отношение этой единицы к
тому целому, в состав которого она входит, ее синтаксическая роль в
предложении или в переменном словосочетании. Имеются в виду
функции членов предложения, а также вставных элементов речи
(вводных слов, обращений) и т. д. Некоторые из этих функций мы
рассмотрим ниже. А сейчас займемся способами формального
выражения синтаксических связей и синтаксических функций.
§ 200. Выражение синтаксических связей и функций с помощью
форм с л о в а, т. е. морфологическим путем. Сюда входят: 1)
согласование, 2) управление, 3) сочетание согласования и управления,
4) обозначение подчинительной связи в главенствующем слове.
1. Согласование состоит в повторении одной, нескольких или всех
граммем одного слова в другом, связанном с ним слове. Сюда относится
согласование сказуемого с подлежащим в русском и многих других
языках, например: Я читаю. Ты читаешь. Она поет, Мы работаем и т. д. (в
глаголе повторены граммемы лица и числа, содержащиеся в
подлежащем); Он читал. Она писала. Они работали, Книга оказалась
интересной. Книги оказались интересными (в сказуемом повторены
граммемы рода и числа) и т. д.2 В ряде языков, как упоминалось, глагол-
сказуемое подвергается двойному и тройному согласованию – не только
с подлежащим, но и с прямым и даже косвенным дополнением.
Согласование широко используется как средство выражения
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определительных связей, причем граммемы определяемого
(господствующего) слова повторяются в определяющем. В русском
языке в этом случае повторяются граммемы рода, числа и падежа: новая
книга, новую книгу, о новой книге, новые книги и т. д.
Особое использование согласования наблюдается при замене слова-
названия словом-заместителем, например «Брат купил книгу. Она
оказалась интересной» (повторение в слове-заместителе граммем рода
и числа).
2. Управление состоит в том, что одно слово вызывает в связанном с
ним другом слове появление определенных граммем, не повторяющих,
однако, граммем первого слова. Управление широко используется как
средство выражения подчинительных связей. Так, переходный глагол
требует в русском и во многих других языках постановки дополнения в
винительном падеже («читаю книгу»); другие разряды глаголов
управляют другими падежами без предлогов – дательным («радуюсь
весне»), родительным («добиваюсь ре-зультатов·», «лишился покоя»,
«хотел добра»), творительным («шевелю губами», «казался
счастливым») и различными предложными сочетаниями («бороться
против пошлости», «участвовать в концерте» и т. д.). Постановки
зависимых от них слов в определенных падежах и с определенными
предлогами требуют и другие слова – существительные (ср. «жажда
знаний», «исключение из правила·»), прилагательные («полный сил»,
«довольный покупкой», «склонный к авантюрам»), наречия («наравне со
мной»), неглагольные предикативы («было жаль беднягу»). Свои
особенности управления имеют (в частности, в русском и других
славянских языках) отрицательные предложения (ср. пишу стихи – не
пишу стихов).
3. Сочетание согласования и управления имеет место, например, в
русском языке в группах «числительное + существительное», в которых
числительное управляет существительным, требуя его постановки в
одних случаях в род. п. мн. ч. (пять столов), в других – в особой «счетной
форме» (два шага) 1 , и одновременно согласуется с ним (пяти столам,
пятью столами, два окна, но две двери). В языках так называемого
эргативного строя глагол-сказуемое не только согласуется с
подлежащим, но одновременно и управляет им, требуя его постановки в
«абсолютном» падеже при непереходном глаголе и в «эргативном» 2
падеже – при глаголе переходном (причем подлежащее непереходного
глагола оформлено тем же падежом, что и дополнение переходного). Вот
примеры из грузинского языка, в котором, однако, картина усложнена
еще тем, что подлежащее при переходном глаголе выступает не в одном
эргативном, а в трех разных падежах, в зависимости от того, в какой
видовременной форме употреблен глагол.

167
 Бархударов Л.С.
Структура простого предложения современного английского языка
С.12
III. РАЗДЕЛЫ СИНТАКСИСА
6. Таким образом, мы определяем синтаксис как раздел грамматики,
изучающий структуру предложения. Однако следует иметь в виду, что
само предложение обладает сложным строением. Соединяясь в
предложение, слова не просто присоединяются одно к другому, как
бусинки, нанизываемые на ниточку: в строе предложения слова
группируются, объединяются между собой в характеризуемые
определенным строением группы слов, называемые словосочетаниями.
(Определение словосочетания см. в гл. третьей). Так, в приведенном
выше примере My brother lives in London выделяются такие группы слов
или словосочетания как my brother и lives in London, каждое из которых
характеризуется определенной внутренней структурой (наличием слов
определенных грамматических классов в определенных формах,
употребляемых в определенной последовательности). При этом, что
особенно важно, одно и то же словосочетание может выступать в
предложении в различных позициях без какого-либо изменения своей
внутренней структуры; ср.: My brother lives in London; This is my
brother; I gave my brother an apple; etc. Это означает, что структура
словосочетаний может изучаться в определенном отвлечении от
структуры всего предложения в целом, в котором употребляется данное
словосочетание.
7. Далее, следует учитывать, что сами предложения в большинстве
случаев употребляются не в отрыве друг от друга, но вступают в
определенные связи, часто образуя характеризуемые той или иной
структурой группы предложений, именуемые традиционно сложными
предложениями. При этом, опять-таки, существенным является то, что
одни и те же предложения могут по-разному объединяться друг с
другом без какого-либо изменения своей внутренней структуры. Ср.
напр.: It was dark, and it began to rain; When it was dark, it began to rain;
здесь структуры двух сложных образований различны, в то время как
внутренние структуры составляющих их предложений идентичны. Из
этого вытекает, что структура таких сложных образований («сложных
предложений») также может изучаться в определенном отвлечении от
внутреннего строения самих участвующих в этих образованиях
предложений.
С учетом вышесказанного представляется возможным уточнить
понимание синтаксиса следующим образом: в предмет изучения
синтаксиса входит не только структура предложения как таковая (т. е.
непосредственное членение предложений), но также и структура как
составных частей предложения – словосочетаний, так и более крупных,
чем – предложение, образований (групп, состоящих из нескольких
168
предложений). Таким образом, можно выделить следующие разделы
синтаксиса: 1) учение о структуре предложения как такового –
естественно, это будет основной и центральной частью синтаксиса; 2)
учение о структуре частей предложения – словосочетаний; 3) учение о
структуре синтаксически связанных групп предложений («сложных
предложений»). Иначе говоря, синтаксис, помимо учения о строении
самого предложения как такового, включает в себя также и учение о
строении единиц меньших, чем предложение (словосочетаний) и
больших, чем предложение («сверхфразовых единств» или «сложных
предложений»).

С.141
ОБЩИЕ ПОЛОЖЕНИЯ
1. Определение: предложением (sentence) называется языковая
единица, обладающая структурой, дающей данной единице
возможность употребления в качестве минимального высказывания
(речевого произведения), а именно, подлежащно-сказуемостной
структурой.
Из этого определения следует, что:
1) предложение – единица языка, но такая единица, которая
характеризуется структурой, дающей данной языковой единице
возможность употребляться как минимальный, т. е. наименьший
самостоятельный отрезок речи, т. е. как минимальное речевое
произведение;
2) структурой, дающей языковой единице возможность
самостоятельного употребления в речи, является подлежащно‐
сказуемостная структура (subject-predicate structure). Именно эта
структура и дает предложению относительную независимость,
выражающуюся в способности самостоятельного употребления в
качестве минимума речевого произведения;
3) подлежащно-сказуемостная структура лишь дает возможность
самостоятельного использования предложения в речи. Но эта
возможность реализуется далеко не всегда: предложение может быть
включено в состав более крупных образований («сложных
предложений») и тем самым утрачивать свою самостоятельность и
выступать уже не как минимум речевого общения, а как часть более
крупного высказывания. От этого, однако, предложение не перестает
быть предложением, ибо его подлежащно- сказуемостная структура
сохраняется.
2. Предложение используется в речи как минимальная единица
коммуникации, единица сообщения; всякое предложение что-то
сообщает – либо утверждает или отрицает что-нибудь, либо спрашивает
о чем-нибудь, либо побуждает слушающего (читающего) к выполнению
того или иного действия, – т. е. несет в себе какую-то информацию.
169
Поэтому мы не относим к числу предложений те речевые произведения
(высказывания), которые не содержат в себе никакого сообщения, т. е.
не предназначены для передачи информации. К таким типам
высказываний, т. е. к не-предложениям (non-sentence utterances)
относятся следующие
а) междометия, напр. Ah! Oh! Hullo! Bang! Alas! Cock-a-doodle-doo! etc.;
б) формулы вежливости, напр. приветствия – Good morning; How do
you do; etc.; прощания (leave-takings) – Good-bye; So long; поздравления –
A merry Christmas; A happy New Year; Many happy returns; etc.;
благодарности– Thank you; и некоторые др.;
в) обращения (calls) типа John! Waiter! и др.
Ни междометия, ни формулы вежливости, ни обращения сами по
себе не предназначены для передачи информации; та информация,
которую мы из них извлекаем, получается нами в итоге ряда
умозаключений, а не из непосредственного содержания высказывания.
Не будучи предложениями, указанные типы высказываний не обладают
подлежащно-сказуемостной структурой: ни Ah!, ни Heavens!, ни Good
morning, ни Waiter! не членятся на подлежащее и сказуемое. (В тех
случаях, когда в высказываниях данного типа можно усмотреть
подлежащее и сказуемое, напр. в How do you do, речь идет об этимологии
данных конструкций).
4) 3. Подлежащно-сказуемостную структуру (ПС-структуру)
можно определить как такое членение конструкции по НС, которое дает
данной конструкции возможность самостоятельного употребления в
качестве минимального высказывания. Элементы ПС-структуры –
подлежащее и сказуемое – вычленяются в результате членения
предложения по НС на первом этапе членения.
Определение: подлежащее и сказуемое суть НС предложения. Это
значит, что подлежащее и сказуемое – понятия синтаксические, а не
логико-семантические; они выделяются в предложении в результате его
синтаксического членения по НС на высшем уровне членения, то есть
как составляющие максимальной длины. Это также значит, что
структура предложения (так же, как и структура подчинительного и
предикативного словосочетания) бинарна. (О так называемых
«односоставных» предложениях речь будет идти в особом разделе, где
мы постараемся показать, что и они двучленны, т. е. характеризуются
подлежащно-сказуемостной структурой). Что касается так называемых
«второстепенных членов предложения», то они вычленяются не из
предложения как такового, а из подлежащего и сказуемого в том
случае, если эти последние представлены не одиночными словами, а
словосочетаниями. Иначе говоря, т. н. «второстепенные члены
предложения» – вовсе не члены предложения, а, так сказать, члены
членов предложения – подлежащего и сказуемого. Таким образом,
понятие «член предложения» если и имеет какой-нибудь смысл, то лишь
170
будучи примененным к подлежащему и сказуемому. Но поскольку
подлежащее и сказуемое являются НС предложения, постольку термин
«член предложения» в таком понимании оказывается полностью
синонимичным термину «НС предложения» и тем самым избыточным.
Мы предпочитаем вообще не употреблять термина «член предложения»,
поскольку с ним связаны устойчивые и неправильные» ассоциации,
идущие от традиционной – и неверной – модели «членов предложения».
5. Поскольку мы не пишем работы по общему языкознанию, нам нет
необходимости давать общелингвистическое определение подлежащего
и сказуемого – достаточно будет, если мы дадим им определение,
применимое к английскому языку.
6. Мы полагаем, что легче начать с определения сказуемого,
поскольку в английском языке сказуемое характеризуется более
четкими морфологическими признаками, чем подлежащее, в связи с чем
анализ предложения удобнее начинать с обнаружения в нем сказуемого.
Определение: сказуемым называется НС предложения, включающая
в себя предикативную (личную) форму глагола, хотя бы в нулевом
варианте.
Из этого определения следует, что:
1) сказуемое всегда включает в себя предикативную форму
глагола; но это не значит, что оно сводится к глаголу. Минимальное
сказуемое равняется предикативной форме глагола; но максимальная
величина сказуемого ничем не ограничена (по крайней мере,
теоретически), поскольку глагол может быть распространен любым
количеством подчиненных ему слов;
2)в сказуемом может быть более чем одна предикативная форма
глагола (простейший случай: сочинительное словосочетание, состоящее
из нескольких предикативных форм глагола);
3)могут иметь место случаи, когда в сказуемом в предикативной
форме имеется только служебный глагол (см. в разделе о сказуемом);
4)предикативная форма глагола в сказуемом может быть
представлена и нулевым вариантом (zero alternant); эти случаи, где
наличие предикативной формы глагола в сказуемом не поддается
наблюдению и должно быть установлено косвенным путем (см. в
разделе об эллиптических предложениях), представляют особую
трудность для анализа.
5. После того, как дано определение сказуемому, определение
подлежащего не составляет особого труда.
Определение: подлежащим называется НС предложения,
остающаяся в предложении после вычета из него сказуемого и
связанная с предикативной формой глагола в сказуемом там, где
последняя допускает это, при помощи корреспонденции в лице и числе.
Такое определение предполагает, что в предложении выделяется, в
первую очередь, сказуемое, т. е. предикативная форма глагола плюс все
171
подчиненные ей (в случае служебного глагола, все вводимые в
предложение через нее) слова, если таковые имеются. Подлежащее
после этого определяется как все то, что остается в предложении за
вычетом сказуемого.

172
 GLOSSARY
absolute tenses – tenses describing the action in its relation to the moment of
speech
adjunct – a subordinate component of a phrase, usually that of a noun phrase
adjective – a notional part of speech traditionally defined as a describing
word or ‘a word that tells us something about a noun’, which can be used
attributively in a noun phrase and have comparative and superlative degrees.
adjective phrase – a phrase functioning adjectivally, and consisting of an
adjective as a head-word plus premodifier(s) or postmidifier(s) (very difficult,
simple enough)
adverb – a notional part of speech that usually modifies or qualifies a verb
(run quickly); an adjective (really awful), or another adverb (very quietly)
adverb phrase – a phrase functioning as an adverbial in clause structure and
containing an adverb as a head-word (He speaks very quickly)
affirmative – of a sentence: stating that a fact is so; answering ‘yes’ to a
question, put or implied
affix – a bound morpheme, an addition to the root (or base form) of a word or
to a stem in order to form a new word or a new form of the same word
agent – the doer of the action denoted by a verb
agreement – a way of connection implying concord of grammatical forms in a
phrase of subordination, as in these people, гарна погода.
allomorphism – divergence of organization
allomorphic features – divergent features of language units
analytic – designating a language without (or with few) inflections
analytical constructions – grammatical constructions formed by analytical
means
appositive clause – a finite clause often introduced by that, defining and
postmodifying a noun phrase, and sharing identity of reference with it: They
had the idea that everything would be all right in the end
article – a part of speech belonging to the class of determiners
aspect – a lexical-grammatical category used in describing how the action of a
verb is marked
asyndetic – not connected by conjunctions, the term applied to the
coordination of words or clauses without an overt marker
attribute – the part of a sentence, expressed by the adjective, noun, infinitive,
participle, clause, etc., complementing a subject or object of the sentence
auxiliary verb – a verb used in forming tenses, moods, voices of notional
(lexical) verbs
case – the functional role of a noun or noun phrase in relation to other words
in the clause or sentence, the form of a word (shown by inflection) showing it
category – a class of items with the same function; one of the characteristics
of such a class .

173
clause – a grammatical unit operating at a level lower than a sentence but
higher that a phrase
complement – a constituent of a verb-phrase filling out or completing the
meaning of the head-verb
compound sentence – a sentence containing two or more coordinate clauses
conjunction – a function word used to join clauses, words in the same clause,
and sometimes sentences.
contamination – a syntactic process implying fusion of structures.
contrastive grammar – synchronic study of grammars of two or more
languages
declension – the variation of the form of a noun, adjective or pronoun, to
show different cases, such as nominative, accusative, dative, instrumental,
locative, vocative; the class into which such words are put according to the
exact form of this variation, usually called first, second, …declension.
definiteness/indefiniteness – a grammatical category of a noun expressed
by the definite and indefinite articles
determiner – a member of a class of words that precede nouns (noun phrase
head-words) and limit the meaning in some way
diachronic – concerned with the historical development of language; as
opposed to synchronic
expansion – a syntactic process of conjoining cognate elements (expanders):
a sunny day – a sunny but cold day
extension – a syntactic process of adjoining subordinate elements
(extenders) to the head-word: a sunny day – a very sunny in May
feminine – see gender
free morpheme – the smallest linguistic unit that can stand alone
function – manifestation of relationship between related elements, e.g.
objective relations inherent between the V‐head and N‐complement can be the
manifestation of the object function of the complement: read a book.
function word (form word, empty word, grammatical word, structural
word)– a word that primarily has formal or grammatical importance rather
than meaning
government – a way of connection when the head-word of a phrase of
subordination requires of its adjunct to assume an appropriate grammatical
form (usually a case-form) or to be used with definite preposition: to see him,
to look at a man.
gender – a grammatical category of a noun, adjective, numeral, pronoun, etc.,
according to gender the words are divided into three classes, traditionally
related to the properties of sex, and called feminine, masculine and neutre
gerund – a non-finite form of the verb (-ing form), which combines properties
of a verb and a noun
grammar – the structure of language, including morphology and syntax

174
head (word) - the word which is an obligatory member of certain kinds of
phrase and which, standing alone, would have the same grammatical function
as the whole phrase of which it is part
infinitive – the unmarked base of the verb, the non-finite form of the verb,
combining properties of the verb and that of the noun
infix – an affix inserted within the main base of a word
inflection – a word-changing affix
interjection – a word class, whose members are outside normal clause
structure, having no syntactical connection with other words, and generally
having emotive meaning
isomorphism – likeness or similarity of organization
level – in structural grammar a stage, a layer in hierarchy of language
structure. It is common to distinguish the three main levels: phonological,
morphological and syntactical levels.
marker – a formal signal of grammatical meaning.
masculine – see gender
mood – a grammatical category of a verb, indicating whether the verb is
expressing fact, command, hypothesis etc.
morphology – a branch of grammar studying parts of speech, their
characteristic features and grammatical categories
neuter – see gender
notional word – words that have lexical meaning
noun – a part of speech, denoting a person, thing or place that can function as
subject or object or attribute in the sentence, can be combined with adjectives,
articles and others within a noun phrase
number – a grammatical category expressing the idea of quantity
oblique moods – moods expressing unreal actions
paradigm – a set of paradigmatic forms of linguistic units (words, phrases
and sentences)
paradigmatics – one of the two planes of language structure comprising
language units in their class membership
pattern – an extracted and abstracted backbone of a construction describable
in terms of constants (constituents) and their distribution
postpositive – a subordinate placed after the head-word
prepositive – a subordinate placed before the head-word
syntactic processes – transformations and modifications (external and
internal) of syntactic units caused by lingual and extralingual factors
syntagmatics – one of the two planes of language structure comprising
language units in their linear ordering
system – an organized interlocked arrangement of cognate interrelated
objects
valency – potential ability of elements to pattern with one another

175
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