Топик: Теоретическая грамматика английского языка
The said inconsistency can be overcome if we accept the idea that in Eng there exist 2 tense cat..
The 1st cat. - the cat. of primary time - expresses a direct retrospective evaluation of the time of the process denoted, due to which the process receives an absolutive time characteristic. This cat. is based upon the opp. of "the past tense" & "the pres. tense", the past tense being its strong member.
The 2nd tense cat. is the cat. of "prospective time", it is based upon the opp. of "after-action" & "non-after-action", the marked member being the future tense. The cat. of prospect is relat. by nature which means that it characterizes the action from the point of view of its correlation with some other action. As the future Val form may be relat. either to the pres. time, or to the past time incl.d in non-future, the Eng V acquires 2 diff. future forms: the future of the pres. & the future of the past. It means that the future of the past is doubly strong expressing the strong members of the cat. of primary time & the cat. of prospect.
The cat. of primary time is subjected to neutralization & transposition, transposition being more typical. The vivid cases of transposition are the "historical pres." & the "Preterite of Modesty". As for the cat. of prospect, it is often neutralized; neutralization can be of 2 types: syntactically optional & syntactically obligatory.
20. Cat. of Aspect
Gr. aspective meanings form a variable gr. cat. which is trad.ly associated with the opp. of continuous & non-continuous forms of the V. Yet, 1 can find a great divergence of opinions on the probl. of the Eng aspect. The main difference lies in the interpretation of the categorial semantics of the opp.al members - continuous & indefinite forms: the categorial meaning of the continuous form is usually defined as the meaning of duration, while the interpretation of the categorial semantics of the Indefinite form causes controversy (the indefinite form may be interpreted as having no aspective meaning (I.P. Ivanova), as a form having a vague content (G.N. Vorontsova), as a form stressing the fact of the performance of the action (A.I. Smirnitsky). In Modern Linguistics A.I. Smirnitsky's interpretation of the categorial semantics of the indefinite form is widely accepted.
In theoretical gr-ar the interpretation of perf. / non-perf. V-forms also refers to disputable ?s. Some linguists interpret the opp. of perf. / non-perf. forms as aspective (O. Jespersen, I.P. Ivanova, G.N. Vorontsova), others - as the opp. of tense forms (H. Sweet, G.O. Curme, A. Korsakov). A.I. Smirnitsky was the 1st to prove that perf. & non-perf. make up a special, self-sufficient, cat. which he called the "cat. of time correlation"; this viewpoint is shared now by a vast majority of linguists.
Developing A.I. Smirnitsky's views on the categorial semantics of perf. / non-perf. forms, we can come to the conclusion that in Eng there exist 2 aspective cat.: the cat. of development (based on the opp. of continuous & non-continuous forms) & the cat. of retrospective coordination (based on the opp. of perf. & non-perf. forms).
The perf. form has a mixed categorial meaning: it expresses both retrospective time coordination of the process & the connexion of the prior action with a time-limit reflected in a subsequent event. The recognition of the 2 aspect cat. also enables 1 to give a sound interpretation to the perf. continuous forms: they must be treated as forms having marks in both the aspect cat..
The opp. of continuous & non-continuous forms can be neutralized & transponized. Besides, in the cat. of development Vs which are usually not used in continuous forms can be subjected to the process of reverse transposition, e.g.: Were you wanting my help?
As for the opp. of perf. & non-perf. forms, it can undergo only the process of neutralization, transposition being alien to it.
21. Cat. of Mood
A great divergence of opinions on the ? of the cat. of mood is caused by the fact that identical mood forms can express diff. meanings & diff. forms can express similar meanings.
The cat. of mood shows the relation of the nominative content of the sent. towards reality. By this cat. the action can be pres.ed as real, non-real, desirable, recommended, etc.
It is obvious that the opp. of the 1 integral form of the indicative & the 1 integral form of the subj-ve underlies the unity of the whole system of Eng moods. The formal mark of this opp. is the tense-retrospect shift in the subj-ve, the latter being the strong member of the opp.. The shift consists in the perf. aspect being opposed to the imperf. aspect, both turned into the relat. substitutes for the absolutive past & pres. tenses of the indicative.
The study of the Eng mood reveals a certain correlation of its formal & semantic feat.s. The subj-ve, the integral mood of unreality, pres.s the 2 sets of forms acc. to the structural division of Val tenses into the pres. & the past. These form-sets constitute the 2 corresponding func.al subsystems of the subj-ve, namely, the spective, the mood of attitudes, & the conditional, the mood of appraising causal-conditional relations of processes. Each of these, in its turn, falls into 2 systemic subsets, so that at the immed-ly working level of pres.ation we have the 4 subj-ve form-types identified on the basis of the strict correlation btw their structure & their func.: the pure spective, the modal spective, the stipulative conditional, the consective conditional:
Pure Spective (Subj-ve 1) consideration, desideration, inducement
Stipulative Conditional (Subj-ve 2) unreal condition
Consective Conditional (Subj-ve 3) unreal consequence
Modal Spective (Subj-ve 4) consideration, desideration, inducement
The elaborated scheme clearly shows that the so-called "imperative mood" has historically coincided with Subj-ve 1.
The described system is not finished in terms of the historical development of lang.; on the contrary, it is in the state of making & change. Its actual manifestations are complicated by neutralizations of formal & semantic contrasts, by fluctuating uses of the auxiliaries, of the finite "be" in the singular.
22. The sent. as a syntactic unit.
The sent. is the immediate integral unit of spee4 built up of words acc. to a definite syntactic pattern & distinguished by contextually relevant comm-tive purpose. Any coherent connexion of words having an informative destination is effected within the frame work of sent.. Therefore the sent. idis the main object of syntax. The sent., being composed of word, may in certain cases include one word of various lexico-gram. st&ings. Ex. Congratulations! The actual existence of one-word sent.s does not contradict the general idea of a sent. as a special syntactic combination of words. The sent. is a predicative utterance unit. It means that the sent. not only names some referents with the help of its word-constituents, but also, 1st presents these referents as making up a certain situation (a situational event) & 2nd reflects the connexion btw the nominal denotation of the event & objective reality showing the time of the event, its being real or unreal, desirable or undes., etc. There is a diff. btw the sent. & the word. Unlike the word, the sent. does not exist in the system of the lang. as a ready-made unit. It is created by the speaker in the course of commun-tion. Trad. gr. has never regarded the sent. as part of the system of means of expression; It has alw interpreted the sent. not as an implement for constructing spee4, but as spee4 itself. Being a unit of spee4, the sent is intonationally delimited. Intonation separates one sent. from another in the continual flow of uttered segments. The sent. is characterized by its specific category of predication which establishes the relation of the named phenomena to actual life. As for predication proper, it embodies syntactic modality as the fundamental feature of the sent. It is the feature of predication that identifies the sent. as opposed to any other combination of words having a situational referent. The centre of predication in a sent. of Val type is a finite V. The finite V expresses essential predicative meanings by its categorical forms. The sent as a lingual unit performs 2 essential signemic (meaningful) func.s: 1st substance-naming (nomin-ve func.), 2nd – reality-evaluating (predicative func.).
23. The phrase, its relation to the word & the sent.
The phrase is the object of minor syntax. The phrase is usually understood as a combination of 2 or more words which is a gr. unit but is not an analytical form of a word. Nominal phrase – a compound signemic unit made up of words & denoting a complex phenomenon of reality analyzable into its component elements together with various relations btw them. The trad. class-tion of phrases is based on the part of spee4 status of the phrase constituents. In accordance with this criterion, the following types of phrases can be identified: "noun + noun", "adjective + noun", "V + noun", "V + adV", "adV + adjective", "adV + adV", etc. Phrases are made up not only by notional words but also by func.al words, e.g.: "in accordance with", "due to", "apart from", "as soon as" - such phrases perform in a sent. preposition-like & conjunction-like func.s. Syntactic relations of the phrase constituents are divided into 2 main types: agreement & government. Agreement takes place when the subord. word assumes a form similar to that of the word to which it is subord.. In English agreement is typical only of the category of number in demonstrative pronouns. Government takes place when the subord. word is used in a certain form required by its head word, the form of the subord. word not coinciding with the form of the head word. The expression of government is the use of the objective case of personal pronouns & of the pronoun "who" when they are used in a Val phrase or follow a preposition. Phrases can also be classified according to the nominative value of their constituents. As a result three major types of phrases are identified: notional (consisting of grammatically connected notional words), formative (made up by notional & func.al words), & func.al (consisting of func.al words alone). Notional phrases are subdivided into 2 groups on the principle of the constituent rank: equipotent phrases (the phrase constituents are of an equal rank) & dominational phrases (the syntactic ranks of the constituents are not equal as they refer to one another as the modifier & the modified). Further subdivision of equipotent notional word groupings into coordinative & cumulative is carried out on the principle of the character of nomination realized by the phrase constituents: coordinative phrases are based on the logically consecutive connexions, cumulative phrases are characterized by the constituent inequality in the character of nomination realized & the presence of a coordinative conjunction. In their turn, dominational notional phrases are subdivided into consecutive & cumulative: the class-tion principle of the character of nomination realized by the phrase constituents remains valid. Dominational consecutive phrases fall into minor groupings according to the specific features of dominational connexion.
24. Actual division of the sent.
The actual division of the sent. exposes its informative perspective showing what immediate semantic contribution the sent. parts make to total inf-tion conveyed by the sent. From the point of view of the actual division the sent. can be divided into 2 sections: thematic (theme) & rhematic (rheme). The theme expresses the starting point of communication; it means that it denotes an object or a phenomenon about which smth is reported. The rheme expresses the basic informative part of the communication, emphasizing its contextually relevant centre. Between the theme & the rheme intermediary, transitional parts of the actual division can be placed, also known under the term "transition". Transitional parts of the sent. are characterized by diff. degrees of their informative value. The theory of actual division has proved fruitful in the study of the comm-tive properties of sent.s. In particular, it has been demonstrated that each comm-tive type is distinguished by features which are revealed first & foremost in the nature of the rheme. As a declarative sent. immediately expresses a proposition, its actual division pattern has a complete form, its rheme making up the centre of some statement. As an imperative sent. does not directly express a proposition, its rheme represents the informative nucleus not of an explicit proposition, but of an inducement in which the thematic subject is usually zeroed. If the inducement is emphatically addressed to the listener, or to the speaker himself, or to the third person, thematic subjects have an explicit form.
The diff.ial feature of the actual division pattern of an interrogative sent. is determined by the fact that its rheme is inf-tionally open because this type of sent. expresses an inquiry about inf-tion which the speaker does not possess. The function of the rheme in an interrogative sent. consists in marking the rhematic position in a response sent., thus programming its content. Diff. types of ?s are characterized by diff. types of rhemes.