Subordinate and coordinate phrases.

Textual Lingustics

The basic unit is not a sentence as in tradit. Grammar but a super sentence construction. It is a succession either of at least 2 simple sentences or 1 composite sentence.

Text Linguistics studies a discourse not of separate sentences in isolation – a combination of at least 2 predicative groups. The connection between simple sentences or clauses is called Cumulation.

It deals with: cumulemes –a one direction sequence, represented by sentences in a monologue, directed from 1 speaker to the listener.

Text linguistic deal with Occurrence – a two directon sequence. It is expressed by sentences in a dialogue uttered by the speakers in turn. The occurseme consists of at least 2 cumulemes.

Types of cumulemes:

· Factual(narrative & descriptive) simple narrations of events, people, etc.

· Modal(reasoning & perceptive)

Don't worry. There will be a certain amount of unpleasantness but I will have some photographs taken. You're perfectly all right. A reasoning cumuleme expressing reassurance.

· Mixed

Types of cumulation:

· Prospective (cataphoric) cumulation is such connection when what proceeds is not clear without what follows.

· Retrospective (anaphoric) is such connection when what follows correlates with what proceeds.

it is the basic type of cumulation in ordinary speech. E.g.: What curious

Means of cumulation – personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, nouns with a generic meaning, demonstrative pronouns, synonyms

Blokh: inner/ auto cumulation

· Conjunctive cumulation is effected by conjunction-like connectors. To these belong, first, regular

conjunctions, both coordinative and subordinative; second, adverbial and parenthetical sentence-connectors

(then, yet, however, consequently, hence, besides, moreover, nevertheless, etc.)

· Correlative cumulation is effected by a pair of elements one of which, the "succeedent", refers to the other,

the "antecedent". (I saw Mary going out. She was holding a cup in her hands) чую или не чую?

A discourse is a sourse of organized language means used in 1 single communicative act.

Means of cohesion: sentences which constitute the text are connected logically and writing makes them coherent.

Coherence – is defined as the relationship which links the meaning of sentences in a discourse. It is cause by correlation of what proceedes and what follows.

· Grammatical (word order, substitution, representation and other kinds of ellipsis)

Lexical (personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, synonyms, antonyms,word repetition; or the choice of a word that is related in some way to a previous one

On the bass of functional nature:

· Conjunctive

· Correlative:substitutional – the use of substitute pronouns, nouns as “man, thing”

Representative – the use of modal verbs, “not” “to”

Topic sentence – makes it easy for the reader to know what a particular paragraph is about. It states the main thought, the sensial idea, a starting point aims at giving a central idea.

Comment sen-ce – comment on the topic sentence and develop the idea expressed in the topic sen-ce.

Pragmatics

The main point in simple words: utterances communicate much more than is said.

Every sentence may be characterized syntactically, semantically and pragmatically. The syntactic structure of the sentence shows how the sentence is organized formally; its semantic structure indicates the meaning of the sentence as a form of meanings of its components. As for pragmatic aspect of the sentence, it tries to reveal the actual meaning of the sentence under the given circumstances.

Pragmatics – the study of the language from the point of view of the users, studies those aspects of meaning which derive from the contextof an utterance, tries to reveal the actual meaning of the sentence under the given circumstances. One and the same sentence may differ pragmatically under different communicative conditions. How speakers organize what they want to say in accordance with who they are talking to,where, when and under what circumstances. What’s unsaid, what determines the choice between said and unsaid, how close/distant the listener and the speaker are.

Basic unit – Speech Act

Basic notions:

· Deixis – ‘show, point out’ (demonstrative pronouns used to point out smth in relation to the speaker).
Deictic expressions include a word or phrase whichdirectly relates an utterance to word or phrase or person:

o Spatial deixis (here, there) - The book is here (near the speaker), The book is over there (father away from the speaker)

o Temporal deixis (adverbs – now, then, ago)

o Personal deixis (personal pronouns)

Deictic means:

§ Pure (demonstrative pronouns, whose only function is to point out)

§ Impure (personal pronouns, they combine deictic and non-deictic function)

· Distance

· Presupposition - is something the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making an utterance, the knowledge, common for the listener and the speaker

· Entailment – natural meaning of the sentence, what is actually said. Entailment is a relationship between two or more sentences. If knowing that one sentence is true gives us certain knowledge of the truth of the second sentence, then the first sentence entails the second. An entailment is something that logically follows from what is asserted in the utterance.

Basic concept of pragmatics:
Types of presupposition (Blokh):

· Existential – implies the existence if the entities, is expressed by possessive constructions and definite noun phrases: the Queen of England, the table, the cat, the girl next door, James’ dog

· Factitive – implies that the presupposed information becomes the fact, follows ‘to know’, ‘to realize’, ‘to regret’, ‘to be aware of’, ‘to be glad’, ‘to be odd’: She didn’t realize he was ill. It isn’t odd that he left early.

· Lexical – the speaker’s sentence presupposes another unstated concept, indicators – to manage, to stop, to start, again: He stopped smoking>He used to smoke. They started complaining>They were not complaining before. You are late again>You were late before.

· Structural – some information is presupposed to be true because of the structure of the sentence: Wh-questions: When did he leave?>He left. Where did you buy the car?>You bought a car.

· Non-factive – the information is understood not to be true, indicators: to dream, to imagine, to pretend: I dreamed that I was rich>I wasn’t rich. We imagine we were in Paris.>We were not in Paris.

· Counterfactual – what is presupposed is not only untrue, it is the opposite of what is true, Subjunctive II, Conditional Mood: Had I be the King…

Speech Act - an utterance regarded as a functional unit of communication. The speaker’s communicative intention is realized in speech acts, which every conversation consists of.

Speech acts components:

1. Locutionary Aspect – physical production, the use of words, their arrangement according to the grammatical rules, naming of objects, qualifies relations between words.

2. Illocutionary Aspect – the communicative force of the speech act at the moment of speech, ~ communicative types of the sentence.

3. Perlocutionary Aspect – what follows from the speech act.

Speech Act classification

American school (pragmatics) J.Ostin, Searle (oe:)

· Representatives – SA where the speaker states what is believe or known, they represent the world from the speaker’s point of view: statements, assertions, conclusions, descriptions: The Earth is flat. It was a bright sunny day. It’s a German car.

· Expressives – SA that state what the speaker feels, express psychological, physical, emotional states (pleasure, pain, likes, dislikes, joy, sorrow, etc.): I’m really sorry. Congratulations. Oh yes, great.

· Directives – SA that speakers use to make someone else do smth, express what the speaker wants: commands, orders, requests, suggestions, positive or negative: Give me a cup of coffee, make it black.

· Commissives – SA that speakers use to commit themselves to some future actions, express what the speaker intends to do: promises, threats, refusals: I’ll be back. I’m going to get next time. He will not do that.

· Requestives – requests: I request that you help me.

· Prohibitives

· Declarative– a speech act which changes the state of affairs in the world:I now pronounce you man and wife

Direct and Indirect Speech Acts:

There is a relationship between the communicative types of the sentence and the communicative functions (e.g. declarative – statement)

Direct SA – there is a direct relationship between the structure and the function:
Open the door: imperative~command

Indirect SA – there is an indirect relationship between the structure and the function:
Would you pass me the salt?: question/request
Take down your name: imperative/question (What is your name?)
Why should I go there?: question/statement (I don’t want to go there)

Indirect speech acts are often felt to be more polite ways of performing certain kinds of speech acts, such as requests and results (e.g. Let’s go to the cinema tonight – I have an exam in grammar tomorrow).

Semantic syntax (or generative semantics)

It studies the sentence as a means of communication, that is how the sentence is organized as a semantic unite.

Every sentence is built around a predicative element which is usually accompanied by one or more nominal elements.

Semantic unites (participants of the situation are called semantic roles or semantic cases (падежи).

Fillmore calls them arguments

Subordinate and coordinate phrases.

Coordination and subordination are the 2 main structural types of phrases.These terms indicate syntactic relations between phrase components.

Coordinate phrases consist of 2 or more constituents which are syntactically equial.

Subordinate phrases include 2 components which are syntactically unequial.they fall into different subtypes:

• according to the structure they’re simple phrases – include 2 main components; - and complex – the components of which are expanded or extended
• morphologically they’re divided into: verb,adj.,adv.,prep., and noun phrases.
• the phrases are divided into continuous and discontinuous.
• grammatically they’re agreement,government,adjoinment,enclosure.

Government (not widely used) – the use of a certain form of an agent is required by the head.In modern English we speak about: prep,verbal,nominal government.

Adjoinment – widely used,can be defined negatively as absence of any formal sign of dependence.the head and adjunct are joined by their lexical meaning and syntactic position (ex. Come quickly)

Enclosure (term was introduced by Ильиш) – placing of a phrase-element between 2 parts of another element.

Agreement – when head and adjunct agree in certain grammatical categories.