CHAPTER 3. THE VERB AND ITS GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES 18 страница
She woke up screaming every night and it was always the same dream (S. Sheldon) -copulative; / made enough working on shares, but they came and took it all away from me (E. Caldwell) - adversative; You'll either sail this boat correctly or you'll never go out with me again (Th. Dreiser) - disjunctive; I had an inclination to get married, so I looked for more remunerative work (E. Waugh) — causitive-consecutive.
Copulation as a type of semantic relations between the clauses in fact is a very wide term and it embraces such relations as correlation (He was an artist and she was a dancer), likeness ( She could sing and so could he), enumeration ( One small group was playing cards, .another sat about a table and drank (Th. Dreiser)), specification (Rubbish lay everywhere, and long-broken tractors rusted in their own debris (C. Thurbon)), cumulation (They stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed (Sh. Jackson).
However, the most frequent coordinative conjunction and appears to be very polysemantic and may in fact express all the four types of semantic relations between the clauses. E.g. There were the few of us who cared, and there were the silly ones (J. Fowles) - copulative; You are young and I am old, You are rich and I am poor - adversative; My next plan was to be a carpenter, and for a winter I went regularly to classes in a government polytechnic (E. Waugh) - causative -consecutive. The semantic relations between the clauses in a compound sentences are expressed, as we have pointed out, not only by the conjunctions, but by the structure of the whole sentence and.by the semantics of the words in the clauses. Of course, the conjunctions serve as the most explicit markers, but the other means are also very important. It is possible to trace a certain relationship between the semantics of the conjunction and the lexical semantics of the words in the clauses as well as the whole structure of the compound sentence. The role of the lexical semantics of the words in the sentence varies and depends largely on how explicitly the semantic relations are expressed by the conjunctions. In the case of prototypical conjunctions the semantics of the words in the clauses plays a secondary role, because the conjunction serves as a very explicit marker of the semantic relations. There may be a certain harmony between the meaning of the conjunction and the semantics of the lexical composition of the clauses. Thus, in case of the copulative relations the words in the clauses are often characterized by a certain semantic proximity: they may be partial synonyms or belong to the same semantic/ thematic field, the syntactic structures of the clauses are often identical E.g. It was summer and the hay harvest was almost over (D.H. Lawrence).
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In the case of adversative relations the words in the clauses may also form semantic oppositions. E.g. It was early afternoon but very dark outside, and the lamps had already been turned on (I. Murdoch). In the beginning she had been too ill to be concerned about herself, but slowly she had regained her strength and her health (S. Sheldon).
When a less prototypical conjunction is used to connect the clauses or when the clauses are joined asyndetically, the role of the lexical semantics of .the components of the sentence and their syntactic arrangement increases and they play the main role in identifying the semantic relations between the clauses. E.g. It was still early and the place was empty (J. Cheever)\ Do not dictate to your author; try to become him (V. Wool/).
The order of clauses within a compound sentence may sometimes be reversible, e.g. The piano goes out of tune, the dog goes mad (J. Updike), but usually it cannot be reversed for several reasons, both semantic and structural. First of all, the order of clauses cannot be reversed if it corresponds to the order of events in reality, e.g. 'Just then another automobile drove up, and six or seven men got out (E. Caldwell}. I opened the cab door and let him out, and he -went about his ceremony (J.Steinbeck). It cannot be reversed if the first clause serves as an exposition for the action presented in the successive clause, e.g. She was in the middle of a lake in a fierce storm and a man and a woman were forcing her head under icy waters, drowning her (S. Sheldon). The order of clauses cannot be reversed for structural reasons - if the successive clause contains substitutes and representants or elliptical constructions. E.g. My town had grown and changed and my friend along with it (J. Steinbeck). Oil was the future and he was determined to be apart of it (S. Sheldon).
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As for the number of clauses in a compound sentence it is determined first of all by the type of semantic relations between the components of a compound sentence. The most common is a two-clause construction which is typical for expressing adversative, disjunctive and cause-consequence relations. They are called "closed" constructions [Blokh 1983, 339]. E.g. Just as he never forgave an injury, neither did he forget a favour (S. Sheldon; He proposed to her five times but she refused..
In case of enumerative and cumulative semantic relations the number of clauses within a compound sentence is theoretically unlimited and it is determined by the communicative intention of the speaker (and the skill of the writer). In the extract presented below the famous Canadian humourist Stephen Leacock describes a visit to a photographer who does not seem to like the visitor's face and gives the visitor a series of commands which are presented either isolatedly or in a series of compounds with several clauses: " The ears are bad, droop them a little more. Thank you. Now the eyes. Roll them in under the lids. Put the hands on the knees, please, and turn the face just a little upward. Yes, that's better. Now just expand the lungs! So! And hump the neck- that's it - and just contract the waist -ha! - and twist the hip up toward the elbow --now!" (S. Leacock).
Very often the clauses within a compound sentence are arranged climatically and have a great expressive effect. E.g. Ted would begin his day with a swim, before dressing to catch the train, and Linda would hold court all day amid crowds of wet matrons and children, and Ted would return home from work to find a poolside cocktail party in progress, and the couple would end their day at midnight, by swimming nude, before bed. What ecstasy!(J. Updike). It overflows, it floods, it mingles with the souls of others (V. Woolf) The avenue darkened with black bees from the department stores: the traffic swelled into an interlaced jam; the buses were packed four deep like platforms above the thick crowd; but Silvester, to whom the daily shift and change was a matter only of sordid monotony, walked on...(F.S. Fitzgerald).Thus compound sentences have a great stylistic potential and are indispensable for creative prose.
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4. Semicompound sentences are structures that contain two types of predication: primary and secondary connected by coordinate relations. This structural type is presented by sentences with homogeneous parts, sentences with the double predicate, sentences with infinitival and participial constructions. E.g. Directly behind the boat, the rushing water hissed and swirled (N. Sparks}; Teresa pulled her hair back, looking out over the water (Idem; He spoke eight languages and was a noted raconteur (S. Sheldon). Donny Ray lies stiff as a board with a sheet tucked tightly under his frail body (J. Grisham). At fifteen he left his home town never to come back again (S.Sheldon).
There are two ways of describing the derivational history of semi-compound sentences. They may be treated either as the result of extending the elementary sentence with the help of such syntactic processes as extension, expansion and contamination (see ch. 2) or as the result of performing various transformations over two simple sentences and joining then into a semi-compound sentence (for detailed description of the derivational history of semicompound sentences see: [Blokh 1983, 351-361]). However, not all sentences with homogeneous parts present the results of certain syntactic transformations. If we look attentively at such sentences as Dora and Nora were twins; John and Mary are a happy couple; Oil and water do not mix; Jack and Jill never quarrel, we can see that they cannot be treated as the result of transformation over two simple sentences. In such sentences we have two subjects which make one whole, named by the predicative (twins, couple) or which participate in the reciprocal action named by the predicate ( mix, quarrel). In other words homogeneous subjects in such predicates are obligatory and the combination of two (or more) nouns intended for the subject position takes place at the phrase level, not at the sentence level. Therefore, describing the syntax of homogeneous parts, scholars think it necessary to differentiate between two types of conjunctions which result in homogeneous parts: sentential conjunction (Nick and Bob are my friends) and phrasal conjunction (Nick and Bob are friends) [JleBHUKHH 2003, 346-347; ria/ryneBa 1974, 161]. The surface structures of the two sentences are identical but their derivational histories and their semantic structures are not identical. Another case of asymmetry between the syntactic and semantic structures of the sentence occurs when the conjunction and joins two or more parts of the sentence which are not wholly homogeneous. Here we may differentiate between two cases. The conjunction may join two words which carry out different syntactic functions in the sentence. E.g. Who and why did such a nasty thing never became known. Who refers to the subject of the sentence and why - to the adverbial modifier; Some day and some way I will repay him (T. Chamales). Some way is an adverbial modifier of time and some way is an adverbial modifier of manner, so they are not wholly homogeneous. In other cases homogeneous parts carry out identical syntactic functions but their semantic functions are different. E.g. / took a long and hot bath (I. Shaw). The words long and hot are homogeneous on the syntactic level, but their semantic roles are different: long describes the duration of the process and hot - the quality of the water in the bathtub. Another example: Once again he rose to his feet and said quietly and deliberately (J. Archer) - the two adverbs quietly and deliberately function as adverbial modifiers, but they belong to different types of adverbial modifiers: 'quietly' is an adverbial modifier of manner whereas ''deliberately' is an adverbial modifier of purpose. Such cases present great interest and deserve a more profound analysis.
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Semicompound sentences are widely used both in everyday speech and in the language of literature. They reveal the principle of economy of the language and they correspond best to the tendency of modern language to express more information within a unit of time or space.
CHAPTER 8. THE COMPLEX SENTENCE
1. The general characteristic of the complex sentence.
2. Different approaches to the classification of subordinate clauses. The classification of subordinate clauses on the functional basis.
3. Semicomplex sentences. Functional synonymy between subordinate clauses and structures of secondary predication.
4. Secondary semantic functions of the complex sentence.
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