XXXXVII. The problem of higher syntactical units

This problem may be formulated as follows: is the sentence the highest existing syntactical unit, or are there higher syntactical units than the sentence — units of which a sentence is but a component part?

The traditional view of course is that the sentence is the highest syntactical unit and that whatever units we may find of a higher order will be not syntactical, but either stylistic, or literary.

What reasons are there, then, to suppose that there exists a grammatical, that is, a syntactical unit higher than the sentence, and how are the limits of this higher unit to be delineated?

Text is a coherent stretch of speech which is a semantico-topical and a syntactic unity, centered on a common informative purpose. Text can be interpreted as a lingual unity with its two distinguishing features: first semantic (topical) unity; second semantico-syntactic cohesion.

The primary division of sentence sequences in speech should be based on the communicative direction of their component sentences. From this point of view monologue sequences and dialogue sequences are to be discriminated.

In a monologue, sentences connected in a continual sequence are directed from one speaker to his one or several listeners. Thus, the sequence of this typed can be characterized as a one-direction sequence.:

We’ll have a lovely garden. We’ll have roses in it and daffodils and a lovely lawn with a swing for little Billy and little Barbara to play on. And we’ll have our meals down by the lily pond in summer.

The succession of sentences is called a “super-phrasal unity”.

As different from this, sentences in a dialogue sequence are uttered by the speakers-interlocutors in turn, so that they are directed, as it were, to meet one another; the sequence of this type is characterized as two-direction sequence:

“Annette, what have you done?” – “I’ve done what I had to do.”

The monologue text, or “discourse”, is then a topical entity; the dialogue text, or “conversation”, is an exchange-topical entity.

On the basis of the functional nature of connectors, cumulation of sentences is divided into two fundamental types: conjunctive cumulation and correlative 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, morover, nevertheless). Adverbial and parenthetical sentence connectors may be both specialized, i.e. functional and semi-functional words, and non-specialized units performing the connective functions:

The two conjunctions that are especially frequent in this function are, and and but. The conjunction and is found in this function often enough, and some writers seem to have a special predilection for it.

Here is a typical example from Th. Dreiser's "An American Tragedy": They had been to all these wonderful places together. And now, without any real consciousness of her movements, she was moving from the chair to the edge of the bed, sitting with elbows on knees and chin in hands; or she was before the mirror or peering restlessly out intothe dark to see if there were any trace of day. And at six, and six-thirty when the light was just breaking and it was nearing time to dress, she was still up — in the chair, on the edge of the bed, in the corner before the mirror. But she had reached but one definite conclusion and that was that in some way she must arrange not to have Clyde leave her.

It might perhaps be said that the higher unit established by co-ordinating conjunctions is somewhat like what we call a "paragraph". But a conjunction of this kind may even be found at the beginning of a paragraph. Thus, in the passage just quoted the sentence And now, without any real consciousness... stands at the opening of a new paragraph, and so does the sentence beginning with But she had reached...

It is necessary to add something to the definition of a conjunction: a conjunction may unite words, parts of a sentence, clauses, and independent sentences as well.

There was no train till nearly eleven, and she had to bear her impatience as best she could. At last it was time to start, and she put on her gloves.

Correlative cumulation is effected by a pair of elements one of which, the “succeedent”, refers to the other, the “antecedent”, used in the foregoing sentence; by means of this reference the succeeding sentence is related to the preceding one, or else the preceding sentence is related to the succeeding one. As we see, by its direction correlative cumulation may be either retrospective or prospective, as different from conjunctive cumulation, which is only retrospective.

Correlative cumulation, in its turn, is divided into substitutional connection and representative connection. Substitutional cumulation is based on the use of substitutes:

Spolding woke me with the apparently noiseless efficiency of the trained housemaid. She drew the curtains, placed a can of hot water in my basin, covered it with the towel, and retired.

A substitute may have as its antecedent the whole of the preceding sentence or a clausal part of it. Furthermore, substitutes often go together with conjunctions, effecting cumulation of mixed type.

Representative correlation is based on representative elements which refer to one another without the factor of replacement:

She should be here soon. I must tell Phillipp, I am not in to any one else.

I went home. Maria accepted my departure indifferently.

Representative correlation is achieved also by repetition, which may be complicated by different variations:

Well, the night was beautiful, and the great thing not to be a pig. Beauty and not being a pig! Nothing much else to it.

A cumulative super-phrasal unity is formed by two or more independent sentences making up a topical syntactic unity. The first of the sentences is the leading sentence, the succeeding are sequential.

This super-phrasal unity is marked in the text by a finalizing intonation counour with a prolonged pause; the relative duration of this pause equals two and a half moras (mora – the conventional duration of a short syllable), as different from the sentence-pause equalling only two moras.

This unity is a universal unit of language, like a sentence, and it is used in all the functional varieties of speech. For instance, a part of the author’s speech in the work of fiction:

The boy winced at this. It made him feel hot and uncomfortable all over. He knew well how careful he ought to be, and yet, do what he could, form time to time his forgetfulness of the part betrayed him into unreserve.

Compare this with a unit in a typical newspaper article:

We have come a long way since then, of course. Unemployment insurance is an accepted fact. Only the most die-hard reactionaries, of the Goldwater type, dare to come out against it.

Here is a sample of scientific-technical report prose:

To some engineers who apply it to themselves the word “practical” as denoting the possession of a major virtue, applied research is classed with pure research as something highbrow they can do without. To some businessmen, applied research is something to have somewhere in the organization to demonstrate modernity and enlightenment. And people engaged in applied research are usually so satisfied in the belief that what they are doing is of interest and value that they are not particularly concerned about the niceties of definition.

Poetical text is formed by super-phrasal units, too:

She is not fair to outward view, As many maidens be;

Her loveliness I never knew Until she smiled at me.

Oh, then I saw her eye was bright, A well of love, a spring of light.

But the most important factor showing the inalienable and universal status of the super-phrasal unit in language is its use in colloquial speech (which is reflected in plays, as well as in conversational passages in works of various types of fiction).

The basic semantic types of super-phrasal units are “factual” (narrative and descriptive), “modal” (reasoning, perceptive, etc) and mixed. Here is an example of a narrative super-phrasal unit:

Three years later, when Jane was an Army driver, she was sent one night to pick up a party of officers who had been testing defences on the cliff. She found the place where the road ran between a cleft almost to the beach, switched off her engine and waited, hunched in her great-coat, half asleep, in the cold black silence. She waited for an hour and woke in a fright to a furious voice coming out of the night.

A reasoning unit of perceptional variety:

She has not gone? I thought she gave a second performance at two?

A remonstrative unit:

Are you kidding? Don’t underrate your influence, Mr. O’Keefe. Dodo’s in. Besides, I’ve lined up Sandra Straughan to work with her.

A reasoning unit expressing reassurance:

Don’t worry. There will be a certain amount of unpleasantness but I will have some photographs taken that will be very useful at the inquest. There’s the testimony of the gunbearers and the driver too. You’re perfectly all right.

A paragraph is a stretch of a written text marked by a new line at the beginning and an imcomplete line at the close. Paragraphs are connected within the framework of larger elements of texts making up different paragraph groupings. Even larger stretches of text can be cumulated to one another in the syntactic sense, such as chapters and other compositional divisions. For instance, compare the end of Chapter XXIII and the beginning of Chapter XXXIV of J.Galsworthy’s “Over the River”:

Chapter XXIII… She went back to Condafold with her father by the morning train, repeating to her Aunt the formula: “I’m not going to be ill.”

Chapter XXIV. But she was ill, and for a month in her conventional room at Condaford often wished she were dead and done with. She might, indeed, quite easily have died …

The means which are used to establish connections between sentences. And this leads on to a series of questions which may be said to lie on the border line of grammar.

What is meant is study of the structure of entire texts, such as short newspaper notices, poems, or novels. In this study it does not appear possible to stay strictly within the limits of grammar: some lexical phenomena will also have to be taken into consideration.

We will only give some hints as to the possible trends of investigation in this field, and we begin by studying some opening paragraphs of a modern novel. Let this be Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley:

The snapshots had become almost as dim as memories. This young woman who had stood in a garden at the turn of the century was like a ghost at cockcrow. His mother, Anthony Beavis recognised. A year or two, perhaps only a month or two, before she died. But fashion, as he peered at the brown phantom, fashion is a topiary art. Those swan-like loins! That long slanting cascade of bosom — without any apparent relation to the naked body beneath! And all that hair, like an ornamental deformity of the skull! Oddly hideous and repellent it seemed in 1933. And yet, if he shut his eyes (as he could not resist doing), he could see his mother languidly beautiful on her chaise-longue, or, agile, playing tennis, or swooping like n bird across the ice of a far-off winter,

Now let us take a look at the elements in this passage which in some way or other tend to establish connections between sentences.

In the first sentence there is the past perfect form had become, which points to two time levels in the narration. In the second sentence, there is another past perfect form — had stood and this time it is correlated with the past indefinite form was in the same sentence.

In the third sentence the possessive pronoun his does not establish any connection with the preceding text, as there has so far been no mention of any man, to whom the possessive pronoun might refer. It refers to the name Anthony Beavis, which appears after the pronoun (this is not a frequent use). If there had been mention of a man in the preceding text this would be misleading. In the next sentence the pronoun she establishes a connection both with the second sentence (the phrase this young woman) and with the third (the phrase his mother).

In the next sentence, the conjunction but establishes a relation with the preceding text. So does the pronoun he, referring to the name Anthony Beavis, and also the phrase the brown phantom, which (as is clear from the context) refers to features of the woman in the photo. Then the pronoun it refers to the phrase all that hair, and would be unintelligible without this reference. Finally, the phrase his mother in the last sentence of the passage clearly refers back to the identical phrase his mother used in the third sentence.

Текст

Предложение – единица сообщения – не существует в речи изолированно, а соединяется с другими предложениями, образуя развернутый текст, в котором отражаются и закрепляются результаты работы человеческой мысли.

В объективной действительности языка текст существует и как законченное целое, будь то письменное монологическое сочинение или утсный диалог, - ведь и последний имеет свое начало и свой конец, позволяющий подвести итог реализованному обмену мыслями.

Какое место в грамматическом изучении текста должно занять предложение? Наблюдения над речью разных форм и назначений (устная, письменная, обиходная, профессиональная, спокойная, эмоциональная) с учетом парадигматического фактора, показывают, что предложение явялется кардинально существенным элементом выражения именно с точки зрения строя текста. Предложение является выразителем предикации, то есть отнесения номинативного содержания речи к действительности. Другие единицы текста не обладают собственными средствами предикации. Это значит, что вне предложения текст не может выражать суждений и умозаключений, то есть лишается способности служить полноценным средством осмысленного отражения окружающего мира.

Любые устные формы речи становятся носителями информативного смысла лишь в соединении с предикативными ядрами речи, лишь в составе предикативных объединений слов. Физиологическое производство речи подчиняется законам функциональной синтаксической деривации, которые всевозможное хеканье и мычание реального говорящего отодвигают на роль информационных помех или шумов (такие шумы могут нести свою полезную функцию, служа заполнителями молчания, сигналами настроения, запросами внимания).

Критерием деления сверх-фразовых единств является коммуникативная направленность составляющих их предложений. С этой точки знения различаются последовательности монологические и диалогические. Монологическая последовательность однонаправленна, она исходит от одного говорящего к его слушателю или слушателям. Диалогическая последовательность двунаправленна. Ее компоненты, состоящие из одного или нескольких предложений. Произносятся собеседниками по очереди, как бы навстречу друг другу.

Однонаправленная последовательность самостоятельных предложений формируется при помощи присоединения, или кумуляции, в отличие от синтаксического сложения предложений, превращающего его в части (клауземы) сложного предложения. Поэтому непосредственное объединение предложений присоединительного типа, соответствующее сверхфразовому единству, можно назвать кумулемой. Формирование двунаправленной последовательности базируется прежде всего на самом факте их встречной обращенности. Поэтому данный тип предложений может быть назван встречным или оккурсивным.

В книжно-печатном монологическом тексте кумулема очерчивается границами абзаца. Абзац представляет собой строчное единство, выделяющееся красной строкой в начале и неполной строкой в конце. В устной речи абзац выделяется паузой не менее чем в две с половиной моры.

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