Model of parts of the sentence.

In order to state general rules of sentence construction it is necessary to refer to its smaller units. The process of analyzing sentences into their parts (constituents) is known as parsing (грамматический разбор). As we know, the sentence is a communicative, semantic and structural unity. Parsing can be conducted on each of these levels.

The syntactic structure of the sentence can be analysed at two levels – prefunctional (here the sentence constituents are words and word-groups) and functional – the sentence constituents are parts of the sentence. E.g. He is sleeping. (pron + aux. verb+ notional Verb); (subject + predicate)

Parts of the sentence are notional sentence constituents which are in certain syntactic relations to other constituents or to the sentence as a whole. Traditionally, we distinguish between principal (primary) parts of the sentence, which form the predication, and the secondary parts which extend the basic structure being added to the words of the predication in accordance with their combinability.

Parts of the sentence are notional constituents as they name elements of different events of objective reality: actions or states, participants and circumstances of the events. Principle parts of the sentence are interdependent. The subject is the structural center of the sentence: the predicate agrees with the subject in number and person,; the predicate is the communicative centre of the sentence which correlates the event described in it with the objective reality by means of its grammatical categories: the speaker is fixed by the verbal category of person, the reality is expressed by the category of mood, the time of the action – by the category of tense.

Secondary parts of the sentence are modifiers of principle and other secondary parts: attributes are noun adjuncts, objects and adverbial modifiers are verb adjuncts. Besides the three traditionally identified secondary parts (attribute, object and adverbial modifiers) two more are singled out: the apposition and the objective predicative. E.g. Peter, a friend of mine, is a student (apposition). They painted the door white. White is an objective predicative as it refers not to the subject of the sentence but the object and it reminds the sentence The door was white when painted. In the latter case the word white is a predicative.

The traditional classification of the parts of the sentence is considered by some linguists (Khaimovich, Rogovskaia) to be inconsistent. The reasons are the following.

1. There often are difficulties in distinguishing between certain parts of the sentence: I want to leave (to leave – a predicative or an object?); Features of her mother and father were blended on her face (on her face – a prepositional object or an adverbial modifier of time?).

2. The names attribute and adverbial modifier really show the subordinate nature of the part of the sentence they denote: the latter double term shows not only the secondary character of the cor­responding part of the sentence (modifier), but also refers to a certain part of speech (adverbial). As for the term object, it does not indicate subordination; it only refers to the content (the object of the action).

3. Many words of a sentence, such as prepositions, conjunc­tions, articles, particles, parenthetical words, are traditionally not considered as parts of the sentence, even as tertiary ones. But as we know the parts of a unit are units of the next lower level, in our case, words. The function of each word in the sentence is its relation to the other words and to the sentence as a whole. So each word is as much a part of the sentence as each morpheme is a part of the word (its root, prefix, inflexion, etc.)

4. When a noun or an adjective is attached to a finite link-verb it is called a 'predicative' (He is a teacher), but when it is attached to a non-finite verb (To be a teacher is my dream) it has no name.

5. The part of the sentence forming a compound nominal predicate is called predicative (She is a teacher), the part forming the compound verbal predicate has no name: She must go.

Many of these inconsistencies can be done away with if we discriminate between the syntactical and the morpholo­gical relations within the sentence.

We may consider only the words containing the structural meaning of predicativity as the structural subject and predicate. The chief criterion for the division of all the other words of a sentence into parts of the sentence is their combinability. Thus combinability is the property that correlates parts of speech and parts of the sentence as well as the functions of notional and semi-notional words.

Those notional words in a sentence which are adjuncts of certain head-words will be divided in accordance with their head-words into attributes (adjuncts of nouns), complements (adjuncts of verbs) and extensions (adjuncts of adjectives, adverbs and adlinks in a sentence). They differ from complements and attributes in being usually modifiers of modifiers, or tertiaries, in the terminology of O. Jespersen). In a simple sentence extensions may be single words or combinations of words, including complexes.

Those semi-notional words which serve to connect two words or clauses (prepositions, conjunctions) will be regarded as a separate part of the sentence, connectives.

Those semi-notional words that are used to specify various words or word combinations (articles, particles) will be called specifiers.

Finally, words in a sentence, with zero connections, referring to the sentence and known as parenthetical ele­ments, are a distinct part of the sentence.

The verb in the sentence forms the greatest number of word-combinations. The adjuncts of all these combinations are united by the term complements. But the complements of a verb are so numerous and various that it is feasible to subdivide them into several groups correlated with the subclasses of verbs. As we know, verbs divide into notion­al, semi-notional and structural ones. We shall call the adjuncts of the latter two groups predicative complements (predicatives). Notional verbs are subdivided into objective and subjective. The common adjuncts of both groups will be termed adverbial complements (adverbials), those of objective verbs alone — objective complements (objects).

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