Word Order

The term “word order” is used to refer to the order of elements in a sentence. The basic word order of English is subject-predicate-object-adverbial.

Inversion has two primary forms:

1) Subject-predicate (or full) inversion

The subject is preceded by the entire predicate predicate. Is most often found with an initial place or time adverbial, a short intransitive or copular verb, and a long subject that introduces new information: It was a large brown envelope and a piece of lined paper.

Who is coming to tea? (questions to the subject)

2) Subject-operator (or partial) inversion

The subject is preceded only by the operator. The notional (or lexical) verb goes after the subject. In other words, the subject is framed by the predicate. Partial inversion is typical of interrogative sentences.

Does she like London?

How didyou find me?

P.S. Zhuikova has put a hypothesis that there is a third type of inversion: when the predicate is framed by the subject. We find it in constructions beginning with existential there:

There is a sofa in the living room.

There is a discrete subject: the grammatical subject there precedes the existential predicate is, the notional subject a sofa follows it.

Functions of WORD ORDER

1. Grammatical (in analytical languages, such as English):

(1) distinguishing between declarative and

interrogative clauses;

(2) expressing syntactic relations in a clause:

• differentiating between S and O_d:

My brother (S) saw your sister (O_d).

• differentiating between O_i and O_d:

I showed my friend (O_i) that singer (O_d).

• expressing attributive relations:

People here rise early. VS People rise early here.

I found an interesting book. VS

I found the book interesting.

2. Communicative (in inflected languages, such as Russian):

• distinguishing between the Given Theme (frontposition) and the New Rheme (final position) – objective word order;

• linking sentences in a text.

3. Emphatic:

subjective word order – the New precedes the Given (marked Theme bearing the information focus):

Very ill he looked. (C_s—R)

Such fine clothes they wore. (O—R)

- fronting (esp. Of adverbials): In came the conductor ...

- constructions with the introductory there: there is a cat under the bed.

- the passive construction with an agent object serve to increase the communicative value of the subject by moving it closer to the emphatic final position: the tower of London was built by William the Conqueror.

- Constructions with the introductory it: it was the TV that woke me up.

Word order in all languages performs a number of functions. The main function of word order is predetermined by the nature of the language.

TEXT

In modern linguistics text is considered to be the main unit of linguistic analysis. There used to be a lots of disagreements on the statement of text – whether it is a unit of speech or language. Most agree it is a unit of both. Text is an ordered sequence of sentences combined of various types of logical, lexical and grammatical cohesion conveying structurally organized info. Text is a product of oral and written speech. Galperin recognizes the existence only of written text. TEXT CATEGORIES. The main text category is its integrity or wholeness. It’s realized in the form of semantic, structural and communicative integrity, which correspond to content, form and function. CONTENT/SEMANTIC INTEGRITY. Content is info of the whole of the text. All info is structurally organized into a hierarchy of themes: microthemes, combined into macro themes. STRUCTURE. The arrangement of the text content into a hierarchy of themes determines the structural organization of the text. From the point of view of structure, the text falls into SPUs – the main structural text units. SPU comprises a number of sentences, occasionally there can be 1 sentence, which forms a semantic, structural and communicative unity. SPU – semantic unity, characterized by a common theme. It’s a communicative unity – it possesses a common communicative intention, it’s a structural unity because all the sentences are structurally interdependent. SPUs can differ in their significance: predicative and relative SPUs. Predicative contain more important info, while relative – less important info. Rather large text can be analyzed in terms of hierarchy of SPUs, since there is a hierarchy of themes. There are micro SPUs containing micro themes, and macro SPUs made up of micro SPUs. There are SPU of different order. COMMUNICATIVE INTEGRITY (to inform, to urge). 1) Can be analyzed in terms of hierarchy of communicative intention, which can vary in smaller units, can be super imposed on each other. There is always one communicative intention which dominates. 2) Can be analyzed in terms of functional perspective which is related to the actual division of the sentence but applied to the text level. It carries out text segmentation into themes and rhemes. Маскальская has done this analysis «Грамматика текста». She established that themes and rhemes form strings of different shapes, classified into models. There are 3 such models: linear topical progression T1 – R1 > T2 – R2 > T3 – R3 : a string with a common theme T1 – R1 > T1 – R2 : a number of subordinate theme and rheme segments dependant on the main theme

TEXT INFO – the sphere of stylistic analysis. 3 kinds of info: content-factual, content-conceptual, superlinear or implied. COHESION – necessary property of any text which differentiates it from disconnected utterances. There are various means of text cohesion: syntactic, semantic, stylistic. GALPERIN classifies them into a following way: 1) traditional grammar connectives - conj., pronouns, participial clauses; 2) logical connectives – the use of adverbs (soon, ago); 3) associative cohesion – retrospection, allusion; 5) compositional means – the use of digressions (автор.отступления); 6) stylistic means – repetition; 7) rhythmic means – used in poetry: meter and rhythm. BLOCH: gram.connectives. 1) Conjunction-like connectives – coordinative, subordinative conjunctions and adverbial and parenthetical sentence connectors such as: yet, then, however, moreover. 2) Substitutional connection – use of substitutes: pronouns. CONTINUUM / time and space continuum. It is a continuous series of facts and actions progressing in terms of time and space. Lexical and gram.means of expressing time and space continuum: the use of tense forms and perfect forms. TEXT MODALITY. 2 types: objective – characterizes the content as real or unreal, expressed by gram.means such as the category of mood: subjective – expresses the attitude of the speaker to the content of the text, expressed by structural and stylistic means. RETROSPECTION and PROSPECTION (means of text cohesion). Retrospection refers the reader to the preceding events, prospection – to the following events. INTEGRATION is related to cohesion too, but it’s a broader and more physiological notion. COMPLITION. The author fulfills his/her idea, which is completely expressed, the message is brought home to the reader.

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Semantic structure of the S.	\|

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