Syntax ANALYSIS OF SIMPLE SENTENCE The essential structure of English sentences is one containing both theme and rheme,

i.e., a two-element sentence. However, there are cases , much rarer, in which there is only one of the two basic sentence elements. In principle, we distinguish two types of on-element sentences: (i) A one-element sentence resulting from the omission of one of the two basic elements, because its expression is either unnecessary. This type of sentence may be regarded to be incomplete in a way. Nonsense! This is a one-element sentence containing only rheme, the theme being the message of the other speaker. The theme is not expressed in this sentence because the speaker does not find it necessary. We can speak of a oneelement sentence due to economy of expression. This type of sentence need not be based on linguistic contaqxt, but rather on a situational context: Teacher! Yelled by a pupil when a teacher is approaching a classroom. (ii) A one-element sentence communicates a message which is an undivisible whole, is unanalysable, and therefore, we cannot speak of incompleteness. This type of sentence does not occur in English, but does occur in Slovak (Polish?): Pr, Je teplo, Mrzne, VERBAL AND VERBLESS SENTENCES There are two basic types of sentence in English. The regular sentence pattern is the VERBAL SENTENCE. In this respect, English coincides with other IndoEuropean languages. However, English, just as the other IE languages, also possesses sentences devoid of the verb VERBLESS SENTENCES. These sentences are not elyptical in the sense that they lack something. On the contrary, from the point of view of the content they lack nothing. Only their form is such that they do not contain any verb. Verbless sentences are highly frequent in Russian on soldat, u mea degy, ja staryj. English verbless sent5ences may be divided into two basic types: those constituted by one element and those constituted by two elements. One-element verbless sentences may be further subdivided into thetic and predicative:

VERBLESS SENTENCE

ONE-ELEMENT

TWO-ELEMENT

THETIC

PREDICATIVE ONE-ELEMENT VERBLESS THETIC SENTENCE

One element verbless thetic sentences state the existence of a content whole, presented as an unanalyzed unit. Examples: 1. sentences expressing a subject that either affects us through our senses or is somehow connected with the behaviour of the speaker or hearer. It is used in reference to both persons and things: The bell, sir. 2. They can express a) questions: Teeth? b) requests: Another bottle, please. c) Opinion: He will come, no doubt of it. Etc. ONE-ELEMENT VERBLESS THETIC SENTENCE They express the predication to a theme that is evident from the situation and hence remains unexprfessed: Nonsense! An excellent idea! No matter ME It maketh no matter Questions are quite frequent in colloquial speech: Back from holiday? Going to school? Commands: Out with the thruth! Off with him! TWO-ELEMENT VERBLESS SENTENCES They express both the theme and the rheme of the utterence, but the two elements are joined without the finite verb. In English these sentences are fairly common.

Frequently, this type of sentence has the rheme at the beginning, while the theme is expressed only afterwards, as it were additionally. These sentences have subjective word order which is otherwise rare in English. For this reason, sentences of this type are of particular interest. Example: An excellent idea, this! Quite human, those politicvians! This type of verbless sentence with objective word order is rare, and usually has the form of set phrases: Example: No harm done! Ten years cut out of my life! (expressing excitement) Frequently, there is an adverbial complement in the predicative function: Tickets downstairs at the office. Expression of surprise: His father dead? He a gentleman?

APPOSITION As already mentioned, verbless sentences differ from verbal ones in not containing the finite verb which has become the typical form of predication in Indo-European languages. Hence, they contain no feature characteristic of a sentence with a regular form and it is precisely for this reason that they may easily lose their sentence function. Such verbless clauses then operate as semiclauses or even mere sentence members. The most typical example od a semiclausal function is the apposition. Apposition is a non-sentence predication effected by juxtaposition of a coordinate nominal element. What does this definition mean? Ap[position is in essence a verbless predicative clause with weakened independence (hence non-sentence predication). Example: His death, a judicial murder, aroused the fury of the whole population. The words a judicial murder represent an apposition, a i. a coordinated nominal expression relating to the subject his death. The meaning of the apposition a judicial murder corresponds to the full sentence His death was a judicial murder. On semantic grounds, the following types of apposition are distinguished:
(a) Explanatory apposition.

It explains the basic element by adding to it an expression of narrower meaning. The third man, Mr. Charles Wild, remained silent all the time. Thus the basic feature of explanatory apposition is additional explanation. Sometimes this additional explanation is separated from the basic element by some other sentence members: He remained silent all the time, Mr. Charles Wild. A special case of explanatory apposition is enumarative apposition which specifies an expression by enumerating its compondents: The Scandinavian nations, the Danes, the Swedes, the Norwegians, faithfully kept to the League of Nations.

(b) Classificatory apposition. This type of apposition adds to the basic element an expression of broader meaning, under which the basic element can be subsumed. Example: His death, a judicial murder, has been remembered by the population. This is perhaps the most common case of apposition. Classificatory apposition may be juxtaposed not only to a word but also to a whole sentence. In this case it is called sentence-qualifying apposition as opposed to word-qualifying apposition. Example: He usually hit the object at which he struck, a very rare thing. Classificatory apposition is sometimes evaluative, i.e., it expresses an evaluative qualification based on emotional colouring: I saw him yesterday, poor boy. (c) Attributive apposition. Attributive apposition essentially differs from the former two types. In both explanatory and classificatory, the basic element and the appositional element may be equated (his death = judicial murder, The Scandinavian nations = the Danes, the Swedes, the Norwegians...) The attributive apposition, on the other hand, expresses a feature that is attributed to the basic element, and therefore there cannot be any sign of equality. Example: He produced a splendid diamond ring, value two hundred, and offered it to her. Areas the size of whole countries lay completely devastated. Appositional attribute One of the typical features of attributive apposition are the pauses separating it at both ends from the rest of the sentence. If these pauses disappear, which results in a very close connection, the construction can be called an appositional attribute expressed by a juxtaposed coordinated substantival expression: He very rarely mixed with boys his own age. A very close connection between the basic and the appositional elements appears in appositional collocations that might be called copulative, in which

both terms have the same force: king-emperor (the former title of the King of England with regard to India). Sometimes the appositional attribute is attached via a preposition: The city of Prague The month of May Sometimes the prepositional construction expresses emotional qualification in which the role of determinant and determinatum are swapped: That devil of man ABSOLUTE CONSTRUCTIONS Absolute construction differ from apposition in that it is not dependent on any noun. While in Slovak there are no Acs, English employs them fairly often. Types of absolute construction: 1. Verbless two-element clause employed in the function of a verbless subordinate clause: The war over, he returned home. The expression the war over is a two-element verbless clause with adverbial predication. His hands in his pockets, he waited quietly for an answer. Similarly, The crisis finished, things returned to normal. The crisis finished is a two-element verbless clause with participial predication. There being on way of escape they remained sitting silently. There being on way of escape expresses existential predication. In general, absolute constructions with participial predication are very common. The temporal relation with regard to the main clause may be that of (a) Simultaneousness The war being finished he decided to return home (b) Priority The war having been finished he decided to return home. (c) posteriority He agreed to pay one half of the sum in cash, the other half to be paid within six months.

2. One-element absolute constructions He decided to ring her up, answer or no answer. The second part of this sentence actually contains two one-element thetic clauses connected by the conjunction or. 2. One-element predicative absolute constructions When in London, I visited the Trafalgar Square. He looked at her as if greatly surprised.

VERBAL SENTENCES In English, declarative verbal sentences always consist of two elements unlike Slovak, where one-element verbal sentence is possible: pr, hor, sne. The missing subject is replaced takes the form of (a) formal subject in sentences referring to atmospheric conditions: It is raining, snowing. (b) concrete subject: V zmku stra [in the castle it-haunts] The castle is haunted - in this case the location comes to function as a subject Vonia tu za fialkami [it-smells here after violets] There is a smell of violets here (c) The tendency to employ a concrete subject is obvious in sentences describing physical or mental states. Je mi zima, je mi teplo [Is to-me cold, warm] je nm to [is to-us sorry], I am cold, warm, I am sorry d) Similarly, Na tle tu nezle [on style here not-matters] The style does not matter here Interestingly, Old English knew subjectless clauses such as m is cealde - I am cold The reason for their disappearnace is two-fold: the loss of inflectional morphemes distinguishing Dative and Accusative, and second, the grammaticalization of word-order. In addition to the formal subject, English also knows the so-called general subject: It can be expressed by one: One never knows If the experience includes the speaker or even hearer English uses !st or 2nd person plural You never can tell, We never can tell To express an experience excluding the speaker English mainly uses 3rd person plural: They say Frequent use is made of the passive: It is understood that it is believed that

The function of the subject in English Grammatical subject in English is supposed to have arisen from a formally fixed manner of expressing the theme of the utterance. In the earliest stages of Indo-European languages the theme of the utterance appears to have expressed the Agent of the Action predicated by the verb. Thus the earliest type presumably was Father is coming The blacksmith is forging a horseshoe. Thus, originally: SUBJECT = THEME = AGENT Already in the oldest period , however, this pattern began to be departed from. The most important deviation from the original conception was the formation of passive constructions, since in these constructions the subject denotes The Patient of the Action predicated by the verb, the Agent being expressed by a prepositional phrase following the verb (adjunct of the verb) The horseshoe was forged by the blacksmith. Thus: SUBJECT = THEME = PATIENT The passive voice in Indo-European languages developed much later than the active. As a result, in contemporary IE languages it is almost invariably expressed by periphrastic forms (=by description). As a result, in the course of time the function of subject consisting originally in expressing the Agent was weakened in favour of expressing the Theme of the utterance. This tendency to employ Subject for the expression of the Theme of an utterance is connected with the fixed wordorder in English, which cannot otherwise satisfy the requirements of functional sentence perspective in the objective sense, i.e., in the sense that a sentence should start with the Theme and that Rheme should follow Theme. English uses the PASSIVE much more frequently than Polish, Slovak, or Czech, which makes it possible to distinguish constructions where the subject expresses the Theme of the utterance from those in which it denotes the Patient directly affected by the verbal action. The thematic function of the Subject is facilitated by frequent use of perceptive constructions The essence of these constructions is a formulation which, instead of stating what a thing is like, states how a person finds it. In this manner English often achieves continuity of the subject in several consecutive sentences, which results in the uniformity and logical clarity of the whole sequence. Whenever he found the task difficult he asked his father for help. He perceived the situation as a nightmare.