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The actual existence of one-word sentences, however, does not contradict the general idea of the sentence as
a special syntactic combination of words, the same as the notion of one-element set in mathematics does not
contradict the general idea of the set as a combination of certain elements. Moreover, this fact cannot lead even
to the inference that under some circumstances the sentence and the word may wholly coincide: a word-
sentence as a unit of the text is radically different from a word-lexeme as a unit of lexicon, the differentiation
being inherent in the respective places occupied by the sentence and the word in the hierarchy of language
levels. While the word is a component element of the word-stock and as such is a nominative unit of language,
the sentence, linguistically, is a predicative utterance-unit. It means that the sentence not only names some
referents with the help of its word-constituents, but also, first, preseats these referents as making up a certain
situation, or, more specifically, a situational event, and second, reflects the connection between the nominal
denotation of the event, on the one hand, and objective reality, on the other, showing the time of the event, its
being real or unreal, desirable or undesirable, necessary or unnecessary, etc. Cf.:
I am satisfied, the experiment has succeeded. I would have been satisfied if the experiment had succeeded.
The experiment seems to have succeeded - why then am I not satisfied?
Thus, even one uninflected word making up a sentence is thereby turned into an utterance-unit expressing
the said semantic complex through its concrete contextual and consituational connections. By way of example,
compare the different connections of the word-sentence "night" in the following passages:
1) Night. Night and the boundless sea, under the eternal star-eyes shining with promise. Was it a dream of
freedom coming true? 2) Night? Oh no. No night for me until I have worked through the case. 3) Night. It pays
all the day's debts. No cause for worry now, I tell you.
Whereas the utterance "night" in the first of the given passages refers the event to the plane of
reminiscences, the "night" of the second passage presents a question in argument connected with the situation
wherein the interlocutors are immediately involved, while the latter passage features its "night" in the form of a
proposition of reason in the flow of admonitions.
It follows from this that there is another difference between the sentence and the word. Namely, unlike the
word, the sentence does not exist in the system of language as a ready-made unit; with the exception of a
limited number of utterances of phraseological citation, it is created by the speaker in the course of
communication. Stressing this fact, linguists point out that the sentence, as different from the word, is not a unit
of language proper; it is a chunk of text built up as a result of speech-making process, out of different units of
language, first of all words, which are immediate means for making up contextually bound sentences, i.e.
complete units of speech.
It should be noted that this approach to the sentence, very consistently exposed in the works of A.I.
Smirnitsky, corresponds to the spirit of traditional grammar from the early epoch of its development.
Traditional grammar has never regarded the sentence as part of the system of means of expression; it has
always interpreted the sentence not as an implement for constructing speech, but as speech itself, i.e. a portion
of coherent flow of words of one speaker containing a complete thought
Being a unit of speech, the sentence is intonationally delimited. Intonation separates one sentence from
another in the continual flow of uttered segments and, together with various segmental means of expression,
participates in rendering essential communicative-predicative meanings (such as, for instance, the syntactic
meaning of interrogation in distinction to the meaning of declaration). The role of intonation as a delimiting
factor is especially important for sentences which have more than one predicative centre, in particular more
than one finite verb. Cf.:
1) The class was over, the noisy children filled the corridors. 2) The class was over. The noisy children filled
the corridors.
Special intonation contours, including pauses, represent the given speech sequence in the first case as one
compound sentence, in the second case as two different sentences (though, certainly, connected both logically
and syntactically).
On the other hand, as we have stated elsewhere, the system of language proper taken separately, and the
immediate functioning of this system in the process of intercourse, i.e. speech proper, present an actual unity
and should be looked upon as the two sides of one dialectically complicated substance - the human language in
the broad sense of the term. Within the framework of this unity the sentence itself, as a unit of communication,
also presents the two different sides, inseparably connected with each other. Namely, within each sentence as
an immediate speech element of the communication process, definite standard synactico-semantic features are
revealed which make up a typical model, a generalized pattern repeated in an indefinite number of actual
utterances. This complicated predicative pattern does enter the system of language. It exists at its own level in
the hierarchy of lingual segmental units in the capacity of a "linguistic sentence" and as such is studied by
grammatical theory.