 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
113
into its nominative parts. In other words, the identification of traditional syntactic parts of the sentence is
nothing else than the nominative division of the sentence. Cf.:
The pilot was steering the ship out of the harbour.- -The old pilot was carefully steering the heavily loaded
ship through the narrow straits out of the harbour.
Any separate (notional) part of the sentence (subject, object, etc.) can denote a wide range of the elements of
the reflected situation. For instance, the subject of the sentence, besides denoting the agent of the action (as in
the example above), may point out the object of the action, the addressee of the action, the instrument with
which the action is performed, the time and place of it, etc. Cf.:
The ship was carefully steered by the pilot. The pilot was entrusted with the ship's safety. The rudder,
obeying the helmsman, steadily directed the boat among the reefs. The quiet evening saw the boat sailing out
into the open sea...
The semantic reflections of the elements of the situation, in contrast to the parts of the sentence, are
sometimes referred to as the "semantic roles" of the sentence, or the "deep cases" of it.
However, no matter what the concrete referential meaning of any part of the sentence might be, it is only
through those nominative, syntactically determined sentence constituents that the situation together with its
various elements can be reflected. Thus, it must be clearly understood that what is called the "semantic roles" of
the sentence is in fact the situational meanings of its syntactic parts.
As is easily seen, no separate word, be it composed of so many stems, can express the described situation-
nominative semantics of the proposition. Even hyperbolically complicated artificial words such as are
sometimes coined for various expressive purposes by authors of fiction cannot have means of organizing their
root components analogous to the means of arranging the nominative constituents of the sentence.
Quite different in this respect is a nominal phrase - a compound signemic unit made up of words and
denoting a complex phenomenon of reality analysable into its component elements together with various
relations between them. Comparative observations of predicative and non-predicative combinations of words
have unmistakably shown that among the latter there are quite definite constructions which are actually capable
of realizing nominations of pro-posemic situations. These are word combinations of full nominative value
represented by expanded substantive phrases. It is these combinations that, by their nominative potential,
directly correspond to sentences expressing typical proposemic situations. Cf:.
... >The pilot's steering of the ship out of the harbour. ... >The old pilot's careful steering of the heavily
loaded ship through the narrow straits out of the harbour.
In other words, between the sentence and the substantive word-combination of the said full nominative type,
direct transformational relations are established: the sentence, interpreted as an element of paradigmatics, is
transformed into the substantive phrase, or "nominalized", losing its processual-predicative character. Thus,
syntactic nominalization, while depriving the sentence of its predicative aspect (and thereby, naturally,
destroying the sentence as an immediate communicative unit), preserves its nominative aspect intact.
The identification of nominative aspect of the sentence effected on the lines of studying the paradigmatic
relations in syntax makes it possible to define more accurately the very notion of predication as the specific
function of the sentence.
The functional essence of predication has hitherto been understood in linguistics as the expression of the
relation of the utterance (sentence) to reality, or, in more explicit presentation, as the expression of the relation
between the content of the sentence and reality. This kind of understanding predication can be seen, for
instance, in the well-known "Grammar of the Russian Language" published by the Academy of Sciences of the
USSR, where it is stated that "the meaning and purpose of the general category of predication forming the
sentence consists in referring the content of the sentence to reality".* Compare with this the definition
advanced by A.I. Smirnitsky, according to which predication is understood as "referring the utterance to
reality" [Смирницкий, 1957, 102].
* Грамматика русского языка. М„ I960. Т. 2, Ч. I, с. 79-80.
The essential principles of this interpretation of predication can be expressed even without the term
"predication" as such. The latter approach to the exposition of the predicative meaning of the sentence can be
seen, for instance, in the course of English grammar by MA. Ganshina and N.M. Vasilevskaya, who wrote:
"Every sentence shows the relation of the statement to reality from the point of view of the speaker" [Ganshina,
Vasilevskaya, 321].
Now, it is easily noticed that the cited and similar definitions of predication do not explicitly distinguish the
two cardinal sides of the sentence content, namely, the nominative side and the predicative side. We may quite
plausibly suppose that the non-discrimination of these two sides of sentence meaning gave the ultimate cause to
some scholars for their negative attitude towards the notion of predication as the fundamental factor of sentence