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the basis of the subject categarial meanings; second, on the basis of the predicate categorial meanings; third,
on the basis of the subject-object relation.
Reflecting the categories of the subject, simple sentences are divided into personal and impersonal. The
further division of the personal sentences is into human and non-human; human - into definite and indefinite;
non-human - into animate and inanimate. The further essential division of impersonal sentences is into factual
(It rains. It is five o'clock) and perceptional (It smells of hay here).
The differences in subject categorial meanings are sustained by the obvious differences in subject-predicate
combinability.
Reflecting the categories of the predicate, simple sentences are divided into process featuring ("verbal")
and, in the broad sense, substance featuring (including substance as such and substantive quality - "nominal").
Among the process featuring sentences acttonal and statal ones are to be discriminated (The window is open-
ing-The window is glistening in the sun); among the substance featuring sentences factual and perceptional
ones are to be discriminated (The sea is rough - The place seems quiet).
Finally, reflecting the subject - object relation, simple sentences should be divided into subjective (John
lives In London), objective (John reads a book) and neutral or "potentially" objective (John reads), capable of
implying both the transitive action of the syntactic person and the syntactic person's intransitive characteristic.
C H A P T E R XXV
SIMPLE SENTENCE: PARADIGMATIC STRUCTURE
§ 1. Traditional grammar studied the sentence from the point of view of its syntagmatic structure: the
sentence was approached as a string of certain parts fulfilling the corresponding syntactic functions. As for
paradigmatic relations, which, as we know, are inseparable from syntagmatic relations, they were explicitly
revealed only as part of morphological descriptions, because, up to recent times, the idea of the sentence model
with its functional variations was not developed. Moreover, some representatives of early modern linguistics,
among them F. de Saussure, specially noted that it was quite natural for morphology to develop paradigmatic
(associative) observations, while syntax "by its very essence" should concern itself with the linear connections
of words.
Thus, the sentence was traditionally taken at its face value as a ready unit of speech, and systemic
connections between sentences were formulated in terms of classifications. Sentences were studied and
classified according to the purpose of communication, according to the types of the subject and predicate,
according to whether they are simple or composite, expanded or unexpanded, compound or complex, etc.
In contemporary modern linguistics paradigmatic structuring of lingual connections and dependencies has
penetrated into the would-be "purely syntagmatic" sphere of the sentence. The paradigmatic approach to this
element of rendering communicative information, as we have mentioned before, marked a new stage in the
development of the science of language; indeed, it is nothing else than paradigmatic approach that has provided
a comprehensive theoretical ground for treating the sentence not only as a ready unit of speech, but also and
above all as a meaningful lingual unit existing in a pattern form.
§ 2. Paradigmatics finds its essential expression in a system of oppositions making the corresponding
meaningful (functional) categories. Syntactic oppositions are realized by correlated sentence patterns, the
observable relations between which can be described as "transformations", i.e. as transitions from one pattern of
certain notional parts to another pattern of the same notional parts. These transitions, being oppositional, at the
same time disclose derivational connections of sentence patterns. In other words, some of the patterns are to be
approached as base patterns, while others, as their transforms.
For instance, a question can be described as transformationally produced from a statement; a negation,
likewise, can be presented as transformationally produced front an affirmation. E.g.:
You are fond of the kid. >Are you fond of the kid?
You are fond of the kid. >You are not fond of the kid.
Why are the directions of transitions given in this way and not vice versa? - Simply because the ordinary
affirmative statement presents a positive expression of a fact in its purest form, maximally free of the speaker's
connotative appraisals.
Similarly, a composite sentence, for still more evident reasons, is to be presented as derived from two or
more simple sentences. E.g.: