Substantivization of adjectives

Some scientists refer substantivization of adjectives to conversion. Adjectives, when substantivized, lose all or part of the characteristics of the adjectives and acquire all or part of the characteristics of the noun. But most scientists disagree with them because in cases of substantivization of adjectives we have quite different changes in the language. Substantivization is the result of ellipsis (syntactical shortening) when a word combination with a semantically strong attribute loses its semantically weak noun (man, person etc), e.g. «a grown-up person» is shortened to «a grown-up». In cases of perfect substantivization the attribute takes the paradigm of a countable noun, e.g. a criminal, criminals, a criminal’s (mistake), criminals’ (mistakes). Such words are used in a sentence in the same function as nouns, e.g. I am fond of musicals. (musical comedies).

There are also two types of partly substantivized adjectives:

1) those which have only the plural form and have the meaning of collective nouns, such as: sweets, news, empties, finals, greens;

2) those which have only the singular form and are used with the definite article. They also have the meaning of collective nouns and denote a class, a nationality, a group of people, e.g. the rich, the English, the dead.

Lecture V: Sentence, as the main unit of syntax

Content:

1. General characteristics of syntax.

2. Sentence, as the main unit of syntax.

3. Word-groups. Syntactic bonds between words.

4. Communicative Structure of the Sentence.

General characteristics of syntax.

In the first lecture of our course we mentioned, that when you know a language, you can speak and be understood by others who know the same language; that knowledge of a language enables you to combine words to form phrases, and phrases to form sentences. But not every string of words constitutes a well-formed sentence in a language. Therefore, in addition to knowing the words of the language, linguistic knowledge includes rules for combining words to form sentences and make your own judgments. These rules must be limited (finite) in length and number so that they can be stored in our brains. Yet, they must permit us to form and understand an infinite set of new sentences. Our ability to speak and understand, and to make judgments about the well-formedness of sentences, reveals our knowledge of the grammar of our language.

We have also discussed the notion of «Grammar» and indicated that this term derives from Greek (it means «art of letters» as in Greek gramma = letter) and it refers to the study of morphology (i.e. the rules of word formation, parts of speech and their grammatical categories) and syntax (i.e. the rules of sentence formation). Hence, syntax is a branch of grammar that studies sentence construction, its communicative-functional, structural and pragmatic classifications as well as its informative organization via «functional sentence perspective» theory. Therefore a sentence is the main object of syntax as a part of the grammatical theory.

What is a sentence? When we speak or write, we convey our thoughts through sentences. A sentence is the smallest lingual unit which is capable of performing a communication, containing some kind of information. With the help of a sentence we can make a statement («London is the capital of the UK.»), command or request («Wash your hands before eating.») or ask a question («Have you ever been to Paris?»).

In written language, a sentence is a string of words standing between an initial capital letter and the mark of punctuation at the end while in spoken language a sentence is marked by s special intonation. 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. For instance:

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).

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 (Blokh 1983: 238).

The sentence as a lingual sign is based on predication in the centre of which stands a finite verb. Due to this feature, the sentence can perform two essential functions: a) designating function, which implies referring to a target extralinguistic situation or event, and b) communicative function which implies transmitting some kind of information.