5. Retell the text. Syntax

Syntax is a part of grammar which treats of phrases and sentences. Phrase theory deals with various types of phrases. Theory of sentences reviews of types of simple sentences and parts of sentences of the various types of composite sentences and ways of syntactic methods of syntactic analysis.

A phrase is a grammatical and semantic unit, consisting of no less than two notional words belonging to the nominative means of the language. There is a difference between phrase and other linguistic units. Phrase has no less than two notional words (that’s how it is distinguished from a word) as in ‘a black bird’; ‘a blackbird’.

Phrase has the meaning of its constituents, i.e. it is not idiomatic. For example: to burn bridges (a phrase); to burn bridges (phraseology).

Phrase has no intonational contour and predicative relations. That’s how it differs from a sentence.

Phrase is distinguished from a member of the sentence, though it can be a member of a sentence.

There are phrases with subordination: ‘to give lectures’, ‘store house’. There are also phrases with coordination such as ‘a husband and wife’.

Russian linguist Irtenjeva puts forward the following requirements for a phrase:

1) it must belong to one part of speech;

2) it must be generally used in language;

3) it must be used as a ready-made element;

4) it must name one thing of reality.

A phrase has a lexical meaning and grammatical structure.

Some difficulties occur, when people study phrases. One of them is connected with syntactic phenomena. There is a dependence of words from their head words. There are relations between head words and notional words. There are also lexico-semantic relations between lexical meanings of words.

According to the head word we can single out the following groups of phrases:

1) nominal: ‘high speed’;

2) verbal: ‘talk fast’;

3) adjectival: ‘very high’;

4) adverbial: ‘quite near’;

According to their structure phrases can be grouped into two groups:

1) phrases with agreement;

2) phrases with government.

When making a subordinate word we take a form similar to the form of head word, to which it is subordinated. Consider the following examples of agreement: ‘Children play’; ‘Those houses’.

Professor Iljish believes that there are however some cases, when those two components don’t coincide as in ‘My family are early-risers’; ‘The United Nations is an organization’.

Government is the use of a certain form of the subordinate word required by its head word, but not coinciding with the form of the head word itself. Government is used with the objective case of pronouns. They can be used as subjects: ‘My friend and me’.

Notional government is ‘whom’ forms, but it can be replaced by ‘who’ as well as in ‘I spent the summer at my father’s (house)’.

Joinment is the absence of agreement and government. Consider this example ‘He answered very quickly (answered + quickly)’.

Professor Iljish singles out one more means of expressing syntactical relations. He calls it enclosure, which means putting a word between two other elements of phrase, e.g. ‘The then government’.