Modern theories
general syntax - school

Definition of the basic concepts of syntactic theory

1. Morphology and syntax.

According to ancient linguistic tradition, grammar is divided into two disciplines: morphology and syntax. The term “morphology” means “the study of the form” of a word. Back in the 19th century. The central section of formal grammar was precisely morphology, because the most obvious was the change in word forms in Indo-European languages: the declension of nouns and the conjugation of verbs.

The term “syntax” was borrowed from military vocabulary and meant “co-arrangement of parts, construction” (the word tactics– “sequence of actions” – has the same root). The term itself indicates that this section of grammar deals with units that are combinations of words. Thus, the word is the central unit of European grammar (“parts of speech”, “members of a sentence”, etc.). The word distinguishes two main disciplines - morphology and syntax. Everything that is smaller than a word (within a word) is a subject of morphology, everything that is larger than a word (a combination of words) is a subject of syntax. That is, it is the concept of the word that is key to distinguishing between morphology and syntax. But the word is structured differently in different languages ​​of the world, so different languages ​​will differ in morphology and syntax. Synthetic languages ​​(for example, Russian) are languages ​​with rich morphology. Analytical languages ​​(for example, English) are languages ​​with developed syntax. Russian word, for example good, will, in addition to the lexical meaning, contain indications of gender, number and case. And the English word round can be a different part of speech depending on the context (there is no indication of grammatical class within the word itself).

So, syntax is the part of grammar that deals with units that are longer than a word. Traditionally, the units of syntax are the phrase and the sentence. However, not any combination of words is a phrase, but only those words that are connected to each other by a syntactic connection. A sentence can even consist of one word if it performs a communicative function and is a predicative unit, that is, it is updated by indicating tense and mood. This is what makes the word different spring as a nominative unit from a communicative unit - sentences Spring!. The linking verb is omitted from the present tense sentence There is, which, pointing to the present tense and the indicative mood, fits the statement into the context of the speech situation and actualizes it. Some linguists said that a word is a unit of a language system, and a sentence goes beyond the boundaries of the language system into speech, into the area of ​​linguistic creativity.

Word and sentence have different structures. A word is a rigid complex of morphemes: morphemes cannot be swapped (you cannot put an inflection before the root and a prefix after it), you cannot remove and endlessly add new morphemes to the word. A.A. Reformatsky, for example, tried to come up with a word that would consist of a large number of postfixes; he came up with a somewhat artificial word malicious– you cannot add even more postfixes to this word. On the contrary, a sentence is a relatively free complex of units. Words in a sentence can be interchanged (in languages ​​with free word order). For example, in Latin it was customary to place words connected by a syntactic connection far from each other: “ First he was considered among the Romans poet" However, the sentence has a more complex hierarchical structure; in addition, sentences are capable of unlimited complication - they can be extended by adding subordinate clauses, adverbs, participial phrases, etc.

Many linguists of the 20th century, for example L. Tenier, said that the entire modern grammatical theory is structured in such a way that morphology is in the center, and syntax is given a secondary role. However, modern linguistics is trying to rethink the general theory by presenting syntax as the “organizational center of grammar.”

2. Syntax and vocabulary.

So, the word is not only the central unit that allows us to distinguish between two grammatical disciplines: morphology and syntax. The concept of a word combines grammar and vocabulary. As we have already said, in Russian words often contain lexical and grammatical meanings. However, some syntactic theories proposed considering abstract syntactic structures devoid of lexical content, that is, without connection with vocabulary. Linguists said that vocabulary deals with specific meanings, and grammar serves only to classify, categorize words, indicates the relationship of words to each other, that is, it does not operate with meanings. The concept of “pure grammar” was formulated. In this context, L.V.’s phrase is interesting. Shcherby The glok kuzdra shteko has sprouted the bokr and curls the bokrenka, which is devoid of lexical meanings, but is grammatically correct. Shcherba asked students to think about this phrase and answer the question: is it true that we do not understand anything that is conveyed by this phrase? Can we say that there is an indication of the connection of words with each other, of the morphological features of words, but the meaning, meaning is completely absent. The students responded that they understood the situation described: a certain creature performed a single action in the past on a probably adult animal and continues to perform an action in the present on a baby of this animal. The grammar reported this. All that remains is to name the characters and say what exactly kuzdra did with sideways And bokrenkom, that is, turn to vocabulary. Thus, grammar also conveys part of the meaning; it is inextricably linked with vocabulary.

Later, linguists noticed that the lexical content of syntactic structures (that is, the choice of words for a sentence) is very important. Noam Chomsky, for example, said that sincerity can scare a boy, but the reverse is not true: the boy cannot be frightened by sincerity. This allows us to conclude that meaning has a serious, one might say decisive, influence on syntactic structures.

The syntactic structure of a sentence is determined by the grammatical properties of the words included in it. Interest in categorical semantics made it possible to construct a new syntactic theory in the light of the close interaction between syntax and vocabulary.

Description of some syntactic theories

1. Formal syntax.

The simplest and most obvious theory of syntax is a list of all the correct sentences of a language. Even the ancient grammatical tradition proposed listing schemes and sentence patterns as a way of describing syntactic structures. Each sentence can be presented in the form of a diagram - a list of sentence members and their connections. The sentences themselves are classified depending on their form: one-part and two-part sentences, simple and complex, complex and complex, etc. Complex sentences, for example, were grouped according to the nature of conjunctions and allied words without consistent and strict consideration of content. Formal syntax in the Russian linguistic tradition was presented in the works of scientists of the Fortunat school: M.N. Peterson, A.M. Peshkovsky, A.A. Shakhmatova. In school textbooks up to our time, a logical-grammatical classification of sentences is presented, which is usually associated with the name F.I. Buslaeva.

2. Structural syntax.

In the first half of the 19th century. in linguistics, the structural approach to the study of language triumphed. The desire to bring linguistics closer to the exact sciences contributed to the emergence of theories that could objectively describe the complex, multi-level structure of language and explain the interconnection of linguistic units. The triumph of the structural approach was the creation of a special science - phonology, which explained the structure and functioning of the phonetic system of the language. Morphology and vocabulary also used the structural method to a greater or lesser extent. The situation with syntax was more complicated. Firstly, syntactic units were an open list, that is, all possible sentences cannot be counted and described. Secondly, many linguists did not consider syntax within the framework of a structural description of the language system, since syntax already represented linguistic creativity, the use of ready-made language units in speech. Emile Benveniste, for example, excluding the syntactic level from the language system, paid attention to the main property of the sentence - the ability to perform a communicative function, to the actualization of the syntactic structure in the context of the speech situation.

Structuralists fundamentally distinguished between “internal” and “external” linguistics. The first represents the structure of the language system, and the external represents the influence of various external factors on the language. The subject of close study by structuralists was precisely “internal” linguistics. But syntax is very closely connected with the process of thinking and speech formation, with psychology and logic. So, the structuralists did not pay enough attention to syntax, and the very method they used could not provide an adequate syntactic theory.

However, attention should be paid to one interesting attempt to describe syntax within the framework of the structural direction, presented in the work of the French scientist Lucien Tenier. Unlike other structuralists, he spoke about the importance and primacy of syntax in language. The basis of structural syntax is the syntactic connection of elements. To construct a sentence means to breathe life into an amorphous mass of words by establishing a set, a hierarchy of syntactic connections. Tenier was a teacher of foreign languages ​​and wrote teaching aids for his students. He said that along with linear syntax, that is, the order of units in a sentence, there is structural syntax, that is, a hierarchy of units. The structural order is multidimensional, because Each control element can have several subordinates. The center of any sentence is the verb. The verb describes action, that is, it expresses a little drama. With a verb there can be characters (actants) and circumstances - places, time, method, etc., in which the process unfolds (circonstants). Verbs have different numbers of actants. The verb may not have any active persons; it is an actantless (impersonal verb - evening) verb. A verb can have only one character; it is a one-actant verb (intransitive - Alfred falls). A verb can have two characters; it is a two-actant verb (transitive - Alfred hits Charles). A verb can have three characters; it is a three-actant verb ( Alfred gives Charles a book). The ability to attach actants is called the valence of a verb.

3. Communicative syntax.

The main function of language - communicative - is realized through syntax. This is the stage of the grammatical structure of a language at which coherent speech is formed. Communicative syntax proposes to describe syntactic structures based on their meaning, rather than their formal structure.

Syntax is associated with thinking, the process of communication and the designated surrounding reality. The communicative functions of syntactic structures are the same in the languages ​​of the world, which makes syntax the most universal part of the structure of a language. At the same time, the ways of expressing syntactic relations in each language represent linguistic specificity. Functional syntax allows you to describe the structures that are used in the language to express a request, order, admiration, etc.

Within the framework of the communicative approach to syntactic units, it was formulated theory of actual division of a sentence. Depending on the relevance, importance of a particular content, and significance for communication, the proposal can be divided into two parts. One part - the most important, obligatory for the existence of a sentence - is called rhema. Without it, the sentence loses its meaning. Rema– a component of the communicative structure that constructs a speech act. The other part of the sentence is optional, representing, as it were, the background of the rheme, is subject.

This theory was first formulated in the works of the Czech scientist V. Mathesius, the leader of the Prague linguistic circle. The actual division of a sentence is contrasted with its formal division. Offer Karl is going to Berlin tomorrow formally divided into major and minor members; such division does not imply options. However, from the point of view of the importance and relevance of the message in a given communicative situation, the main member of the sentence (rheme) can become any word, for example, Tomorrow or to Berlin.

It is obvious that in colloquial speech and dialogue, syntactic structures consisting only of rheme - the main part of the sentence - are often used. In this regard, the problem of ellipsis began to be developed, that is, the possibility of removing parts from a sentence that were irrelevant for a given communicative situation began to be discussed. Thus, the theory of actual division made it possible to develop issues of the syntax of colloquial speech, features of the syntactic structures of dialogue, problems of ellipsis, etc.

LITERATURE

1. Peshkovsky A.M. Russian syntax in scientific coverage. M., 2001.

2. Benveniste E. Levels of linguistic analysis // Benveniste E. General linguistics. BGK im. I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay. 1998. pp. 129–140.

3. Tenier L. Basics of structural syntax. M.: Progress, 1988.

4. Mathesius V. About the so-called actual division of a sentence. // Prague Linguistic Circle. M.: Progress, 1967.

O.A. VOLOSHIN,
Ph.D. Phil. sciences,
MSU,
Moscow

1. The subject of structural syntax is the study of sentences(phrase). No wonder that when German linguists needed to translate the word “syntax” into their language, they chose the term"Satzlehre" "the doctrine of supply."

2. Sentence 1 is an organized whole whose elements are words 2.

3. Each word that is part of a sentence loses its isolation, which is always inherent in it in the dictionary 3. You can notice that each word of the sentence enters into certain connections with neighboring words(connections), the totality of which constitutes the backbone, or structure, of a sentence.

4. These connections are not expressed in any way. But they are necessarily revealed by the consciousness of the speakers, without which not a single sentence would be intelligible. When I say a sentence Alfred parle "Alfred says" (see art.* 1), I do not mean to say two separate things: on the one hand, “there is a man named Alfred,” and on the other hand, “someone is speaking.” In my mind these messages are combined: "Alfred performs the action of speaking," or "he who speaks"This is Alfred."

5. It follows that a sentence like Alfred parle does not consist of

1 Grammarians have repeatedly tried to make the concept of a sentence (phrase)more clear, reducing it to the term proposition borrowed from logic (proposition)(cf. ch.20, § 18).It cannot be said that these attempts were crowned with complete success. Wed. statement by O. Blok: “Among different authors there is no consensus even on what should be understood by the term proposition” (Bloch 1936, 90).

In other words, we do not share the point of view of A. Sauvageau, who, despairing of defining the concept of a sentence, notes: “The definition of a sentence is of no interest from the point of view of syntax. At best, this concept can be considered the final goal of research, but not its starting point " (Sauvageot 1936,162).

3 However, an isolated word - this is pure abstraction, since the sentence - it is a natural environment in which words live, just as fish live in water. When creating a dictionary, we take elements of linguistic reality and artificially extract them from the natural environment in which they live. So the dictionary inevitably turns out to be a collection of fossils.

* Art. - abbreviation for "stemma" (stemme). - Note ed.

two elements: 1) Aflred and 2) parle, and of three: 1) Alfred, 2) parle, 3) the connection that unites them and without which there would be no proposal. Saying that a sentence like Alfred parle contains only two elements, - means to analyze it from a purely superficial, morphological point of view and ignore the most essential - syntactic connection.

6. The same is true in the world of chemicals: as a result of the sodium compound(Na) and chlorine (C1) a complex substance is formed - table salt or sodium chloride(NaCl) , - having completely different properties than its constituents sodium and chlorine.

7. Syntactic connection is necessary to express thoughts. Without it we could not convey any coherent content. Our speech would be a simple sequence of isolated images and ideas, unrelated to each other.

8. It is the syntactic connection that makes the sentence a living organism, and it is in it that its vitality lies.

9. Build a sentence - means breathing life into an amorphous mass of words by establishing a set of syntactic connections between them.

10. And back, understand the sentence - means to understand the totality of connections that unite the words included in it.

11. The concept of syntactic connection is thus the basis of all structural syntax. The importance of this concept should be strongly emphasized.

12. As a matter of fact, it is precisely what we call connection that is expressed by the word “syntax” itself, meaning in Greek “arrangement”, “establishment of order”. In addition, this concept, reflecting the internal nature of a sentence, corresponds to inner Sprachform "internal form of language" by W. Humboldt 5.

13. For clarity, we will depict connections between words graphically, using lines that we will call lines of syntactic connection (see Art. 1).

4 Fruitful concept inner Sprachform,introduced more than a century ago, has still not taken its rightful place in linguistics. This was prevented by the axiom imposed by “morphologists”, according to which only directly perceived, material facts of language, that is, facts related to the external sphere, belong to the jurisdiction of linguistics. Thus a prioriself-denied inner Sprachform,which, by definition, belongs to the internal sphere.

5 Wilhelm Humboldt - a linguist of the highest class, with a brilliant intuition, to whom modern linguistics is still far from doing justice, while Bopp, the founder of comparative grammar, is extolled to the skies. Meillet considered this state of affairs fair, which is at least paradoxical if we take into account the comparative importance of the works of these two scientists. In the history of thought, Humboldt, the friend of Schiller and Goethe, undoubtedly stands much higher than Bopp, who never rose above the level of a good specialist. Anyone who has any idea of ​​the development of German thought in the 19th century will rightly be surprised to learn that such a comprehensive thinker as Humboldt, possessing deep knowledge in various fields, a scientist of high scientific culture, is placed on the hierarchical ladder below Bopp, a simple a specialist in comparative grammar, who is almost invisible in the history of German thought. In the end, linguists will inevitably give full justice to Humboldt, a man whom Goethe allowed into the circle of people intellectually close to him, and who was a thinker on a completely different scale than Bopp.

II. Structural syntax. arose as an awareness and overcoming of the shortcomings of traditional syntax; he first of all set the task of developing rigorous methods and procedures for the analysis of syntactic structures: this is how the NS method, distributional analysis, and subsequently TA arose, which gave linguistics a solid scientific foundation. Syntax of this type is analytical and strictly linguistic; logical and psychological categories and criteria (as well as semantic ones) are completely excluded from the study. The scheme of “sentence members” is replaced by formal models depicting the structure of a sentence in the form of a chain of word forms (C. Frieze), a NS tree, and a dependency tree (L. Tenier). Theoretical propositions were no longer simply put forward, but were each time proven on the basis of linguistic criteria and analytical procedures. Syntax has turned into an exact science, although this rigor (and accuracy) was achieved at the cost of a certain simplification and schematization of real linguistic reality, for which adherents of traditional syntax often (and not without reason!) reproached the structuralists, calling structural diagrams and abstract constructions (models of language) structuralists caricature of language. Undoubtedly, such accusations could be rightly addressed to the extreme (extremist) wing of the structuralists, who generally expelled meaning from language and considered language a “system of pure relations” in an even more abstract form than the founder of structuralism F. de Saussure himself (for example, the Copenhagen School / Glossematics).

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Syntax

“Syntax of a complex sentence” - Usually subordinate clauses come after the demonstrative word in the main part. Contents: 1. Syntax. Conjunctive sentence - simple sentences are joined into a complex sentence by conjunctions and allied words. COMPLEX SENTENCES.". Complex sentences. A set of mini-posters on the topic “SYNTAX. SSP. In the NGN, the demonstrative word then is sometimes used: I came then to explain myself.

“Discourse and Syntax” - Cataphora. Offer. Grade. Exception. Cofunctional agents. Stalin talked peacefully with Vuchetich. One-sided dependence. Switching reference. In discourse. In TRS terms. Phenomena bordering between discourse and syntax. Case study. Syntax. Matrix. Main line. Syntactic anaphora.

“Syntactic norms” - A conversation took place with an engineer. Relatives living in Siberia arrived in Moscow and stayed with us. Management standards. Norms for agreement between subject and predicate. Scientists from different countries took part in the conference. Determine which ending option is normative. Find sentences with syntax errors.

“Language syntax” - A characteristic feature of syntax is a systematic approach to learning. Structural syntax. Main publications. Zellig Zabbetai Harris. Syntax. There may be several transformations. Expanded syntax definition. The relationship between the verb - predicate and the name (argument). List of required transformations.

“Russian language “Syntax and punctuation”” - The basic unit of syntax. Main types of complex sentences. Principles of Russian punctuation. Punctuation marks. Offer. Optional punctuation marks. Basic syntactic unit. Syntax. Syntax and punctuation. Role in language.

Literature

1. Grammar of the modern Russian literary language / rep. ed. N.Yu. Shvedova. – M., 1970. – P. 541-547.

2. Russian grammar / ch. ed. N.Yu. Shvedova. – T. 2: Syntax. – M., 1980.– P. 92-123, 136-180.

3. Modern Russian language / V.A. Beloshapkova, E.A. Bryzgunova, E.A. Zemskaya and others; edited by V.A. Beloshapkova. – 3rd ed., – M., 2003. – P. 716-763.

At the end of the 60s. XX century In Russian syntactic science, a type of description of the formal organization of a sentence appeared, based on the concept of a structural diagram.

Structural scheme is an abstract sample consisting of minimum components necessary to create an offer.

There are two understandings of the minimum supply:

1. Formal and grammatical minimum(predicative center; T.P. Lomtev, N.D. Arutyunova, P.A. Lekant, etc.) .

This understanding of the minimum was put forward by N.Yu. Shvedova and presented in “Russian Grammar” 1980 and “Grammar of the Modern Russian Literary Language” 1970. The scheme does not include conventional distributors:

The boy threw the ball. N 1 – V f

2. Semantic (nominative) minimum:

The boy threw the ball. N 1 – V f – N 4obj

In this case, some conventional distributors, necessary for the semantic sufficiency of the syntactic structure: a distributor of a transitive verb, expressed by a noun in the form of V.p.; substantive-subject expander ( Smells like bird cherry. Praed N 5); case or prepositional case form with spatial meaning or adverb:

The ball is under the table (there). N 1 V f N 5 loc / Adv loc

Depending on how the predicative minimum is organized (by one or two word forms), the structural schemes differ two-component And one-component:

It is impossible to sit indoors in the spring.Praed Inf

I don't care about you anymore.No N 2

To prove means to convince.Inf cop Inf

The hungry cannot be understood by the well-fed.Inf

What joy!N 2

A structural diagram in the understanding of “Russian Grammar” of 1980 is a syntactic pattern that has not only a formal organization, but also a linguistic meaning.

This meaning, common to all structural schemes, is predicativity. Objective-modal meanings that form predicativeness are expressed using syntactic tenses and moods.

N.Yu. Shvedova clarifies the list syntactic moods, which includes: syntactic indicative (present, past and future tense), syntactic irreal moods (subjunctive, conditional, desirable, imperative, obligatory). All these particular modal-temporal meanings are expressed by certain modifications of the formal organization of the sentence (that is sentence forms). The entire system of sentence forms is called its paradigm.

The complete sentence paradigm is eight-membered, the original form is the present tense form of the syntactic indicative.