THE SENTENCE: BASICS & THE ACTUAL DIVISION

The sentence

the immediate integral unit of speech built up by words according to a definite syntactic pattern and distinguished by a contextually relevant communicative purpose

Word (as opposed to sentence)

a purely nominative, ready-made unit of the word-stock that names static objects and phenomena of reality and is reproduced in speech

Sentence (as opposed to word)

a both nominative and predicative unit produced each time in speech to name dynamic situations, processes, or events

Predication (differential feature)

the basic differential feature of the sentence that reflects the connection between the nominal denotation of an event and objective reality

What predication shows

the time of the event, its reality status, desirability, affirmation or negation, and the communicative purpose of the utterance

Modality

a broad category expressing the connection and the speaker's attitude between named objects and actual reality, manifested through modal verbs, particles, and modal phrases

Syntactic modality

the specific type of modality expressed directly through the sentence structure, making all predication a form of modality, though not all modality is predication

The Center of Predication

the structural and semantic core of a clause or sentence that actualizes a proposition, attributing a state, action, or property to a subject

The core of predication

the finite form of the verb (the predicate) which expresses the categories of tense, mood, and voice

Lucien Tesnière's view

the dependency grammar theory stating that the verbal predicate is the structural node around which the entire sentence is organized according to the verb's valency

Actants

the essential structural arguments or participants in a verbal process, such as the subject, direct object, and indirect object

Circonstants

the non-obligatory adjuncts or circumstants that express the background conditions of a process, such as adverbial modifiers of time, place, or manner

Valency theory

the syntactic framework stating that the predicate verb determines the specific number and type of structural arguments and circonstants required to form a grammatical sentence

Grammatical means of sentence structure

word order, functional words (auxiliary verbs, particles, conjunctions), and intonation or punctuation

The Sentence in Language vs. Speech

in language, the sentence is a finite, abstract, and potential sentence pattern, while in speech, it is an infinite, concrete, and actualized utterance

A sentence pattern

a generalized, abstract syntactic model represented in the language system, serving as the bridge between langue and parole (e.g., NP + VP)

Why sentence patterns matter

they serve as the bridge between language and speech, enabling speakers to produce infinite utterances from a finite set of descriptive syntactic models

Proposition

the core nominative and semantic content of a syntagmatically complete sentence that reflects a dynamic processual situation

What the proposition reflects

the processual situation (predicate), the agent (subject), the objects of the process, and the accompanying conditions (adverbial modifiers)

Nominalization

the syntactic transformation of a fully predicative sentence into a non-predicative substantive or nominal phrase (e.g., "his father's unexpected arrival")

What happens during nominalization

the sentence loses its processual-predicative character, the finite verb becomes a noun or gerund, and categories of tense, mood, and agreement disappear

What nominalization proves

the structural fact that a sentence possesses two distinct and separable layers: its nominative situational content and its actualizing predicative content