GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF FUNCTIONAL WORDS

CHAPTER VI

PRO-UNITS

Pronominals are the pro-units which re place nominals, i. e. N-elements.

As far as the English language is concerned, the pro-units can occur as pro-nouns, pro-verbs, pro-infinitives, pro-predicates, pro-clauses, and even as certain pro-fragments of the text.

THE MEANING OF PRO-UNITS

• The pro-units are meaningful grammatically and denotatively.

• The pro-units replace meaningful notional elements, taking upon themselves not only the syntactic significance of the replaced elements but also their informative content.

THE FUNCTION OF PRO-UNITS

The function of the structural substitutors at the phrase-level is performed in noun-phrases by the two pro-elements: "one" and "that" which substitute for the position of the N-head.

E.g.: Fanny had had few friends. Yet the gathering at the grave side, under its receding rows of black umbrellas, was a large one.

PRONOMINALS The transformation implying the

syntactical representation of noun-phrases by the corresponding pro-units, i. e. by pronominals, is appro priately designated as "pronominalization" because it predetermines the occurrence of pronominals and is the rule of their use in the process of forming a composite sentence-structure.

PRONOMINALIZATION

The pronominals which participate in this type of pronominaliza tion are specific grammatical words.

The pronouns "he", "she" and "it" can occur as pronominalizers.

E.g.: Rain took the glass from his hand and laid it upon the floor.

GENERATIVE PRONOMINALIZATION

The generative pronominalization may assume different forms in accordance with the nature of the pronominal which functions as its marker. For instance, reflexivization is the transformation resulting in the use of reflexive pronominals (self-pronouns).

E.g.: Soames saw Bosinney watching her and smiling to himself.

RELATIVIZATION

The relativization is not a mere substitution of an element by a wh-word. It is a complex conceptual operation resulting in the use of the Wh-pronominals. E.g.:

The room at the end of the house to his right, which adjoined the library (...), was the best guest-room.

RECIPROCAL PRONOUNS

The reciprocal pronouns "each other", "one another" occur as object-complements with the verbs of objective valency in case the reciprocity of the action requires manifestation.

ANOTHER TYPE OF PRONOMINALIZATION

It seems to be the surface substitution and representation of a noun or noun-phrase by the corresponding pronominal which has its actual antecedent.

This kind of pronominalization is a textual phenomenon since the pronominal and its antecedent are, as a rule, in a rather distant position.

CONTEXTUAL PRONOMINALIZATION

It is a meaningful substitution of semantic and cohesive value.

The pronominal in such cases substitutes not a nounal element but a semantically substantive one, regardless its formal characteristics and status.

The antecedent can be a word, a word-group, a clause and even a fragment of the text.

THE PRONOUNS “HE”, “SHE”, “IT”

substitute regularly the word-antecedent, its implicit animateness/inanimateness is being represented. The word-status and the concrete discreteness of the antecedent is predetermining the occurrence of the "it" which is in the line with the personal pronouns "he" and "she", e. g.:

Mary quickly cleared the dishes from the table and spread upon it a drugget cover...

TEXTUAL PRO-UNITS

The antecedent of the larger-than-the-word status is substituted by the element "it" which enters into the paradigmatic line with the grammatical words having deictic or demonstrative force: this, that, it.

TEXTUAL PRO-UNITS

The words like "so", "thus", "such", "then" can be added to the list of the pro-units which signal the cohesive relations obtaining between the elements of the text.

The pro-units which contract the cohesive "-phoric" relations

with the elements of the text can be qualified as textual relators because they do not only substitute for and represent this or that antecedent element in the text but also relate the parts of the text ensuring its cohesiveness.

Example Here are some examples to illustrate the

complex function, representational and relatory, of the pro-units:

It was useless to hurry to his train. The traffic swung past he lamplight shone warm on all the golden faces; but Sigmund hadalready left the city (...) He was in a kind of trance, his consciousness seeming suspended. This was one of the crises of his life.

DEICTICS

Deixis is the orientation made by the speaker in reference to the main and all the parameters of the speech situation: the speaker himself, the time and the place of speaking.

Following tradition we would define deixis as the egocentric orientation.

3 TYPES OF THE PHENOMENON

the deixis of person, the deixis of time and that of space.

PERSONAL PRONOUNS The personal pronouns are deictic in

functional design because they serve for the indication of the communicants: / — the speaker, you — the addressee (s), we — both the speaker and the addressee (s) as the members of the communication.

The personal pronouns of the third person are deictic too but they indicate the oblique participants of the conversation.

THE DEIXIS OF PERSON

Rather specifically the deixis of person is revealed by the use of the indefinite pronoun "one" and the generalizing "we" and "you" in such expressions as: as you know, as we know, one may easily find out that..., if you slip into thinking that..., as we tried to show in the previous part, etc.

THE DEIXIS OF TIME The deixis of time, i. e. the temporal

orientation in the speech situation in reference to the moment of uttering, can be made with the help of "now", "just at present", "at this moment" and alike.

The present-tense forms, and the Present Continuous as well as the Present Perfect forms in particular, signal "present" and thus reveal their deictic features.

THE DEIXIS OF SPACE The deixis of space, i. e. the orientation

in space made by the speaker in reference to himself and other communicants is indicated by the elements "this" and "that", "here" and "there" .

the demonstrative and spatial deictics are sometimes used with specifiers, e. g.:

/ was a foot to ask you to meet me here in all this crowd, Mary. I knew I would find you, but I quite forget that you might get into the crush before then.

OPERATORY WORDS The functional words which are

specialized on forming up the utte rance produced by the speaker as the unit of speaking can be qualified as "speech operators".

The utterance can be characterized as the unit of speaking, in which the processes of thinking, speaking and producing the utterance itself find their manifestation.

THE FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES OF THE

UTTERANCE

There are special devices for marking the functional categories of the utterance. These are the devices marking the theme and the rheme of the utterance.

THE RHEMATIC SPEECH OPERATORS OF THE

UTTERANCE

just, only, at least, such as, rather than, etc. They occupy the position before the element which they mark as the rheme of the utterance,

The operators of the rheme cause changes in the communicative accentuation of the utterance rendering certain cognitive information. Therefore, some linguists are inclined to interpret them as accentuators.

THE EGOCENTRIC CHARACTER OF THE

SPEAKING

makes it possible to outline the main aspects in forming up the utterance as the unit of speaking. These seem to be the aspects of the inner world of the speaker with his communicative intention, estimation, evaluation, attitude and emotion.

The speaker uses different devices for the purpose: accentological, intonational, lexico-grammatical and grammatical.

INTERJECTIONS

are specific grammatical words of signalling power, which function probably as the utterantial operators, as the emotion signals. They stand apart from other utterantial operators because they are highly additional elements, they do not, in fact, form up the utterance either.

THREE MAIN GROUPS OF INTERJACTIONAL

GRAMMATICAL WORDS

emotion signals, injunctive and vocative units, e. g.:

-Ah, well, I suppose that I'll find another! (King). Look, dear. Let's come in our way back.

The functional words which are designed to form up the utterance in its egocentric orientation must be defined as "pragmatic operators".

PARTICLES

are grammatical words which function as epistemic operators. They indicate particular conceptual operations, those like intensification (intensifying particles), identification or particulari-zation (identifying partictes) and emphasization (emphasizing par ticles).

MODAL WORDS

seem to be attitutional operators which are designed to render the so-called subjective modality or to indicate the attitude of the speaker to what he speaks about. (Passive adverbs as well)

PARENTHETICAL WORDS The class of parenthetical words is sometimes

said to include the modal words if the notion of "parenthesis" is interpreted on the syn tactical principle as anything standing apart from the structure of the utterance.

Parenthetical words comprise the operatory estimating words and those of the mental registration of the event by design. Respectively, estimating operators are distinguished as those grammatical words which indicate the estimation of the content expressed in the utterance by the speaker himself.

GRAMMATICAL WORDS

FROMATORS & OPERATORS: AUXILIARIES Formatory, operatory, structural,

connactive

OPERATORS

Logical: negators, interrogators, determiners, categories, identifiers, concretizers, subcategorizers, quantifiers

OPERATORS

Pragmatic: modals, intensifiers, emphasizers, specifiers, particularizers.

OPERATORS

Speech communicative: topicalizers, performatives, emotives, responsers, deictics.

OPERATORS

Textual: Relators, connectors, pro-units, deictics, introducers, topicalizers