Adjectives display the ability to be easily substantivised by conversion (zero-derivation). Among such adjectives there are units well-established in the system of lexicon (a relative, a dear), and new coinages (a sensitive).
Among the substantivised adjectives there can clearly be distinguished two sets:
1) the set which from the categorial point expresses constitutive categories of the noun (the number, the case, the gender, the article determination) and performs normal nounal functions.
2) the set characterised by hybrid lexico-grammatical features (the poor, the rich).
Such words demonstrate incomplete presentation of the part-of speech characteristics of either nouns or adjectives: 1) like nouns, the words are used in the article form; express the category of number (in a relational way); 2) their article and number forms are rigid as they do not show the regular structural change (categorially unchangeable); 3) the words convey the mixed adjectival-nounal semantics of property.
Such adjectival-nounal words are highly productive and idiomatically characteristic of Modern English (adjectivids). They fall into two main grammatical subgroups: 1) pluralia tantum (the English, the rich, the unemployed, the uninitiated, etc.) expressing sets of people (personal multitudes); 2) singularia tantum (the invisible, the abstract, the tangible, etc.) expressing abstract ideas of various types. The words of the second set are often referred to as partly substantivised.
Lecture 17.
The Complex Sentence.
The Composite Sentence.
The composite sentence is formed by two or more predicative lines (polypredicative construction). It reflects two or more elementary situational events making up a unity. Each predicative unit in a composite sentence makes up a clause. The clauses are related to one another on different semantic grounds. The use of composite sentences is characteristic of literary written speech rather than colloquial oral speech.
Composite sentences display two principal types of construction:
1) hypotaxis (subordination)
2) parataxis (coordination).
By coordination the clauses are arranged as units of syntactically equal rank (equipotently); by subordination, as units of unequal rank (dominatingly). By subordination one of the clauses (subordinate) is placed in a notional position of the other (principal): a subordinate clause, however important the information rendered by it might be for the whole communication, presents it as naturally supplementing the information of the principal clause. A subordinate clause in a complex sentence, as a rule, refers to one notional constituent (expressed by a word or a phrase) in a principal clause. A coordinate clause (sequential) in a compound sentence refers to the whole of the leading clause.
The means of combining clauses into a polypredicative sentence:
1) syndetic (conjunctional)
2) asyndetic (non-conjunctional).
All composite sentences are to be classed into:
1) compound sentences (coordinating their clauses)
2) complex sentences (subordinating their clauses).
Besides the classical types of coordination and subordination of clauses, there is found another case of the construction of composite sentence: sentences with parenthetical clauses. They are treated as specific cumulative constructions (composite-cumulative sentences): the continuative cumulation (the cumulated clause is in post-position to the expanded predicative construction) and parenthetical cumulation (the cumulated clause is in inter-position to the expanded predicative construction).
Alongside of completely composite sentences, there exist constructions with homogeneous predicates or verbid complexes which are treated under the heading of semi-composite sentences.
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