Second edition

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making the sentence nonsensical. Cf.: I love red flowers, I love flowers, whereas I hate red tape cannot be transformed into I hate tape or I hate red.¹
Transformational procedures may be of use in practical classroom teaching as they bring to light the so-called sentence paradigm or to be more exact different ways in which the same message may be worded in modern English.
It is argued, e.g., that certain paired sentences, one containing a verb and one containing an adjective, are understood in the same way, e.g. sentence pairs where there is form similarity between the verb and the adjective.
Cf.: I desire that. . . — I am desirous that . . .; John hopes that . . . — John is hopeful that . . .; His stories amuse me . . . — are amusing to me; Cigarettes harm people — are harmful to people.
Such sentence pairs occur regularly in modern English, are used interchangeably in many cases and should be taught as two equally possible variants.
It is also argued that certain paired sentences, one containing a verb and one a deverbal noun, are also a common occurrence in Modern English. Cf., e.g., I like jazz — > my liking for jazz; John considers Mary’s feelings -> John’s consideration of Mary’s feelings.²
Learning a foreign language one must memorise as a rule several commonly used structures with similar meaning. These structures make up what can be described as a paradigm of the sentence just as a set of forms (e.g. go — went — gone, etc.) makes up a word paradigm. Thus, the sentence of the type John likes his wife to eat well makes up part of the sentence paradigm which may be represented as follows John likes his wife to eat well — > John likes his wife eating well — > what John likes is his wife eating well, etc. as any sentence of this type may be re-patterned in the same way.
Transformational procedures are also used as will be shown below in componental analysis of lexical units.