Structural-semantic classification of the predicate in sentence in Modern English

3.2.8 Wh-Words

Wh-words that begin with the letters “wh-” like “who”, “what”, “when”, “where”, “which”, “whose”, and “why” and their close cousins “how”, “how much”, “how many”, etc. They are used for posing questions and are thus sometimes called interrogatives. Unlike the word types mentioned so far, they can be determiners, adverbs, or pronouns (both regular and possessive), and so it is typical to see them marked as a special subtype of each. Identifying phrases that include wh-words is important, because they usually occur near the front in written text and fill an argument role that has been left empty in its normal position, as in “Which book did you like best?” In informal speech one might say “You left your book where?” or “You said what?”, but the unusual syntax also suggests a problem (like mishearing, shock, or criticism). The semantics of the wh-expression specify what sort of answer the speaker is expecting (e.g., a person, a description, a time, a place, etc) and thus are essential to question-answering systems.

3.3 PART-OF-SPEECH TAGS

The general syntactic category of a word is also known as its part of speech (POS) whereas “tag” refers to labels for specifying the category and syntactic features (such as singular or plural). Today, the use of “tag” is often synonymous with the labels given in the Penn Treebank II (PT2) tagset^[15],[16]. There was no process of agreement for adopting this tagset as a standard. Instead, a group of linguistic experts, with resources to support the work, developed them and disseminated them widely. Along the way, refinements have been made so that human annotation is more reliable and the sets of words in each category are not too sparse; early versions had about 80 tags, while the current only has only about 35. The tag set and associated guidelines for English have been stable since 2015. (The word tags have been stable since 1999). Figure 3.8 includes the complete English tagset for words, excluding punctuation.

Depending on the distribution of semantic features of predicates Brinton distinguishes between stative, inchoative, continuative, egressive, causative, and agentive sentences. Stative predicates and sentences denote an unchanging condition whereas inchoative sentences denote a change in state or the beginning of a new state. Causative sentences denote something effecting a change of state in an entity, and agentive sentences involve a human agent who intentionally and volitionally brings about a change in state in an entity. The end or cessation of a state is termed egressive while continuative sentences express a continuation of a state. Stative predicates and sentences are assumed to be basic, being analyzed with the stative feature BE; other types of sentencesare formed by adding additional semantic features. In inchoative sentences the predicates are analyzed with the stative feature plus an additional inchoative feature COME; causative sentences are distinguished by the additional feature CAUSE while the nature of agentive sentences can be represented by the agentive feature DO. Egressive and continuative predicates can be analyzed with COME NEG and NEG COME NEG features (id.: 277-281).Brinton's predication analysis is evidently based on the ideas earlier formulated by David Dowty (1979) who distinguished between DO, BECOME, CAUSE operators to describe the meaning of four verb classes expressing state, achievement, activity, and accomplishment. Adding two more features BE and NEG allows getting six main predicate types and six contaminated types thus making up a powerful and flexible methodology for the explanation and description of predicative constructions. We think that Brinton's conception can be best explained in terms of distributional analysis. Contrastive distribution characterizes predicates with opposite meanings, stative –inchoative, causative –agentive. A sentence cannot be stative and inchoative at the same time. Such features as inchoative and causative, inchoative and agentive, egressive andcausative, egressive and agentive, continuative and causative, continuative and agentive are in complementary distribution and can occur in one and the same sentence to make up contaminated forms. Table 1 represents distribution of semantic features of predicates. + denotes features that are in contrastive distribution; –is used to describe features that are in complementary distribution, and 0 stands for inapplicable variant

Sentence Classification There are agreement and disagreement regarding the sentence classification criteria: should it be based on its semantic grammatical criteria or structural intonational one, the term, division and subdivision into groups, the boundary and extent of one group or another. In some English grammars, sentences according to the purpose of the sentence are classified into four types: a. demonstrative (indicative), b. question c. imperative d. exclamatory. In some other grammar books this number of sentences varies. Huddleston by subclassifying the question in a. open, b. closed distinguishes five types of sentences. Open questions get an unlimited number of answers, while closed question get an answer “Yes / No. Functional grammar classifies sentences into a. demonstratives b. Yes/No questions c. Wh questions d. imperatives. In Albanian normative grammar books, the sentences, according to the purpose of their statement are classified into four groups (Çeliku, M. Domi, M. Floqi, S. Mansaku, S. Përnaska, R. Prifti, S. Totoni, M. 1996: 408) a. demonstrative, b. question, c. imperative, d. exclamatory. Celiku’s sentence classification has a wider scope. The sentences are classified into five types: a. Demonstrative, b. Question, c. Wish clauses, d. Imperative, e. Exclamatory.

Exclamatory sentences are a controversial issue. There are authors who classify them not as a separate group, but distribute them in other demonstrative, interrogative and imperative sentences. For example, Dhima classifies exclamatory sentences within the group of demonstratives. ( Dhima, 2010, 54.) Analysing sentences according to the purpose of the sentence, we adhere to the classification that normative and functional grammarians. We briefly present: Indicative: In almost all grammar books, demonstrative sentences, with a syntactic structure "subject - predicate", are defined as sentences that serve to indicate something. The sentence is indicative if it lacks all the qualities that characterize other types of sentences, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory. Demonstratives are used in all styles of literary language, fiction, scientific, journalistic style, prose, novels, stories etc. 1.You were just four. Ju ishit vetëm katër. 2. He is so dramatic in English class. Ai është shumë dramatik në orën e anglishtes. 3.You look great today. Dukesh mirë sot. 4. It wouldn’t be very serious. Nuk do të ishte shumë serioze. Demonstratives (1-3) are positive, (4) is negative. In all of these sentences the intonation is declining from beginning to end. In Albanian, unlike English, which is a free order language, the intonation can change according to the order of the elements of the sentence and according to the order of the statement, taking in these cases different communicative values and special stylistic uses. Questions are used in spoken and written discourse (i) to ask for missing information (wh questions), (ii) to ask if the statement is true or false (yes/no questions), (iii) to ask about the right alternative (tag questions). Through interrogative sentences the speaker seeks to learn something he does not know or to ascertain the truth of a fact. They are characterized by clear distinguishing features, such as intonation, interrogative words, and wordorder (Huddlestone, R, Pullum, G. 2002: 856). Example [2] 1. How was your trip, Nick? Si ishte udhëtimi, Nik? (wh question) 2. Is that adorable? A është e admirueshme? (yes/ no question) 3. Mary is generous, isn’t she? Ajo është bujare, apo jo? (tag question) Question (1) in both languages is formed with a wh- word “How / Si”. The verb shifts before the subject; as a result, we have an inversion of order, predicate - subject. Question (2) is yes/no one. In English the verb has an initial position, while in Albanian the question starts with the particle "A". In Albanian language other particles are used for yes/ no questions such as vallë, mos, mos vallë etc. Tag question (3) in Albanian language is incomplete sentence (without a subject or verb) Generativist analyses questions as surface structures of deep structures formed by transformational rules of Wh movement. Your trip was wonderful. Udhëtimi yt ishte i mrekullueshëm. Your trip was how. Udhëtimi yt ishte Si. How was your trip? Si ishte udhëtimi yt? According to functionalists the theme is inserted in Wh word. How was your trip, Nick? Si ishte udhëtimi yt, Nik? Theme Rheme In yes/no question the theme includes not only the verb but the subject as well. Is She adorable? Është Ajo e admirueshme? Theme (1) Theme (2) Rheme In exclamatory sentences, the affective attitude of the speaker, the expression of his/her feelings, such as joy, sorrow, surprise, irony, etc. are conveyed. In the initial position of the sentence stands Wh-word. Exclamatory sentences have different intonations depending on the emotions they express, 1. What a disaster it was! Çfarë shkatërrimi ishte! 2. How clever that girl is! Sa e zgjuar është ajo vajzë! 3. How happy would he be! Sa i lumtur do të ishte ai! Imperative sentences (i) are limited to the main sentence; (ii) in the second person the subject is usually absent; (iii) the verb is used in its basic form; (iv) in English the negative imperative sentences the auxiliary verb “do” is used, although its main verb is the verb “be / jam”. 2. Don’t be late. Mos u vono.

Conclusion We conclude this study with the view that in addition to the different opinions given on the notion of sentence, in our opinion, it is the basic syntactic unit, which is the main tool, the main way of shaping, expressing and communicating thought. As we have seen above, most scholars agree on the definition of a sentence when they state that: the grammatical use of words results in the construction of syntactic units, of which human speech is composed. Syntactic units can vary in form and content, composition and completeness of communication. Through detailed sentence reviews, this part of the paper highlighted a number of issues related to sentence classification starting from its inner part. Among the contentious issues of disagreement of different views of linguists regarding the classification of sentences according to purpose, based on normative and functional grammars of languages, we accepted four types of sentences. 1. Demonstratives which are deep structures, where each element of the sentence is positioned in its place and serves to indicate something. 2. Questions, which are classified into wh questions that are used in language to ask for missing information and yes/no questions that are used to ask if the statement is true or false. They are surface structures that emerge from the deep structure through transformational rules. 3. Exclamatory sentences which are characterized by different intonations, depending on the purpose of statement. 4. Imperative sentences that express the will of the speaker in the form of orders, requests, advice, etc.

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