Present-Day English Syntax [antikvár]

FOREWORD The book is designed for the students of the senior courses of the University faculties of foreign languages. The aim of the book as recommended by the program is to lead the students to a deeper understanding of modern English structure keeping abreast of the findings set forth in the most important Soviet and foreign writings which have appeared in recent times. It presupposes that advanced students have already had enough pattern practice and sufficient knowledge of working grammar pertaining to the English syntax. The aim of the book is therefore to present a syntactic description of the language in the light of generál principles of modern linguistics. The central interest in a synchronic analysis has given shape to the whole book. The linguistic material is organized with a view to concentrate the student's attention on the syntactic structures of the language as a system constituted by organically related levels. ín terms of our analysis syntax is viewed as a system of a binary structure. We include here observations on the synsemantic character of syntactic structures, their transformations, neutralization of oppositions on the syntactic level, structural polysemy and synonymy, homonymic patterns and grammatical ambiguity. This naturally involves somé disputable problems where scholars differ in their angles of view. The given quotations from different sources serve to show how the disputable questions have been variously treated by different writers and which of the linguistic approaches seems most convincing. There is a discussion of the problems that arise in the presentation of the material but the scope of the material presented is dictated by its factual usefulness. Our concern in the introduction was to show that syntax should be viewed in relation to such parts of language learning as morphology, phonetics and style. Here we alsó review, in brief, the me> thodsof modern technique of syntactic analysis that have in recent