SUBORDINATIONThe classification of subordinate clauses offers special difficulties and remains the area of syntax where we find different linguistic approaches with some important disputable points open to thought and discussion. Much still remains to be done in this field of grammar learning. This is oneof many ranges of linguistic structure in which we find borderline cases where the lexico-grammatical organisation of complex syntactic units presents special difficulties. Contexts are of extreme importance in understanding syntax. Various kinds of contextual indication, linguistic or situational, and intonation in actual speech resolve structural ambiguity in homonymic patterns on the syntactic level. As we shall further see, the significant order of sentence elements, as an important factor of syntax, will also merit due consideration in describing the distributional value of various kind of subordinate clauses. It is to be noted that disagreement over the classification of sub-clauses is based not on conflicting observations in language learning but rather on different linguistic approaches to the study of syntax. There are obvious reasons for describing sub-clauses proceeding from the similarity of their functions with those of parts of the sentence. Analysis of clause patterns from this angle of view seems most helpful and instructive. The traditional distinction between the main and the subordinate clause is familiar in grammar learning, but students of language should be prepared to meet it under other names. Emphasising the structural position of sub-clauses, Ch. Fries, for instance, adopted the term included sentence as a compromise between Ch. Fries's included sentence and the term of traditional grammar, W. N. Francis offered the name included clause. Logically, the term clause itself would be a sufficiently distinct term, because it is not used here for any larger class of forms of which included clauses are a subclass. To express subordination of one syntactic unit to another in a complex sentence English uses the following means: a) conjunctions; b) conjunctive words; c) asyndeton; d) sentence-order,i. e. the position of syntactic structures relative to one another; e) correlative words.
|
