THE SECONDARY PARTS OF THE SENTENCE

The secondary parts of the sentence are classified according to the syntactic relations between sentence elements. These relations differ in character.

Oppositional relations between the principal and secondary parts of the sentence are quite evident. The former are the core of the communicative unit, the latter develop the core as being a) immediately related to some of the sentence-elements or b) related to the predicative core as a whole.

The closest bond is commonly observed in attributive relationships. Attributive adjuncts expand sentence-elements rather than the sentence itself.

His possessive instinct, subtler, less formal, more elastic since the War, kept all misgivings underground. (Galsworthy)

The second type of non-predicative bond, the completive one, is more loose. It develops the sentence in another way. In this type of bond the secondary parts relate, to the predicative core as a whole.

The same number of the unemployed, winter and summer, in storm or calm, in good times or bad, held this melancholy midnight rendezvous at Fleishmann's bread box. (Dreiser)

The completive bond can expand the sentence indefinitely.

The copulative bond connects syntactically equivalent sentence elements.

With the money he earned he bought novels, dictionaries and maps browsed through the threepenny boxes in the basement of a secondhand bookshop downtown. (Sillitoe)

In actual speech various types of syntactic bond can actualise various types of syntactic meaning. Thus, for instance, both process and qualitative relationship can find their expression in:

(a) the attributive bond an easy task;

playing boys;

(b) the completive bond I found the task;

I found the boys playing;

(c) the predicative bond The task was easy;

The boys were playing.