lead even to the inference that under some circumstances the sentence and the word may wholly coincide: a word-sentence as a unit of the text is radically different from a word-lexeme as a unit of lexicon, the differentiation being inherent in the respective places occupied by the sentence and the word in the hierarchy of language levels. While the word is a component element of the word-stock and as such is a nominative unit of language, the sentence, linguistically, is a predicative utterance-unit. It means that the sentence not only names some referents with the help of its word-constituents, but also, first, presents these referents as making up a certain situation, or, more specifically, a situational event, and second, reflects the connection between the nominal denotation of the event on the one hand, and objective reality on the other, showing the time of the event, its being real or unreal, desirable or undesirable, necessary or unnecessary, etc. Cf.: p align="justify"> I am satisfied, the experiment has succeeded. I would have been satisfied if the experiment had succeeded. The experiment seems to have succeeded - why then am I not satisfied? p align="justify"> Thus, even one uninflected word making up a sentence is thereby turned into an utterance-unit expressing the said semantic complex through its concrete contextual and consituational connections. By way of example, compare the different connections of the word-sentence "night" in the following passages:
1) Night. Night and the boundless sea, under the eternal star-eyes shining with promise. Was it a dream of freedom coining true? 2) Night? Oh no. No night for me until 1 have worked through the case. 3) Night. It pays all the day's debts. No cause for worry now, I tell you. p align="justify"> Whereas the utterance "night" in the first of the given passages refers the event to the plane of reminiscences, the "night" of the second passage presents a question in argument connected with the situation wherein the interlocutors are immediately involved, while the latter passage features its "night" in the form of a proposition of reason in the flow of admonitions.
It follows from this that there is another difference between the sentence and the word. Namely, unlike the word, the sentence does not exist in the system of language as a ready-made unit; with the exception of a limited number of utterances of phraseological citation, it is created by the speaker in the course of communication. Stressing this fact, linguists point out that the sentence, as different from the word, is not a unit of language proper; it is a chunk of text built up as a result of speech-making process, out of different units of language, first of all words, which are immediate means for making up contextually bound sentences, i. e. complete units of speech.
It should be noted that this approach to the sentence, very consistently exposed in the works of the prominent Soviet scholar A. I. Smirnitsky, corresponds to the spirit of traditional grammar from the early epoch of its development. Traditional grammar has never regarded the sentence as part of the system of means of expression; it has always interpreted the sentence not as an implement for constructing speech, but as speech itself, i. e. a portion of coherent flow of words of one speaker containing a complete thought.
Being a unit of speech, the sentence is intonationally delimited. Intonation separates one sentence from another in the continual flow of uttered segments and, together with various segmental means of expression, participates in rendering essential communicative-predicative meanings (such as, for instance, the syntactic meaning of interrogation in distinction to the meaning of declaration ). The role of intonation as a delimiting factor is especially important for sentences which have more than one predicative centre, in particular more than one finite verb. Cf.: p align="justify"> 1) The class was over, the noisy children fitted the corridors. 2) The class was over. The noisy children filled the corridors. p align="justify"> Special intonation contours, including pauses, represent the given speech sequence in the first case as one compound sentence, in the second case as two different sentences (though, certainly, connected both logically and syntactically).
On the other hand, as we have stated elsewhere, the system of language proper taken separately, and the immediate functioning of this system in the process of intercourse, ie speech proper, present an actual unity and should be looked upon as the two sides of one dialectically complicated substance - the human language in the broad sense of the term. Within the framework of this unity the sentence itself, as a unit of communication, also presents the two different sides, inseparably connec...
