n ("the sentence is predication, predication is the sentence" ). However, the identification of the two aspects of the sentence pointed out above shows that this negative attitude is wholly unjustified; the real content of the predicative interpretation of the sentence has nothing to do with definitions of the "vicious circle" type. In point of fact В»as follows from the given exposition of predication, predicative meanings do not exhaust the semantics of the sentence; on the contrary, they presuppose the presence in the sentence of meanings of quite another nature, which form its deeper nominative basis. Predicative functions work upon this deep nominative basis, and as a result the actual utterance-sentence is finally produced. p align="justify"> On the other hand, we must also note a profound difference between the nominative function of the sentence and the nominative function of the word. The nominative meaning of the syntagmatically complete average sentence (an ordinary proposemic nomination) reflects a processual situation or event that includes a certain process (actional or statal) as its dynamic centre, the agent of the process, the objects of the process, and also the various conditions and circumstances of the realisation of the process. This content of the proposemic event, as is known from school grammar, forms the basis of the traditional syntactic division of the sentence into its functional parts. In other words, the identification of traditional syntactic parts of the sentence is nothing else than the nominative division of the sentence. Cf.: p align="justify"> The pilot was steering the ship out of the harbour.
The old pilot was carefully steering the heavily loaded ship through the narrow straits out of the harbour.
As is easily seen, no separate word, be it composed of so many stems, can express the described situation-nominative semantics of the proposition. Even hyperbolically complicated artificial words such as are sometimes coined for various expressive purposes by authors of fiction cannot have means of organising their root components analogous to the means of arranging the nominative elements of the sentence. p align="justify"> Quite different in this respect is a nominal phrase - a compound signemic unit made up of words and denoting a complex phenomenon of reality analysable into its component elements together with various relations between them. Comparative observations of predicative and non-predicative combinations of words have unmistakably shown that among the latter there are quite definite constructions which are actually capable of realising nominations of proposemic situations. These are word-combinations of full nominative value represented by expanded substantive phrases. It is these combinations that, by their nominative potential, directly correspond to sentences expressing typical proposemic situations. Cf.: p align="justify"> ... ? The pilot's steering of the ship out of the harbour. ... ? The old pilot's careful steering of the heavily loaded ship through the narrow straits out of the harbour. p align="justify"> In other words, between the sentence and the substantive word-combination of the said full nominative type, direct transformational relations are established: the sentence, interpreted as an element of paradigmatics, is transformed into the substantive phrase , or "nominalised", losing its processual-predicative character. Thus, syntactic nominalisation, while depriving the sentence of its predicative aspect (and thereby, naturally, destroying the sentence as an immediate communicative unit), preserves its nominative aspect intact. p align="justify"> The identification of nominative aspect of the sentence effected on the lines of studying the paradigmatic relations in syntax makes it possible to define more accurately the very notion of predication as the specific function of the sentence.
The functional essence of predication has hitherto been understood in linguistics as the expression of the relation of the utterance (sentence) to reality, or, in more explicit presentation, as the expression of the relation between the content of the sentence and reality. This kind of understanding predication can be seen, for instance, in the well-known "Grammar of the Russian Language" published by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, where it is stated that "the meaning and purpose of the general category of predication forming the sentence consists in referring the content of the sentence to reality ". * Compare with this the definition advanced by A. I. Smirnitsky, according to which predication is understood as "referring the utterance to reality" [Смирницький, (1), 102]. p align="justify"> The essential principles of this interpretation of predication can be expressed even without the term "predication" as such. The latter approach to the exposition...
