s face value as a ready unit of speech, and systemic connections between sentences were formulated in terms of classifications. Sentences were studied and classified according to the purpose of communication, according to the types of the subject and the predicate, according to whether they are simple or composite, expanded or unexpanded, compound or complex, etc. p align="justify"> In contemporary modern linguistics paradigmatic structuring of lingual connections and dependencies has penetrated into the would-be "purely syntagmatic" sphere of the sentence. The paradigmatic approach to this element of rendering communicative information, as we have mentioned before, marked a new stage in the development of the science of language; indeed, it is nothing else than paradigmatic approach that has provided a comprehensive theoretical ground for treating the sentence not only as a ready unit of speech, but also and above all as a meaningful lingual unit existing in a pattern form.
Paradigmatics finds its essential expression in a system of oppositions making the corresponding meaningful (functional) categories. Syntactic oppositions are realised by correlated sentence patterns, the observable relations between which can be described as "transformations", ie, as transitions from one pattern of certain notional parts to another pattern of the same notional parts. These transitions, being oppositional, at the same time disclose derivational connections of sentence-patterns. In other words, some of the patterns are to be approached as base patterns, while others, as their transforms. p align="justify"> For instance, a question can be described as transformationally produced from a statement; a negation, likewise, can be presented as transformationally produced from an affirmation. E.g.:
You are fond of the kid. ? Are you fond of the kid? You are fond of the kid. ? You are not fond of the kid. p align="justify"> Why are the directions of transitions given in this way and not vice versa? - Simply because the ordinary affirmative statement presents a positive expression of a fact in its purest form, maximally free of the speaker's connotative appraisals. p align="justify"> Similarly, a composite sentence, for still more evident reasons, is to be presented as derived from two or more simple sentences. E.g.:
He turned to the waiter. + The waiter stood in the door. ? He turned to the waiter who stood in the door. p align="justify"> These transitional relations are implicitly inherent in the syntagmatic classificational study of sentences. But modern theory, exposing them explicitly, has made a cardinal step forward in so far as it has interpreted them as regular derivation stages comparable to categorial form-making processes in morphology and word-building. p align="justify"> And it is on these lines that the initial, basic element of syntactic derivation has been found, ie a syntactic unit serving as a "sentence-root" and providing an objective ground for identifying syntactic categorial oppositions. This element is known by different names, such as the "basic syntactic pattern", the "structural sentence scheme", the "elementary sentence model", the "base sentence", though as the handiest in linguistic use should be considered the "kernel sentence" due to its terminological flexibility combined with a natural individualising force.
Structurally the kernel sentence coincides with the elementary sentence described in the previous chapter. The difference is, that the pattern of the kernel sentence is interpreted as forming the base of a paradigmatic derivation in the corresponding sentence-pattern series. p align="justify"> Thus, syntactic derivation should not be understood as an immediate change of one sentence into another one; a pronounced or written sentence is a finished utterance that thereby cannot undergo any cha nges. Syntactic derivation is to be understood as paradigmatic production of more complex pattern-constructions out of kernel pattern-constructions as their structural bases. The description of this production ("generation") may be more detailed and less detailed, ie it can be effected in more generalised and less generalised terms, depending on the aim of the scholar. The most concrete presentation concerns a given speech-utterance analysed into its derivation history on the level of the word-forms. p align="justify"> By way of example let us take the following English sentence: I saw him come.
This sentence is described in school grammar as a sentence with a complex object, which is syntagmatically adequate, though incomplete from the systemic point of view. The syntagmatic description is supplemented and re-interpreted within the framework of the paradigmatic description presenting the sentence in question as produced from the two kernel sentences: I...
