Understanding Statements, Relations, and Syntagmas in Language
Statements in Language
A statement is a chain of sounds, bounded by a pause, pronounced with a melody, and expressing an idea. There are two types of statements:
- Prayer: A statement containing a verb in person, consisting of a subject and predicate. The speaker reflects their attitude in the sentences by:
- Onyx of Procedures: Using declarative intonation to affirm or deny something.
- Grammatical Procedures: Using certain verbal modes.
- Lexico Procedures: Using adverbs of affirmation and negation.
Depending on the speaker’s attitude, we can distinguish seven types of sentences:
Declarative: Indicates an action occurring in the present, past, or future. It may be affirmative or negative. Interrogative: Reflects a question or doubt. They may be affirmative or negative. Exclamatory: Expresses a feeling of joy, excitement, sadness, surprise, etc. Hesitant: Expresses doubt using adverbs of dubious value. Optative: Expresses a wish. Imperative: Expresses a command, plea, or advice. It may be affirmative or negative. Potential: Expresses a supposition or probability.
- Sentence: A statement without a verb in person and no defined structure.
The meaning of a statement depends on three factors:
- The words that make up the statement.
- The role each word plays in the sentence.
- The tone with which the sentence is pronounced.
Relations Between Statements
- Grammatical Relations:
- Ellipsis: Removal of a lexical item from the statement.
- Anaphora: A phenomenon where a word refers to a part of the speech that came before, which it represents.
Anaphoric word: A grammatical element without meaning.
- Lexical Relations:
- Synonymy: The identity of all or part of the meaning of two words.
Synonymous words: Words spelled differently but with the same meaning.
- Hyperonymy: A word with a broader meaning than another word it contains.
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- Hyponymy: The opposite of hyperonymy. The word has a less comprehensive meaning than the one that contains it.
- Semantic Relations:
- Connectors: Link elements that make explicit the relationships between ideas.
The Syntagma
Syntagma: A grouping of one or more complete and meaningful words that play a syntactic role. Classes of phrases:
- The noun phrase: Its nucleus is a noun or tonic pronoun. It performs the subject function. There are two kinds of subject:
Subject lexicon: A word or set of words in a sentence that serves as the subject.
Grammatical subject: The grammatical person who performs the role of subject.
- The verb phrase: Its nucleus is a verb. It performs the predicate function.
- The adjectival phrase: Its core is an adjective.
- The adverbial phrase: Its core is an adverb.
Complements the core classes:
- Elements Relating to a Noun:
- Accessories Referring to a Verb:
- Direct Object: A person or thing directly receiving the action expressed by the verb. This role is played by a noun or noun phrase.
- Indirect Object: A person or thing indirectly receiving the action of the verb, often accompanied by the preposition “to”.
- Prepositional Supplement: A supplement that accompanies the verb and is always preceded by a preposition.
- Adverbial: A complement that expresses the circumstances in which the verbal action is done.
- Elements Relating to the Verb and Noun:
- Attribute: The function that expresses a quality or property of the subject. It can be expressed by an adjective or a noun phrase and must always be accompanied by a copula: to be, or to appear to be.
- Predicative complement: Equivalent to an attribute, but it is accompanied by a predicative verb. In addition to the predicative function, it expresses how to perform the verbal action.