Nominative topics. The meaning of nominative topics in the dictionary of linguistic terms "nominative representations" in books

2.10. Representations Reduplication of various subsystems of the nervous network can give rise to many different groups of classifiers, “hanging in the air.” Among them, duplicates of entire levels of the hierarchy may appear, the states of which exactly correspond to the state of those

Constructions that only coincide in form with nominative sentences

The question of which nominative constructions are considered sentences and which are not, as well as the question of the one-component and two-component nature of formally similar constructions are resolved differently, and the objective cause these disagreements - semantic and functional capacity of nominatives in modern Russian. It is especially difficult to distinguish nominative sentences from constructions that are similar in form: and other types of sentences.

the actual names(inscriptions on signs, headings, etc.);

nominative representation(For example: Joy... How can you fit it in your chest?);

a nominative that summarizes the previous statement, gives it an assessment or justification, etc.(For example: There wasn't enough time at all. Rehearsals, tours);

names of persons upon presentation(The guest extended his hand: - Ivanov)?

In some cases, all these syntactic phenomena are qualified as sentences, in others, only part of them belongs to sentences, in others, all of them are taken beyond the boundaries of simple sentence schemes. No less important is the question of differentiation between one-component and two-component. This applies primarily to structures consisting of nominative and adverbial or objective spreader type: There is smoke in the air; The joy is over; Lecture at the club (cf.: At the club - lecture); Gift for sister (cf.: Gift for sister),

as well as syntactically ambiguous combinations like Glorious Autumn, where two-part - one-part is emphasized intonation accentuation.

The distinction between nominative sentences and constructions similar in form seems possible by taking into account such properties of the sentence as independence of functioning. This approach makes it possible to identify as nominative sentences only those constructions that have the property of independent functioning, i.e. those whose functional quality is not determined by the preceding or subsequent design. These sentences are independently functioning syntactic units that have the meaning of being. They are not attached to the so-called base structure. In this case, the range of nominative sentences becomes quite defined and, at the same time, relatively narrow. This will include syntactic units like Winter; Silence; Heat; Trenches; Mud, Here comes the stream; What a weather!; Four hours, etc.(of course, these main members can have consistent and inconsistent propagators: Last winter; Four o'clock in the afternoon).

Some syntactic constructions may formally coincide with nominative sentences. These are designs that either do not contain the meaning of being, existence And incapable of independent functioning, or are incomplete two-part sentences with an existing member in the form of the nominative case (most often acting as a predicate with an absent subject, clear from the context or situation).

Nominative case as a simple name

Nominative sentences do not include various names, inscriptions on signs, etc. They have the form of the nominative case, but contain the function of naming without the meaning of being: Palace of Sports; Department store; "House with mezzanine"; "Eugene Onegin"; "Fathers and Sons".

Such constructions are often classified as sentences, but they are distinguished into a special group, united by the dominant meaning of the name. In this case, it seems most successful to classify these structures as "properly named".

The nominative case as a predicate in a two-part sentence

The nominative case can be used as a predicate in a two-part sentence with an absent subject, to which there is a direct constitutive indication. Such constructions are a message about something named in the context or clear from the situation, i.e. This is a predicate in the form of the nominative case in an incomplete two-part sentence with a missing subject: Chichikov glanced sideways at him again as they walked into the dining room: Bear! The perfect bear! (G.); One day, on a rainy day, an acquaintance with whom I was walking down the street said, squinting his eyes to the side: - Korolenko (M.G.); -Who are you, young man? “Young man,” I answered (M.G.); - Who are you? - he asked again. - Yes, a pretzel worker, a worker (M.G.).

In such designs the nominative case denotes a characteristic attributed to the person or thing being reported in the context.

In their function they are also close to the predicate. names of persons by last name, first name, position, etc. upon presentation:The guest stood up, flashed his golden jaw generously, and extended his hand:- Mamedov (Rec.); A girl in a blue sundress came in, blushed and greeted Vanya. hand. “My daughter,” said the old woman proudly (Paust.).

Nominative cases used in isolation

Isolated nominatives (nominatives) coincide in form with nominative sentences, but differ from them in functional (semantic-structural) and stylistic properties.

A.M. Peshkovsky refers them to “words and phrases that do not form either sentences or their parts”.

N.Yu. also considers them “isolated formations” characteristic of colloquial speech. Shvedova.

Isolated nominatives are words in the nominative case, as well as noun phrases with the main word in the nominative case form. Since isolated nominatives do not have signs of supply(They devoid of the meaning of being and intonation completeness; taken separately, do not perform a communicative function), They exist only as part of syntactic integers, i.e. always stand next to another sentence, connecting with it logically and intonationally. However, not existing independently, they retain, regardless of the structure of this sentence, their own form unchanged. Such segmented (divided into component elements; in this case, binary) constructions refer either to the sentence following them, or to the sentence in front, i.e. both substantively and formally act as text components. Thus, there is a distinction between prepositive nominatives and postpositive nominatives. Formally they are similar, functionally they are different.

Most clear and definite in their function nominatives in preposition - This nominative representation, or nominative topic. In principle, prepositive nominatives are unambiguous; their purpose is to name the topic of the subsequent message, i.e. evoke an idea of ​​the subject that is the topic of the message. Naming a topic focuses attention on it and logically highlights it, which is especially important for colloquial speech. The appearance of the nominative representation is associated with positional detection of accents. The title of the message subject is in the current position. For example: Feelings. This is an area of ​​close attention of scientists (gas). Such syntactic phenomena cannot be classified as nominative sentences: despite the external isolation of use, they are deprived of grammatical and functional independence, since they do not have the meaning of being. They lack intonation completeness (even if there is a dot).

The nominative representation differs from the nominative sentence in that this syntactic construction lexically unlimited, i.e. Any noun can be used in this function.

An isolated nominative, in particular nominative representations, - conversational style design. It is in direct speech, without special preparation, that all sorts of emphatic (emphatic) intonations and positions play an important role. One of the common means of highlighting an important word (or part of a statement) is to place it in the actual position, and in this case we are talking about a unique form of presenting a thought when it is presented in two steps: “...first an isolated object is put on display, and the listeners only know that something will now be said about this object and that for now this object must be observed; the next moment the very thought is expressed". When naming, an absolutely independent form is used - the nominative case. Here are examples: Cranes... Swamped with work, far from the gloomy fields, I live with a strange concern - to see cranes in the sky! (Sol.); Minors... An age that requires particularly close attention (gas).

Mandatory pause after such a nominative, it is a natural moment for the speaker to formulate the next utterance; for the listener, this is the moment of organizing attention, preparing for subsequent perception. Such “gradation” in the presentation of thoughts clearly conveys the nature of casual speech, when there is no time for preliminary thinking and it takes place in the very process of “speaking.” As a reflection of the conversational style, such constructions are used in fiction and newspaper and magazine articles.

A particularly common type of nominative representation is the nominative, supported by a pronoun, personal or demonstrative, in the subsequent sentence, which comes after a long pause. The pronoun acts as the subject. For example: Zhiguli on the Volga... They are beautiful in all seasons (gas); A person going into tomorrow... He is unthinkable without a broad outlook on life (gas.); Amazons... Since childhood, we have become accustomed to the fact that this is only a legend (gas).

However, nominatives bear a special stamp of colloquialism, not separated by a pause from the next pronoun. Calling such a nominative "lecture", A.M. Peshkovsky speaks about him cautiously: “It seems that this also includes the very common (especially in colloquial speech) nominative, picked up in the nearest sentence by the word he (or the word this with repetition of the nominative)”. Here are examples: Kindness is above all blessings (M. G.); Your voice is like the ringing songs of an old pine tree (Bl.); Marchenko - he was a man, a golden man (Cossack).

Such designs have and other interpretation, in which the nominative is assigned subject function with the following pleonastic pronoun.

Often in such compounds the nominative is included in speech by initial conjunctions ah, but, although it retains its clearly isolated position: And two-year-old Franco - he spent two whole days under the ruins (Drun.); But the banner - here it is, fluttering on the ridge, above the very top (B. Pol.).

Communication with the previous message can be carried out both by particles and introductory words: Well, for example, self-financing on state farms is, in your opinion, just economics? (gas.).

The isolated nominative is supported by a pronoun and in constructions with interrogative sentence. The meaning of the question in such cases is entirely related to the concept designated by the nominative. For example: Talent! But what is he essentially? (Snow.); Mind on other planets - what is it like? (gas.).

The subject supporting the nominative can be not only a pronoun, but also noun with demonstrative pronoun. For example: Shipwreck... This metaphor is close to the structure of the novel (gas); ...Telepathy. How different this word evokes in different people (gas).

An indication of an object called a nominative representation in a sentence can be carried out not only by the grammatical subject, but also by other members of the sentence. Such constructions, and they are especially characteristic of colloquial speech, are sometimes called “displaced”, since their beginning and end are given in different syntactic planes. For example, the connection is indicated by additions (pronouns in indirect cases that carry out a semantic connection with the nominative representation): Snowflakes... Catch them, they are so slow in flight (Pinch.); Osharov... I knew him a little (Fox.).

In addition to the nominative, which precedes the sentence, a nominative and without further sentence, then he prepared by the preceding context, the content of which makes it possible to omit the entire ascertaining part of the syntactic structure as unnecessary. Such cases usually occur in artistic speech; they create the feeling of the presence of hidden, subtextual content, which is guessed by individual external strokes.

Constructions with an isolated nominative are quite common in modern Russian. in a named function,picked up furtherpronominal adverbSo . In contrast to the nominative representation, it can be called nominative naming. Such constructions are always of the same type in a structural sense: this is the removal of part of a predicative member, used in an independent form with the function of naming, into the accented position, followed by an adverb indicating the given subject So and different forms of verbs name, name.

For example: “Islands among the winds” - this is how the famous Swedish explorer and traveler Bengt Sjögren called his book about the Lesser Antilles (journal); “Linguistic ambulance” - this is the name of this new help service that appeared in Leningrad (gas.).

So, the prepositive nominative is, in principle, functionally unambiguous - it is a nominative representation and a nominative naming, close to it in meaning. In both cases, the nominative, preceding the sentence, focuses attention on the object it denotes, the phenomenon, which thus acts as the starting point of reasoning, its starting point, semantic and structural core. Structurally such syntactic constructions are always binary (two-term): nominative and the clause associated with it.

Postpositive nominatives functionally more diverse. However, the form of the nominative case and functioning only with the adjacent sentence in the form of a complex syntactic association makes them similar to the prepositive nominative.

Some postpositive nominatives functionally repeat prepositive ones, naming the subject of the message. But since they are located after the message, they naturally serve the purpose of revealing the content of the preceding subject, given in a general, non-specific form: What a huge and difficult distance this is - twelve months... (gas). However, more often, nominatives placed after the expressed judgment (or question) are capable of focusing in themselves a whole complex of thoughts and images, usually associated with the transfer of memories of something significant and important. This is an impetus for the development of thought, for the line drawing of successive images and paintings. Here's an example: And suddenly he realized: this is with whom he lived all these years of wanderings and deceptions, this is whose photographs he carried at the bottom of his empty travel suitcases. Yes, girl. And the blue smoke, and the first meetings, the vague anxiety, and the scarf thrown over the shoulders, the government house and the long road (Sim.).

Postpositive nominative Yes girl retains the representation function, cf.: Yes, girl... That's who he lived with all these years... Placing it after the statement makes it possible to add a number of nominatives that convey a complex picture of memories, presented in the form of an endless chain.

The nominative that completes the sentence is rich emotional and semantic capabilities. Sometimes the function of the original theme disappears from the nominative, and he only records changes in subsequent impressions, resulting in new ideas that replace the original ones. Quite often, this syntactic device is used to express an emotional mood: Why the letter? Well, it’s hard so be it. Dead night. Tobacco ash, sadness... (P. Shub.).

Other postpositive nominatives are semantically more closely related to the previous message, and grammatically - to the nominative unpredictable-subject or incomplete sentence. However, its functioning only as part of a syntactic whole (together with the preceding sentence) allows it to be interpreted as a construction of a non-sentence nature.

The meanings of the nominative can be very diverse.

This is first of all nominative indicating a reason. For example: Goodbye, though. It's time to get out of the house. The weather is good (Ch.); The dinners are good, but getting to this “Bazaar” is not easy - the dirt is inaccessible (Ch.); In the morning they didn’t want to take the ferry: it was windy (Ch.). The nominative in such cases corresponds, as it were, to the subordinate part of the sentence, but has “that peculiar feature that it does not express a statement, but only names the topic.” Such constructions are usually not used in book speech.

A nominative in postposition may contain assessment value:There is a letter. On the piece of paper there are hasty lines: “If you can, forgive me. It happened. Gone." Indifferent lines. Ice words (Fox.);

generalizations of the previous message:We immediately liked him, direct, friendly, looking smart even in hospital clothes - commander (gas). Nominatives with the meaning of evaluation and generalization are brought together by their predicative (predicate) function in relation to the previous statement.

The nominative can call signs of an object indicated in the previous message, its distinctive details:Irkutsk is an excellent city. Quite intelligent. Theatre, museum, city garden with music, good hotels (Ch.); And then a little woman came to him with a boyish face, thoughtfully roguish and laughing. Blue T-shirt. Cropped hair (Pan.);

Maybe name the objects with which the content of the expressed message is connected:A faded yellow spotlight illuminated two all-terrain vehicles on the black snow. They began to load. Petrol. Products. Walkie-talkie. Sleeping bags (gas);

may report about the content of the perception that accompanies the action indicated in the previous sentence:I remembered about the pit in the stable. “Come on, I say, let’s see what’s there now.” Let's go there - a new floor, recently laid (V. Ov.).

These functions of the postpositive nominative, naturally, do not exhaust all possible cases. However, all these nominatives are united by a common syntactic property: they acquire their functional quality as a result of the influence of the previous context and do not exist as an independent syntactic unit, this is precisely why they differ from nominative sentences, which in themselves, regardless of the preceding and subsequent sentences, express the meaning of being, assert its existence or indicate its presence.

Thus, all particular meanings of the postpositive nominative are entirely determined by the functioning of a given syntactic unit in specific speech contexts. As for the general syntactic property and form of expression, in this sense they are all the same. From a stylistic point of view, this is very economical means of expression, which fully meets the requirements of a laconic and at the same time meaningful speech. Only colloquial speech could serve as the basis for the formation of such content-capacious constructions, since it is in oral speech that it is possible to use intonation as a means of expressing the necessary content. Peculiar intonation, combining a postpositive nominative with a preceding sentence (and sometimes a series of sentences), is a compensator for the missing, but logically possible verbal components of a descriptive construction (in the form of an independent sentence), capable of expressing in detail the content that is conveyed by the nominative alone. Wed, for example: Near the hotel there was a new, two-story house, the doors below were wide open. We looked in: the store (Gonch.). - We looked in: what we saw was a store. It is not difficult to see that the first method of conveying thoughts is more convenient and expressive, and intonation with this method of expression carries a very large load. With the second method, intonation plays a lesser role, since the necessary meaning is expressed lexically.

The use of nominatives becomes very productive stylistic device in fiction, as well as in newspaper and magazine publications, where the task of emotional impact on the reader is no less important than the transmission of information. For the same reason, such constructions are absent in the scientific style, although they are no longer uncommon in popular science literature, for example: The struggle for the honor of Russian names, for the enrichment of their composition (including folk variants), for their competent unified spelling, for the inclusion in the name books of forgotten names and the names of the peoples of our country, as well as some new ones - isn’t this one of the tasks of the popular magazine “Russian” speech"? (magazine).

The breadth of distribution of nominatives can be evidenced by examples of their use in a popular science article, for example: Supersonic passenger airliners. An electronic brain that controls the most complex technological processes. TV antennas over shepherd's nomads lost in the mountains... The latest achievements of science and technology are firmly entering our lives (gas.).

However, such a convenient design due to its clarity and brevity is easy to use if used frequently. becomes a literary cliche.