SEMINAR 11.

TYPOLOGY OF WORD COMBINATIONS IN THE ENGLISH AND

NATIVE LANGUAGES

Exercise 1. Answer the questions

1. What is the unit of the syntactic level ?

2. What is the difference between a phrase and a sentence ?
3. What does the phrase denote?
4. How do we define phrase types ?What syntactic ties are used in
formation of word combinations ?
5. What similarities and distinctions do you find in the formation of
word combinations in the English and native languages?
6. What types of syntactic relations exist in the English and native
languages?

Exercise 2. Work in a small group. Compare and find similarities, differences

and distinctive features of three types of dependent relation in compared
languages: agreement, government, and adjoining (contact). Share your analysis
with other groups.

Similarities Differences Distinctive features

Agreement

Government

Adjoining
Exercise 3. Proof with your own examples the following comparative analysis
of phrase.
1. In English and Uzbek, the adjunct of an attributive phrase can be
expressed by a passive infinitive.
E.g.:__________________________________________________________

This type of phrase in non-existent in Russian. The idea is rendered by a

subordinate clause.
E.g.:__________________________________________________________

2. The English, the Russianand the Uzbek languages differ significantly

in the means of expressing syntactical connections in a phrase. In Russian and
Uzbek all the three ways of connection are used. In English, the use of
government and agreement is restricted to the phrases with pronouns.
E.g.:__________________________________________________________

3. In English attributive phrases denoting objects in numerical order, the

adjunct expressed by a cardinal numeral is in postposition to the kernel
expressed by a noun.
E.g.:__________________________________________________________

4. In the corresponding Russian and Uzbek phrases, the adjunct

expressed by an ordinal numeral is in preposition to the headword.
E.g.:_______________________________________________________________

Exercise 4. Read the statements. Circle the true or false.

 1. Sentence is universal linguistic phenomenon while phrase is not
True / False
2. According to I. Mestchaninov languages are classified into nominative,
ergative and passive
True / False
3. The element of a phrase can be morphologically equal or unequal
True / False

4. Greenberg found out only two variants of word order: S+P+O, S+O+P.
True / False The problem of word
order in typology
5. According to Greenberg, the English and Russian languages belong to
the SPO word order type.
True / False
6. If the elements are syntactically unequal, one of them modifies the
other.
True / False
7. According to Vladimir Skalicka, fixed word order is characteristic of
agglutinational and isolating types.
True / False
8. The principal element is called the “adjunct” or “head word”.
True / False

TOPICS FOR PRESENTATIONS

1. Definitions of phrases in compared languages.
2. Structure and classification of phrases of English, Russian and Uzbek
languages.
3. Criteria of connection of words in phrasess.
4. Syntactic connection in compared languages.