Лекция конспектісі Шымкент 2023 preface

How she gets there is what's troubling me (→ I am troubled). What's troubling me is how she gets there (→ How is she to get there?).
The peculiar structure of this type of sentence, where two nominal clauses are connected by a short link making up all the outer composition of the principal clause, suggests the scheme of a balance. For the sake of convenient terminological discrimination, the sentence may be so called — a "complex balance".
The third type of clauses considered under the heading of clauses of primary nominal positions are object clauses.
The object clause denotes an object-situation of the process expressed by the verbal constituent of the principal clause.
The object position is a strong substantive position in the sentence. In terms of clausal relations it means that the substantivising force of the genuine object-clause derivation is a strongly pronounced nominal clause-type derivation. This is revealed, in particular, by the fact that object clauses can be introduced not only non-prepositionally, but also, if not so freely, prepositionally. Cf.;
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They will accept with grace whatever he may offer. She stared at what seemed a faded photo of Uncle Jo taken half a century before. I am simply puzzled by what you are telling me about the Car fairs.
On the other hand, the semantic content of the object clause discriminates three types of backgrounds: first, an immediately substantive background; second, an adverbial background; third, an uncharacterised background of general event. This differentiation depends on the functional status of the clause-connector, that is on the sentence-part role it performs in the clause. Cf.:
We couldn't decide whom we should address. The friends couldn't decide where they should spend their vacation.
The object clause in the first of the cited sentences is of a substantive background (We should address — whom), whereas the object clause in the second sentence is of adverbial-local background (They should spend their vacation — where).
The plot of the novel centred on what might be called a far-fetched, artificial situation. The conversation centred on why that clearly formulated provision of international law had been violated.
The first object clause in the above two sentences is of substantive background, while the second one is of an adverbial-causal background.
Object clauses of general event background are introduced by conjunctions: Now he could prove that the many years he had spent away from home had not been in vain.
The considered background features of subordinate clauses, certainly, refer to their inner status and therefore concern all the nominal clauses, not only object ones. But with object clauses they are of especial contrastive prominence, which is due to immediate dependence of the object clause on the valency of the introducing (subordinating) verb.
An extremely important set of clause-types usually included into the vast system of object clauses is formed by clauses presenting chunks of speech and mental-activity processes. These clauses are introduced by the verbs of speech and mental activity (Lat. "verba sentiendi et declarandi"), whose contextual content they actually expose. Cf.:
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Who says the yacht hasn't been properly prepared for the voyage? She wondered why on earth she was worrying so much, when obviously the time had come to end the incident and put it out of mind.
The two sentences render by their subordinate clauses speech of the non-author (non-agent) plane: in the first one actual words of some third person are cited, in the second one a stream of thought is presented which is another form of the existence of speech (i. e. inner speech). The chunk of talk rendered by this kind of presentation may not necessarily be actually pronounced or mentally produced by a denoted person; it may only be suggested or imagined by the speaker; still, even in the latter case we are faced by lingually (grammatically) the same kind of non-author speech-featuring complex construction. Cf.: Do you mean to say that the story has a moral?
Not all the clauses introduced by the verbs in question belong to this type. In principle, these clauses are divided into the ones exposing the content of a mental action (as shown above) and the ones describing the content of a mental action, such as the following: You may tell me whatever you like. Will you tell me what the matter is?
The object clauses in the cited sentences, as different from the foregoing examples, describe the information allowed by the speaker-author (the first sentence) or wanted by the speaker-author (the second sentence), thereby not differing much from non-speech-rendering clauses. As for the speech-rendering object clauses, they are quite special, and it is by right that, as a rule, they are treated in grammar books under the separate heading of "rules of reported speech". Due to their semantic nature, they may be referred to as "reportive" clauses, and the same term will helpfully apply to the corresponding sentences as wholes. Indeed, it is in reportive sentences that the principal clause is more often than not reduced to an introductory phrase akin to a parenthesis of additionally specifying semantics, so that the formally subordinate clause practically absorbs all the essential information rendered by the sentence. Cf.: