Linguistic Encoding & Decoding in Global Contexts

1 Introduction

The phenomenon of predication has always aroused a lot of interest in linguistics. Much attention has been given so far to the verbal form of predication in a sentence, namely primary and secondary predicative structures.

Speaking in general terms, predication is seen as a quality / property / relation designated by the speaker as regards an object or individual (in a wider sense), in other words, something which is affirmed or denied of the subject of speech. This quality can be described in a plenty of different ways as it reflects how precisely the speaker correlates it with the situation of speech: the focus can be made on time, modality (possible /impossible, obligatory, necessary, desirable, planned, certain, permissible action or process, etc.) and subject-verb agreement details (person / number). These details are in charge of the degree of explicitness with which predication is fleshed out in a text. Actually, any situation (a quality / property assigned to an object) can be described in a rather economical way, with minimum language means employed, e.g.: I turned and saw how she was being walked toward the door of an interrogation room. (M. Connelly. The Fifth Witness) vs I turned to see her being walked toward the door of an interrogation room. Or: She looked like a deer caught up in the lights of the traffic. (ibid) vs She had the classic deer-in-the-lights look in her eyes.

This phenomenon is described in linguistics as reduced (secondary) predication (Beklemesheva 2011). In other words, some or all grammatical categories of predication are not necessarily explicitly exhibited being easily derived from the context as they coincide with the grammatical form of the full-sized matrix predicate they always go together with.

The forms of reduced predication in the natural language are diverse and plentiful, including semi-predicative structures, structures of condensed predication and latent predication found only in analytical languages (English) (Souleimanova 2009). Overall, secondary predication appears to be an effective tool of increasing the informative “density” of speech as it helps pack more information into a sentence without making it overloaded syntax-wise.

Semi-predicative structures involve participle and infinitive constructions and verbal adverbial constructions (Russian deeprichastiya) retaining some of the predicative grammatical characteristics, at least temporal, sometimes modal ones. Cf.:

I could see it coming; She nested against his shoulder, like a bird seeking refuge; [action is simultaneous with the matrix predicate]; Yellowed with age [this action is prior to the principal one], this scrap of paper turned out to contain [simultaneous] nothing more remarkable than Lawrence’s scribbled note to the butler…

(J. Coe. What a Carve Up!)

Given these features, semi-predicative structures are defined in traditional grammar as non-finite predicates unlike finite ones with all the grammatical characteristics in place.

Condensed predicative structures describe the situation in a more abstract way, largely due to semantic affinity with the finite verb of the matrix sentence. They are: deverbal nouns: проведение мероприятия vs мероприятие будет / было проведено; an adorable continuation of that trend vs the trend was continued / will be continued; and English compound attributes: wheelchair-bound person vs a person who is bound to the wheelchair; cf. also: ill-gotten affluence; well-built man; ill-fitting suit.

Latent predication occurs in structures with adverbial particles, indicating the direction of movement while the predicate of movement itself is omitted (as its meaning is obvious from the context), e.g.: I whistled and signaled him back to the car vs signaled that he should go back to the car; He waved me into silence with an imperious hand vs waved his hand to signal I should keep silent (R. Harris. The Ghost); I want them out vs I want them to go out; adjectives in the comparative degree indicating the outcome of some changes (with an action or a process implied): better standards – the standards have become better as something was improved. Another type of latent predication is omission of a predicate of action / process with the focus made on the result of this action / process, cf.: conducting nuclear tests is prohibited vs nuclear tests are prohibited.

This evidence brings up a question: as the same situation can be described with different predicative structures, what determines the speaker’s choice? When is it more appropriate to use he came to see instead of he came and saw? With summer approaching he decided on the countryside vs Summer was approaching and he decided to go to the countryside; she waved him forward vs she waved to encourage him to move forward?

There is a sense that the answer can be found with the help of functional sentence analysis. The communicative significance of secondary predicative structures has not been paid enough attention to so far. Though syntactically secondary predicative structures are dependent (as they are used only in combination with full-sized matrix predicates), content-wise they make independent efficiently packed units of information, which might be more or less significant (rhematic or thematic in terms of the Functional sentence perspective approach – FSP). At the same time, it can be assumed that in the languages of different types (analytical vs synthetic) there are different correlations between the “size” of predication in the structure (explicitness of its grammatical characteristics) and the communicative significance of the predicative structure.