Text Units - Saying and Interphrase Unity

According to V.V. Vinogradov, the doctrine of the text - this is the doctrine of the types of verbal design of self-contained works as a special kind of integral structures. Ways to study the text are scheduled attempts to interpret the statement in the process of its generation, and not just as a finished product. Essentially, text linguistics originated at a time when researchers felt the need to move away from studying the sentence as a formal language unit and move on to studying the statement as a functional unit, a unit of real speech generation and perception, a unit related to the situation. Thus, the study of the text is thoroughly prepared by functional syntax. The functional approach to the study of syntactic units made it possible to go beyond the sentence-statements, pay attention to its place in the system of other sentences-statements, to establish links between them, both contact and distant. And this is a direct way to the study of some unity of sentences-statements, i.e. components or fragments of text.

In the system of categories of linguistic text there is a functional, meaningful and structurally complete speech unity, fastened by the author's modality. Any text - multi-functional and multi-modal - is first of all a set of sentences-statements, which, grouped together on the basis of semantic and structural (interphrase) links, are combined into text units - interphrase unity, components or fragments of text, finally, a whole speech work. The text as a functional-semantic-structural unity has certain rules of construction, reveals the laws of semantic and formal connection of its constituent units.

The mechanisms of formation of the text (varying from the target setting, manifested during speech activity) are usually selective. And they act in the direction of creating different types of text that have their own forms of construction, organizations developed by social practice [1].

When constructing the text, the maximum language units (sentences) are used, which become the minimum speech units (statements), the latter, being combined into semantic-structural units, form different types and types of speech organization (in other words - speech types, text types, etc. .) These blocks are based on different types of statements, which, combined with each other, form these different types of text.

A statement is an implemented sentence (not a scheme, but a lexically filled, expressing a specific goal setting unit of speech). Any statement is a sentence, but not any sentence is a statement. Or: one sentence may contain several statements-messages. In the text, we are not dealing with a sentence (in the terminological sense), but with statements, i.e. not with language units, but with speech units that specify their meaning in the text. For example, the sentence. Students went on a tour may contain three statements, the meaning of which manifests context. Accordingly, different accents are possible (stress):

The students went on a tour (and not someone else).

Students went on a tour (and did not go on foot).

The students went to this excursion (and not for agricultural work).

Statements are single - object and multi-object (depending on how many events are reflected in its content). For example: A train is going (a message about train movement) and a train is going at high speed (a message about train movement and its speed). The proposal I was informed about the arrival of the father reflected two events: I was informed that the father had arrived (two subjects of action).

A statement always has two components, in contrast to a sentence, where there can be one component, two and several (main members and minor; one-piece and two-part sentences). The components of the statement are the theme and the rem (the theme is the given, the initial; the rem is the new, the sought). The terms of the sentence, for example, the subject and the predicate, do not necessarily coincide with the components of the utterance — theme and reference. The order of the components of the statement - from topic to mode (this is an objective, direct word order). For example: We heard the sound. The door creaked. In the second statement, it “squeaked” —the topic (known from the first sentence-statement) and the “door” —the rem (the new one that is reported on this topic). From the point of view of the grammatical structure of the sentence, the “door” will be subject, and “creaked” by the predicate.

Statements are of two types, depending on their communicative qualities (division is given in general and conditionally).

Informative statements, in which meaningful information unfolds (these are descriptive, narrative, argumentative, analyzing type messages), and verifying statements that serve the purpose of affirmation or refutation, counter-arguments (polemical statements, persuasive, influential). The function of informative statements is the message - they carry new information. The function of verification statements is to formulate a reaction to the opinion of the interlocutor (real or imaginary), i.e. give a correction or verification of this opinion [2]. Such statements perform the function of emotional impact.

Cf .: verification and informative statements (depending on the stress) in the poem of M.Yu. Lermontov: “ I love the motherland, but with strange love” (I. Andronikov insists on this reading). The emphasis falls on the word "love", therefore, the phrase is perceived as a response response, refuting the opinion of an imaginary interlocutor. In such a reading, the statement will be verifiable, i.e. refuting another opinion, information about which has already been given. When transferring the stress: “I love my fatherland , but ...” - the statement is perceived as purely informative, not related to the reaction to the information received.

Informative statements underlie the texts of descriptive, narrative, argumentative, analyzing (the latter two combine texts such as reasoning). Verification statements do not serve as organizing components of special types of text, they are wedged (with varying degrees of intensity) into the texts of the types mentioned (there will be more of them, of course, in reasoning type texts), and this insertion gives the effect of dialogization: there is an effect of dialogue, but a question-answer The system is not represented (there is only an answer). This type of speech organization turns into a special journalistic or, more broadly, artistic device.

Monologue depending on the purpose of the statement is mostly communicating or emotionally evaluative, with a pronounced modality.

Organizing on the basis of different communicative types of statements, different types of text produce specific speech means of their design. In an ideal, pure form, they can preserve the specifics of the means throughout the textual component - descriptive, narrative statements, statements such as reasoning (the choice of this speech design is dictated by the nature of the information, as well as by the target specification); the transition from one speech form to another is determined by a number of reasons, including tempo, rhythm; for example, speeding up the pace of narration reduces extremely descriptive moments; on the contrary, slowing down the tempo stretches the description.

Informative utterances usually convey factual and conceptual information (in the artistic text this is the author’s vision of the world), verifying utterances create evaluative information (often subtext).

When characterizing statements, the concepts of dictum and mode are also used . The main, informative information is transmitted by the dictum; additional, evaluative, interpretive - modus. For example, in the sentence-statement Thank God, the rain finally ended. The main information is contained in the component the rain ended (this is a dictum); other components make up the modus: they accompany the basic information, subjectively evaluate it, comment. Statements can consist only of a dictum, but cannot contain only a mode (as there is no material for interpretations), although in the context of a dissected speech, they can take an “independent” position, but only if there is a basic structure. For example: The rain is over. Thank God, finally. Modus components may be subject to reduction: I was surprised that ...; To my surprise...; Surprisingly ... Dictum and modus can be represented in one word, for example, when prompted to action: Enter (I want you to enter).

On the basis of the statement, interphrase unity (or complex syntactic integers) are built. This is the second semantic-syntactic unit of the text, which is the union of two or more statements - thematic and structural unification. Interphrase unity is organized through a theme-rhematic sequence.

In the theme-rhematic sequence, step-by-step thematization of the rem is performed.

The unity of the topic can be considered in the volume of the microtheme and the topic of the entire speech work. The smallest private topic is a topic concluded in interphrase unity. The transition from one topic (microthemes) to another is the boundary of interphrase units. Interphysic unity is always monotematic, when combined with each other, there is a transition from the expression of the microsome to the macrometema.

Communicative continuity between its components is important for the text. Each statement in the communicative plan is connected with the previous one and promotes the message from the known to the new, from the given, initial to the core. The result is a theme-rhematic sequence, a chain. The text as a communicative unit presupposes such a combination of statements, in which each of the subsequent ones contains some minimal information that was already available in the previous statement.

Take an example: A king, a widower, lived in a very famous and big city. The king had a daughter, a bride. The princess was far famous for her face and mind, and therefore many very good people wanted to marry her. Among these suitors were princes, governors, and trade visitors, and clever crooks who always jostle in noble houses and seek out what to serve (N. Roerich. Children's Fairy Tale).

Each of the statements in this piece of text, which is an interphrase unity, gradually moves the information forward, as if starting from the preceding utterance, which is manifested in the repetition of this information: the old king lived, the widower lived with the king (1st sentence - 2 -e offer); there was a daughter – princess (2nd offer - 3rd offer); they wanted to marry her - among these suitors (3rd sentence - 4th sentence).

It is easy to note that if we designate the components of a statement in terms of the actual segmentation of the sentence / t is the theme, d - mode /, then the structure of this interphrase unity and at the same time its communicative perspective will look like this:

As you can see, the new information is carried by the rhematic components of the utterance, it is they who push the information forward; the thematic components, on the other hand, fix the starting points of the statements; they fasten the individual statements, linking them into a single whole and ensuring continuity - informative, communicative, structural. Repeated information is given precisely in the thematic component of the utterance, in which, according to the basic regularity of the construction of the text, the entire preceding utterance repeats, in whole or in part,: g ₁ gives t ₂ ; r ₂ gives t ₃ , etc. Thus, a theme-rhematic sequence is formed within a piece of text, which is syntactically organized as a complex syntactic whole. It is the theme-rhematic sequence that shows the communicative connectedness of the text, because through it there is an accumulation of information, its promotion; but at the same time the theme-rhematic sequence also reveals structural coherence: the thematic continuity of each of the statements requires “clothing in verbal clothes” and at the same time the choice of certain syntactic means of communication. So the content seeks the form, the form becomes meaningful.

Another example: In my youth, I experienced a passion for exotic. The desire of the extraordinary has haunted me for many years (K. Paustovsky) - the end of the first sentence and the beginning of the second have the same meaning, i.e. The first sentence goes to the second sentence.

The same chain dependence holds together the following sequence of units in the structure of a complex whole: I saw a narrow street leading into the mountains. She covered the entire length of a deaf, almost black canopy of vines , stretched on poles. Large ripe bunches of grapes hung low over the street. Below them was a donkey with a flashlight around his neck. The flashlight was electric and the luminary was very strong (K. Paustovsky). So through the theme-rhematic sequence can be traced a gradual, step by step, increase in the reported information; its landmarks: street - grapes - donkey with a flashlight.

Such a pattern in constructing a text message is important in practical terms: the choice of “verbal clothing” to designate repeated information in each subsequent thematic component of the utterance receives an objective justification and turns from an intuitive process into a process that is consciously controlled and controlled. For example, when literary editing a text when it is impossible to find a synonymous substitution to signify the concept mentioned in the text, it is necessary to place the repeated phrase at the beginning of the statement, so as not to destroy the communicative and semantic integrity of the components of the interphrase unity, although stylistically it may seem inconvenient (the editor intuitively tries to put repeated words like can be further from each other). Wed in our example, an unfortunate option when rearranging a repeating word: In the very famous and big city there lived an old king, a widower. The daughter, the bride, was with the king. The theme-rhematic sequence with such a construction of the second utterance was destroyed.

The connection of individual statements is detected through communication signals — indicators of connectedness, in particular, names, pronouns, pronoun-adverbial words, conjunctions, etc. They act as indicators of the connection of individual utterances and text components. However, the structural relationship can be expressed through syntactic parallelism - chains of statements, repeating the same model. In the latter case, the role of word order in constructing text is particularly important and significant. Relationship can not be expressed verbally and exist only at the level of logical relations. For example: It became stuffy. We went outside (causation).

Subject-rhematic sequences are amenable to modeling. Chains can be different. Here are some examples:

At all times in the outfits of men an important place was given a hat. That narrow, then wide-brimmed, then sports cut. She was worn both to a suit, and to a raincoat, and to a shirt (Mosk. Koms. 1983. May 21).

In this case, a chain link is detected (a sequence of non-uniform composition).

A different design is given to the theme-rhematic sequence in the following example:

The storm raged over Petersburg, as the returned youth. A rare rain lashed at the windows. Neva swelled before the eyes and flowed over granite. People ran along the houses, holding their hats. The wind slammed with black overcoats. A dim light, ominous and cold, then diminished, then flared up when the wind blew a canopy of clouds over the city (K. Paustovsky).

This is how a theme-rhematic sequence is made using a parallel connection (a sequence of homogeneous composition). In addition, in this case, the sequence is also united by a common hypertect: t ₁ - g ₁ (The storm raged over Petersburg ... ). All subsequent proposals, similarly constructed, reveal the content of the first sentence, detailing the generalized formulated topic of the storm: (the rain whipped; Neva swelled; people ran; the wind slammed; the light diminished, it flared up; the wind blew ). The following interphase unity is also constructed: The sun has risen. The gardens began to flare up, dropping the dawn haze. Living light ran like a wind, obliquely across the face of a woman, flashed in her eyes, lit eyelashes and a nervous hand, clutching a railing. The bay was covered with stripes of light and fog (K. Paustovsky). The hyperton “Sun has risen” is meaningfully disclosed by subsequent sentences that have a parallel structure (word order, predicate form).

Theme-rhematic sequence can be formed in another way, in particular using the cross-cutting theme:

In our forests, raspberries grow mostly in gullets and along the banks of forest streams, where trees that have fallen to the ground rot into the dust. Raspberries , even garden ones, for some reason like wood rotten dust. Usually, raspberries are accompanied by tall herbs, most often nettle, which almost outgrow the raspberries themselves (V. Solouhin).

Naturally, different types of communication can be combined, making out the theme-rhematic sequences of mixed type.

Механизм перехода ремы одного высказывания в тему другого срабатывает отнюдь не автоматически, т.е. такой переход не всегда есть показатель связности текста и идеальности его структуры. Польская исследовательница Майенова, в частности, привела пример следующий, когда тема-рематическая цепочка не стала гарантией правильности построения текста: Кинотеатр находился на Пулавской улице. Пулавская улица – это одна из улиц Варшавы. Улицы в Варшаве имеют определенную форму. Такую форму можно описать при помощи следующих уравнений.. .[3] Такой текст, структурно «правильно» построенный, в обычной речевой ситуации маловероятен, поскольку в информационном плане он лишен четкого назначения, целевой установки. Значит, структурная связность должна лишь проявлять смысловую и коммуникативную связь; ставшая самоцелью, она лишается содержательного смысла.

Правила анафоры (повторяемости элементов) в принципе никем не устанавливались, но при построении текста в этом отношении действуют достаточно четкие закономерности, выявление которых помогает вскрыть механизм текстообразования и сделать этот процесс управляемым, объективным.

При оформлении повторной информации в каждом из звеньев межфразового единства выявляются некоторые общие закономерности. В частности, учитываются возможность или невозможность замены имен местоименными словами, правила пользования указательными словами, необходимость повторяемости терминов из-за отсутствия эквивалентных замен и т.д. Все это определяет поиск операций, усиливающих структурную связность компонентов текста.

Текстообразующую роль выполняют не только анафорически употребляемые местоименно-наречные слова, различные виды повторной номинации, но и порядок слов, особенно в тех случаях, когда лексико-грамматические средства связи отсутствуют.

The laws of the order of words are connected precisely with the theme-rhematic structure of the utterance. In the formation of text, the rhematic components play a large role due to the fact that the position of the rem turns out to be marked - this is the final position of the utterance. This is the basis for the movement of the communicative progression - the growth of the informational significance of the messages in the text components.

Порядком слов в предложении считается расположение в нем его членов. Существует мнение, что порядок слов в русском языке свободный, т.е. за членами предложения не закреплено определенное место. Действительно, сказуемое может стоять то после подлежащего, то перед ним; некоторые виды обстоятельств и дополнения могут занимать разные места в предложении, способны отрываться от тех слов, с которыми связаны грамматически и по смыслу; даже определения, наиболее тесно связанные с определяемыми словами, могут располагаться и перед ними, и после них. Например: Случилось это давно. В давние-предавние времена... жило одно киргизское племя на берегу большой и холодной реки. Энесай называлась эта река(C. Aitmatov). In the first sentence, the subject stands after the predicate, and the circumstance turned out to be not after the predicate, but after the subject. In the second sentence, circumstance in the long-standing times is placed at the beginning of the sentence, and the predicate lived before the subject. The circumstance on the bank of the river was cut off from the verb-verb . Especially unusual is the order of the words in the last sentence, where the nominal part of the predicate Enesay standing before the bundle was called . Other variants of the arrangement of words in these sentences are possible: It happened a long time ago ... This river was called Enesay; It happened a long time ago ... This river was called Enesai.However, these permutations are not infinite, they are determined and limited by the laws of construction of a complex whole. Consequently, if it is possible to speak of a relatively free order of words, then only with reference to certain verbal complexes. Prepositions, conjunctions, particles always have a definite place in a sentence. Other words allow some freedom in placement, but the options for their location is also not unlimited. These restrictions are associated with two reasons: the structural connectedness of the components of the utterance within the limits of interphrase unity and their semantic significance. The word order may change due to the need to change the meaning, the accentual qualities of the components of the interphrase units.

Каждое предложение, реализуясь в речи в виде конкретной единицы сообщения, оформляется в соответствии с определенным коммуникативным заданием, и его грамматическая структура зависит от задач целенаправленного сообщения. Приспособление грамматической структуры предложения в результате включения в ту или иную речевую ситуацию к задачам коммуникации есть его актуальное членение (термин чешского лингвиста В. Матезиуса). Единицы, фигурирующие при актуальном членении, Матезиус назвал основой и ядром высказывания, или темой и ремой, в другой терминологии.

В результате актуального членения предложение становится динамической единицей речи. Актуальное членение может по-разному соотноситься с его грамматическим членением. Возьмем предложение Отец приедет завтра. Это повествовательное предложение можно переделать в вопросительное Отец приедет завтра? Однако такое «нейтральное» вопросительное предложение в речи не может существовать, так как неясно, какой ответ ожидается. Интонационное выделение слова, с которым связано содержание вопроса (осуществляемого посредством логического ударения), дает возможность приспособить это предложение к нуждам общения. Задавая вопрос Отец приедет завтра? , мы используем речевую ситуацию, при которой общающимся известно, что отец приедет и неизвестно время приезда. При развернутом ответе предложение будет выглядеть так: Отец приедет завтра (или послезавтра ). С точки зрения актуального членения темой сообщения в этом предложении является отец приедет, а ремой (новым в сообщении) – завтра, так как цель построения данного предложения состоит в обозначении времени, поскольку все остальное известно. Wed также вопросы с иными акцентами ( Отец завтра приедет? Завтра приедет отец? ), в которых подчеркивается поиск информации иного типа. Однако в любом случае с точки зрения грамматического членения предложение делится на иные отрезки: отец – подлежащее; приедет завтра – состав сказуемого.

Тема сообщения может быть определена контекстом. Например: В нашем саду водились белки. Но появлялись они редко. Первое предложение содержит сообщение о наличии белок. Поэтому во втором предложении это известное (раз они водились, могли и появиться) помещается вначале – Но появлялись они, а далее сообщается новое – редко. Таким образом, при актуальном членении предложение распадается на части но появлялись они и редко; грамматически же предложение членится по-другому: Они (подлежащее) и появлялись редко (состав сказуемого). При актуальном членении в данном случае объединились оба главных члена в один компонент, а второстепенный член предложения выделился в особый компонент актуального членения.

Грамматическое членение предложения на состав подлежащего и состав сказуемого определяется позиционной структурой самого предложения. Актуальное членение зависит от причин внешних для данного предложения: от контекста, речевой ситуации, т.е. характеризует высказывание как компонент межфразового единства –строевой единицы текста.

Таким образом, при рассмотрении вопроса о порядке слов нельзя исходить из таких категорий, как члены предложения[4]. «Расположение слов в речиопосредовано расположением других единиц, в состав которых они входят, – темы и ремы, а в состав и той и другой единицы могут входить слова любых категорий»[5]. Поэтому не вполне правомерно определять, например, расположение подлежащего перед сказуемым как прямой порядок слов, а расположение сказуемого перед подлежащим как обратный порядок. И при прямом порядке слов грамматическое сказуемое может занимать первое место, если цель высказывания состоит в обозначении действующего лица. Значит, порядок слов в предложении нельзя рассматривать в отрыве от его актуального членения, и понятия «прямой» и «обратный» порядок слов означают не последовательность расположения грамматических членов предложения (подлежащего, сказуемого, определения, дополнения и обстоятельства), а последовательность расположения темы и ремы и их компонентов. Порядок слов в предложении зависит от его «сообщительного»[6] смысла и не может самоопределяться. Порядок слов – не внутреннее качество определенного предложения, а качество, навязанное ему извне: структурой и семантикой предшествующих предложений, коммуникативным заданием и т.д.

The direct dependence of word order on the actual segmentation of the sentence is manifested in its obvious connection with the context. The word order of each individual sentence included in the context is not arbitrary, but subject to this context. Inversion of the members of an individual sentence is very often a reflection of the patterns of building interphase unity. Take an example: “Autumn Day in Sokolniki” is the only landscape of Levitan where a person is present, and that was written by Nikolai Chekhov. After that, people never appeared on his canvases. They were replaced by fields and pastures, hazy spills and impoverished huts of Russia, mute and lonely, as a man was mute and lonely at the time (K. Paustovsky, Isaac Levitan). The word order is relatively free only in the first sentence, which opens the narration. As for the subsequent ones, here the order of the words is entirely subordinate to the context reflecting the sequential development of thought. Thus, the circumstance after this begins the second sentence clearly under the influence of the semantics of the first, the subject people also pull closer to the first sentence because of the mentioning of this concept in the first sentence ( compare the predicate word order - subject to the determinant in a single sentence). In the third sentence, their object was clearly in front of the controlling form of the verb because of the need to indicate the word forms in front. The preposition of the predicate was mute and lonely, too, associated with the text - the presence of homogeneous, separate definitions in front of the mute and lonely. Another example: These poems caused tears in Kiprensky. They had everything he loved since childhood - old gardens, cold wind, night clouds and a tender heart. Then this love for the stormy nature and restless human heart got stronger under the influence of time (K. Paustovsky). The first sentence is relatively free. The sequence of the subject is the predicate, the location of the dependent word forms ( these verses; they caused tears in Kiprensky ) —all fixes the direct word order. The second sentence is constructed differently: the separation of the dependent word form in them, the sequence of the predicate - the subject (cf. everything was in them ... ). This word order is “imposed” by the first sentence. Further, in the third sentence, which then begins as a determinant , the expected usual order (usual for this particular sentence), the predicate - the subject is violated, so the semantics of the sentence in front of it determined the theme that followed, and in this case the subject was grammatical, so it placed immediately after the determinant. Therefore, word order plays a constructive role at the text level.

In the structure of interphrase unity (of a complex syntactic whole), the first introductory phrase, defining the thematic and structural perspective of the whole interphrase unity, plays a major constructive role. The start phrase is autosemantic, i.e. it is self-sufficient in the sense relation, even being taken out of the context of the whole. In the examples cited earlier from K. Paustovsky [7], such a role is played by phrases. The storm raged over Petersburg. The sun rose, which in a sense-related sense, as it were, absorbed all the other expressions of these unity, summarizing the detailed description of the "storm" or "sunrise." It is also important for the structure of these interframe unities that each of the following statements is built on the pattern of the first phrase, beginning, copies its structure; This is facilitated by the predicate word order - the subject (in the first example) and especially similar forms of verbs: people ran, the wind clapped, the light diminished, then flared up; the gardens began to inflame; the light ran through, lit up, the gulf was covered.

Another example:

Weather tormented. In the morning the sun was shining, hovered over steaming fields, over muddy roads, over breads saturated with water that lay down on the ground. In the morning, Averky, who sometimes left his cart and went before the hut, promised the old woman that he would get it. But by lunchtime the clouds again appeared, which seemed even blacker from the shine of the sun, the clouds changed their unusual colors and outlines, the cold wind rose and the rainbow rain flowed across the fields (I. Bunin).

Zachin - Weather tormented. All the content of subsequent statements is subordinated to this original topic: its detailed justification is given. The cohesion of the statements is revealed in the following: the main verbs have one tense plan ( tormented, lighted, soared, promised, dropped, changed, raised, ran ); parallelism in the construction of explanatory parts (second and fourth statements); a repetition of the circumstances of the time at the beginning of each utterance ( in the morning; in the morning; but for lunch ); adversary relationships at the junction of the third and fourth statements; position of the verb-predicate before the subject (the second and fourth statements).

The origin phrase can also have this specificity: it contains a word (or words) containing the entire content of the sequentially enumerated components of a complex syntactic integer. Such unity is built according to the scheme of a sentence with homogeneous terms, for which there is a generalization. Here is an example: From here you could see everything around. And the highest snowy peaks, above which only the sky. They stood behind the mountains, over all the mountains and over the whole earth. And the same mountains as the snows below are wooded mountains overgrown with deciduous thickets, and on top a dark pine forest. And the mountains of Kungei, facing the sun; on the slopes of Kungeev, nothing grew except grass. And the mountains are even smaller, on the side where the lake is, just bare rocky ridges (C. Aitmatov). Thus constructed interphase unity is easily combined into one sentence.

Origin phrases (the first utterances of interphrase unity) play an important role both in structural and in semantic terms: they represent thematic milestones of the text. Each initial phrase is a new microtheme. By the way, if, as an experiment, we pull together the first phrases in a single text, omitting all the other components of the interphase unities, then we get a concise story without details, explanations and explanations.

Take an excerpt from the work of M. Sholokhov:

The regiment retreated the second day. Slowly, with battles, but retreated. On elevated dirt roads stretched the wagons of the Russian and Romanian armies. The combined Austro-German units covered the retreating with a deep flanking round, trying to close the ring. // In the evening it became known that the 12th regiment and the Romanian brigade adjacent to it were threatened with encirclement. The enemy at sunset had knocked out the Romanians from the village of Hovineski and had already advanced to the heights of “480”, which border on the Holschland. // At night, the 12th regiment, supported by an equestrian-division battery, received an order to take up positions in the lower reaches of the Golsh Valley. The regiment, putting guard guard, prepared for the oncoming battle. / On this night, Mishka Koshevoy and his farmer, chubakovy Alexei Beshnyak, were secret. They lurked in the bright near the abandoned collapsed well, inhaling the thin air of frost.

This passage is easily divisible into four parts (see conventional symbols). The first phrases of these parts basically convey in a concise form the entire content of the picture drawn here:

The regiment retreated the second day.

By evening, it became known that the 12th regiment and the Romanian brigade next to it were threatened with encirclement.

At night, the 12th regiment, supported by a battery of the equestrian-mountain division, was ordered to take up positions in the lower reaches of the Golsh Valley.

On this night, Mishka Koshevoy and his farmer, chubakovaty Aleksey Beshnyak, were secret.

Each of these phrases begins a new idea, outlines a sequential transition from one topic to another, which is why a complete retelling of the main content of the passage turned out (of course, without details in the description). Thus, the role of the first phrase in the interphrase unity, as well as the word order in the composition of the statements, turned out to be constructive from the point of view of text formation.

Such is the structure of interphrase unions as semantic-syntactic components of the text, built on the theme-rhematic sequence type.

The growth of information from topic to mode, from one statement to another in the composition of interphrase unity does not always occur with the sequence that was noted in the examples given. In real texts, it is quite often possible to find gaps in the theme-rhematic sequences, jumps that allow you to compress the flow of information, save text space. This happens in cases where a new information (usually consisting in a rem) falls immediately into the subject of the subsequent utterance, i.e. one of the microthemes in the sequence is not represented, forming a missing semantic and structural link. By the way, such “omissions” do not affect the perception of the text, the context fills these gaps. Moreover, often a full thematic representation in a sequence may look artificial, as something overly explanatory of the obvious. The races in the sequence are used by authors whose style is alien to verbosity.

An example of a jump in the sequence:

Shchedrin returned home. Neither Martha nor Peter was. Only the cat wandered from room to room, bending coyly about door jambs (K. Paustovsky. Northern Tale). Conditionally, you can fill in the gaps: Shchedrin returned home. [He discovered at home that] There was neither Martha nor Peter. [There was a cat]. Only the cat wandered from room to room ...

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin often uses this method of data compression:

Once they played cards with horse guards Narumov. The long winter night passed unnoticed. They sat down to dinner at five o'clock (Queen of Spades).

Wed: Once played cards horse equestrian Narumova. [The game dragged on. It was already night.] The long winter night passed unnoticed.

Example from K. Paustovsky:

Out of boredom, I went wandering around the place. On the main street were opened little shops. Of these, she carried herring and washing soap. A freckled barber stood in the doorway of a barbershop with a sign hanging on one crutch and gnawed seeds (the main street and the barber shop are not thematically represented in this complex whole).

A jump in the sequence makes it possible to compress the semantic structure of the text, and then most of the text space will be taken up by the rhematic components of the utterance, since the topic (about what?) Is usually previously known, and the structure of the utterance does not change, only the topic seems to be inferior to its position.

Thus, statements (minimum units of text) are combined in the interphrase unity on the basis of thematic unity and structural indicators of connectivity. Such associations form a theme-rhematic sequence of uniform, heterogeneous or mixed composition. In turn, interphase unity merged into larger thematic blocks, forming fragments of text.

Such a sequence in combining text units with a mandatory increase in the level of division of the text (saying - interphrase unity - fragment) in real texts is not necessarily maintained. So, for example, a separate statement can take the position of an independent component of the text, being between different interphrasal unity, forming a thematic transition between them.

Here, for example, is a fragment from M. Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita:

Margarita jumped down from the cliff and quickly went down to the water. Water attracted her after the air race. Throwing the brush away from her, she ran away and jumped into the water with her head down. Her light body, like an arrow, plunged into the water, and the column of water threw almost to the very moon. The water turned out to be warm, like in a bath, and, emerging from the abyss, Margarita swam in plenty all alone at night in this river.

There was no one next to Margarita, but bursts and snorts were heard a little further behind the bushes, someone was also swimming there.

Margarita ran ashore. Her body was burning after bathing. She felt no fatigue and happily danced on the wet grass. Suddenly she stopped dancing and became alert. The snort began to approach, and some naked fat man in a black silk top hat, wrung on the back of his head, crawled out from behind the willow bushes. The feet of his feet were in muddy mud, so it seemed like a bather wearing black shoes.

This composition is constructed in such a way that the inner phrase-statement by one part summarizes the front component of the text ( there was no one next to Margarita ) and outlines a thematic transition to the description of the following picture (the appearance of a snorting fat boy). Thus, complex whole and thematic blocks of text do not necessarily follow each other, but may be interrupted by separate statements important from the point of view of the composition of the entire text fragment.