Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1991. British and American Philologycal Studies (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 20)

A. I. Pronichev: On the Question of Distinguishing Between Syntactic Constructions in English

47 PRONICHEV A. I. USSR, VLADIMIR ON TIIE QUESTION OF DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN SYNTACTIC CONSTRUCTIONS IN ENGLISH In this paper we shall consider participial and infinitival constructions which occur after a substantive in a postverbal position. Some of such constructions are commonly known as the "Accusative with the Participle (the Infinitive)". These constructions are so common and the knowledge of them is so trivial that we do not even bother to notice that sometimes the participle and the infinitive in the same position are not parts of the above mentioned constructions. The question is not merely a matter of terminology, it is a matter of correct understanding of English sentences. Let us take this example: 1.1 saw some children crossing the street. How do we understand the sentence? Does it mean 1 /"I saw how some children were crossing the street" or 2/"I saw some children who were crossing the street"? In other words, is the participle here the second part of the construction "Accusative with Participle I" or is it used as an attribute to the word " children" ? We borrowed this example from a textbook of English.

1 The authors of the textbook used the sentence to illustrate the construction "Accusative with Participle I". Formally, the words "children crossing" coincide with the construction, but in the given context, in our opinion, they cannot be regarded as such. We think that the second transformation of the given example is correct, and we have found confirmation of our point of view in "A Reference Grammar for Students of English" by Close RA.^ The author gives an example which is analogous to the given one

: 2.1 can see several people standing in the back. The author also writes that the participle "standing" is used here "as an adjective"

. Another example which attracted our attention as erroneous was found in the "English Grammar" by Novitskaya T.M. and Kuchin N.D.

3 / This example is as follows

: 3. We saw Soviet films shown in many Bombey cinemas. The authors give this example to illustrate the construction "Accusative with Participle II". But participle II in this sentence (shown) is definitely used as an adjective to modify the noun "films" and not as the second element of the above mentioned