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

48 construction. In other words, we understand this sentence as follows "We saw, Soviet films which were shown in many Bombey cinemas". The constructions under consideration, as we have already said, are quite common and are widely used in English. That is why the discussion of the given problem seems to us very relevant, especially for teaching purposes. These constructions are described in every English grammar book, but the question of distinguishing between the verbals as the second element of the given constructions and as an attribute to the preceding substantive has hardly been touched upon. Usually, the authors prefer to explain the difference between the infinitive and the participle as the second element of such constructions'* which may also be important to a student of English. In any case, we looked through a score of English grammar books and only in one of them, written by Kiachalova KJM. and Iziailevich E.E., is this question more or less described.*' The authors write that after the verbs to see, to watch, to notice a substantive can be followed by participle 1 which is used as an attribute to the preceding substantive, and they give the following example: 3. Not far from the park I saw a woman sitting on a bench. The authors also explain that such word combinations coincide in form with the construction "Accusative with Participle I", but they have a different meaning and can only be distinguished between by the context. Now, what are the elements of the context that can help us distinguish one case from the other? In our opinion, it may be the meaning of def initeness or indefiniteness of the preceding substantive, if the substantive is used with the definite article or it is represented by a personal pronoun, then the participle can be regarded as the second element of the construction "Accusative with the Participle". And if we replace the indefinite pronoun "some" in our first example with the definite article (I saw the children crossing the street), then we shall be able to see that the meaning of the sentence will change and we shall understand it as "I saw how the children were crossing the street". In other words, we shall have the construction "Accusative with 'Participle I". On the other hand, if the substantive has the meaning of indefiniteness (and is used with the indefinite article or pronoun or without any determinative at all), then the following participle is usually an attribute to this substantive. Syntactically, this can be explained as follows. If the substantive is indefinite, it will naturally require some modification and the following verbal will enter into an attributive relationship with it. If the substantive is definite, it does not require any modification and the following verbal enters into a predicative relationship with it, which is really the case with the constructions "Accusative with the Participle".