Linguistics : Functional perspective in passive constructions

The subject of this article is functional perspective in passive constructions (PC). Under a passive construction we mean a polypropositional sentence, which expresses the object`s condition because of the subject`s activities. The first part of the article contains a survey of the main theoretical principles. The second and the third ones are dedicated to the compositional special features and to the correlation between communicative and grammar structures of a PC-sentence. The analysis showed us that in the absolute beginning of a descriptive text (in the middle and at the end of a paragraph) a PC-sentence can be divided into three (not two-Theme and Rheme) semantic compositional parts: the one, which connects the sentence with the previous context, the part, which expresses the specific information of the sentence, and the third part, which expresses the development of the authors` idea and connects the sentence with the right context. The analysis also showed us that in the absolute beginning of a narrative text a PC-sentence consists of two parts only: the first one connects the sentence with the left context, and the second one expresses the logical development of an idea. In such a context we can read about the object of speech and the stages of its creation. The functions of all the semantic compositional parts of a sentence can fully or partly coincide. Any word of a sentence can get into one of these compositional parts. The order of the parts and the order of the words inside them depend on the context and the communicative intentions of a speaker. These semantic compositional parts are usually syntagmas, and the movement of an intonation inside them depends on the system of semantic oppositions with another components of the context.