In this article the author tries to identify the ways of irreality expression in English sentences.
Key words: irreality, unreality, conditional sentence.
In the process of communication there are various situations when the speaker needs to speak not only about the events that are taking place in reality, but on the basis of them to speak about the unreality of a certain action. Consequently, human thought is capable of abstracting and constructing various kinds of conclusions that reflect not only facts of real reality, but also events contrary to it, that is, invalid, unreal.
In the context of the past, the formal differences between the future indicative of the real future and the ascendant inclination of unrealistic action disappear. Consider this phenomenon on the example of the modal verb «should». In the context of the past, there is one form of «should infinitive» to express real and unrealistic actions related to the future. Thus, in English, in the context of the past, there is no clear formal distinction between real and unrealistic action if it relates to the future. To analyze it, let’s consider two examples:
1) There is no reason that I know why he should hunt me.
2)If that window had opened, I think I should have gone mad [1]
In the first sentence we can infer the implication of unreality through the auxiliary (not modal!) verb should. Introducing this very construction, the author emphasizes the meaning “it is impossible, I don’t believe in it”. The second example refers to the classical conditional sentence, which called Otto Jespersen “imaginative use of tenses” [2]. Therefore, the reader, who is acquainted with conditionals, can easily understand the author’s intention to express unreality of the situation. The omonymy of the «should infinitive» construct is removed by context.
According to O. Bondar, the reality of the action of the structure under study may be due to several factors: [3]
A) availability of time indicators of future time in the proposal;
B) influence of speech situation (extralinguistic context);
C) contrasting the form of the analyzed structure with the form of the past.
An indicator of irreality in the Russian sentence is the modal particle «would», also included in the union «to». In its historical development, the particle «would» comes from the verb «be», which has lost all its morphological features [4].
An analysis of the participation of the two parts of the sentence in the expression of irreality in English showed that it was possible to divide them into two large groups.
The first group are sentences that in the main part contain the speaker 's relation to what is reported in the sub-prepositional part, while the sub-prepositional part contains a description of the unreal event itself. By form, it is Suppressive Mood, and context expresses the meaning of irreality. In the main part of the first type of sentences there are words of certain semantics, which indicate that the event of the sub-preliminary part is represented as unreal. These are the verbs of inducement and desire, such as: demand, insist, demand, suggest, propose, etc. and derived nouns; adjectives, like essential, disgraceful, important, impossible, vital, incredible, incomprehensible, intolerable, terrible. More detailed classification was suggested by Kattahanova and Arustamyan, which included such parts of speech as nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs, and the example of synonymic rows of the semantic field “irreality”. [5]
The second group are sentences in which both components of the sentence are involved in the transmission of the value of irreality. The second type differs from the first in that both components describe unrealistic events between which a causal relationship is detected at the semantic level.
The line between future real and future unreal is very conditional. We have shown that the degree of reality of the action in each particular case is not determined by the grammatical form (due to its homonymicity), but depends on a variety of linguistic and extralinguistic factors. Linguistic factors refer to the context and its components that contribute to the realization of the meaning of reality/irreality. By extralinguistic factors is meant a pragmatic aspect, i.e. a communication plan, knowledge of customs, traditions, culture of the people.
Due to the homonimity of the «should infinitive» design in the context of the past time, there are difficulties in translating this patterns into both Russian and Uzbek languages. Therefore, in translating the sentence with a homonymic design, it is necessary to take into account the pragmatic aspect of the work, to identify all factors that remove homonymy. If homonymy is not removed, the meaning of reality/unreality in pragmatic terms is irrelevant.
One cannot but agree with Plotkin’s view that «the seed of the future real and the seed of the future unreal do not exclude, but complement each other, because both of these seeds are the seeds of futurity. The future time considered from the point of view of the past further separates the action from the moment of its possible implementation. In this sense, the seed of future time in English approaches so close to the seed of irreality that it becomes almost impossible to distinguish them. They are merged into a single problem». [6]
References:
- A. Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Stories. — London: Wordsworth Editions, 1996. — 1408 p.
- Otto Jespersen. A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. — London: Routledge, 2013. — 448 p.
- Bondar, O. The implementation of the modal meanings of the verb «should» and «would» in the context. // International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences. — 2015. — № 64. — 86 p.
- Плоткин В. Я. Строй английского языка: учебное пособие для студентов институтов и факультетов иностранных языков. // Высшая школа. — М.: БГПУ, 1989. — С. 450.
- Каттаханова Д., Арустамян Я. Языковые средства выражения ирреальности в английском языке // Научная дискуссия: вопросы филологии, искусствоведения и культурологии — М., 2013. — С. 123–130
- Плоткин В. Я. Строй английского языка: учебное пособие для студентов институтов и факультетов иностранных языков. // Высшая школа. — М.: БГПУ, 1989. — С. 450.
