syntactic construction

The article develops the previous author’s studies of syntactic constructions in special texts. Based on definitions in the latest International Standard ISO 5127:2017, peculiarities of language for special purposes in comparison with language for general purposes and the related distinction of criteria applied for assessing linguistic phenomena are shown. Ukrainian equivalents of the typical syntactic constructions expressing requirement, prohibition, recommendation, permission, possibility and capability in English- and German-language standards are proposed.

The article compares a classic example of syntactic constructions in 5 languages, specifically, English, German, Russian, Polish and Ukrainian. These constructions express 1) terminative transitive action, 2) resulting event and 3) being in a resulting state. It’s demonstrated that if a language has the category of voice, active and passive constructions are used to represent the same action or event from two different viewpoints, whereas Ukrainian two-component constructions with passive adjectival represent resulting state, i.e. they are resulting and not passive.

The article deals with typical three-term and two-term syntactic constructions in professional texts, their transformational relationship and semantic differences. The activeness/ passiveness criterion of a syntactic construction is formulated. It is common of three-term and two-term syntactic constructions and is based on the syntactic function of the object. On the basis of this criterion the activeness of constructions with forms ending in -но, -то and the direct object is proved.