| compound or complex.
A sentence is marked by its characteristic intonaion pattern and
terminal contour with or without a following pause. Semantically
it represents a complete message in a given context. A sentence
itself is a part of larger discourse, narrative or conversational
speech etc., and may be either of minor or major type. All common
types of sentence formation are discussed below in the forms as
they would form their intonational frame. |
| 3.3.1.
Kinds of sentences: |
| Any Munda sentence
may be categorised either as a minor sentence or a major one. |
| 3.3.1.1.
Minor sentences |
| All such synatatic
formations which are either structurally deviant but semantically
well formed or structurally well formed but semantically deviant
(i.e., semantically different from the total meaning of the components
of struction) may be classified as minor sentences. They occur in
isolation and are thus differentiated from a a clause or phrase.
A minor sentence may be either incomplete or a stereotype. They
are closed for further transformations. |
| 3.3.1.1.1.
Incomplete sentences: |
| Such structurally
deviant sentences which are incomplete formations but which may
be reconstructed with the help of the preceding sentence and whose
semantic structure may be thus deducible are incomplete minor sentences.
They may or may not be elliptical. In conversational speech such
incomplete sentences occur in forms of either addition, interruption
or response, whereas in former two cases they have complementary
character. |
| (a) Additive:
Additive types of incomplete sentence occur where the listner completes
a statement of the speaker in anticipation or as a modification
of a former statement. They may be both fo elliptical or non-elliptical
types. Finite verb may appear in such additives where third person
or impersonal constructions are involved. |
| Example from the
two types will illustrate: |
A. bar  aka-ge
pura?-te-do-ko om-jada |
|
They give merely two rupees in full’ |
|
B. bar aka
ka-re-do bar aka
aa ana |
|
‘two rupees or else two rupees and eight annas’ |
| In the above example
there is a modification by B of the statement of A and is performed
by incomplete sentence which may be reconstructed as following: |
| bar
aka ka-re-do
bar aka
aa ana-ko
om-jada |
| Non-elliptical
incomplete sentences are incomplete due to the absence of any other
syntactic itmes the finite verb and they also need reconstruction.
They usually complete the structure of the previous sentence, left
incomplete and thus both the sentences while remaining incomplete
stand in complementation to each other: |
A. ad seke a-sekea
ote-hasara?-kamiko . . . . |
|
‘and they (finish) the job of preparing the field very soon’ |
|
B. . . . . cabaia ‘(they) finish it’ |
| (b)
Interruptive: The interruptive type of incomplete and minor sentences
are used when any statement has to be either constested or contradicted.
Simple interruption with the objective of supplying a phrase or
a clause is additive, as stated above by virtue of being completive
in character. These sentences also are either elliptical or non-elliptical,
depending upon the point of interruption. The incomplete sentence
in such case, when reconstructed, may differ in construction from
the preceding one, unlike in the case of additive types: |
|
A. ena jan-ko-te-o huiN
din . . . . |
|
‘few days by means of these seeds . . . .’ |
