Structural and semantic properties of english hypothetical comparative constructions

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the study of comparative semantics and the way it is expressed by complex sentences with finite and non-finite subordinate clauses in English. Semantic and structural properties of English hypothetical comparative constructions with the conjunctions as if / as though are thoroughly analysed in this paper. Their use demonstrates current trends in language development, such as the desire for economical expression and the use of syntactically simpler structures in order to express thoughts more laconically which causes the syntactic reduction of subordinate clauses. The study of the peculiarities of comparative situation realized by the analyzed contexts was based on the corpus data obtained from British National Corpus, English dictionaries and modern English fiction. In the course of the study, the main structural-semantic properties such as the dominant type of the subject in the main and subordinate clauses of hypothetical comparative constructions, semantic groups of verbs in the function of the predicate, temporal and modal characteristics of the clauses have been discussed. It is shown that the forms of subjunctive mood in the subordinate clause are often replaced by indicative mood in modern English as the modal meaning of unreality is expressed by subordinating conjunctions as if / as though.