Підручник для студентів старших курсів

1.2. General characteristics of some semantic and structural text categories. Defining a text as an integral communicative unit it is necessary to point out that it is characterized by a number of specific text categories constituting it and thus inherent in it. There is no generally recognized nomenclature of text categories in linguistics. Their types and number vary. For example, two basic groups of text categories, namely, semantic and structural ones are distinguished in textlinguistics: 1) semantic categories: informativity, presupposition, depth, pragmatics, implication, integrity; 2) structural categories: segmentability, grammatical cohesion, prospectiveness, retrospectiveness, continuum.
In fact, almost all text categories have a combined structural-semantic character, as they affect both the plane of expression and the plane of content. All text categories interact with one another, and the character of their interaction can have functional-stylistic significance, as it changes depending on a text type.
I. The aim and purpose of any text is to create and pass on a certain amount of information, which finds its expression in the category of informativity, one of the most essential categories of a text. There are two types of information conveyed by the belles-lettres text – factual and conceptual ones.
Factual information is explicitly presented in a text. It unfolds gradually and includes the description of facts, objects, phenomena, portraits of personages, landscapes, the development of events. It is a linear, surface information which has time and space duration. It makes up the theme of a text.
Conceptual information, or the author’s artistic message, is a more complex type of information, as it is implicit and is deduced from the text as a whole. It makes up the idea of the text, and can be treated as a text deep message which must be understood and explicated by the reader.
The conceptual information of the text, its message may correlate with its title. It may either fully correspond to it or oppose it, but in any case, the title of a text is closely associated with its conceptual information, or the author’s artistic message.
Note: texts of newspaper, scientific and official document functional styles are mainly characterized by factual information. Conceptual information is an indispensable feature of any belles-lettres text and is elicited from it in different ways by different recipients, i.e. readers.