PHENOMENOLOGICAL GRAMMAR: A LITERAL-TRANSLATION “THREE-ELEMENT META-METHOD” FOR IDENTIFYING PARTICIPLES IN COMPOUND SENTENCES

Abstract

The article addresses the challenge of identifying and utilizing participles in English compound sen tences, a persistent difficulty for learners. It critiques the prevailing empirical approach in language teaching, which treats grammatical constructions as external, objectified entities. As an alternative, a phenomenological approach is proposed, transforming the compound sentence and the participle into correlates of consciousness. A methodology based on structural sentence analysis and on the determination of the number of subjects and predicates is justified: the presence of four elements (two subjects and two predicates) indicates the absence of a participle, while the presence of three elements (one subject and two predicates) suggests its presence. Limiting the analysis to structures containing no more than two subjects and two predicates is posited as a necessary condition for simplifying the participle identifica tion process. It is emphasized that this meta-method focuses on the immediate structure of the sentence, i.e. on the ele ments that “show themselves”, which is interpreted as an attempt to describe the “phenomenon of the sentence” without delving into its semantics or context. The application of eidetic reduction is justified as a means of discarding “extrane ous” elements and revealing the essence of the phenomenon: simplifying the sentence structure to counting elements