Traditionally units larger than a sentence are considered to be properties of Speech but not Language. The reason is that a unit of language must be a recurrent, that is repeated element. In this respect we should ask ourselves whatis to be repeated so that we can recognise an element as a unit. An answer to this question depends upon image of language we have.
For long relations between units of different levels were compared to those existing in a building: the smaller units were compared to bricks, the larger units —to blocks of bricks and the whole building — to a sentence. But every is useful only as an initial approach and becomes false if we insist not only on similarity of relations, but on more or less full coincidence of features. This is true for the comparison of a linguistic structure with buildings or any other physically existing structures. Thus to define a unit we have to discover what is actually repeated in speech.
For that we should find what are the elements of the units composed of. If we take any unit: a phoneme, a morpheme or any other, we can see that a unit is, in fact, a set of components with relations among them. So we can conclude that a unit has a structure and components. If so, we can state that recurrence or repetition may concern three features:
a) a unit is a repetition of components only;
b) a unit is a repetition of both components and structure;
c) a unit is a repetition of structure only.
These three possible answers should be now tested. If we take that a unit is a repetition of components only, we can find a great number of units having the same components but different structures, for example such morphs as |let| and |tell|. Thus the first answer cannot be accepted.
If we take that a unit is a repetition of both components and structure, then we should consider that the only units of language are allophones and perhaps morphs. But even these are not repeated in absolutely identical components. Moreover, we should forget about abstract units, since even for phonemes components are variable, including sometimes their relevant features. But the concrete, etic units might be considered as features of the language only if their connected with appropriate abstract, emic units.
Thus we have to take only the third answer stating that a unit is a repetition of structure. If so, we have to consider any repetition of relations of smaller units as a unit of language even if the components of the structure are used in these relations for the first time. From this follows that a sentence, being a stable and repeated structure, is a unit, though in the majority of occasions the very components, that is words within a sentence, might be found in this structure only once.
If we can prove that combinations of sentences are repeated structures in specific functions, we can say that there are units larger than a sentence. In §14 Ch1 we suggested that the units larger than a sentence might be of three types: dialogues, communicative parts and utterances. Now we have to prove that they have repeated structures. To prove that we take a short dialogue and try to find what can be changed in it without destroying it, for example lets take a dialogue the aim of which is to find out time:
A. Excuse me …
B. Yes?
A. Can you tell me what is the time now?
B. Half past two.
A. Thank you.
Not at all.
We can change a lot of things in this short dialogue. We can substitute all words in the utterances but the first two and the last but one. But we cannot remove the one of the utterances. If we do so, either the dialogue will be destroyed or it will belong to some other sphere of communication. Most interesting might be the result of deletion of the final utterance (not at all). Its exclusion will not actually destroy the dialogue or move it to some other sphere, it will show that participant B does not behave as expected, that is this participant does not completely perform his/her communicative part.
This analysis allows us to take dialogues and communicative parts as units of language because as we saw they have their specific recurrent structures.
The same is true for the utterance because depending upon the circumstances of speaking utterances have their specific structures and functions, for example an utterance which we may call a question may have different structures depending upon the speaker’s image of the partner and the situation of communication. A question may include some explanation for the very fact of asking the question, for example:
“Oh, my watch has stopped. Jane, don’t you know what’s the time?”
These structures are repeated if other features of communicative situation are repeated. In the dialogue we analysed it is hardly possible to expect that participant A will explain the reason for his/her asking the question.
Concluding this section we may say that Language possesses at least three units larger than a sentence. Since these units may express some of the meanings through opposition of their forms we may find Grammar on these levels too.