Languages of the world: the criteria for differentiation of expanded sentences on the example of the English, Avar, Russian and French languages

The article contains a comparative analysis of a linguistically relevant, contextually and functionally equivalent basic communication language model - a sentence. The relevance of the topic lies in the fact that the authors carry out a comparative research of an expanded sentence as the most controversial and understudied sentence model based on the examples from four unrelated languages. Expanded sentences are not as unambiguous as they may seem; many Russian and foreign linguists still interpret them in different ways. A critical analysis of scientific literature on expanded sentences and their characteristics in particular leads to the conclusion that an expanded sentence is a special type of sentences characterized by a combination of two compulsory basic conditions: semantic and structural expansion of a sentence. However, according to this research based on different languages, these characteristics when applied to different types of expanded sentences (those with different expanding components) need some clarifications and modifications. There are language constructions which are formally the same as a number of elements expanding a sentence, so in linguistic studies these constructions are often not distinguished, confused and even equated with each other. The authors find this identification of expanded constructions with formally equal components unreasonable.