Lecture 13 sentence

Definition: There are more than 100 definitions of the sentence. Some of them are the following: 1. The sentence is the immediate integral unit of speech built up of words according to a definite syntactic-pattern and distinguished by a contextually relevant: communicative purpose. 2. The sentence is a communication unit made up of words (and word-morphemes) in conformity with their combinabilty and structurally united by intonation and predicativity.

Main problems - There is a considerable divergence of opinion among grammarians concerning the analysis of "one-member" and "imperative" sentences. Some scholars do not treat them as sentences, others do treat them as sentences, as unlike the word such sentences do not exist in the system of language as a ready-made unit, they are created by speakers in the course of communication, they are^ internationally delimited and are characterized by predication. This discrepancy brings to the necessity to distinguish a sentence, which’s always structurally correct, and an utterance, which is not always structurally correct but is still a communicative unit of speech, as its meaning is complete. It happens when language enters into speech,

mat is when a sentence is used in speech (when it is pronounced) then it becomes an utterance.

Essential features of the sentence:

1. Sentence is a unit of speech, 2. Sentence is intonationally delimited, 3. Sentence is a predicative unit

Predication - is the expression of the relation of the utterance (sentence) to reality

1. The center of predication in a sentence of verbal type is a finite verb. The finite verb expresses essential predicative meanings by its categorical forms: tense and mood. For example in the sentence - "I hope" (H.E. Bates), "I" - indicates the person, "hope"- the tense and mood components of predicativity, In the sentence -"Invite me. .."(H.E.Bates), there is a one-word predication - invite- containing the mood component of predicativity. The person component is only implied.

2. V.V. Vinogradov insists that predication is effected by: • Intonation: Thus, one-member sentences of nominal type like: ”Night”, are also predicative units. They are pronounced with proper intonation, they contain the relations to the act of speech, the speaker and reality, as the noun -night- Is associated with the third person. When there are no positive indicators of any tense or mood the sentence is understood to contain the least specific of those meaning-indicative mood and the present tense.

' Word order: So uneasy was he that when the next postcard came it-came as a relief.

* Different functional words: "just, even"- No, Quite simple, 1 was just skating " (H.E. Bates).

Purposes of communication (declaration, interrogation, inducement), e.g.: "Me? Yon don't want to know about- me " (H.E.Bates)

Modal probability, e.g.: "perhaps, probably, may be, by all means I could

yours too?" (H.E.Bates).

Different principles of classification are based on three main aspects of the sentence:

• The semantic aspect (meaning) - the classification according to the semantic (Actual division).

The pragmatic aspect (function.) - the classification according to the purpose of the utterance.

The structural aspect (form) - the classification according to the structure.

CLASSIFICATION OF THE SENTENCE ACCORDING TO THE PURPOSE OF THE UTTERANCE

From the viewpoint of their _ role in the process of communication sentences are usually divided into several types. Scholars distinguish different numbers of communicative types of the sentence:

Two types: declarative and non-declarative [14,55-60].

• Declarative sentence - syntactic configurations which usually display an unmarked (i.e. expected) order of functional categories Subject, Predicate, Direct object, etc.

Non-declarative sentences display marked (out-of-the-ordinary) configurations. They include interrogative, exclamatory and imperative sentences. Interrogatives are subdivided into 1. "Yes/no interrogatives" (because they explicit either "yes" or "no" answers, 2. Open interrogatives or Wh-interrogatives. 3. Alternative interrogative and 4. Rhetorical interrogative.

Three types: the declarative sentence, the imperative (inductive) sentence, the interrogative sentence. These communicative sentence-types stand in strict opposition to one another, and their inner properties of form and meaning are immediately correlated with the corresponding features of the listener's responses [16,243-260].

Four types: declarative, interrogative (general questions, tag questions, alternative questions, suggestive questions, pronominal questions, rhetorical questions), imperative and exclamatory [25,9-18].

Five types. Earlier was distinguished one more type of the sentence plus to four above mentioned ones - the negative sentence.

Types of the sentences:

Declarative - The declarative sentence expresses a statement, either affirmative or negative, and as such stands in systemic correlation with the listener's responding signals of attention, of appraisal, of fellow feeling.

Interrogative - The interrogative sentence express a question. Types of interrogative questions: general questions, special questions, tag questions, alternative questions, rhetorical questions and suggestive questions (a peculiar kind of "yes/no" questions). They keep the word order of statements but serve as. questions owning to the rising tone and a question mark in writing)

There are three more types of the sentences, which are considered to be problematic, as they can express the same purpose of the utterance as the main types of the sentence. They are as follows:

Imperative - The imperative sentence expresses inducement, i.e. it urges the listener in the form of request or command to perform a certain action. Formally imperative sentences are marked by predicative verb in the imperative mood, the reference to the. second person and lack of subject. Types of Imperative sentences: Negative or affirmative, exclamatory, declarative, interrogative as the commands can be softened and made into requests with the help of a tag question or a "yes/no? question beginning with "will/would"

Forms of expressing inducement:

1. By the predicative verb- 'Wait a minute,' she said. (St. Barstow).

2. With the help of the word "please- Please don't ask me. (W.S. Maugham

3. With the help of "let"-:Let/s hurry. We can be back by half-past six '(.t. Collier).

4. By a third person command beginning with a noun or a pronoun denoting the person addressed- Heidi I-see that he washes! (RE. Bates) 5.By a verb less command - 'Sh-h-h! Don't, It might not be tactful (J-Collier),

5. By a word of a command -" But i want her to have it" (F.King)

CLASSIFICATION OF SENTENCES

The problem of classification of sentences is a highly complicated one, and we will first consider the question of the principles of classification, and of the notions on which it can be based.

Let us begin by comparing a few sentences differing from each other in some respect. Take, for example, the following two sentences: (1) But why did you leave England? (GALSWORTHY) and (2) There are to-day more people writing extremely well, in all departments of life, than ever before; what we have to do is to sharpen our "judgement and pick these out from the still larger number who write extremely badly, (CRUMP)

Everyone will see that the two sentences are basically different. This is true, but very general and not grammatically exact. In order to arrive at a strictly grammatical statement of the difference (or differences) between them we must apply more exact methods of observation and analysis.

Let us, then, proceed to a careful observation of the features which constitute the difference between the two sentences.

1 .The first sentence expresses a question, that is the speaker expects an answer which will supply the information he wants. The! second sentence expresses a statement, that is, the author (or speaker) states his opinion on a certain subject. He does not ask about anything, or expect anybody to supply him any information. This difference is expressed in writing by the first sentence having a question mark at the end, while the second sentence has a full stop.

2.The first sentence is adressed to a certain hearer (or a few hearers present), and is meant to provoke the hearer's reaction (answer). The second sentence is not adressed to any particular person or persons and the author does not know how anybody will react to it

3.The two sentences differ greatly in length: the first consists of only 6 words, while the second has 39.

4. The first sentence has no punctuation marks within it, the second has two commas and a semicolon.

5. The first sentence has only one finite verb {did ... leave), while the second has three (are, have, write).

These would seem to be some essential points of difference. We have not yet found out which of them are really relevant from a grammatical viewpoint. We have not included in the above list those which are quite obviously irrelevant from that viewpoint; for example, the first sentence contains a proper name (England) while the second does not contain any, or, the second sentence contains a possessive pronoun (our) while the first does not, etc.

Let us now consider each of the five points of difference and see which of them are relevant from a purely grammatical point of view, for a classification of sentences.

Point 1 states a difference in the types of thought expressed in the two sentences. Without going into details of logical analysis, we can merely say that a question (as in the first sentence), and a proposition (as in the second) ' are different types of thought, in the logical acceptation of that term. The problem now is, whether this difference is or is not of any importance from the grammatical viewpoint. In Modern English sentences expressing questions (we will call them, as is usually done, interrogative sentences) have some characteristic grammatical features. These features are, in the first place, a specific word order in most cases (predicate — subject), as against the order subject — predicate in sentences expressing propositions (declarative sentences). Thus word order may, with some reservations, be considered as a feature distinguishing this particular type of sentence from others. Another grammatical feature characterizing interrogative sentences (again, with some reservations) is the structure of the predicate verb, namely its analytical form "do + infinitive" (in our first sentence, did .., leave ..., not left), where in a declarative sentence there would be the simple form (without do). However, this feature is not restricted to interrogative sentences: as is II known, it also characterizes negative sentences. Anyhow, we can (always with some reservations) assume that word order and the form do 4- infinitive" are grammatical features characterizing interrogative sentences, and in so far the first item of our list appears to be grammalically relevant. We will, accordingly, accept the types "interrogative sentence" and "declarative sentence" as grammatical types of sentences.

Point 2, treating of a difference between a sentence addressed to a definite hearer (or reader) and a sentence free from such limitation., appears not to be grammatical, important as it may be from other points of view. Accordingly, we will not include this distinction among grammatical features of sentences.

Point 3, showing a difference in the length of the sentences, namely in the number of words making up each of them, does not in itself constitute a grammatical feature, though it may be more remotely connected with grammatical distinctions.

Point 4 bears a close relation to grammatical peculiarities; more especially, a semicolon would be hardly possible in certain types of sentences (so-called simple sentences). But punctuation marks within a sentence are not in themselves grammatical features: they are rather a consequence of grammatical features whose essence is to be looked for elsewhere.

Point 5, on the contrary, is very important from a grammatical viewpoint. Indeed the number of finite verbs in a sentence is one of its main grammatical features. In this particular instance it should be noted that each of the three finite verbs has its own noun or pronoun belonging to it and expressing the doer of the action denoted by the verb: are has the noun people, have the pronoun we, and write the pronoun who. These are sure signs of the sentence being composite, not simple.: Thus we will adopt the distinction between simple and composite sentences as a distinction between two grammatical types.

The items we have established as a result of comparing the two sentences given on page 183 certainly do not exhaust all the possible grammatical features a sentence can be shown to possess. They were only meant to illustrate the method to be applied if a reasonable grammatical classification of sentences is to be achieved.»] we were to take another pair or other pairs of sentences and proceed to compare them in a similar way we should arrive at some more grammatical distinctions which have to be taken into account W making up a classification. We will not give any more examples but we will take up the grammatical classification of sentences in a systematic way.

It is evident that there are two principles of classification. Applying one of them, we obtain a classification into declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences. We can call this principle that of "types of communication".

The other classification is according to structure. Here we state two main types: simple sentences and composite sentences. We will not now go into the question of a further subdivision of composite sentences, or into the question of possible intermediate types between simple and composite ones. These questions will be treated later on (see pages 200 and 254 respectively). Meanwhile, then, we get the following results:

Types of Sentences According to Types of Communication Declarative Interrogative Imperative

Sentences belonging to the several types differ from each other in some grammatical points, too. Thus, interrogative sentences-are belonging to different types of communication. Here it will sometimes he impossible to say to what type" of communication the composite sentence as a whole belongs. We will take up this question when we come to the composite sentence.

Some other questions connected with the mutual relation of the two classifications will be considered as we proceed.

The notion of sentence has not so far received a satisfactory-definition, which would enable us by applying it in every particular case to find out whether a certain linguistic unit was a sentence-' or not.

Thus, for example, the question remains undecided whether'", such shop notices as Book Shop and such book titles as English are sentences or not. In favour of the view that they are sentences the following consideration can be brought forward. The notice Book Shop and the title English Grammar mean This is a bookshop, 'This is an English Grammar'; the phrase is interpreted as the predicative of a sentence whose subject and link verb have been omitted, that is, it is apprehended as a unit of communication. According to the other possible view, such notices as Book Shop and such titles as English Grammar are not units of communication at all, but units of nomination, merely appended to the object they denote. Since there is as yet no definition of a sentence which would enable us to decide this question, it depends on everyone's subjective view which alternative he prefers. We will prefer the / view that such notices and book titles are not sentences but rather/ nomination units.

We also mention here a special case. .Some novels have titles formulated as sentence, e.g. The Stars Look Down, by A..Cronin, or They Came to a City, by J.B.Priestley. These are certainly sentences, but they are used as nomination units, for instance, Have you read The Stars Look Down?, Do you like They Came to a City?

With the rise of modern ideas of paradigmatic syntax yet another problem concerning definition of sentence has to be

considered.

In paradigmatic syntax, such units as He has arrived, He has not arrived, Has he arrived, He will arrive, He will not arrive, Will he arrive, etc., are treated as different forms of the same sentence, just as arrives, has arrived, will arrive etc., are different forms of the same verb. We may call this view of the sentence the paradigmatic view.

Now from the point of view of communication, He has arrived and He has not arrived are different sentences since they convey different information (indeed, the meaning of the one flatly contradicts that of the other).

THE SIMPLE SENTENCE

We will now study the structure of the simple sentence and the types of simple sentences.

First of all we shall have to deal with the problem of negative sentences. The problem, briefly stated, is this: do negative sentences constitute a special grammatical type, and if so, what are its

grammatical features? In other words, if we say, "This is a negative sentence," do we thereby give it a grammatical description?

The difficulty of the problem lies in the peculiarity of negative expressions in Modern English. Let us take two sentences, both negative in meaning: (1) She did not know when she would be seeing any of them again. (R. MACAULAY) (2) Helen's tremendous spell ~ perhaps no one ever quite escaped from it. (Idem) They are obviously different in their ways of expressing negation. In (1) we see a special form of the predicate verb (did. .. know, not knew) which is due to the negative character of the sentence and is in so far a grammatical sign of its being negative. In (2), on the other hand, there is no grammatical feature to show that the sentence is negative. Indeed, there is no grammatical difference whatever between the sentences Nobody saw him and Everybody saw him. The difference lies entirely in the meaning of the pronouns functioning as subject, that is to say, it is lexical, not grammatical. The same is of course true of such sentences as / found nobody and / found everybody. On the other hand, in the sentence / did not find anybody there is again a grammatical feature., viz. the form of the predicate verb (did.. . find, not found).

The conclusion to be drawn from these observations is obviously this. Since in a number of cases negative sentences are not characterized as such by any grammatical peculiarities, they are not a grammatical type. They are a logical type, which may or may not be reflected in grammatical structure. Accordingly, the division of sentences into affirmative and negative ought not to be included into their grammatical classification.'

Before we proceed with our study of sentence structure it will be well to consider the relation between the two notions of sentence and clause. Among different types of sentences treated in a syntactic investigation it is naturally the simple sentence that conies first. It is with specimens of simple sentences that we study such categories as parts of the sentence, main and secondary; homogeneous members, word order, etc. It is also with specimens of simple sentences that we illustrate such notions as declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory sentences, as two-member and one-member sentences,

and so forth. As long as we limit ourselves to the study of simple sentences, the notion of "clause" need not occur at all.

When, however, we come to composite sentences (that is, sentences consisting of two or more clauses), we have to deal with the notions of main clause, head clause, and subordinate clause. Everything we said about the simple sentence will also hold good for clauses: a clause also has its parts (main and secondary), it can also be a two-member or a one-member clause; a main clause at least must also be either declarative, interrogative, imperative, or exclamatory, etc. We will consider these questions in due course.

So then we will take it for granted that whatever is said about a simple sentence will also apply to an independent clause within a composite sentence. For instance, whatever we say about word order in a simple sentence will also apply to word order in an independent clause within a composite sentence, etc.