21. Principles of classification of sentences

As it’s known, sentences may be classified on the bases of 2 main principles:

• Communicative ( declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory);

• Structural ( simple and composite, one-member and two-member, complete and elliptical);

Traditional grammar calls it a functional classification. Declarative sentences are said to make statements; interrogative sentences are said to ask questions; imperative sentences are said to make requests and give orders; exclamative sentences are said to express strong feelings.

Thus, the declarative sentence expresses a statement, either affirmative or negative, and as such stands in systemic syntagmatic correlation with the listener's responding signals of attention, of appraisal (including agreement or disagreement), of fellow-feeling. Cf.:

"I think," he said, "that Mr. Desert should be asked to give us his reasons for publishing that poem." — "Hear, hear!" said the К. С.

The so-called declarative sentences not only make statements but also ask questions, give orders, and express strong feelings. Cf: The new room Is better? - Yes, sir (J. Fowles).

The imperative sentence expresses inducement, either affirmative or negative. That is, it urges the listener, in the form of request or command, to perform or not to perform a certain action. As such, the imperative sentence is situationally connected with the corresponding "action response" (Ch. Fries), and lingually is systemically correlated with a verbal response showing that the inducement is either com- plied with, or else rejected. Cf.:

"Let's go and sit down up there, Dinny." — "Very well" (J. Gals- worthy).

The so-called imperative sentences not only make requests and give orders but also make statements and express strong feelings. Cf:

Spare the rod and spoil the child (Proverb). <It implies If you spare the rod, you will spoil the child>

Don't be so stupid! (M. Swan). <It expresses annoyance>

The interrogative sentence expresses a question, i.e. a request for information wanted by the speaker from the listener. By virtue of this communicative purpose, the interrogative sentence is naturally connected with an answer, forming together with it a question-answer dialogue unity. Cf.:

"What do you suggest I should do, then?" said Mary helplessly. — "If I were you I should play a waiting game," he replied (D. du Maurier).

The so-called interrogative sentences not only ask questions but also make statements and requests and express strong feelings. Cf.: How can I climb that? (P.H. Mathews). <It implies / can 't climb it.>

In analytical English where the verbal component of predication usually lacks person distinctions, the common type of sentence and 'sentence representative' is two-member that has a subject and predicate, e.g. / returned to my room (M. Spark).

As to the essence of one-member sentences and 'sentence representatives', opinions differ. A.A. Shakhmatov, M. Ganshina and N. Vasilevskaya identify the principal part of a one-member sentence either with the subject or with the predicate. The majority of linguists, however, think that a one-member sentence is a sentence having only one member, which is neither the subject nor the predicate because the notions of subject and predicate, as V.V. Vinogradov has rightly pointed out, are correlative notions.

One-member sentences are typical of inflected languages. In analytical languages, one-member sentences are few. In English, imperative sentences and imperative 'sentence representatives' are surely one-member, e.g.:

Wait a moment

The imperative sentences and imperative 'sentence representatives' generally address the command or request to the second person. The fixed nature of person characteristic makes the use of a special exponent of person redundant, although sometimes it does appear in the form of the personal pronoun you. In these cases, imperative sentences become two-member. Cf:

You try to eat something (W. Faulkner).

When inducement is addressed both to the addressee (the second person) and to the speaker (the first person), it finds its expression in a specific morpheme, - 's, sometimes - in the personal pronoun us, e.g.:

Let's go (V. Woolf).

Tradition qualifies as one-member also infinitive and nominal sentences. Infinitive sentences are said to realize non-real modality, to refer to the future tense, and to be impersonal, e.g.:

To think of the Weldons separating! (D. Parker).

Nominal sentences are said to realize real modality, to refer to the present tense, and to actualize the meaning of the third person, e.g.:

Dusk -of a summer night (Th. Dreiser).

In Fries's system, as a universal speech unit subjected to communicative analysis was chosen not immediately a sentence, but an utterance unit (a "free" utterance, i.e. capable of isolation. The sentence was then defined as a minimum free utterance.

• "situation utterances"

1. Utterances that are regularly followed by oral responses only. These are greetings, calls, questions. E.g.: Hello!

2. Utterances regularly eliciting action responses. These are requests or commands. E.g.: Read that again, will you?

3. Utterances regularly eliciting conventional signals of attention to continuous discourse. These are statements. E.g.:

I've been talking with Mr. D — in the purchasing department about our type-writer. (—Yes?).

• "Characteristic of situations such as surprise, sudden pain, disgust, anger, laughter, sorrow". E.g.: Oh, oh! Goodness! My God! Darn! Gosh! Etc.- non-communicative" utterances.

Indeed, the very purpose of communication inherent in the addressing sentence is reflected in the listener's response. The second and third groups of Ch, Fries's "communicative" sentences-utterances are just identical imperative and declarative types both by the employed names and definition. As for the first group, it is essentially heterogeneous, which is recognised by the investigator himself, who distinguishes in its composition three communicatively different subgroups. One of these ("C") is constituted by "questions", i.e. classical interrogative sentences. The other two, viz. greetings ("A") and calls ("B"), are syntactically not cardinal, but, rather, minor intermediary types, making up the periphery of declarative sentences (greetings — statements of conventional goodwill at meeting and parting) and imperative sentences (calls — requests for attention).

As regards "non-communicative" utterances — interjectional units, they are devoid of any immediately expressed intellective semantics, which excludes them from the general category of sentence.

In the language system certain sentence –patterns are correlated and are connected by oppositional relations:

• Statement/question (He knows it-Does he know it?

• Non-negative-negative structures (Does he know it?-doesn’t he know it?

• Non-emphatic/emphatic structures (Come!-DO come!)

Members of syntactic opposition can be regarded as grammatical modifications, or variants of sentence pattern. Thus the semantic structure of the sentence can be represented by a number of forms, which constitute the paradigm of the sentence.