#sentence types

König, Ekkehard & Peter Siemund. 2007. Speech act distinctions in grammar. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language Typology and Syntactic Description: Volume 1: Clause Structure, vol. 1, 276–324. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511619427.005.

to finish off the sentence patterns, let’s learn about the sentence types!

most of which are pretty explanatory so this should be kind of short...but we’ll see. 

Interrogative Sentences

the two most common interrogative patterns in English are the yes/no question and the wh-question. both kinds of questions alter the basic declaritive word order by putting the verb, or part of the verb in front of the subject.

the election is today. (declaritive)

is the election today? 

when is the election?

wh-questions, aka information questions, use interrogative words such as why, where, when, who, what or how, to elicit specific details. 

the interrogative can also fill an NP slot. some can even be used as determiners. 

more common in speech is the tag question. it’s like repition of the subject. 

your mother is a doctor, isn’t she?

Imperative sentences  

in the case of imperative sentences or commands, the subject is nearly always unstated, although clearly understood. 

commands can be negative and generally begin with the word ‘don’t ‘ 

Sit down. 

don’t be silly.

take your time. 

Don’t act stupid. 

Exclamative sentences

we usually think of exclamatory sentences as a sentence spoken with heightened emotion or written with a  ! 

I love your new home! (pattern 7)

Wipe that grin off your face! (pattern 2)

are you kidding me! (pattern 3)

but int terms of form. the first one is declaritive, a very straightforward sentence. the second one is imperative, and the third is interrogative. 

a formal exclamative sentence involves a shift in order that focuses special attention on a complement. 

what a lovely apartment you have

how proud you must be

what a piece of work is man! 

these sentences differ structually from all three of the previous sentences. the what or how of the sentence introduces the emphasized element is added to the underlying declaritve sentence patterns. 

Punctuation and the sentence pattern. 

the biggest thing to learn when it comes to sentence patterns and punctuation is: 

do not put single commas between the required slot. 

so don’t separate: 

the subject from the verb

the verb from the direct object

the direct object from the object complement

indirect object from the direct object

the verb from the subject compliment 

even though the noun phrases may be long, the slots are never separated by commas. the one exception to this rule occurs when the direct object is a direct quotation following a verb like say. 

here’s an example that show when there’s no room for a comma. 

Geoff Pullum has a good mythbusting description of sentence types on the Lingua Franca blog. 

Grammar books, and hundreds of websites out there, are appallingly confused about statements, questions, orders, and exclamations. Most of the problem lies in their failure to distinguish syntax from semantics. I want to try and sort things out a bit, and provide a little homework exercise.

Clause type is syntactic, not semantic. It shouldn’t be confused with any element of meaning or use. Standard English has four clause types (five if you treat 2a and 2b as separate), differing with respect to which words you put where:

Declarative   Characteristic use: making statements. Example: He was polite. Key syntactic properties: subject precedes auxiliary and/or predicate.

Interrogative   Characteristic use: asking questions.

Closed interrogative: for expressing questions having a fixed, finite list of answers that the form of the question suggests. Example: Was he polite? Key syntactic properties: auxiliary before subject.

Open interrogative: for expressing questions having an unbounded range of answers. Example: How polite was he? Key syntactic properties: wh-phrase at beginning of clause; auxiliary before subject if wh-phrase is not the subject of its clause.

Imperative   Characteristic use: issuing directives about desired behavior by others. Example: Be polite. Key syntactic properties: plain form of verb; subject often missing.

Exclamative   Characteristic illocutionary force: making exclamatory statements. Example: How polite he was! Key syntactic properties: wh-phrase at beginning of clause (headed by either how or what); subject before auxiliary.

Crucially, the characteristically associated meanings are only a default. Using an interrogative (e.g., What’s your name?) is the stereotypical way to express a question, but declaratives can also in effect convey questions, through a combination of literal meaning and pragmatic implication:

I want to know your name. I’m asking you to tell me your name.

Imperatives, too, can be used to convey the effect of questions:

Tell me your name. Tell me what your name is.

Even an exclamative can come pretty close to implying a question:

How I’d love to know what your name is.

Grammar books and grammar websites are particularly confused about exclamatives, which they often call “exclamatory sentences” (see the hopelessly confused page here for a random example). They imagine that any kind of sentence that might intuitively be used for exclaiming and/or ends with ‘!’ must belong, so they give examples like I can’t figure this out! (a declarative), or Out of my way! (not a clause at all).

Read the whole thing.

Okay so I did my normal review today and I also finished up the “Introduction to the Korean Language” section of Korean Grammar in Use. The two sections I looked at this time were about sentence types (and formality levels) and honorifics. Again, it’s pretty long so it’s under the cut and I’ve added tags for future reference. Also, if you see any mistakes in these feel free to let me know :) As for tomorrow, it’s on to the “Getting Ready” section ^^

Sentence Types and Figurative Language

English I Honors students worked complex and compound-complex sentences.

Complex Sentences

We determined a few things:

compound sentence = simple sentence + simple sentence

complex sentence = simple sentence + subordinate clause

compound-complex sentence = complex sentence + simple sentence

compound-complex sentence = compound sentence + subordinate clause

Compound-Complex Sentences

En…

Sentence Types and Lit Circles

After going over homework, English I Honors classes got to the summit of the sentence quest: sentence types. Afterward, we worked to identify the name and function of every part of given sentences: English 8 students continued working on the lit circles for The Diary of Anne Frank. Today is the last day for students to work on act 1 scene 2. The due-date schedule is below: