The communicative types of sentences

The sentence is a communicative unit, therefore, the primary classification of sentences must be based on the communicative principle. There are recognized three types according to the purpose of communication:

1) The declarative sentence expresses a statement, either affirmative, or negative, and stands in correlation with the listener’s responding signals of attention, feeling etc: I've held a torch in the darkness to glance upon a truth unknown.

2) The imperative sentence expresses inducement, either affirmative or negative. It urges the listener in the form of request or command to perform or not to perform a certain action: Shut your mouth, little prick!

3) The interrogative sentence expresses a question, i.e. a request for information wanted by the speaker from the listener: What happened back there?

Sometimes exclamatory sentence is distinguished as an additional type. Exclamatory sentences are marked by specific intonation patterns, word-order and special constructions with functional-auxiliary words, rendering the high emotional intensity of the utterance (Man, does it hurt!). Interestingly enough, each communicative type, be it declarative, imperative or interrogative, may be represented in its exclamatory, emotionally coloured variant: That was some ride. – That was one hell of a ride!; Let me finish. – For the love of God, let me finish!; Why couldn't you tell me so in the first place? – Why on earth couldn't you tell me so in the first place?

There have been attempts to refute this traditional classification of communicative sentence types and to introduce a new one. For example, Charles Fries suggested classifying all the utterances not on the basis of their own semantics, but on the kind of responses which they elicit, or according to their external characteristics [29]. He distinguished:

1) utterances which are followed by oral responses (greetings, calls, questions, etc.);

2) utterances followed by action responses (requests or commands);

3) utterances which elicit signals of attention to further conversation (statements);

4) non-communicative utterances, which are not directed to any interlocutor in particular and presuppose no response (e.g., interjectional outcries) [29].

Besides these four monofunctional communicative types of sentences, there is a number of constructional sentence models of mixed communicative character.

Another communicative description of utterances was undertaken at the end of the 1960s by J. R. Searle within the framework of the so-called “ theory of speech acts ”, on the basis of philosophical ideas formulated by J. L. Austin [35]. According to them, the two basic utterance types are defined as:

1) performatives – utterances by which the speaker explicitly performs a certain act: I pledge gilty.

2) constatives (representatives) – utterances by which the speaker states something, e.g.: There's no particular explanation. Constatives are subdivided into promissives (commissives), expressives, menacives, directives, requestives etc.

The Structural classification of sentences

According to the number of predicative lines sentences are classified into simple, composite and semi-composite [15].

The simple sentence

The simple sentence is built up by one predicative line: A drank some hot coffee on the way to work. The dominating type of a simple sentence with full predication (containing both the subject and the predicate) is called a two-member sentence. One-member sentences contain either the subject or the predicate which can’t be restored.

The composite sentence.

The word "composite" is used by H. Poutsma as a common term for both the compound and complex sentences [34].

There are three types of composite sentences in Modern English: compound, complex and compound-complex sentences [15].

1. The compound sentence contains two or more independent clauses with no dependent one: I create problems, and he knows how to handle them. It is usual to single out the following types of semantic relations between coordinative clauses: copulative, adversative, disjunctive, causal, consequential, and resultative.

2. The complex sentence contains one dependent clause and one or more independent clauses: She became so furious that she couldn't utter another word. According to their integral features all subordinate clauses are divided into four generalized types: clauses of primary nominal positions, clauses of secondary nominal positions, clauses of adverbial positions, clauses of parenthetical positions.

3. The compound-complex sentence combines the two previous types. The compound-complex sentences are those which have at least two independent clauses and at least one dependent (subordinate) clause in its structure: Her face has flashed a dazzling smile but it couldn't be more plain she was faking it.

Historically not all the grammarians were unanimous in this respect. According to it H. Sweet there are structurally two types of sentences: simple and complex [49].

One of the representatives of structural linguists Ch. Fries considers two kinds of composite sentences: sequence sentences and included sentences [29]. The sequence sentences consist of situation sentence and sequence sentence. He makes an attempt to reject the traditional classification and terms. His attitude towards the traditional concept of the compound sentence is primarily a matter of the punctuation of written texts.