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All the cited examples belong to "elliptical" types of utterances in so far as they possess quite definite
"vacant" positions or zero-positions capable of being supplied with the corresponding fillers implicit in the
situational contexts. Since the restoration of the absent axis in such sentences is, so to speak, "free of avail", we
class them as "free" one-axis sentences. The term "elliptical" one-axis sentences can also be used, though it is
not very lucky here; indeed, "ellipsis" as a sentence-curtailing process can in principle affect both two-axis and
one-axis sentences, so the term might be misleading.
Alongside the demonstrated free one-axis sentences, i.e. sentences with a direct contextual axis-implication,
there are one-axis sentences without a contextual implication of this kind; in other words, their absent axis
cannot be restored with the same ease and, above all, semantic accuracy.
By way of example, let us read the following passage from S. Maugham's short story "Appearance and
Reality":
Monsieur Le Sueur was a man of action. He went straight up to Lisette and smacked her hard on her right
cheek with his left hand and then smacked her hard on the left cheek with his right hand. "Brute," screamed
Lisette.
The one-axis sentence used by the heroine does imply the you-subject and can, by association, be expanded
into the two-axis one "You are a brute" or "You brute", but then the spontaneous "scream-style" of the
utterance in the context (a cry of indignation and revolt) will be utterly distorted.
Compare another context, taken from R. Kipling's "The Light That Failed":
"... I'm quite miserable enough already." - "Why? Because you're going away from Mrs Jennett?"-"No."-
"From me, then?" No answer for a long time. Dick dared not look at her.
The one-axis sentence "No answer for a long time" in the narrative is associated by variant lingual relations
with the two-axis sentence "There was no answer...". But on similar grounds the association can be extended to
the construction "He received no answer for a long time" or "No answer was given for a long time" or some
other sentence supplementing the given utterance and rendering a like meaning. On the other hand, the peculiar
position in the text clearly makes all these associations into remote ones: the two-axis version of the
construction instead of the existing one-axis one would destroy the expressive property of the remark
conveying Dick's strain by means of combining the author's line of narration with the hero's inner perception of
events.
Furthermore, compare the psychologically tense description of packing up before departure given in short,
deliberately disconnected nominative phrase-sentences exposing the heroine's disillusions (from D. du
Maurier's "Rebecca"):
Packing up. The nagging worry of departure. Lost keys, unwritten labels, tissue paper lying on the floor. I
hate it all.
Associations referring to the absent axes in the cited sentences are indeed very vague. The only
unquestionable fact about the relevant implications is that they should be of demonstrative-introductory
character making the presented nominals into predicative names.
As we see, there is a continuum between the one-axis sentences of the free type and the most rigid ones
exemplified above. Still, since all the constructions of the second order differ from those of the first order just
in that they are not free, we choose to class them as "fixed" one-axis sentences.
Among the fixed one-axis sentences quite a few subclasses are to be recognized, including nominative
(nominal) constructions, greeting formulas, introduction formulas, incentives, excuses, etc. Many of such
constructions are related to the corresponding two-axis sentences not by the mentioned "vague" implication, but
by representation; indeed, such one-axis sentence-formulas as affirmations, negations, certain ready-made
excuses, etc, are by themselves not word-sentences, but rather sentence-representatives that exist only in
combination with the full-sense antecedent predicative constructions. Cf:.
"You can't move any farther back? "-"No." (I.e. "I can't move any farther back"). "D'you want me to pay for
your drink?" - "Yes, old boy." (I.e. "Yes, I want you to pay for my drink, old boy"). Etc.
As for the isolated exclamations of interjectional type ("Good Lord!", "Dear me!" and the like), these are not
sentences by virtue of their not possessing the inner structure of actual division even through associative
implications (see Ch. XXII).
Summing up what has been said about the one-axis sentences we must stress the two things: first, however
varied, they form a minor set within the general system of English sentence patterns; second, they all are related
to two-axis sentences either by direct or by indirect association.
§ 5. The semantic classification of simple sentences should be effected at least on the three bases: first, on