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212
COMMUNICATIVE TYPES OF SENTENCES
§ 6. The sentence is a minimal unit of communication. From the viewpoint of their role in the process of
communication sentences are divided into four types, grammatically marked: declarative, interrogative,
imperative, exclamatory sentences. These types differ in the aim of communication and express statements,
questions, commands and exclamations respectively.
Dickens was born in 1812.
When shall I see you again?
Do you know Italian?
Come up and sit down.
What a quiet evening!
These types are usually applied to simple sentences. In a complex sentence the communicative type depends
upon that of the main clause, as in:
I waited till the light turned to green. (statement)
Do you always wait till the light turns to green? (question)
Wait till the light turns to green. (command)
How thoughtless of you not to have waited till the light turned to green! (exclamation)
In a compound sentence, coordinate clauses may as well belong to different communicative types.
Look out, or you may meet with an accident. (command-statement)
I obeyed, for what else could I do? (statement-question)
Declarative sentences
§ 7. A declarative sentence contains a statement which gives the reader or the listener some information
about various events, activities or attitudes, thoughts and feelings. Statements form the bulk of monological
speech, and the greater part of conversation. A statement may be positive (affirmative) or negative, as in:
I have just come back from a business trip.
I haven’t seen my sister yet.
Grammatically, statements are characterized by the subject-predicate structure with the direct order of
words. They are mostly two-member sentences, although they may be one-member sentences, as in:
Very early morning.
No curtain. No painting.
Statements usually have a falling tone; they are marked by a pause in speaking and by a full stop in writing.
In conversation, statements are often structurally incomplete, especially when they serve as a response to a
question asking for some information, and the response conveys the most important idea.
Where are you going? - To the library.
Thanks to their structure and lexical content, declarative sentences are communicatively polyfunctional.
Thus, besides their main function as information-carriers, statements may be used with the force of questions,
commands and exclamations, as in:
I wonder why he is so late.
You mustn’t talk back to your parents.
Interrogative sentences
§ 8. Interrogative sentences contain questions. Their communicative function consists in asking for