The communicative types of sentences.

The sentence is above all a communicative unit; therefore, the primary classification of sentences is based on the communicative principle, traditionally defined as “the purpose of communication”. According to the purpose of communication, sentences are subdivided into declarative, interrogative and imperative.

Declarative sentences are traditionally defined as those expressing statements, either affirmative or negative

Imperative sentences express inducements of various kinds (orders or requests); they may also be either affirmative or negative

Interrogative sentences express questions, or requests for information,

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.

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. additionally, he distinguished a minor group of utterances, which are not directed to any interlocutor in particular and presuppose no response (“non-communicative utterances”, e.g., interjectional outcries).

Fries’s classification does not refute the traditional classification of communicative sentence types, but rather confirms and specifies it

Problems:

1. the exclamatory sentence: whether it is a separate com. Type or whether it is not, cause any other type can become exclamatory (intonation)

Smirnitskiy:

· emotional ( exclamatory sentences)

· non emotional ( all other types)

Ilyish:

· declarative ( emotional/non emotional)

· interrogative ( emotional/non emotional)

· exclamatory ( don’t refer to any other com.type)

2. Affirmative/negative sentences are gram. Varieties of the declarative sentences, or a negative s-s is a variety of an affirmative s-ce. No special com.type for a negative sentence

Blokh: intermediary communicative types

Besides the three cardinal monofunctional communicative types of sentences, there is a number of constructional sentence models ofintermediary, mixed communicative character. The transfer of certain communicative features from one communicative type of sentence to another can be observed in correlations of all three cardinal communicative types, i.e. in statement – question, statement – inducement, and inducement – question correlations.

· So-called indirect questions have the form of a declarative sentence, but actually express a request for information, e.g.: I wonder who shut the window (cf.: Who shut the window?). An answer is expected, as with a regular question, e.g.: I wonder who shut the window. – Tom did; the response supports the mixed communicative character of this sentence type.

· rhetorical questions are interrogative in their structural form, but express a declarative functional meaning of high intensity, e.g.: How can you say a thing like this? The sentence does not express a question; it is a reprimand. No answer is expected; the responses elicited by rhetorical questions correspond to responses elicited by declarative sentence

· Intermediary between statements and inducements are formally declarative sentences with modal verbs and other lexical means of inducement, e.g.: You must shut the window; I want you to shut the window (cf.: Shut the window, please!). The responses to these sentences are similar to those elicited by imperative sentences proper, i.e. actional responses or verbal agreement or disagreement to perform the actions

Thus, the classification of the communicative sentence types, in addition to three cardinal communicative types, includes six intermediary subtypes of sentences of mixed communicative features:

· mixed sentence patterns of declaration (interrogative-declarative, imperative-declarative),

· mixed sentence patterns of interrogation (declarative-interrogative, imperative-interrogative)

mixed sentence patterns of inducement (declarative-imperative, interrogative-imperative).