COMMUNICATIVE TYPES OF SENTENCES

Plan
Theoretical part………………………………………………………….3
Simple sentence ……………………………………………………………3
Types of sentences…………………………………………………….........3
a) The declarative sentence
b) The imperative sentence
c) The interrogative sentence
d) The exclamatory sentence
Communicative classification of sentences………………………………………………..5
Conclusion …………………………………………………………………6
Practical part (Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat.  Chapter I )…7

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Theoretical part
Simple sentence
According to Blox the sentence is a communicative unit, therefore the
primary classification of sentences must be based on the communicative principle.
This principle is formulated in traditional grammar as the "purpose of
communication". The purpose of communication, by definition, refers to the sen-
tence as a whole, and the structural features connected with the expression of this
sentential function belong to the fundamental, constitutive qualities of the sentence
as a lingual unit.
In accord with the purpose of communication three cardinal sentence types have
long been recognized in linguistic tradition: first, the declarative sentence; second,
the imperative (inductive) sentence; third, the interrogative sentence. These
communicative sentence-types stand in strict opposition to one another, and their
inner proper-ties of form and meaning are immediately correlated with the
corresponding features of the listener's responses.
Types of sentences
Thus, the declarative sentence expresses a statement, either affirmative or
negative, and as such stands in systemic syntagmatic correlation with the
listener's responding signals of attention, of appraisal (including agreement or
disagreement), of fellow-feeling. Cf.: "I think," he said, "that Mr. Desert should
be asked to give us his reasons for publishing that poem." — "Hear, hear!" said
the К. С. (J. Galsworthy). "We live very quietly here, indeed we do; my niece
here will tell you the same." — "Oh, come, I'm not such a fool as that," answered
the squire (D. du Maurier).
The imperative sentence expresses inducement, either affirmative or
negative. That is, it urges the listener, in the form of request or command, to
perform or not to perform a certain action. As such, the imperative sentence is
situationally connected with the corresponding "action response" (Ch. Fries), and
lingually is systemically correlated with a verbal response showing that the
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inducement is either com-plied with, or else rejected. Cf. "Let's go and sit down
up there, Dinny." — "Very well" (J. Gals-worthy). "Then marry me." — "Really,
Alan, I never met anyone with so few ideas" (J. Galsworthy). "Send him back!"
he said again. — "Nonsense, old chap" (J. Aldridge).
Since the communicative purpose of the imperative sentence is to make the
listener act as requested, silence on the part of the latter (when the request is
fulfilled), strictly speaking, is also linguistically relevant. This gap in speech,
which situationally is filled in by the listener’s action, is set off in literary
narration by special comments and descriptions. Cf.: "Knock on the wood." —
Retan's man leaned forward and knocked three times on the barrera (E.
Hemingway). "Shut the piano," whispered Dinny; "let's go up." — Diana closed
the piano without noise and rose (J. Galsworthy).
The interrogative sentence expresses a question, i.e. a request for
information wanted by the speaker from the listener. By virtue of this
communicative purpose, the interrogative sentence is naturally connected with an
answer, forming together with it a question-answer dialogue unity. Cf.:"What do
you suggest I should do, then?" said Mary helplessly. — "If I were you I should
play a waiting game," he replied (D. du Maurier).
Naturally, in the process of actual communication the interrogative
communicative purpose, like any other communicative task, may sporadically not
be fulfilled. In case it is not fulfilled, the question-answer unity proves to be
broken; instead of a needed answer the speaker is faced by silence on the part of
the listener, or else he receives the latter's verbal rejection to answer. Cf.:
"Why can't you lay off?" I said to her. But she didn't even notice me (R. P.
Warren). "Did he know about her?" — "You'd better ask him" (S. Maugham).
Evidently, such and like reactions to interrogative sentences are not immediately
relevant in terms of environmental syntactic featuring.
Alongside of the three cardinal communicative sentence-types, another
type of sentences is recognized in the theory of syntax, namely, the so-called
exclamatory sentence. In modern linguistics it has been demonstrated that
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exclamatory sentences do not possess any complete set of qualities that could place
them on one and the same level with the three cardinal communicative types of
sentences.
The property of exclamation should be considered as an accompanying
feature which is effected within the system of the three cardinal communicative
types of sentences. In other words, each of the cardinal communicative sentence
types can be represented in the two variants, viz. non-exclamatory and
exclamatory. For instance, with the following exclamatory sentences-statements it
is easy to identify their non-exclamatory declarative prototypes: What a very small
cabin it was! (K. Mansfield) — It was a very small cabin. How utterly she had lost
count of events! (J. Galsworthy) <— She had lost count of events. Why, if it isn't
my lady! (J. Erskine) «— It is my lady.
Similarly, exclamatory questions are immediately related in the syntactic
system to the corresponding non-exclamatory interrogative sentences. E.g.:
Whatever do you mean, Mr. Critchlow? (A. Bennett) «-What do you mean? Then
why in God's name did you come? (K. Mansfield) «- Why did you come?
Imperative sentences, naturally, are characterized by a higher general degree of
emotive intensity than the other two cardinal communicative sentence-types. Still,
they form analogous pairs, whose constituent units are distinguished from each
other by no other feature than the presence or absence of exclamation as such. E.g.:
Francis, will you please try to speak sensibly! (E. Hemingway) «- Try to speak
sensibly. Don't you dare to compare me to common peo-ple! (B. Shaw) <— Don't
compare me to common people. Never so long as you live say I made you do that!
(J. Erskine) <— Don't say I made you do that.
As is seen from the given examples, all the three pairs of variant communicative
types of sentences (non-exclamatory — exclamatory for each cardinal division)
make up distinct semantico-syntactic op-positions effected by regular grammatical
means of language, such as intonation, word-order and special constructions with
functional-auxiliary lexemic elements. It follows from this that the functional-
communicative classification of sentences specially distinguishing emotive factor
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should discriminate, on the lower level of analysis, be-tween the six sentence-types
forming, respectively, three groups (pairs) of cardinal communicative quality.
Communicative classification of sentences
American scholar Ch. Fries classed communicative classification of sentences as
a deliberate challenge to the "accepted routine", not in accord with the purposes
of communication, but according to the responses they elicit. In Fries's system, as
a universal speech unit subjected to communicative analysis was chosen not
immediately a sentence, but an utterance unit understood as a continuous chunk
of talk by one speaker in a dialogue. The sentence was then defined as a
minimum free utterance.
Utterances collected from the tape-recorded corpus of dialogues (mostly
telephone conversations) were first classed into "situation utterances" (eliciting a
response), and "response utterances". Situation single free utterances (i.e.
sentences) were further divided into three groups:
1) Utterances that are regularly followed by oral responses only. These are
greetings, calls, questions. E.g.: Hello! Good-bye! See you soon! ... Dad! Say,
dear! Colonel Howard! ... Have you got moved in? What are you going to do for
the summer? ...
2) Utterances regularly eliciting action responses. These are re-quests or
commands. E.g.: Read that again, will you? Oh, wait a minute! Please have him
call Operator Six when he comes in! Will you see just exactly what his status is?
3) Utterances regularly eliciting conventional signals of attention to continuous
discourse. These are statements. E.g.: I've been talking with Mr. D — in the
purchasing department about our type-writer. (—Yes?). That order went in March
seventh. However it seems that we are about eighth on the list. (— I see). Etc.
Alongside of the described "communicative" utterances, i.e. utterances directed to
a definite listener, another, minor type of utterances were recognized as not
directed to any listener but, as Ch. Fries puts it, "characteristic of situations such
as surprise, sudden pain, disgust, anger, laughter, sorrow" [Fries, 53]. E.g.: Oh,
oh! Goodness! My God! Darn! Gosh! Etc. Such and like interjectional units were
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classed by Ch. Fries as "non-communicative" utterances.
Observing the given classification, it is not difficult to see that, far from
refuting or discarding the traditional classification of sentences built up on the
principle of the "purpose of communication", it rather confirms and specifies it.
Indeed, the very purpose of communication inherent in the addressing sentence is
reflected in the listener's response. The second and third groups of Ch, Fries's
"communicative" sentences-utterances are just identical imperative and
declarative types both by the employed names and definition. As for the first
group, it is essentially heterogeneous, which is recognized by the investigator
him-self, who distinguishes in its composition three communicatively different
subgroups. One of these ("C") is constituted by "questions", i.e. classical
interrogative sentences. The other two, viz. greetings ("A") and calls ("B"), are
syntactically not cardinal, but, rather, minor intermediary types, making up the
periphery of declarative sentences (greetings — statements of conventional
goodwill at meeting and parting) and imperative sentences (calls — requests for
attention). As regards "non-communicative" utterances — interjectional units,
they are devoid of any immediately expressed intellective semantics, which
excludes them from the general category of sentence as such (see further).
Thus, the undertaken analysis should, in point of fact, be looked upon as an
actual application of the notions of communicative sentence-types to the study of
oral speech, resulting in further specifications and development of these notions.
Conclusion
According to Blox the undertaken survey of lingual facts shows that the
combination of opposite cardinal communicative features displayed by
communicatively intermediary sentence patterns is structurally systemic and
functionally justified. It is justified because it meets quite definite expressive
requirements. And it is symmetrical in so far as each cardinal communicative
sentence type is characterized by the same tendency of functional transposition in
relation to the two other communicative types opposing it. It means that within
each of the three cardinal communicative oppositions two different intermediary
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communicative sentence models are established, so that at a further level of
specification, the communicative classification of sentences should be expanded
by six subtypes of sentences of mixed communicative features. These are, first,
mixed sentence patterns of declaration (interrogative-declarative, imperative-
declarative); second, mixed sentence patterns of interrogation (declarative-
interrogative, imperative-interrogative); third, mixed sentence-patterns of
inducement (declarative-imperative, interrogative-imperative). All the cited
intermediary communicative types of sentences belong to living, productive
syntactic means of language and should find the due reflection both in theoretical
linguistic description and in practical language teaching.

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 Practical part (Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat   Chapter I )

The declarative sentence

We were sitting in my room, smoking, and talking about Мы сидели в моей комнате, курили и разго
how bad we were—bad from a medical point of view I том, как плох каждый из нас, – плох, я, кон
mean, of course имею в виду, в медицинском смысле. e-rea
Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of giddiness Гаррис сказал, что у него бывают страшны
come over him at times, that he hardly knew what he was приступы головокружения, во время котор
doing; and then George said that he had fits of giddiness просто ничего не соображает; и тогда Джо
too, and hardly knew what he was doing. что у него тоже бывают приступы головокр
он тоже ничего не соображает
It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent Странное дело: стоит мне прочесть объявл
medicine advertisement without being impelled to the каком-нибудь патентованном средстве, как
conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease прихожу к выводу, что страдаю той самой
therein dealt with in its most virulent form. о которой идет речь, причем в наиопаснейш
I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and Я взял справочник и нашел там все, что мн
then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, нужно, а потом от нечего делать начал пер
and began to indolently study diseases, generally.  книгу, просматривая то, что там сказано о
других болезнях.
All they need do would be to walk round me, and, after . Им достаточно было бы обойти в
that, take their diploma
меня и затем получить свои дипло
He is an old chum of mine, and feels my pulse, and looks Он мой старый приятель; когда мне почуди
at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for nothing, нездоров, он щупает у меня пульс, смотрит
when I fancy I'm ill; so I thought I would do him a good язык, разговаривает со мной о погоде – и в
turn by going to him now. бесплатно; я подумал, что теперь моя очер
ему услугу.
He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen В моем лице он получит такую практику, к
hundred of your ordinary, commonplace patients, with не получить от тысячи семисот каких-нибу
only one or two diseases each. заурядных пациентов, у которых не набере
болезней на брата.

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 The imperative sentence

English Russian
"Why, you skulking little devil, you," they would say, "get up ...Эй ты, чертенок, - гов
and do something for your living, can't you? нибудь, что ли!
"What we want is rest," said Harris. Все, что нам нужно, - э
"Sea-side!" said my brother-in-law, pressing the ticket - Море! - говорил мой
affectionately into his hand руку молодого человек
"Get me out of this," was the feeble reply. - Унесите меня отсюда
"Hi! come further in," I said, shaking him by the shoulder. - Эй, осадите назад! Вы
"You'll be overboard."
"Let's go up the river." - Поедем вверх по реке

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 The interrogative sentence

English Russian
Why hadn't I got housemaid's knee? Почему у меня нет в
Why this invidious reservation? Чем объяснить такую
"Well, what's the matter with you? - Ну, чем же ты боле
"You are a chemist?" - Вы аптекарь?
"What can I get you, sir?" - Что прикажете при
"Weren't you a little shaky by Southend Pier one day, - Не вы ли однажды

and wanted to be thrown overboard?" Саусэндского мола и

выбросило за борт?

The exclamatory sentence

English Russian
This is all very well for an hour or two; but you can't Все это прекрасно н

balance yourself for a week! качаться взад и впер

расскажешь словами
Sea-side!" said my brother-in-law, pressing the ticket Море! - говорил мой
affectionately into his hand
в руку молодого чел
"Southend Pier!" he replied, with a puzzled Саусэндский мол! -
expression.
видом.

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