In many
respects, sentences can be analysed in the same terms as clauses,
that is separating the elements into the categories of subject, object,
verb, complement andadverbial.
However,
sentences are also described in terms of:
- how
clauses are arranged
- functions
of the sentence
- traditional
patterns which are used for particular effects in speech and writing
Clause
structures in sentences
The most basic
sentence form contains a single clause. This is known as a simplesentence:
- Mary had a
little lamb.
- Chocolate
is delicious.
- Down fell
the rain.
A compound
sentence joins two coordinate clauses together:
- Mary had a
little lamb and took it to school.
- I drank
some tea and felt better.
- Here is a
wug and here are two wugs.
A multiple
sentence links clauses of essentially similar type, with coordinating
conjunctions.
- I came
home, sat down, put the kettle on, lit the fire and sat down with a book.
A complex
sentence uses subordination to link clauses. It is not
necessarily very "complex" in the everyday sense (that is, difficult
to analyse), but it may be:
- I hope
that she will come.
- Lest you
forget, here is my address.
- Having
played football, I sat in the bath, while the kettle boiled, thinking of
how to spend the evening, which loomed before me promisingly.
This is a
simple kind of classification. Sentences are traditionally categorized into
four types: statement, command, question or exclamation. These
are readily illustrated by examples (note alternative names).
- Statement or declarative: This
is my porridge.
- Command,
wish, imperative or directive: Go and never darken my doors
again.
- Question or interrogative: Who's
been eating my porridge?
- Exclamation: How
happy I feel!
David Crystal
(The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, p. 218) notes some other
categories. Among these are:
Here a
statement is turned into a question, with an interrogative tag at the end. Tags
are typical of speech where the speaker changes the function of the sentence in
mid-utterance:
- Jolly nice
day today, isn't it?
Here the
structure is that of a question, but the meaning (indicated in speech by
intonation) equates to an exclamation:
- Didn't she
do well? Have I got news for you?
Again the
structure is that of a question, but the speaker (or writer) expects no answer.
They are used as emphatic statements:
- How on
earth should I know? Is the Pope a Catholic? Do bears crap in the woods?
These are akin
to imperatives, but Crystal expands the category to include related functions
of instruction, direction and so on. He lists: commanding,
inviting, warning, pleading, suggesting, advising, permitting, requesting,
meditating, expressing wish orimprecation. Crystal notes that many use the
verbs let and do in non-standard ways:
- Let me
see. Let's go. Let us pray.
- Do come
in. Do be quiet. Don't do that again.
These sentences
of a special kind, which reflect the structure of a preceding sentence from a different
speaker in a language interaction (usually conversation):
- Echo of
statement: A: It took me five hours to get
here. B: Five hours to get here?
- Echo of
question: A: Have you seen my wife? B: Have I seen
your lice?
- Echo of
directive: A: Sit down there. B: Down there?
- Echo of
exclamation: A: What a plonker! B: What a complete
plonker!
Professor
Crystal (The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, p. 216) records
some unusual types of sentence, which cannot be analysed in a regular way. They
are found in particular kinds of text and discourse - some are common in real
speech or fictional dialogue, while others are found in such things as
headlines or slogans, where a message is presented as a block of text. They do
not follow all the rules of normal grammar, such as verb agreement. Among the
types noted by Crystal are:
- Formulae
for set social situations: Cheers, Hello, Ciao, See you, How do you
do? Ta!
- Emotional
or functional noises (traditionally interjections): Hey! Ugh! Agh!
Ow! Tut! Shh! (Note how such forms are subject to change over time.
Consider Tush, eh, hein?)
- Proverbs
or aphorisms: Easy come, easy go. Least said, soonest mended.
- Short
forms as used in messages, instructions or commentaries: Wish you were
here. Shearer to Beckham. Simmer gently. Hope you are well.
- Elliptical
words or phrases with a structural meaning equivalent to a complete
exclamation, question or command: Brilliant! Lovely day! Coming?
Drink? All aboard! Drink up!
For purposes of
analysing style, sentences may be described as loose,
balanced orperiodic.
Here the writer
or speaker states fact after fact as they occur, seemingly freely and artlessly,
as in the opening of The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe:
“I was born in
the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that
country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull: he
got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards
at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named
Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called
Robinson Kreutznoer; but by the usual corruption of words in England, we are
now called, nay we call ourselves, and write our name Crusoe, and so my
companions always called me. ”
Here the writer
or speaker has a concern for symmetry - the second half of the sentence
contains a similar or opposite idea to the first half. These techniques are
very effective in persuasion, and are sometimes known as parallelism or
antithesis. Consider this from Francis Bacon (1561-1626):
“Children
sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter: they increase the cares
of life, but they mitigate the remembrance of death.”
Or this from
Viscount Grey of Fallodon, on the eve of the First World War:
“The lamps are
going out all over Europe: we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”
Or, finally,
this, spoken by President John F. Kennedy:
“Ask not what
your country can do for you: ask what you can do for your country.”
Here the climax
of the sentence comes at its end. A good example is in the opening of Edward
Gibbon's 18th century Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:
“It was in
Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the
Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of
Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first
started to my mind.”
A comprehensive
bibliography is published by AQA/NEAB. You and your teachers will use some of
the reference works on this list. In addition you may make use of any of the
following sources of help.
Dictionaries
are an excellent source of information. The best of these give etymologies,
identify word classes, record standard and non-standard words and show variant
spellings. Some modern dictionaries use a language corpus to indicate words
among the thousand (or other number) most commonly used. The Oxford
English Dictionary (OED) and The Shorter Oxford Dictionary are
the traditional authorities, but there are excellent dictionaries published by
Chambers, Longman, Collins, Cambridge and others.
