Declarative sentences or statements.

A declarative sentence or statement is used when the speaker wishes to give someone some piece of information which the hearer is unlikely to know. It may be done in the form of an affirmative or negative statement.

              He always comes late – he doesn’t come so late.

Declarative sentences are endless in their variety. We will consider the point of view of prof. V.V.Buzarov who says that there are sentence – patterns which are very common in everyday conversation.

    1. The pattern Here/There comes our bus or  Here/There it is.

They are rather common in everyday speech. But when the subject is a personal pronoun, the subject-predicate inversion does not take place.

              Here you are. (= This is for you).

              Here we are (= We’ve arrived at the expected place).

              There you are (= That supports or proves what I’ve said).

    2. The existential sentences of the pattern There + be + a noun-phrase.

 An English sentence like  A book is on the desk  or Some books are on the shelf is possible but uncommon. It is important to notice that in informal English the introductory subject there often determines agreement with the predicate, so that the verb  be  is singular even when the notional subject is plural.

              There’s two patients in the waiting-room.

Another common sentence-pattern with the introductory there is that in which the notional subject is followed by a for-to-infinitive construction or simply by a single infinitive as attribute.

              There was no one for us to talk to.

This type of the introductory there-sentence sometimes has a definite notional subject expressed by a noun with the definite article.

              There’s the man next door to consider.

3.Introductory It-subject

The anticipatory it usually introduces the notional subject which may be expressed in various ways: by an infinitive, a gerund, infinitival or gerundial complexes and even a subordinate clause.

It’s no use going there so early.

In informal spoken English the reverse process sometimes occurs: an infinitive or gerundial phrase or a clause is placed in front position and the main clause with that at the end of a sentence after an intonation break.

    Meeting you in London that day, that was pleasant.

4. The pattern She is easy/ a pleasure to teach.

This sentence is the converted variant of To teach her is easy/a  pleasure.

The object is picked out from the sentence and placed as subject in the reworded sentence. The number of adjectives used in such constructions is very limited. Thus, the adjective easy in this construction could be replaced by agreeable, amusing, difficult, hard, hopeless, interesting, nice, pleasant, impossible.

There is another similar construction like He is foolish to meet her again. And again the number of adjectives used in this construction is also limited: brave, clever, crue,l generous, good, polite, kind, rude, selfish, silly, stupid, wicked, wise, reasonable.

5. He/ John is sure / certain to like it.

It is frequently used in conversational English.

               You are sure to like the place. He is likely to see her.

6. Construction with correlative subjects or objects.

There is a special type of syntactical construction in which a word-substitute (usually a personal pronoun) is placed at the beginning of the sentence, whereas the noun-phrase to which it refers is pushed to the end. The noun-phrase tag acts in this construction as repeated (tautological) subject, the personal pronoun being the initial subject.

              He’s a complete idiot, that brother of yours.

7. The pattern He/John was man enough to do …

Colloquial English makes ample use of a special construction in which such nouns as: man, fool, idiot … are used as predicatives without the indefinite article (because they denote here qualities rather than substances).

Interrogative sentences

    Most interrogative sentences are formed by means of inversion, i.e. by placing the predicate or part of it before the subject. There are the following types of interrogative sentences: - general (Yes/No) questions

- special questions

- alternative questions

- disjunctive questions

Every type of questions has its own features and rules of usage.

Imperative sentences

    They are widely used in speech when the speaker induces the person(s) addressed to fulfill an action. This may be done in the form of a command, order, request, irritation, offer, entreaty, etc. The most common type of imperative sentences differs structurally from the declarative and interrogative sentences in several important points. Most imperative sentences normally have no overt grammatical subject.

    It is easy to confuse the imperative subject in such sentences with a vocative. Whereas the subject always precedes the predicate verb, however, the vocative is a mobile element that occur in final and medial, as well as initial position in the sentence. Another difference is that the vocative, when placed in front position, has a separate tone-unit (typically fall-rise), the subject merely receives ordinary word – stress.

Exclamatory sentences

    Exclamatory sentences are primarily used for expressing the speaker’s own feelings or strong emotion (surprise, indignation, incredulity, disgust, ridicule and so on). They are characterized by emphatic intonation in speaking and by an exclamation mark in writing. Any of the three above-mentioned communicative types of sentences can be made exclamatory but in our further discussion we will restrict ourselves to purely exclamatory sentences which do not belong to any of those three types whose basic quality is either declarative or interrogative or imperative with an additional emotional element when they are made exclamatory.

              What a shame! How encouraging!

Thus, in studying the structure of a sentence, we are faced with a problem which has been receiving ever greater attention in linguistic investigations of recent years.

References

1. Blokh M.Y. A Course in Theoretical English Grammar. – M., 2000. – p.229-236, 261-272

2. Ilyish B.A. The structure of Modern English. – L., 1971. –Ch.26-29, 31