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48THE ROLE AND PLACE OF COMMUNICATIVE TYPES OF SENTENCES IN THE TEXT
Karymsak M., Ilyas A.
Undergraduates ITII Taraz, Kazakhstan
Abstract
In this work, we will concentrate mainly on a rather formal, standard, written variety, not only because this is the variety that we will come across most in academic books and articles, but especially because it is more carefully thought about before put on paper and therefore does not show the kinds of gaps and unfinished sentences that may occur in spoken language. Another reason is that a more formal written variety often contains sentences that are longer and are therefore more complex than spoken sentences. In this work, we will first take a look at sentences in general to narrow down our object of analysis, then we will introduce you to the basic constituents of a sentence, and finally we will show you how these may or may not be combined in typical sentence patterns.
Keywords: communicative, complex sentences, communicative functions.
If we want to describe the English language, we first have to decide which type of language we are going to focus on. Not only are there hundreds of different English dialects all over the world, even within dialects there are varieties, ranging from substandard and slang to informal and formal ones, which in turn may be spoken or written. In this work, we will concentrate mainly on a rather formal, standard, written variety, not only because this is the variety that we will come across most in academic books and articles, but especially because it is more carefully thought about before put on paper and therefore does not show the kinds of gaps and unfinished sentences that may occur in spoken language. Another reason is that a more formal written variety often contains sentences that are longer and are therefore more complex than spoken sentences.
In this chapter, we will first take a look at sentences in general to narrow down our object of analysis, then we will introduce you to the basic constituents of a sentence, and finally we will show you how these may or may not be combined in typical sentence patterns.
Declarative, interrogative, imperative and exclamatory sentence patterns
When people communicate, they do so for various reasons; the four main reasons are:
• to inform someone of something
• to get information from someone
• to get someone to do something
• to express one's attitude about something
Each of these communicative functions has a typical
sentence pattern:
John is leaving.
Is John leaving?
Leave!
How awful John is leaving! What a shock John is leaving!
These patterns have the following syntactic characteristics:
subject-whole verb
part of verb-subject-rest of verb
verb by itself
How ... or What a ... followed by remainder of sentence
These sentence types with these patterns are named as follows:
Declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory If we will look at any large body of written text, we would end that most sentences are communicative and will have the declarative sentence pattern. That is why we will concentrate mostly on those, but almost any linguistic sign (including a typical sentence pattern) may have more than one sense. For sentence types this means that in the right context, with the right intonation, a sentence type may very well be used to express a different communicative function.
Participants, process, attributes and setting In a declarative sentence, a speaker or writer gives information about situations or events. When different people describe the same event or situation, it is likely that they use different words to describe it because they may end different aspects of the scene important or interesting. The words the speaker uses shows which of the aspects of the scene he or she ends most appropriate, relevant or effective at the moment of speaking. Consider the cartoon below and quickly jot down about three simple sentences you might use to describe what is happening. (We will get back to these later.)
Picture 1
Out of all the details in an event or situation, a speaker can name the following aspects: one or more participants, attributes of these participants, and information about the setting of the event or situation.
First of all, the speaker names at least one person or thing and says something about him, her or it. In these cartoons, there are a few things that stand out most: the little boy, the balloon, and the cactus. In a typical sentence, the person or thing that stands out the most (for us humans that is usually a person doing something) is named first. We will call this person or thing the first participant.
The little boy is happy.
He turned three years old.
He must be Annie's little brother.
Then the speaker names the process, such as is, is holding, is walking, which descnbes the act, deed, state of being or becoming that the first participant is involved in. The speaker may then say something about the first participant or name one or two more participants. As you can see in the following examples, if the speaker says something about the first participant, it will be an attribute describing a quality or characteristic, or one or more words identifying the participant or giving the class the participant is a member of
a quality a characteristic identification
He
was
a toddler.
class membership
But the speaker may also choose to mention a second participant, which is another thing, person, event, or situation that stands out in the scene.
The little boy is holding a balloon.
And, in some cases it is possible to name an attribute of the second participant. In the following sentences, unpoppable and his treasure describe the second participant.
It is also possible for the speaker to name three participants. In such cases, something is transferred from one participant to another. In the following sentences, the mother is the just participant, a balloon, the second one, and the boy, the third one.
Besides naming participants and attributes of these participants, the speaker may choose to give information about the setting, which tells how, where, when,
why, under what condition, in spite of which condition the process or the event or situation takes place. The term 'setting' is to be taken very broadly. It may refer to time, reason, condition, cause and so on. Basically it refers to anything that is not a participant, an attribute or a process. In the following examples, yesterday tells when the event took place. Up high tells how the balloon was held, for his birthday tells why the event took place and when he walked through the hallway tells when the event took place.
The little boy was very proud yesterday.
He was holding his balloon up high.
The mother had given him the balloon for his birthday.
When he walked through the hallway, he considered it unpoppable.
Subject, predicator, object, attribute, and adverbial
So far we have talked about the roles different sentence parts may name in a sentence. A group of words
Roles and functions <
Roles
first participant process
something about the first participant a second participant something about the second participant a third participant
the setting
To summarize, main participants, which tell us who or what, are subjects, direct objects, or indirect objects. The part that names the process is called the predicator, and characteristics of one of the participants are called attributes. Finally, those parts of the sentence that tell us when, why, how, and so on are called adver-bials.
S P IO DO A
The mother / had given / the boy / a balloon / for his birthday.
S P SA A
The little boy / was / very proud / yesterday.
A S P DO OA
All day long, / the little boy / considered / the balloon / his greatest treasure.
Typical sentence patterns
When a speaker describes an event or situation, he or she must organize the words according to a recognizable sentence pattern; otherwise, the listener cannot make sense of the stream of words. For example, the following two utterances will not make much sense because there are no recognizable patterns. In the first one, there are just words in alphabetical order and in the second one, phrases in alphabetical order:
also but expresses ideas language not only our shapes the thinking use we expresses ideas not only... but also our thinking shapes the language we use
To make sense of words, a listener must recognize a pattern. First of all, words that make up one constituent (a subject, a predicator) are put together in a certain order. For example, we say the language, not language the. Then the sentence constituents are arranged according to a recognizable pattern. The most common pattern in English is that the subject is named first, then the predicate, which is the remainder of the sentence, naming the process, other participants, attributes and setting.
Now let's look at the previous utterances in a recognizable pattern. The subject and predicate have been separated with a slash.
subject predicate
The language we use / not only expresses ideas but also shapes our thinking.
The predicate, in turn, contains the predicator, consisting of one or more words denoting the process. The predicator may be followed by a complement,
used to name a particular role has a technical function in the sentence. The technical terms and the abbreviations we will use for these are shown in Table 1.
Table 1
sentence constituents
Function Abbreviation
subject S
predicator P
subject attribute SA
direct object DO
object attribute OA
indirect object IO
benefactive object BO
Adverbial A
which is a superordinate term for the objects or attributes, which name other participants or attributes of participants that are necessary to complete the meaning of the predicator.
In the following example, the correlative conjunction not only.but also is set o-with parentheses because it does not have a function in the sentence. It merely connects the two predicates.
Subject predicator complement The language we use / (not only) expresses / ideas / (but also) shapes / our thinking. The complements ideas and our thinking are both direct objects. Therefore, this pattern is very similar to a very basic one: the S-P-DO pattern. The main difference is that it contains two predicates joined by the words not only and but also. In English there are five such basic, prototypical sentence patterns. Most sentences we will come across, no matter how complex, will be somewhat similar to one of these. However, they are usually much more complex because often the constituents are very complex and long. Because the pattern that can be used is very much dependent on the meaning of the verb in the predicator, the patterns are named after very typical verbs for that pattern. The first three patterns are most common in everyday language; the last two occur much less frequently. The running pattern (intransitive verbs) Sentences with the running pattern consist of a subject and predicator, often (but by no means always) followed by an adverbial. For this pattern is needed a verb that expresses an action involving only one main participant. There are many verbs like run that express a pure action, for example, swimming, talking, cycling, listening, and so on. This sentence pattern may have one or more adverbials, but no direct object nor subject attribute. S P (A)
John is running (fast).
Here, the parentheses indicate that the constituent is optional. In other words, this constituent may be left off. Logical structure of communicative sentences Everyone at least once think about such a question - "Why do we need to use language"? Probably, the most important reason is that we wish to give someone piece of information which we think he doesn't know about. We will show some general ways in which information is given and received and we shall consider attitudes' of a speaker and hearer to information and reality it deals with.
• Questions and answers. In conversation, both statements and questions provoke a response. For questions, the most natural response is an answer to the question, giving the speaker the information he needs. (Yes-No question):
"Santiago, " the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from where the skiff was hauled up. "I could go with you again. We've made some money.
"No," the old man said. "You're with a lucky boat. Stay with them."
"Can I go out to get sardines for you for tomorrow?"
"No. Go and play baseball. I can still row and Rogelio will throw the net."
"I'll get the cast net and go for sardines. Will you sit in the sun in the doorway?"
"Yes. I have yesterday's paper and I will read the baseball." (p. 1 - p. 2)
• Questions about alternatives:
"Should we talk about Africa or about baseball?"
"Baseball I think, " the boy said. "Tell me about the great John J. McGraw. " He said Jota for J. (p.9)
These limited types of questions are the one, which expect as an answer one of two or more alternatives mentioned in the question: The old man and the boy could talk about two things-about Africa and about baseball. The boy took the second alternative (about a baseball), an alternative one of two, mentioned in the dialogue.
• Statements with negative and positive bias:
"The month when the great fish come," the old
man said. "Anyone can be a fisherman in May. "
"I go now for the sardines," the boy said. (p.6)
Analyzing this microdialogue we can conclude, that the usage of any-words like any, ever, yet are neutral between positive and negative replies, the Old man says" "Anyone can be a fisherman in May. " The boy doesn't directly answer to his statement, he just stood and went for sardines. That is why we can consider, that the boy could as agree, as well as disagree with the Old Man's words: "I go now for the sardines," the boy said.
In the given work we investigated communicative types of sentences, their role and place in the text.
First of all, we carried out a detailed analysis of the leading linguists' works, who devoted their research to this theme. Taking into account differences in opinion concerning the issue of communicative sentences, we gave an extensive survey of the most widespread writings on this theme.
Having studied the full theoretical basis of research, we defined peculiarities of the sentence as a communicative unit, examined particular functional features of communicative sentences in the text.
In accordance with the results of our research work we can make the following conclusions:
1. In contemporary English language there are four main types of communicative sentences: declarative, interrogative, imperative and exclamatory, which are provoked by the human necessity:
a) to inform someone of something;
b) to get information from someone;
c) to get someone to do something;
d) to express one's attitude about something.
2. Communicative types of sentences, considered in contextual conditions influence the form of language used; contextual factors include such things as the social positions and roles of the participants in discourse and their interpersonal relations of intimacy and power, the psychological states of the speaker and hearer, the intentions, beliefs and attitudes.
3. By means of communicative types of sentences we are able to build up the implications on the text basis. In other words, the interpersonal meanings, which are hidden in the text, could be revealed through communicative sentences.
In the course of investigation, we managed to reveal an additional function of communicative types of sentences - the associative one. This function plays a great role while text comprehension. In addition to getting information from the text, we can conceive some unwritten facts and possible course of developing events due to associative function.
As we have already mentioned above, communicative types of sentences are distinctive for their various sentence structure. This fact lets the reader make implications while reading or reflecting the text. Therefore, we can consider communicative types of sentences as an important part not only in grammar, but also as the component of another study field - psycho-linguistics.
We hope that our research work would serve for the further scientific research in this area and will help as the basis for communicative sentence investigations.
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