Languages & Linguistics
Declaratives
Declaratives are a type of sentence that make a statement or assertion. They are the most common type of sentence in English and are characterized by their subject-verb-object structure. Declaratives can be affirmative or negative and can be used to convey a wide range of meanings and information.
Written by Perlego with AI-assistance
Related key terms
1 of 5
3 Key excerpts on "Declaratives"
eBook - PDFWorking with English Grammar
An Introduction
- Louise Cummings(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
It is not difficult to see why this is the case. One of the pri- mary purposes of any language is to produce statements about people, places and events in the world. Declarative sentences are the vehicle by means of which statements are expressed. 7.2.1 Structure of Declaratives Declaratives have a two-part structure that consists of a subject noun phrase fol- lowed by a predicate verb phrase. As the following sentences illustrate, the subject noun phrase may be a personal or demonstrative pronoun, a proper or common noun, or a dummy subject like it and there: She is leaving her job. [Personal pronoun] This is an amazing painting. [Demonstrative pronoun] Mike grows pumpkins. [Proper noun] The boy sat under the tree. [Common noun] It is very cold in here. [Dummy subject] There is little chance of success. [Dummy subject] The predicate verb phrase may contain a lexical verb on its own (grows pumpkins) or a lexical verb with an auxiliary verb (is leaving her job). There may also be other elements in the predicate including noun phrases (her job), prepositional phrases (under the tree) and adjective phrases (very cold), which have object, adverbial and complement functions, respectively. Declarative sentences are produced by even very young typically developing children. However, the structure of these sentences may not be adult-like in all respects. At just over 2 years of age, Lara occasionally produced declarative sen- tences in which the subject noun phrase was omitted. However, because the sub- ject could be recovered from context, there was no lack of understanding on the part of the hearer (usually Lara’s mother): [I] want my slippers. [I] want snack. In other declarative sentences, Lara included a subject noun phrase only for some element to be omitted from the predicate verb phrase. In the following examples, an auxiliary verb is omitted: You [are] sitting on.
eBook - PDFLanguage in Time and Space
A Festschrift for Werner Winter on the Occasion of his 80th Birthday
- Brigitte L.M. Bauer, Georges-Jean Pinault, Brigitte L.M. Bauer, Georges-Jean Pinault, Brigitte L. M. Bauer, Georges-Jean Pinault(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
A declarative sentence is simply a kind of sentence. Each particular sentence will be treated here as an individual, concrete, non-repeatable lingual object, which can be characterized in terms of structures of various kinds. A sentence, if conceived of in this way should be called an actual sentence, and should be kept distinct from a sentence as an abstract entity. The set of all actual sentences will be denoted by the symbol Sen, and the set of all declarative sentences by the symbol Dec. The formulae s e Sen and s e Dec read, respectively, as: s is an actual sentence and s is an actual declarative sentence. However, since only actual lingual objects will be dealt with here, the adjective 'actual' will be sometimes omitted, if the context provides unambiguous information. All actual sentences con-vey messages and they function in communication as certain wholes, that is, they are communicatively indivisible. However, looked at from dif-ferent angles, units of various kinds can be distinguished within them. Dictons and syntagmas, among others, belong to such units. 42 Jerzy Banczerowski The concept of dicton has already been characterized on various occa-sions (cf. Banczerowski 1999: 19). Nevertheless, for the sake of quick refer-ence, it should be reiterated that each particular dicton, as a part of an actual sentence, is also an individual, concrete, non-repeatable unit. It conveys both lexical and semical (grammatical) meaning. Or, more cor-rectly, it is already capable of both lexification and semification. Dictons may be linearly continuous or discontinnous. No synsemantical unit can be regarded as a dicton but it forms a corresponding dicton with an appro-priate autosemantic word. The set of all dictons will be denoted as Die, and the formula χ e Die reads: χ is a dicton. A lingual unit consisting of at least two dictons will be termed an actual syntagma. However, syntagmas as such are of no special concern here.
eBook - PDFFrom Axiom to Dialogue
A Philosophical Study of Logics and Argumentation
- Else M. Barth, Erik C. Krabbe(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
When the declarative base of the language in question is of the form iTor of the form ίΓ Λ , we need, furthermore, two specialized interrogative sentence forms, pertaining to complex sentences of the form U & V, namely: (U & V) L ? or only: L ? (U & V) R ? or only: R? which may be read as: How do you defend the left conjunct of. . .? which may be read as: How do you defend the right conjunct of...? We may, from now on, speak of the dialectically augmented language forms JD> 0D , and ίΓβ . Languages of these forms may be called dialectical or O-lan-We summarize our terminology in the following schema: Figure II. 3 f declarative sentences { , .. ' . /ΟΛΤΤ hypothetical: (?)U sentences of D-languages questions exclamations f U? ? (U & V) L ? L? (U&V)R? R? U! utterances/inscriptions of sentences of D-languages utterances of assertive sentences: U utterances of hypothetical sentences: (?)U utterances of questions: U ? (etc.) utterances of exclamations: U!,! concerning utterances/ inscriptions of declarative sentences ' a use of a sentence is to be called: a statement; 'mention of sentences: not relevant to the kinds of discussions we shall consider in this book. statements may therefore be ( assertive: U I hypothetical: (?)U 52 II.5. Speech acts II. Declarative and Dialectical Languages It is possible to distinguish certain broad semiotical periods and approaches ac-cording to — among other things — the types of speech acts that were regarded as particularly important in them.
Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.
