Attachments_setltd@mail.ru_2012-06-24_15-33-11 английский язык / 42 declarative sentences

42 Declarative sentences

§ 7. A declarative sentence contains a statement which gives the reader or the listener some information about various events, activities or attitudes, thoughts and feelings. Statements form the bulk of monological speech, and the greater part of conversation. A statement may be positive (affirmative) or negative, as in:

I have just come back from a business trip.

I haven't seen my sister yet.

Grammatically, statements are characterized by the subject-predicate structure with the direct order of words. They are mostly two-member sentences, although they may be one-member sentences, as in:

Very early morning.

No curtain. No painting.

Statement usually have a falling tone; they are marked by a pause in speaking and by a full stop in writing.

In conversation, statements are often structurally incomplete, especially when they serve as a response to a question asking for some information, and the response conveys the most important idea.

Where are you going? - To the library.

Thanks to their structure and lexical content, declarative sentences are communicatively polyfunctional. Thus, besides their main function as information-carriers, statements may be used with the force of questions, commands and exclamations, as in:

I wonder why he is so late.

You mustn't talk back to your parents.