1.1. Declaratives
Declarative sentences are used to express statements, to make something known, to explain, or to describe. The typical declarative sentence contains at least a predicative nucleus consisting of a subject and of a predicate.
a. gianni smart
‘Gianni is smart.’
b. maria chocolate buy
‘Maria bought chocolate.’
In these sentences the property of being smart is predicated of Gianni, and the property of buying chocolate is predicated of Maria.
However, there can be elliptical sentences with a minimal structure. In the following question-answer pair, the single word utterance gianni can be considered a sentence as long as it is interpreted as the elliptical version of ‘Gianni arrived late.’
wh
A: arrive late who
B: gianni
‘Who arrived late?’ ‘Gianni.’
Declaratives can be simple sentences as above or more complex constructions. For example, two declaratives can be coordinated.
maria cat like but dog hate
‘Maria likes cats but hates dogs.’
A declarative sentence can be embedded under another declarative sentence (SYNTAX 3.3).
gianni think maria chocolate buy
‘Gianni thinks Maria bought chocolate.’
Declaratives can be affirmatives and negatives. An affirmative or positive sentence is used to express the validity or truth of a basic assertion while a negative sentence expresses its falsity. This quality of meaning is often referred to as negative and positive polarity. Negative sentences are illustrated below.
neg
a. maria cat see not
‘Maria does not see the cat.’
neg
b. wine buy nobody
‘Nobody bought wine.’
Declaratives are the unmarked or most neutral type of sentence in comparison to the other three types. As such, they are the compass for examining various grammatical structures. Our description of interrogative, imperative and exclamative sentences will explain how they differ from declaratives.
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant Agreement No 693349.