Four and a half types of sentence

The first snippet: It was a long drive home.

This lesson is taking a more zoomed out perspective than the other sentence construction lessons, so it's not essential to have done the other lessons in the series before this one. That being said, we will assume that you are comfortable writing sentences that include different elements ('things', 'people', 'actions', 'qualities', 'places', 'times'). We also think you will ge more out of this lesson if you understand the structure of clauses ('subjects', 'verb groups', 'complements' and 'modifiers').

We're not spending much time on statements in this lesson, because if you've done the previous sentence construction lessons, then you've already written a lot of them, and know pretty much everything there is to know about them. Huzzah!

A slightly more technical term you might hear for words like 'what', 'who', 'where', etc. is 'interrogative word'. We're just going to stick with 'question word' on Writelike, because it's easier to remember.

Questions have a few nuances when it comes to their grammatical structure, which could be confusing if you try to analyse them using the methods we've developed over the previous lessons in this series.

But the differences really boil down to just a few rules, which we'll explain here just so you can see how they work:

1. The 'question word' always goes just before the verb group.

• Who ate the cake?
• What did Mimi eat?
• Where did Mimi eat the cake?
• Last night, how did Mimi eat the cake?

No matter what question we ask, the question word always comes before the verb group. Usually that means the question word will come right at the start of the sentence (but if a sentence has any modifiers—like "last night" in that final example—those can sneak in front).

2. The 'question word' fills the same clause component slot as the 'answer' would.

This is a little bit theoretical, but it will help explain the third 'rule' (to come).

If we answered the questions above with a statement, we can see that the 'question word' is standing in for the word group that is the 'answer':

• Who ate the cake?
  Mimi ate the cake.
• What did Mimi eat?
  Mimi ate the cake.

We can go one step further and say that the 'question word' is filling the same clause component slot.

The 'subject':

• Who ate the cake?
• Mimi ate the cake.

The 'complement':

• What did Mimi eat?
• Mimi ate the cake.

Or a 'modifier':

• Where did Mimi eat the cake?
• Mimi ate the cake in the kitchen.

3. The verb group gets split up when the 'question word' is not the 'subject' of the clause.

You've probably noticed something strange about some of these verb groups.

What did Mimi eat?
Where did Mimi eat the cake?
How did Mimi eat the cake?

It kind of looks like there are 2 verb groups in each question. which would normally mean there are 2 clauses. But really there's still only 1 verb group; it's just been broken up and the tense (shown by the tense helper, 'do') has swapped places with the subject, "Mimi".

This doesn't happen when the 'question word' is the subject:

Who ate the cake?

As we already saw, 'question words' always go in front of the verb group, so when the 'question word' is the subject, we can't do the swap!

You might have noticed something odd about that last snippet. There's no main verb!

Well, that's not entirely true. The main verb is 'are'. 'Being' verbs (like 'is', 'was', 'are') are a bit special and can do all sorts of things that other verbs can't.

For example, in the snippet above, 'are' is playing the role of both 'tense helper' and 'main verb'. Since we can only use one highlighter, we chose to highlight its role as tense helper because of how it swaps with the subject to form a question.

Note that 'being' verbs can also have separate verb helpers

There are some circumstances where you'll find 'being' verb questions with separate verb helpers.

For example, you might be using modal verbs to get a slightly different shade of meaning:

"Would you be familiar with the Latin term 'in loco parentis'?"

"No, we weren't going to live here forever."

Again, the asker is trying to get the responder to agree with their original statement: "We weren't going to live here forever."

There's a little bit of social manipulation going on here. The asker is trying to bypass the respondent's reluctance to leave by getting the respondent themself to admit that they can't stay where they are.

"Yes, we are blocked up."

The asker is trying to get confirmation that they understood the situation correctly.

"Yes, I do think I'm mighty smart!"

Actually, this is a bit of an odd one, because it's also drawing on a common social 'rule': "you should be humble and not brag about things like being clever". So even though the structure of the question is leading you to answer "yes", the responder will probably still want to answer "no".

The asker is purposefully creating a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario. They're forcing the responder to either:

• Put in effort to break the natural flow and put themselves down in order to contradict the asker's opinion, or
• Break social norms and risk looking arrogant by admitting they have a positive trait.

Nasty!

In Understanding Clauses and Complex Sentences, we learned that clauses always have a 'subject' and a 'verb group'. But here we are saying that commands only consist of a verb group. What has happened to the 'subject'?

The 'subject' is usually the person or thing that does the action. In a command like "Pay attention!", who is paying attention (or is at least meant to be)?

The 'subject' is whoever is being spoken to (in other words, "you"). So it's usually just implied:

"(You) Pay attention!"

But it can be spelled out:

"Everyone, pay attention!"

"Pay attention, Ginnie."

(It's worth noting that these are arguably not 'subjects' in the strict grammatical sense, which is why they get separated out by commas. But functionally, they specify the intended 'actor', which is what a subject would usually do.)

Right from the very start of this lesson series about sentences, we've been hammering home the idea of verbs, verbs, verbs. And yet here we are, learning about exclamations, and there's not a single verb in sight. So it's a valid question—are these really sentences?

They don't contain any clauses (the building block of sentences). But they do function at the same grammatical level as sentences, so functionally, yes, exclamations are a kind of sentence. They're the "strange uncle/aunt/cousin" of the sentence family.

It has a verb, yes, but there's no subject (the other necessary component of a clause). Who is bringing the equipment back?

This is an interesting example of a fragment because in another context it actually could be a complete sentence. Let's change the first line of dialogue:

"Go there and bring him back."

"And bring Pathfinder and Sojourner rover back with him," Mindy added.

Now it's a command, not a fragment, because of the way we interpret bring—Mindy is telling someone to bring the equipment back. (And remember that commands always have "you" as an implied subject.)

In the original, Mindy is giving information—the astronaut can bring the equipment back. It's a fragment because she doesn't include the 'subject' (the astronaut). The other speaker already established who they're talking about, so Mindy doesn't need to say it. This is very common in dialogue.

Both exclamations and fragments aren't made of complete clauses. But we've said exclamations are sentences and fragments aren't really sentences. So what's the difference?

Exclamations are self-contained. The exclamation "Oh!" doesn't require anything else to make its meaning clear. Same with "Hello?", "How mysterious!" or any other exclamation.

Fragments are not self-contained. Their meaning only makes sense in context. It's similar to how implied subjects work—the information is in another sentence, so we don't need to repeat it.

Once they locked me up all day long. And (they locked me up) all night.

Or the writer might just be leaving out words that don't really add any meaning in order to make their writing more punchy:

(There was) No answer.

Writers often use fragments for emphasis and impact. Here the fragments slow you down, and use simplicity and repetition to emphasise the narrator's emotion (in this case, anger).

Let's try it for ourselves.

Grammatically, the dialogue 'tag' (he said, I said, said Amelia, etc.) is part of the sentence with the dialogue. It turns the whole thing into a statement because it's giving you information: who said what.

But for the purpose of functional analysis, it's more useful to highlight them separately.

Answering a question with a command will usually sound dismissive—one character is purposefully avoiding giving the other the information they want. Exactly how that comes across depends on the relationship between the characters and the context of the situation.

In the original snippet, Auggie's dad is avoiding having a difficult conversation with Auggie. He tries to use his authority as a parent to get Auggie to leave ("Go back to sleep, Auggie").

While his intentions are well-meaning—he wants to avoid causing Auggie more anxiety—we get the sense that he is dismissing Auggie's current emotions (i.e. Auggie is already anxious, and his dad isn't addressing that).

The first worked example is a bit different because of the context (being in a dangerous situation). The narrator isn't being dismissive of Cali—rather, by calling for immediate action, they are signalling that there isn't time to answer the question. (But notice that the result—avoiding a conversation—is the same. It's the motivation that has changed.)

Try describing the second worked example by yourself (or discuss it in a group).

• What is the "commanding" character trying to achieve?
• What does this say about the relationship between the two characters in the snippet?

What is this sentence?

"Lead it to the water's edge and shove it in?"

It's got a question mark, and it is performing the function of a question. But it has no subject, and doesn't have the grammatical features of a question (question words, flipped subject/verb helpers, or tags). So it's a fragment.

Which reveals something important about fragments: they can be from different sentence types.

A lot of fragments come from statements, like this:

Once they locked me up all day long. And (they locked me up) all night.

Now we have an example of a fragment that has come from a question:

(should she) Lead it to the water's edge and shove it in?

What about commands? What would a fragment of a command look like? We've actually already seen one:

"Dr. Livesey take the north side, if you please; Jim, (take) the east, Gray, (take the) west."

Exclamations? Exclamations are the only sentence type you won't find fragments of. Can you think why that would be the case?

We haven't highlighted a "main clause" in that last snippet, because it doesn't have one!

It's missing both a subject and a verb group that relate to the description of the colour. What is "dark red"? What 'action' does the colour relate to? Is something just 'being' dark red? Is someone 'painting' something dark red? We need more context.

On the other hand, we have all the context we need to understand the supporting clause (describing the gum leaves). It's just dependent on the main... fragment.

Exclamations aren't made of clauses, so there aren't as many ways to embed more meaning into them. Because they're usually cried out in surprise, fear, anger, excitement, and so on, they also tend to be pretty short. That being said, it can happen. Here's an example:

Oh the folly of him going out by himself in that way!
(The Secret Commonwealth, Phillip Pullman, source)

Once again, exclamations are the odd ones out when it comes to sentence types. It's pretty common to see them attached to other sentence types without the help of a connector.

Pay attention to how people talk. Listen for different sentence types—especially fragments. This can be quite hard to do, but the results can be very interesting!

Notice when writers use sentence types other than statements (statements are generally the default). What do you notice about how different text types (stories, reports, manuals, articles) use sentence types?

What effects do you notice from different combinations of sentence types? What do sentence types tell you about the characters in a story and the relationships they have with each other?

We drew snippets from a lot of different texts in this lesson. Here are the main ones:

Burning for Revenge is the 5th book in John Marsden's Tomorrow series, about 5 friends who return from a camping trip in the bush to discover that their town has been occupied by an invading army.

R.J. Palacio's Wonder follows the school life of a boy, Auggie, who has an extraordinary facial difference, and is attending a mainstream school for the first time in grade 5.

Koyasan is the story of a girl who must face her deepest fears and venture into the world of malicious spirits in order to save her baby sister.

Treasure Island is a classic adventure story of pirates, treasure, mutiny and general swashbuckling.