Clause types

Five clause types

The clause types and their typical speech acts are:

• declaratives are usually associated with statements (for example, The train is on time.);

• open interrogatives are usually associated with information seeking questions (for example, When will the train come?);

• closed interrogatives are usually associated with yes/no questions (for example, Is the train on time?);

• exclamatives are usually associated with exclamatory statements (for example, How late the train is!); and

• imperatives are usually associated with directives, that is, commands or requests (for example, Make sure you are on time.).

Correlation between clause type and speech act

The correlation between clause type and the resulting speech act is not absolute, for example an interrogative clause (such as, How many times have I told you to close the door?) or declarative clause (such as, It's cold in here) can be used as a type of directive (= close the door). Here are some other examples:

Example	Clause type	Intended speech act
Mel, this ice-cream is really tasty.	declarative	making a command
Don't you like your ice-cream, Mel?	closed interrogative	making a command
What do you think of your ice-cream, Mel?	open interrogative	making a command
How I enjoy feeding you up, Mel!	exclamative	making a command
Eat some ice-cream, Mel.	imperative	making a command

All of these examples could be intended and understood as commands under the right conditions. For this reason it is important to distinguish between the clause type (the grammatical form of the clause) and the speech act type (the intended meaning of the clause in context).

Intonation is also an important marker of the speech act involved. In the case of questions, the clause is associated with rising intonation. In some cases intonation alone is enough to indicate that a clause is a question, even if syntactically it has the form of a declarative. The question mark indicates the intonation of the clause – not the clause type.

Note that a sentence may contain clauses of more than one type. The following two compound sentences contain clauses with different structures:

In complex clauses, the subordinate clause can be of many different types – the only clause type usually excluded from this position is the imperative.

Clause types in subordinate clauses

Example	Clause type
Mel thinks eating ice-cream is great.	declarative
Mel didn't say whether she ate ice-cream or not.	closed interrogative
Sarah wants to know how much ice-cream Mel ate last night.	open interrogative
We told Sarah what a lot of ice-cream Mel ate.	exclamative

Interrogatives and questions

There are two different constructions that can be used to form interrogative clauses in English: these are called open and closed interrogatives.

Closed interrogatives

Closed interrogatives may only be answered by a limited range of responses, often simply yes or no, while open interrogatives, constructed using 'wh- words' allow for a much greater range of answers. Both open and closed interrogatives can be used to get either information or direction. Consider the questions the following table.

Information and direction questions

Construction	Information question	Direction question
Closed interrogative	Did you remember to lock the door? Yes / No.	Should I lock the door? Yes / No.
Open interrogative	What did you do about the door? I locked it.	What should we do about the door? Lock it.

Closed interrogatives are formed by placing the auxiliary before the subject. Consider the following pairs:

Declarative	Closed interrogative
Mavis is smiling now.	Is Mavis smiling now?
Charlie can't see.	Can't Charlie see?
George had tonsillitis.	Did George have tonsillitis?

Clauses that do not already contain an auxiliary take the dummy auxiliary do in closed interrogatives.

Polar and alternative questions

Closed interrogatives can be divided into two types: polar and alternative questions. Polar questions take yes/no answers while alternate questions require an answer from the set options presented in the question. Polar questions can be presented with either positive or negative polarity.

Alternative questions contain elements linked by or and the answer is expected to be identified with one of the elements.

Because coordination using or is possible in other speech acts, its function in an interrogative clause is sometimes ambiguous. Intonation assists in determining which meaning is intended.

Interrogative tag

Tag questions come in two types: reversed polarity tags and constant polarity tags. In reversed polatiry, the polarity of the tag is opposite to the polarity of the clause. (So, if the clause is positive, the tag will be negative.) Reversed polarity tags are used for confirmation:

Constant polarity tags have the same polarity value as the clause. (So, a positive clause will have a positive tag.) Constant polarity tags are used to express surprise:

Open interrogatives

Open interrogatives involve the 'wh- words': who, whom, whose, what, which, when, where, why, how. Note that whom is the accusative case form of who and whose is the genitive case form. The accusative whom has grammatically and stylistically restricted uses.

It is possible to have more than one interrogative phrase in a clause:

Echo questions

Echo questions are used to express surprise or to seek confirmation of the speaker's previous utterance. They mirror the form and content of the previous utterance.

Echo questions

Construction	Stimulus	Echo question
Closed interrogative	Mimi bought a lion.	Mimi/She bought a lion?
Open interrogative	Mimi bought a lion.	Mimi/She bought what?

In this type of open interrogative the interrogative phrase is never fronted.

Exclamatives

Exclamative clauses are typically used to allow the speaker to express a heightened evaluation of a situation. They are introduced by the forms what and how. The interrogative pronouns what and how allow the speaker to focus on specific constituents within the clause.

What

In exclamative clauses, what functions as an adjectival – it encodes information about quality or degree. With singular nouns it is clear that what occurs as an external modifier because it appears before the determiner. With plural and non-count nouns, the determiner is not present. In these cases the exclamative and the interrogative phrases are similar but the clause type can still be distinguished by the presence/lack of subject auxiliary inversion.

Number	Exclamative	Open interrogative
singular	What a great guy Doug is!	What kind of guy is Doug?
plural	What cute little mice we caught!	What cute little mice did we catch?
non-count	What ice-cream we tasted!	What ice-cream did we taste?

How

The exclamative how functions as an adverb. Again, exclamative and interrogative phrases may be similar but the clauses will differ in terms of the behaviour of the subject and auxiliary.

	Exclamative	Open interrogative
degree modifier in AdjP	How clean Debbie's car is!	How clean is Debbie's car?
adjunct in clause	How Mel told Sarah off!	How did Mel tell Sarah off?

Alternative exclamatory possibilities

In addition to exclamative clauses (which can sound rather quaint), exclamation can be accomplished in a range of other ways. In addition to intonational signals of excitement, exclamatory meaning is communicated through lexical choice (often conventionalised) as the following examples show. Note that these examples involve a range of clause types.

Imperatives and directives

Imperative clauses can generally be identified by:

Comparison of declaratives and imperatives

Declarative	Imperative	Comment about imperative examples
You (must) eat those eggs.	Eat those eggs.	no 2nd person pronoun; no modal
You are eating a lot.	Eat a lot.	no 2nd person pronoun; plain form verb
Everyone eats eggs.	Eat eggs everyone.	3rd person subject but still plain form verb
You aren't very cooperative	Don't be very cooperative.	Use of auxiliary do (c.f. *You do be very cooperative.)

First person imperatives

Second person subjects are the norm in imperatives, although it is possible to use third person forms such as everybody. First person plural imperatives are also possible but they have a special form, introduced by let's.

Comparison of declaratives and first person imperatives

Declarative	Imperative
We eat a lot of eggs.	Let's eat a lot of eggs.
We are eating a lot.	Let's eat a lot.
We aren't very cooperative.	Don't let's be very cooperative. Let's not be very cooperative.

Uses of imperatives

The conventional use of imperatives is to issue directives. These commonly function as commands but other specific types of speech acts may also be expressed by imperatives.

Imperatives and speech act types

Example	Intended speech act
Don't come to class late.	order / command
Please turn off your mobile phones in class.	request
Prepare the exercises before the tutes.	instruction
Make sure you practice substitution tests.	advice
Feel free to discuss any questions about the course with me.	invitation
Ask as many times as you need so that you're sure.	permission

When imperatives refer to non-control but positive experiences they are usually interpreted as wishes: