Sentence

句子

The largest structural unit in terms of which the grammar of a language is organized. Most linguistic definitions of the sentence show the influence of Leonard Bloomfield, who pointed to the structural autonomy, or independence, of the notion of sentence: it is ‘not included by virtue of any grammatical construction in any larger linguistic form’. Linguistic discussion of the sentence has focused on problems of identification, classification and generation. Identifying sentences is relatively straightforward in the written language, but is often problematic in speech, where intonation and pause may give uncertain clues as to whether a sentence boundary exists. Classification of sentence structure proceeds along many different lines, e.g. the binary constituent procedures of immediate-constituent analysis, or the hierarchical analyse of Hallidayan and other grammars. Most analysts agree on the need to recognize a functional classification of sentences into statement, question, command and exclamatory types. There is also widespread recognition of a formal classification into declarative, interrogative, imperative and exclamative types.

句子是构成一种语言的语法的最大结构单位。语言学对句子的定义大多受美国语言学家伦纳德·布龙菲尔德的影响，他用结构自主性或独立性来定义句子：句子“不作为一个语法构式包含在一个更大的语言形式内。”语言学有关句子的讨论集中在句子的识别、分类和概括三个问题上。句子的识别在书面语中较为简单，但在口语中常成问题，语调和停顿只能提供句子界限不太明确的线索。句子结构的分类可用多种不同的方法进行，例如可用直接成分分析法这种二分组构成分分析程序，也可用韩礼德式的和其他语法的层级分析法。大多数分析者都同意有必要从功能上将句子分为陈述、提问、命令、感叹等类型；也大多同意从形式上分为陈述句、疑问句、祈使句和感叹句等类型。