Hello, everyone.  The list has been quiet lately.  I had an exchange with
Ed Vavra that I thought was interesting.  It concerned defining the
sentence.  I would really appreciate a sampling of your views.  My idea is
based on Aristotle, who connects sentences with the notions of truth and
falsity in his essay, On Interpretation, without offering a complete
definition of a sentence.  What I proposed to Ed was that a declarative
sentence is an utterance that has the formal qualities of utterances that
can be classified as true or false.  I don't mean that every sentence can
itself be classified as true or false, since it is easy to come up with
counterexamples, e.g., "This sentence is false."  What I am
saying is that every declarative sentence has formal qualities that can be
realized in such a way as to produce true or false statements.  Formally,
<"this sentence is false"> consists of a noun phrase, a linking verb, and
an adjective.  Obviously, that format can make any number of true or false
statements, e.g., "This patient is dead." Is it true that every
correctly formed declarative sentence has such a format, one that is
at least potentially productive of true or false statements,
while no non-sentence does?

I would think that questions or commands could be explained as variations
or transformations of declarative sentences.  I don't think that
elliptical sentences like <"In the refrigerator."> as an answer to a
question like <"Where is the cheese?"> are really a problem, since no one
would suggest that <in the refrigerator> is a correctly formed sentence
all by itself.

Ed seemed to accept this definition but had misgivings about its use in
teaching grammar to younger students.

I would be most interested in your thoughts.  I hope that everyone's
semester is off to a good start!

David