All, As a theorist on the origin of language, my immediate comment is that, if we substitute 'statement' (and question and command) for sentence, then the problem vanishes. An informative statement, in which one person updates another about some portion of the real about them, deals, if the hearer accepts it, in a transformation of understanding. It does not really matter much how the update takes place: it can even work with a gesture or facial expression. However, the core of all language is this need to transform understanding. Gadamer and Collingwood have both drawn attention to the fact that, because of this, every statement can be seen as an answer to a question, and what that question is will transform what the statement actually means. Take ''The cat is on the mat', and check it against 'What is on the mat?', 'Where is the cat?', 'What is the relation of the cat to the mat?', and even 'Which cat is on the mat?' where the answer is 'THE cat', that is, the one we have just been talking about. This is why statements can shrink to a few or even single words, for the hearer who gets the answer 'On the mat' to the question "Where is the cat?' does not need a reminder of what it is he or she wanted updating on. So there is no possibility of the death of the STATEMENT: otherwise we would cease to communicate! The original complainant was obviously troubled about sentence structure and its relation to punctuation, as Bill remarked. Edmond Dr. Edmond Wright 3 Boathouse Court Trafalgar Road Cambridge CB4 1DU Tel.: 00 - 44 - (0)1223 - 350256 Email: [log in to unmask] To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/