Language Focus: Types of Sentences and Word Formation

25 min

Style begins with two choices a writer makes thousands of times: how to build a sentence, and which word to use. Look again at sentences you have met in this unit:

"What a lark!" (Woolf)
"Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death." (Chopin)
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …" (Dickens)
"The woman looked up." (passage E, Lesson 2)

The first is an exclamation without a verb; the second makes us wait for its main clause; the third balances opposite against opposite; the fourth gives us nothing but a plain action. None is better than the others. Each fits its purpose.

Definition

simple sentence: one main clause. The woman looked up.
compound sentence: two or more main clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, so, yet, for, nor) or a semicolon. She wept, but the tears did not last.
complex sentence: one main clause and at least one subordinate clause. When the doctors came, they said she had died of heart disease.
compound-complex sentence: at least two main clauses and at least one subordinate clause.
periodic sentence: a sentence that holds back its main clause until the end. Loose (cumulative) sentence: main clause first, details added after.
word formation: the ways new words are made from existing ones or from nothing.

Part 1: Types of sentences

By structure

Type	Pattern	Example
Simple	One main clause	The bus passed Nyanza.
Compound	Main + main	Okonkwo was feared, yet he was afraid of one thing.
Complex	Main + subordinate	Although he was famous, Okonkwo feared failure.
Compound-complex	Main + main + subordinate	When the door opened, Brently walked in, and Louise fell.

By function

Type	Job	Example
Declarative	States	The letter remains sealed.
Interrogative	Asks	Do you not want to know who has taken it?
Imperative	Commands, invites	Close up those barren leaves.
Exclamatory	Expresses strong feeling	What a plunge!

By rhetorical shape: what writers do with them

Periodic sentences build suspense: Chopin's first sentence makes us wait through the heart trouble and the gentleness before we reach "the news of her husband's death".
Loose sentences feel natural and flowing, like Woolf's chain of memories.
Balanced sentences set two halves in parallel for contrast: Dickens's antitheses.
Short sentences, after long ones, hit hard: "Mr. Bennet made no answer."
Minor sentences (fragments without a main verb), such as "What a lark!", are used on purpose in literature for speed or feeling; avoid them in formal essays.

Part 2: Word formation

Process	How it works	Examples
Affixation (derivation)	Add a prefix or suffix	mis-shapes (Wordsworth), un-reliable, kindness, modernism
Compounding	Join two words	grip-sack, travel-stained (Chopin), bride-cake, notebook
Conversion	Change word class with no change of form	a text becomes to text; to email; a must
Clipping	Shorten a word	exam (examination), lab, phone
Blending	Fuse parts of two words	smog (smoke + fog), brunch, chortle (chuckle + snort, invented by Lewis Carroll in 1871)
Acronym and initialism	Use first letters	UNESCO (said as a word); REB (said letter by letter)
Back-formation	Remove what looks like an affix	edit from editor; babysit from babysitter
Borrowing	Take a word from another language	safari (from Kiswahili), genre (from French)
Coinage	Invent a new word	serendipity (Horace Walpole, 1754); robot (from Karel Čapek's play R.U.R., 1920)

Why it matters in literature. Writers coin and compound to compress meaning. Chopin's "travel-stained" packs a whole journey into one adjective, and its ordinariness is the shock: Brently has had a dull, dusty trip while his wife has lived through her greatest hour.

Worked example: changing the sentence, changing the effect

Plain version: The door opened and Brently came in and Louise died. (compound, flat)

Periodic: Just as Louise reached the bottom of the stairs, with the whole of her new life before her, the door opened. The main clause is delayed, so the suspense rises.
Short sentences: The door opened. It was Brently. Two blows, each one shorter than the last.
Balanced: He walked in alive; she fell down dead. The parallel halves throw the reversal into relief.

Each version tells the same events; the structure decides where the reader's attention falls.

Tip

Name the type, then the effect. "This is a periodic sentence" earns little. "This periodic sentence delays the word 'death' until the end, so the reader is hit by it exactly as Mrs Mallard is" earns analysis marks.

Warning

A long sentence is not automatically complex: "She wept and she rose and she went upstairs" is compound.
Avoid comma splices in your own writing: She wept, she went upstairs needs and, a semicolon or a full stop.
Don't confuse an acronym (pronounced as a word, like UNESCO) with an initialism (spoken as letters, like REB).

"The 4 English Sentence Types", from Adam's English Lessons on engVid. Watch how he builds each type from the one before, then test yourself on the table above.

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Practice

Classify by structure: (a) The clock had stopped. (b) Pip stared, but Miss Havisham did not move. (c) Because she had been betrayed, she stopped every clock. (d) When Lockwood arrived, Heathcliff was rude, and the dogs attacked him.
Classify by function: (a) Come forth into the light of things. (b) How fresh the air was! (c) Who has taken Netherfield?
Rewrite as a periodic sentence: Okonkwo hanged himself after the clan refused to fight.
Name the word-formation process: (a) motel (b) flu (c) to bottle (milk) (d) heartbreak (e) donate from donation (f) NGO
Find two compounds in the last lines of "The Story of an Hour" and explain one of them.
Write a paragraph of 80–100 words about a market morning, using all four structural types. Label each sentence.

Show answersHide answers

(a) simple; (b) compound; (c) complex; (d) compound-complex.
(a) imperative; (b) exclamatory; (c) interrogative.
For example: When the clan refused to rise and fight beside him, Okonkwo hanged himself. (Better still, delay the main clause further: After the meeting, after the messenger's death and the silence of his clansmen, Okonkwo hanged himself.)
(a) blending (motor + hotel); (b) clipping (influenza); (c) conversion (noun to verb); (d) compounding; (e) back-formation; (f) initialism.
travel-stained and grip-sack. "Travel-stained" shows Brently arriving dusty from an ordinary journey, a dull detail that contrasts painfully with the drama his wife has just lived through.
Answers will vary; check that each label is correct.

1Part 1: Types of sentences

By structure

By function

By rhetorical shape: what writers do with them

2Part 2: Word formation

Part 1: Types of sentences

Part 2: Word formation