Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Three types of sentence | Syntax | Khan Academy

- [Voiceover] Hello Grammarians. Hello Paige.

- [Paige] Hi, David.

- [Dave] So we have three different sentence

varieties that we're going to talk about today.

- [Paige] Okay.

- [Dave] Here are their three flavors.

Flavor number one, declarative sentences.

Flavor number two, interrogative sentences.

And flavor number three, imperative sentences.

Those are all pretty long and wibbly words.

- [Paige] Seriously.

- [Dave] But we will address each one of them in turn.

Paige, if you please, what is a declarative sentence?

- [Paige] A declarative sentence is a type

of sentence that just states a fact or an opinion,

I suppose, but it just makes a statement.

So that would be something like

it is a beautiful day.

- [Dave] It is a beautiful day, Paige.

We can also use declarative sentences

to get across any kind of information.

This is what we call exposition in writing.

- [Paige] Righ. Yeah.

- [Dave] So we can say Lavender hated baseball.

You know, you could start a short story with that.

- [Paige] Right, that's- - [Dave] I challenge you to.

- [Paige] Just a fact about Lavender.

- [Dave] That's a fact about Lavender.

So a declarative sentence is a statement.

Just straight up.

- [Paige] Yep.

- [Dave] An interrogative sentence is a question.

So it asks a question.

- [Paige] It's just a fancy word for a question.

- [Dave] Right. - [Paige] Okay.

- [Dave] So an example of an interrogative sentence

would be where did you go last night?

- [Paige] Right.

- [Dave] Or how is he still singing that note?

- [Paige] I have no idea.

- [Dave] Incredible breath control

So that's what an interrogative question is.

- [Paige] Right.

It's like being interrogated.

That's, like, a similar word to interrogative,

is just having a lot of questions asked.

- [Dave] Like really aggressively.

- [Paige] Yeah, it's not a very positive thing.

- [Dave] Paige, what did you do with the cheese?

- [Paige] I don't know. (laughs)

- [Dave] Paige, why are you still eating the cheese?

- [Paige] I'm not.

- [Dave] Paige, I know you stole the cheese.

Finally, the third kind of sentence

we want to talk about today is the imperative.

An imperative is a command.

- [Paige] Right, so when you tell someone to do something.

- [Dave] So a command like, Paige, follow that bunny!

(laughs)

- [Paige] And the bunny stole the cheese.

- [Dave] Yeah.

So this is one of those sentences that doesn't

have a subject that is literally spoken out loud.

- [Paige] Right, it's just implied.

You know, if you're saying that to me,

I know that I am the subject.

- [Dave] Right. So it's you follow that bunny.

- [Paige] Right.

- [Dave] But the you is just not spoken.

Or, if you're not into bunny following, you know,

something like remember to wash the dishes,

you're still being commanded to remember.

- [Paige] Yeah, yeah.

- [Dave] So, yeah, that's our, those are our

three sentence types.

- [Paige] Yeah.

Declarative is a statement.

Interrogative is a question,

and imperative is a command.

- [Dave] So, Paige, I think we can recast our slogan

in each of these three types of sentence.

- [Paige] Okay.

- [Dave] So, okay, so declarative, right?

That's what it usually is, declarative form is

you can learn anything.

- [Paige] Okay.

- [Dave] We can make it a question, so interrogative's

can you learn anything?

- [Paige] Right.

- [Dave] The answer is yes. - [Paige] Yes.

- [Dave] And the imperative, we wanna make it a command,

would be what, Paige?

- [Paige] Learn anything!

- [Dave] Yeah!

So you can do any of those three.

- [Paige] Sure.

- [Dave] David out.

- [Paige] Paige out.