Skip to main content
sentential

sentential

1 8.5
Relating to a whole sentence and its parts
  • adjective
  • /sɛnˈtɛnʃəl/
  • Specialized
translation icon : oracional
  • Many students struggle with sentential coherence when constructing their essays.
  • sentential pausing
  • sentential context
  • sentential pause

Examples

  • Understanding sentential structure is crucial for language learning.

  • However, the present subjunctive can appear in a si-clause that is a sentential complement, as in

    Academic text (1995)
  • His account doesn't explain what it means for a simple sentential function to be satisfied by an object.

    Blog text (2)
  • Reading comprehension involves putting the recognized words together to gain sentential and textual understanding.

    Academic text (2012)
  • Therefore, some of Swinney's targets would have been facilitated by virtue of their ambiguity, regardless of their relationship to the sentential context.

    Academic text (1991)
  • To do this, such linguists must "triangulate" between the utterances of the natives, the world, and their own sentential attitudes.

    Academic text (2001)
  • We hypothesized that average readers would demonstrate lower fluency than highly skilled readers via less pitch mobility and longer sentential pauses.

    Academic text (2013)
  • A 1 on the rating scale indicated that only one meaning of the homonym was plausible according to sentential context; a 5 indicated that both meanings were equally plausible.

    Academic text (1991)
  • Brock et al. (2008) found that language impairment, not autism, differentiated children's abilities to integrate higher-level (sentential/pragmatic) information during word recognition.

    Academic text (2013)
  • The teacher emphasized the importance of sentential clarity in writing.

Compounds

cross-sentential
  • Specialized
9.6

Connecting words or ideas across more than one sentence

sentential function
  • Specialized
9.9

An expression with gaps that becomes a sentence when you fill them with words

Surface Forms

sentential positive

Morphology

sentential = sentence (semi-transparent) = sentence + ial

The adjective is clearly built from 'sentence' plus a learned adjectival suffix, but the spelling and specialized grammatical sense make it less than fully transparent.

Etymology

The word sentential comes from the common word sentence, which itself comes from an old Latin root sentire meaning 'to feel' or 'to think'. So, sentential means 'about a sentence', relating to the parts and meaning of a sentence.