CHAPTER XXIII COMMUNICATIVE TYPES OF SENTENCES

§ 1. The sentence is a communicative unit, therefore the primary classification of sentences must be based on the communicative principle. This principle is formulated in traditional grammar as the "purpose of communication".

The purpose of communication, by definition, refers to the sentence as a whole, and the structural features connected with the expression of this sentential function belong to the fundamental, constitutive qualities of the sentence as a lingual unit.

In accord with the purpose of communication three cardinal sentence-types have long been recognised in linguistic tradition: first, the declarative sentence; second, the imperative (inducive) sentence; third, the interrogative sentence. These communicative sentence-types stand in strict opposition to one another, and their inner properties of form and meaning are immediately correlated with the corresponding features of the listener's responses.

Thus, the declarative sentence expresses a statement, either affirmative or negative, and as such stands in systemic syntagmatic correlation with the listener's responding signals of attention, of appraisal (including agreement or disagreement), of fellow-feeling. Cf.:

"I think," he said, "that Mr. Desert should be asked to give us his reasons for publishing that poem." — "Hear, hear!" said the К. С. (J. Galsworthy). "We live very quietly here, indeed we do; my niece here will tell you the same." — "Oh, come, I'm not such a fool as that," answered the squire (D. du Maurier).

The imperative sentence expresses inducement, either affirmative or negative. That is, it urges the listener, in the form of request or command, to perform or not to perform a certain action. As such, the imperative sentence is situationally connected with the corresponding "action response" (Ch. Fries), and lingually is systemically correlated with a verbal response showing that the inducement is either complied with, or else rejected. Cf.:

"Let's go and sit down up there, Dinny." — "Very well" (J. Galsworthy). "Then marry me." — "Really, Alan, I never met anyone with so few ideas" (J. Galsworthy). "Send him back!" he said again. — "Nonsense, old chap" (J. Aldridge).

Since the communicative purpose of the imperative sentence is to make the listener act as requested, silence on the part of the latter (when the request is fulfilled), strictly speaking, is also linguistically relevant. This gap in speech, which situationally is filled in by the listener's action, is set off in literary narration by special comments and descriptions. Cf.:

"Knock on the wood." — Retan's man leaned forward and knocked three times on the barrera (E. Hemingway). "Shut the piano," whispered Dinny; "let's go up." — Diana closed the piano without noise and rose (J. Galsworthy).

The interrogative sentence expresses a question, i.e. a request for information wanted by the speaker from the listener. By virtue of this communicative purpose, the interrogative sentence is naturally connected with an answer, forming together with it a question-answer dialogue unity. Cf.:

"What do you suggest I should do, then?" said Mary helplessly. — "If I were you I should play a waiting game," he replied (D. du Maurier).

Naturally, in the process of actual communication the interrogative communicative purpose, like any other communicative task, may sporadically not be fulfilled. In case it is not fulfilled, the question-answer unity proves to be broken; instead of a needed answer the speaker is faced by silence on the part of the listener, or else he receives the latter's verbal rejection to answer. Cf.:

"Why can't you lay off?" I said to her. But she didn't even notice me (R. P. Warren). "Did he know about her?" — "You'd better ask him" (S. Maugham).

Evidently, such and like reactions to interrogative sentences are not immediately relevant in terms of environmental syntactic featuring.

§ 2. An attempt to revise the traditional communicative classification of sentences was made by the American scholar Ch. Fries who classed them, as a deliberate challenge to the

"accepted routine", not in accord with the purposes of communication, but according to the responses they elicit [Fries, 29-53].

In Fries's system, as a universal speech unit subjected to communicative analysis was chosen not immediately a sentence, but an utterance unit (a "free" utterance, i.e. capable of isolation) understood as a continuous chunk of talk by one speaker in a dialogue. The sentence was then defined as a minimum free utterance.

Utterances collected from the tape-recorded corpus of dialogues (mostly telephone conversations) were first classed into "situation utterances" (eliciting a response), and "response utterances". Situation single free utterances (i.e. sentences) were further divided into three groups:

1) Utterances that are regularly followed by oral responses only. These are greetings, calls, questions. E.g.:

Hello! Good-bye! See you soon! ... Dad! Say, dear! Colonel Howard! ... Have you got moved in? What are you going to do for the summer? ...

2) Utterances regularly eliciting action responses. These are requests or commands. E.g.:

Read that again, will you? Oh, wait a minute! Please have him call Operator Six when he comes in! Will you see just exactly what his status is?

3) Utterances regularly eliciting conventional signals of attention to continuous discourse. These are statements. E.g.:

I've been talking with Mr. D — in the purchasing department about our type-writer. (—Yes?). That order went in March seventh. However it seems that we are about eighth on the list. (— I see). Etc.

Alongside of the described "communicative" utterances, i.e. utterances directed to a definite listener, another, minor type of utterances were recognised as not directed to any listener but, as Ch. Fries puts it, "characteristic of situations such as surprise, sudden pain, disgust, anger, laughter, sorrow" [Fries, 53]. E.g.: Oh, oh! Goodness! My God! Darn! Gosh! Etc.

Such and like interjectional units were classed by Ch. Fries as "noncommunicative" utterances.

Observing the given classification, it is not difficult to

see that, far from refuting or discarding the traditional classification of sentences built up on the principle of the "purpose of communication", it rather confirms and specifies it. Indeed, the very purpose of communication inherent in the addressing sentence is reflected in the listener's response. The second and third groups of Ch, Fries's "communicative" sentences-utterances are just identical imperative and declarative types both by the employed names and definition. As for the first group, it is essentially heterogeneous, which is recognised by the investigator himself, who distinguishes in its composition three communicatively different subgroups. One of these ("C") is constituted by "questions", i.e. classical interrogative sentences. The other two, viz. greetings ("A") and calls ("B"), are syntactically not cardinal, but, rather, minor intermediary types, making up the periphery of declarative sentences (greetings — statements of conventional goodwill at meeting and parting) and imperative sentences (calls — requests for attention). As regards "non-communicative" utterances — interjectional units, they are devoid of any immediately expressed intellective semantics, which excludes them from the general category of sentence as such (see further).

Thus, the undertaken analysis should, in point of fact, be looked upon as an actual application of the notions of communicative sentence-types to the study of oral speech, resulting in further specifications and development of these notions.

§ 3. Alongside of the three cardinal communicative sentence-types, another type of sentences is recognised in the theory of syntax, namely, the so-called exclamatory sentence. In modern linguistics it has been demonstrated that exclamatory sentences do not possess any complete set of qualities that could place them on one and the same level with the three cardinal communicative types of sentences. The property of exclamation should be considered as an accompanying feature which is effected within the system of the three cardinal communicative types of sentences.* In other words, each of the cardinal communicative sentence types can be represented in the two variants, viz. non-exclamatory and exclamatory. For instance, with the following

* See: Грамматика русского языка. М., 1960. Т, 2. Синтаксис, ч. I, с. 353; 365 и сл.

exclamatory sentences-statements it is easy to identify their non-exclamatory declarative prototypes:

What a very small cabin it was! (K. Mansfield) – It was a very small cabin. How utterly she had lost count of events! (J. Galsworthy) <– She had lost count of events. Why, if it isn't my lady! (J. Erskine) «— It is my lady.

Similarly, exclamatory questions are immediately related in the syntactic system to the corresponding non-exclamatory interrogative sentences. E.g.:

Whatever do you mean, Mr. Critchlow? (A. Bennett) «-What do you mean? Then why in God's name did you come? (K. Mansfield) «- Why did you come?

Imperative sentences, naturally, are characterised by a higher general degree of emotive intensity than the other two cardinal communicative sentence-types. Still, they form analogous pairs, whose constituent units are distinguished from each other by no other feature than the presence or absence of exclamation as such. E.g.:

Francis, will you please try to speak sensibly! (E. Hemingway) «- Try to speak sensibly. Don't you dare to compare me to common people! (B. Shaw) <— Don't compare me to common people. Never so long as you live say I made you do that! (J. Erskine) <— Don't say I made you do that.

As is seen from the given examples, all the three pairs of variant communicative types of sentences (non-exclamatory — exclamatory for each cardinal division) make up distinct semantico-syntactic oppositions effected by regular grammatical means of language, such as intonation, word-order and special constructions with functional-auxiliary lexemic elements. It follows from this that the functional-communicative classification of sentences specially distinguishing emotive factor should discriminate, on the lower level of analysis, between the six sentence-types forming, respectively, three groups (pairs) of cardinal communicative quality.

§ 4. The communicative properties of sentences can further be exposed in the light of the theory of actual division of the sentence.

The actual division provides for the informative content of the utterance to be expressed with the due gradation of

its parts according to the significance of their respective role in the context. But any utterance is formed within the framework of the system of communicative types of sentences. And as soon as we compare the communication-purpose aspect of the utterance with its actual division aspect we shall find that each communicative sentence type is distinguished by its specific actual division features, which are revealed first and foremost in the nature of the rheme as the meaningful nucleus of the utterance.

The strictly declarative sentence immediately expresses a certain proposition. By virtue of this, the actual division of the declarative sentence presents itself in the most developed and complete form. The rheme of the declarative sentence makes up the centre of some statement as such. This can be distinctly demonstrated by a question-test directly revealing the rhematic part of an utterance. Cf.: The next instant she had recognised him. → What had she done the next instant?

The pronominal what-question clearly exposes in the example the part "(had) recognised him" as the declarative rheme, for this part is placed within the interrogative-pronominal reference. In other words, the tested utterance with its completed actual division is the only answer to the cited potential question; the utterance has been produced by the speaker just to express the fact of "his being recognised".

Another transformational test for the declarative rheme is the logical superposition. The logical superposition consists in transforming the tested construction into the one where the rheme is placed in the position of the logically emphasised predicate. By way of example let us take the second sentence in the following sequence: And I was very uneasy. All sorts of forebodings assailed me.

The logical superposition of the utterance is effected thus: → What assailed me was all sorts of forebodings.

This test marks out the subject of the utterance "all sorts of forebodings" as the rheme, because it is just this part of the utterance that is placed in the emphatic position of the predicate in the superpositional transform.

Similar diagnostic procedures expose the layer-structure of the actual division in composite syntactic constructions. For instance, in the following complex sentence rhematic question-tests easily reveal the three declarative rhemes on the three consecutive syntactic layers: I knew that Mr, Wade had been very excited by something that he had found out.

Test for the first syntactic layer: What did I know?

Test for the second syntactic layer: What state was Mr. Wade in?

Test for the third syntactic layer: What made him excited? (By what was he excited?)

The strictly imperative sentence, as different from the strictly declarative sentence, does not express by its immediate destination any statement of fact, i.e. any proposition proper. It is only based on a proposition, without formulating it directly. Namely, the proposition underlying the imperative sentence is reversely contrasted against the content of the expressed inducement, since an urge to do something (affirmative inducement) is founded on the premise that something is not done or is otherwise not affected by the wanted action, and, conversely, an urge not to do something (negative inducement) is founded on the directly opposite premise. Cf.:

Let's go out at once! (The premise: We are in.) Never again take that horrible woman into your confidence, Jerry! (The premise: Jerry has taken that horrible woman into his confidence.)

Thus, the rheme of the imperative utterance expresses the informative nucleus not of an explicit proposition, but of an inducement — a wanted (or unwanted) action together with its referential attending elements (objects, qualities, circumstances).

Due to the communicative nature of the inducement addressed to the listener, its thematic subject is usually zeroed, though it can be represented in the form of direct address. Cf.:

Don't try to sidetrack me (J. Braine). Put that dam* dog down, Fleur; I can't see your face (J. Galsworthy). Kindly tell me what you meant, Wilfrid (J. Galsworthy).

Inducements that include in the address also the speaker himself, or are directed, through the second person medium, to a third person (persons) present their thematic subjects explicit in the construction. E.g.:

I say, Bob, let's try to reconstruct the scene as it developed. Please don't let's quarrel over the speeds now. Let her produce the document if she has it.

The whole composition of an ordinary imperative utterance is usually characterised by a high informative value,