42. Communicative types of sentences.

Communicative types of sentences. 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".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,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. The interrogative sentence expresses a question, i.e. a request for information wanted by the speaker from the listener.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. What a very small cabin it was! (K. Mansfield) – It was a very small cabin. The communicative properties of sentences can further be exposed in the light of the theory of actual division of the sentence.The strictly declarative sentence immediately expresses a certain proposition. 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. 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. 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.As far as the strictly interrogative sentence is concerned, its actual division is uniquely different from the actual division of both the declarative and the imperative sentence-typesThe unique quality of the interrogative actual division is determined by the fact that the interrogative sentence expresses an inquiry about information which the speaker (as a participant of a typical question-answer situation) does not possess. Therefore the rheme of the interrogative sentence, as the nucleus of the inquiry, is informationally open (gaping); its function consists only in marking the rhematic position in the response sentence and programming the content of its filler in accord with the nature of the inquiry.