29(Rus)sentence

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.

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. "Very well" 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. 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. "What do you suggest I should do, then?"

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. Imperative sentences, naturally, are characterised by a higher general degree of emotive intensity than the other two cardinal communicative sentence-types. The unique quality of the interrogative actual division is determined by the fact that the interrogative sentence, instead of conveying some relatively self-dependent content, expresses an inquiry about information which the speaker (as a participant of a typical question-answer situation) does not possess. . The undertaken survey of lingual facts shows that the combination of opposite cardinal communicative features displayed by communicatively intermediary sentence patterns is structurally systemic and functionally justified. It is justified because it meets quite definite expressive requirements. And it is symmetrical in so far as each cardinal communicative sentence type is characterised by the same tendency of functional transposition in relation to the two other communicative types opposing it. It means that within each of the three cardinal communicative oppositions two different intermediary communicative sentence models are established, so that at a further level of specification, the communicative classification of sentences should be expanded by six subtypes of sentences of mixed communicative features. These are, first, mixed sentence patterns of declaration (interrogative-declarative, imperative-declarative); second, mixed sentence patterns of interrogation (declarative-interrogative, imperative-interrogative); third, mixed sentence-patterns of inducement (declarative-imperative, interrogative-imperative). All the cited intermediary communicative types of sentences belong to living, productive syntactic means of language and should find the due reflection both in theoretical linguistic description and in practical language teaching.