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Besides the three cardinal monofunctional communicative types of sentences, there is a number of
constructional sentence models of intermediary, mixed communicative character. The transfer of certain
communicative features from one communicative type of sentence to another can be observed in
correlations of all three cardinal communicative types, i.e. in statement – question, statement –
inducement, and inducement – question correlations.
So-called indirect questions have the form of a declarative sentence, but actually express a request
for information, e.g.: I wonder who shut the window (cf.: Who shut the window?). An answer is expected,
as with a regular question, e.g.: I wonder who shut the window. – Tom did; the response supports the
mixed communicative character of this sentence type. Sentences of this type, declarative in form and
intermediary between statements and questions in meaning, render the connotation of insistence in asking
for information. On the other hand, so-called rhetorical questions are interrogative in their structural
form, but express a declarative functional meaning of high intensity, e.g.: How can you say a thing like
this? The sentence does not express a question; it is a reprimand. No answer is expected; the responses
elicited by rhetorical questions correspond to responses elicited by declarative sentences (signals of
attention, appraisals, expressions of feelings, etc.), e.g.: How can you say a thing like this? – Oh, I’m
terribly sorry, I did not mean it. If a direct answer follows the rhetorical question, it emphasizes
implications opposite to the content of the question; often it is the speaker himself or herself, who
answers the rhetorical question, e.g.: Who is to be blamed for it? No one, but myself.
Intermediary between statements and inducements are formally declarative sentences with modal
verbs and other lexical means of inducement, e.g.: You must shut the window; I want you to shut the
window (cf.: Shut the window, please!). The responses to these sentences are similar to those elicited by
imperative sentences proper, i.e. actional responses or verbal agreement or disagreement to perform the
actions, e.g.: I want you to shut the window. - O.K., I will. On the other hand, inducive constructions can
be used to express a declarative meaning of high expressiveness and intensity, in particular, in
various proverbs and maxims, e.g.: Scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours (= One good turn deserves
another). They presuppose no actional response.
Inducive constructions can also be used to express a request for information, inducing the listener to
verbal response of information rendering; they represent another type of indirect question, e.g.: Tell me
who shut the window (сf.: Who shut the window?) The reverse intermediary construction, that of
inducement in the form of a question, is very characteristic of English; it is employed to convey various
shades of politeness, suggestion, softening of a command, etc., e.g.: Will you, please, shut the window?
Could you shut the window, please? The response elicited by suchpolite requests resembles the one to a
proper inducement, e.g.: Will you, please, shut the window? - O.K., I will.
Thus, the classification of the communicative sentence types, in addition to three cardinal
communicative types, includes six intermediary subtypes of sentences of mixed communicative features;
first, mixed sentence patterns of declaration (interrogative-declarative, imperative-declarative), second,
mixed sentence patterns of interrogation (declarative-interrogative, imperative-interrogative), and, third,
mixed sentence patterns of inducement (declarative-imperative, interrogative-imperative). Most of the
intermediary communicative types of sentences perform distinct stylistic functions, and can be treated as
cases of transposition of the communicative types of sentences presented in oppositions, paradigmatically.
Another communicative description of utterances was undertaken at the end of the 1960s by J. R.
Searle within the framework of the so-called “theory of speech acts” (теория речевых актов), on the
basis of philosophical ideas formulated by J. L. Austin. Utterances are interpreted as actions or acts by
which the speaker does something (the title of the book by J. L. Austin was How to Do Things with
Words). On the basis of various communicative intentions of the speaker, J. R. Searle produced a detailed
classification of so-called pragmatic (i.e. pertaining to the participants and the circumstances of the
particular speech act) utterance types. The two basic utterance types are defined as
performatives and constatives (representatives): performatives are treated as utterances by which the
speaker explicitly performs a certain act, e.g.: I surrender; I pronounce you husband and wife; and
constatives (representatives) as utterances by which the speaker states something, e.g.: I am a teacher;
constatives are further subdivided into minor types, such as promissives (commissives), e.g.: I will help
you; expressives, e.g.: How very sad!; menacives, e.g.: I’ll kill you!, directives, e.g.: Get out!; requestives,
e.g.: Bring the chalk, please; etc. From the purely linguistic point of view, various speech acts correlate
structurally and functionally with the three cardinal communicative types of sentences. The mixed
communicative types of sentences can be interpreted in the theory of speech acts as indirect speech acts,
e.g.: ‘There is no chalk left’ may be interpreted as a representative or as a directive: There is no chalk left
(= bring some more); ‘I’ll be watching you!’ under different communicative circumstances may be either
a constative, a promissive or even a menacive.
Later the theory of speech acts developed into a separate branch of linguistics known as “pragmatic
linguistics” (“pragmalinguistics”, or “pragmatics”); this approach is used in syntactic studies as
complementary to the classification of the grammatically distinguished communicative types of
sentences.