 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
118
"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. Ways of expressing different purposes of communication of the speaker, i.e. his "communicative
intentions", are studied by the branch of linguistics called "pragmatic linguistics", or contractedly
"pragmalinguistics". In accord with the principles of pragmalinguistics, communicative intentions of the
speaker are realized in his "speech acts", each of them characterized by a definite communicative intention
underlying it. Such are statements of fact, conjectures, confirmations, refutations, agreements, disagreements,
commands, requests, greetings at meeting, greetings at parting, exhortations, recommendations, applications for
information, supplications, promises, menaces, etc. Among such and like speech acts classified as pragmatic
utterance types, two mutually opposed and crucially important types are pointed out, namely "constative
utterances" ("constatives") and "perfonnative utterances" ("performatives"). Whereas constatives express the
speaker's reflections of reality as they are, performatives render such verbal actions of the speaker as
immediately constitute his social functions. In other words, the perfonnative is the pronouncement by the
speaker of such an action of his, as is embodied in the pronouncement itself: pronouncing this kind of utterance,
the speaker performs his complete function; hence the term "perfor-mative utterance". E.g.:
I declare the conference open. (Indeed, I open the conference by pronouncing this sentence. My act of
opening the conference is performed by declaring it open.) I disapprove of this decision! (My act of
disapproving the decision is performed by this utterance of disapproval.)
The perfonnative utterance includes (or implies) the pronoun of the first person singular (the direct
indication of the speaker), while its verb is used only in the form of the present tense of the indicative mood,
active.
It is, no doubt, quite important and necessary to study the semantics of the sentence from the point of view
of the speaker's intention inherent in it. However, it must be clearly understood that performative utterances are
not to be looked upon as standing in absolute isolation from the rest of the sentence-patterns of language. Far
from being isolated, they are part and parcel of the syntactic system as a whole, forming regular structural and
functional correlations with other predicative constructions. E.g.:
I declare the conference open. (Performative). -1 declared the conference open. (Constative: real fact in the
past).-I would have declared the conference open if... (Constative: unreal fact in the past). - He declares the
conference open. (Constative: action of a third person in the present). Etc.
Thus, structural and functional considerations on purely linguistic. lines (i.e. identifying and analysing
lingual facts as means of expressing ideas) demonstrate that, peculiar as they might be from the logical point of
view, performative utterances in the long run belong to the declarative type of sentences. Furthermore, the