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whole set of performative utterance types at any given level of generalization is subject to syntactic
communicative sentence type identification based on the character of the actual division of the sentence shown
above.
§ 3. An early 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. (-1 see). Etc.
Alongside the described "communicative" utterances, i.e. utterances directed to a definite listener, another,
minor type of utterances were recognized 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 recognized 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 "noncommunicative" utterances - interjcctional 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.
§ 4. Alongside the three cardinal communicative sentence-types, another type of sentences is recognized in
the theory of syntax, namely, the so-called exclamatory sentence. In modem 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
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
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