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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. Namely, the proposition underlying the imperative sentence is reversely
contrasted against the content of the expressed inducement, since an urge to do something (affirmative
inducement) is founded on the premise that something is not done or is otherwise not affected by the wanted
action, and, conversely, an urge not to do something (negative inducement) is founded on the directly opposite
premise. Cf:.
Let's go out at once! (The premise: We are in.) Never again take that horrible woman into your confidence.
Jerry! (The premise: Jerry has taken that horrible woman into his confidence.)
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, though it can be represented in the form of direct address. Cf:.
Don't try to sidetrack me (J. Braine). Put that dam' dog down, Fleur; I can't see your face (J. Galsworthy).
Kindly tell me what you meant, Wilfrid (J. Galsworthy).
Inducements that include in the address also the speaker himself, or are directed, through the second person
medium, to a third person (persons) present their thematic subjects explicitly in the construction. E.g.:
I say, Bob, let's try to reconstruct the scene as it developed. Please don't let's quarrel over the speeds now.
Let her produce the document if she has it.
The whole composition of an ordinary imperative utterance is usually characterized by a high informative
value, so that the rheme proper, or the informative peak, may stand here not so distinctly against the
background information as in the declarative utterance. Still, rhematic testing of imperative utterances does
disclose the communicative stratification of their constituents. Compare the question-tests of a couple of the
cited examples:
Put that dam' dog down, Fleur. > What is Fleur to do with the dog? Kindly tell me what you meant,
Wilfrid. > What is Wilfrid to tell the speaker?
As for the thematic, and especially the subrhematic (transitional) elements of the imperative utterance, they
often are functionally charged with the type-grading of inducement itself, i.e. with making it into a command,
prohibition, request, admonition, entreaty, etc. Compare, in addition to the cited, some more examples to this
effect:
Let us at least remember to admire each other (L. Hellman). Ob, please stop it.. Please, please stop it (E.
Hemingway). Get out before I break your dirty little neck (A. Hailey).
The second-person inducement may include the explicit pronominal subject, but such kind of constructions
should be defined as of secondary derivation. They are connected with a complicated informative content to be
conveyed to the listener-performer, expressing, on the one hand, the choice of the subject out of several
persons-participants of the situation, and on the other hand, appraisals rendering various ethical connotations (in
particular, the type-grading of inducement mentioned above). Cf.:
"What about me?" she asked. - "Nothing doing. You go to bed and sleep" (A. Christie). Don't you worry
about me, sir. I shall be all right (B.K. Seymour).
At a further stage of complication, the subject of the inducement may be shifted to the position of the rheme.
E.g.:
"... We have to do everything we can." - "You do it," he said. "I'm tired" (E. Hemingway).
The essentially different identifications of the rheme in the two imperative utterances of the cited example
can be proved by transformational testing: ... >What we have to do is (to do) everything we can. ... >The
person who should do it is you.
The inducement with the rhematic subject of the latter type may be classed as the "(informatively) shifted
inducement".
§ 6. 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-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. 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.
Different types of questions present different types of open rhemes.