in take that horrible woman into your confidence, Jerry! (The premise: Jerry has taken that horrible woman into his confidence.) p align="justify"> 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.: p align="justify"> 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). p align="justify"> 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 explicit 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. p align="justify"> The whole composition of an ordinary imperative utterance is usually characterised 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? p align="justify"> 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,-ie-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). Oh, please stop it ... Please, please stop it (E. Hemingway). Get out before I break your dirty little neck (A. Hailey). p align="justify"> 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.: p align="justify"> "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). p align="justify"> 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). p align="justify"> 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. p align="justify"> The inducement with the rhematic subject of the latter type may be classed as the "(informatively) shifted inducement".
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.
In the pronominal ("special") question, the nucleus of inquiry is expressed by an interrogative pronoun. The pronoun is immediately connected with the part of the sentence denoting the object or phenomenon about which the ...
