Functional Variation of the Imperative in Discourse: Prosodic Evidence of “Hybridization”

The cognitive-discursive approach used in experimental research helps to reveal specific behavior of language units which is conditioned by particular characteristics of the immediate communicative situation. The cognitive aspect of this approach describes how the human mind works to adapt speech production processes to ever-changing conditions of communicative activity, which results in changes of the functions of language units used in these processes. Since, either in oral or written forms, texts are the material result of this activity, acoustic analysis helps to evaluate the character of modifications of sound sequences as well as to define their intonation structure that facilitates the performance of utterances in discourse. Corpus analysis helps to evaluate pragmatic factors that maintain speech production processes and to describe their influence in the usage of language units. The relevance of the research lies in the need to have a better understanding and a more thorough description of the behavior of intonation language units in discourse as well as its correlation to the cognitive processes in speech production. With this goal in mind, the author applies the cognitive-discursive approach to experimental phonetic research of intonation in discourse. The paper presents the results of examining the process of “hybridization” of direct imperative utterances, identifying types of such “hybridization,” and looking at conditions of speakers’ activity which accompany this “hybridization.” Using the methodology of experimental discourse analysis, the author shows how functional variability of this particular language unit in specific discourse environments can lead to significant changes in the intentional meaning of the unit, i. e., to imperative utterances acting as interjections. In specific discourse environments, accompanied by marked emphasis in the semantic structure of the utterances and constrained by psycho-physiological thresholds and limitations of information processing mechanisms, speech production processes form a “hybrid” which combines characteristics of both a direct imperative and an interjection. This “hybridization” can be complete or partial. The “hybrid” maintains the illocutionary force of an imperative utterance due to its formulaic syntactic structure and intonation, characterized by less variation than that of an interjection, and the intonation of such units complies with the codified intonation standard of the English language. At the same time, its acoustic features correspond to the acoustic features of 1st and 2nd type interjections: “hybrids” that correspond to 1st type interjections consist of rare sounds and sound sequences, while “hybrids” that correspond to 2nd type interjections retain their sound structure completely or partially.