FORMULATICITY OF THE INCOMPLETE SYNTACTIC FORM OF AN IMPERATIVE STATEMENT IN DISCOURSE

Background. Language units functioning in specific discourse conditions undergo desemantization and gramaticalization, which results in new discourse units forming. These units perform relevant discourse functions and carry communicative meanings. These units also possess formulaicity due to pragmatic factors. Corpus analysis provides proper techniques to identify and describe these units, classify factors conditioning the appearance of such units in discourse. Purpose. The aim of the research is to identify incomplete syntactic structures of imperatives in discourse, analyze them and categorize their features. Materials and methods. The research employs corpus analysis methods to build the sample of imperatives with incomplete syntactic structures in discourse. Research corpora include 22 fiction texts containing more than 2 million words. The paper presents quantitative evaluation of representation in discourse of incomplete syntactic structures of imperatives. Analyzing the formulaic character of these structures is performed on the background of methodology described in Russian and foreign literature on formulaic structures in discourse in the last 10 years. Results. The research shows that the sample comprises groups of incomplete syntactic structures of imperative utterances characterized by varying degrees of formulaicity. Identified groups of incomplete structures of imperative utterances include collocations with Noun, Adjective, Adverb, Pronoun as the primary init in the collocation. These groups also include Prepositional Phrases, Interjections. The degree of formulaicity demonstrates itself in the varying stability of the above-mentioned collocations. Formulaicity of these collocations arrives on the grounds of desemantization and grammaticalization which occur due to frequent usage in discourse, performance of specific discourse functions and possession of communicative meanings. It leads to incomplete syntactic structures of imperatives comporting themselves as autonomous discourse units, formed through described processes in accordance with linguistic laws.