1.

Syntactic functions of the noun. The noun as an attribute

The categorial meaning of the noun is substance or thingness. Nouns directly

name various phenomena of reality and have the strongest nominative force among
notional parts of speech: practically every phenomenon can be presented by a noun
as an independent referent, or, can be substantivized. Nouns denote things and
objects proper (tree), abstract notions (love), various qualities (bitterness), and
even actions (movement). All these words function in speech in the same way as
nouns denoting things proper.
Formally, the noun is characterized by a specific set of word-building affixes and
word-building models, which unmistakably mark a noun, among them: suffixes of
the doer (worker, naturalist, etc.), suffixes of abstract notions (laziness, rotation,
security, elegance, etc.), special conversion patterns (to find a find), etc. As for
word-changing categories, the noun is changed according to the categories of
number (boy-boys), case (boy-boys), and article determination (boy, a boy, the
boy). Formally the noun is also characterized by specific combinability with verbs,
adjectives and other nouns, introduced either by preposition or by sheer contact.
The noun is the only part of speech which can be prepositionally combined with
other words, e.g.: the book of the teacher, to go out of the room, away from home,
typical of the noun, etc.
The most characteristic functions of the noun in a sentence are the function of a
subject and an object, since they commonly denote persons and things as
components of the situation, e.g.: The teacher took the book. Besides, the noun can
function as a predicative (part of a compound predicate), e.g.: He is a teacher; and
as an adverbial modifier, e.g.: It happened last summer. The noun in English can
also function as an attribute in the following cases: when it is used in the genitive
case (the teachers book), when it is used with a preposition (the book of the
teacher), or in contact groups of two nouns the first of which qualifies the second
(cannon ball, space exploration, sea breeze, the Bush administration, etc.).
2.Intermediary (mixed) communicative types of sentences: interrogativedeclarative, imperative-declarative, declarative-interrogative, imperativeinterrogative, declarative-imperative, and interrogative-imperative.

Imperative sentences performing the essential function of interrogative sentences

are such as induce the listener not to action, but to speech. They may contain
indirect questions. E.g.:
"Tell me about your upbringing." - "I should like to hear about yours" (EJ. Howard).
"Please tell me what I can do. There must be something I can do." - "You can take
the leg off and that might stop it..." (E. Hemingway).
The reverse intermediary construction, i.e. inducement effected in the form of
question, is employed in order to convey such additional shades of meaning as
request, invitation, suggestion, softening of a command, etc. E.g.:
"Why don't you get Aunt Em to sit instead. Uncle? She's younger than I am any day,
aren't you. Auntie?" (J. Galsworthy). "Would - would you like to come?" - "I would,"
said Jimmy heartily. "Thanks ever so much. Lady Coote" (A. Christie).

Additional connotations in inducive utterances having the form of questions may be

expressed by various modal constructions. E.g.:
Can I take you home in a cab? (W. Saroyan) "Could you tell me," said Dinny, "of any
place close by where I could get something to eat?" (J. Galsworthy) I am really quite
all right. Perhaps you will help me up the stairs? (A. Christie)
In common use the expression of inducement is effected in die form of a disjunctive
question. The post-positional interrogative tag imparts to the whole inducive
utterance a more pronounced or less pronounced shade of a polite request or even
makes it into a pleading appeal. Cf.:
Find out tactfully what he wants, will you? (J. Tey). And you will come too, Basil,
won't you? (0. Wilde)
The undertaken survey of lingual facts shows that the combination of opposite
cardinal communicative features displayed by communicatively intermediary
sentence patterns is structurally systemic and functionally justified. It is justified
because it meets quite definite expressive requirements. And it is symmetrical in so
far as each cardinal communicative sentence type is characterized by the same
tendency of functional transposition in relation to the two other communicative
types opposing it. It means that within each of the three cardinal communicative
oppositions two different intermediary communicative sentence models are
established, so that at a further level of specification, the communicative
classification of sentences should be expanded by six subtypes of sentences of
mixed communicative features. These are, first, mixed sentence patterns of
declaration (interrogative-declarative, imperative-declarative); second, mixed
sentence patterns of interrogation (declarative-interrogative, imperativeinterrogative); third, mixed sentence patterns of inducement (declarativeimperative, interrogative-imperative). All the cited intermediary communicative
types of sentences belong to living, productive syntactic means of language and
should find the due reflection both in theoretical linguistic description and in
practical language teaching.