Imperative verbal forms as pragmatic markers (on the material of Russian and Italian languages)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the usage of the imperative forms of some cognitive and volition verbs as well as basic verbs of the politeness category in the dialogic discourse of Russian and Italian languages. In the oral speech the imperative verbal forms function as structurizing elements that organise the dialogic interaction. The imperative verbal forms mark different actions of speech and non-speech character. A regular usage of the imperative forms out of the phrase propositional content allows the dialogue participant to codify and interpret adequately the propositional part of the sentence. The author carries out a functional-pragmatic analysis of speech acts with imperative verbal forms, the main function of which is to structure the dialogic units and the dialog as a whole comprising their illocutionary force. The study of the material of more than one language has enabled to determine that in pragmaticalization of the imperative forms the total desemantization does not occur and the capability of the imperative forms to serve as pragmatic markers is determined by their lexical meaning, combinatory property and possibility to form the imperative. The choice of one or another pragmatic marker is determined by linguistic, paralinguistic or extralinguistic factors. The function of the imperative verbal forms of some lexical-semantic group is close to that of the performatives.