Structure and plot-building, compositional and rhetorical functions of interrogative and exclamation sentences in Ivan Dmitriev’s fairy tales

The relevance of the study is determined by an insufficient description of the linguistic and stylistic features of I. I. Dmitriev’s fairy tales. The purpose of this work is a comprehensive analysis of interrogative and exclamation sentences in these fairy tales. The paper presents the first classifications of these types of syntactic constructions, determines their role in the creation of rhetorical figures, and describes their functions taking into account the genre characteristics. Seven fairy tales served as the material for analysis. The research methodology included the review, classification and stylistic methods. Interrogative and exclamation sentences are present in all texts. Interrogative sentences can be classified into three groups: rhetorical questions, hypophores, and actual questions. When characterizing emotionally charged constructions, the position of the exclamation mark and its combinations with other punctuation marks were taken into account, which helped to distinguish three groups of sentences. Rhetorical exclamations form a separate category within each group. Interrogative and exclamatory sentences often become structural and compositional signals showing the key points of the plot or marking the speech of characters. The results of the analysis show that the demand for small phraseologized complete or incomplete simple sentences is determined by a particular genre’s focus on lively conversational speech. The combination of punctuation marks within one sentence (question mark -exclamation mark, exclamation mark - period, ellipsis - exclamation mark) serves as a graphic signal of emotionally rich and natural conversational intonation. In turn, rhetorical questions, rhetorical exclamations and addresses characteristic of poetic language create additional expression. The results of the research may be useful for further study of the literary language of the XVIII-XIX centuries.