Objectives The purpose of this paper is to compare the numbers of sentences and genre characteristics. To do so, we analyze the sociolinguistic implications of the differences in the number of occurrences of culminative suffixes in different genres. Methods Fifteen genres of texts were selected for the test, according to the type of socio-symbolic activity of systemic functional linguistics. For each of them, we counted the number of sentences with the following grammatical categories: the number of sentence types, the number of mood types, the number of stance types, the number of addressee deference types, and the number of minor sentences. To verify the results statistically, a Chi-squared Test of Independence was performed. Results The number of sentences per genre was highest in private conversations, followed by fairy tales, weather reports, and fiction texts. On the contrary, the lowest number of sentences were found in judgments. In terms of mood, five types of mood were found in private conversations and four in fairy tales, but only a single type of mood was found in other genres. The number of stance types by genre was 4 in private conversations and 3 in fairy tales, and none in elders. The number of addressee deference types by genre tended to be fixed at one type or another depending on the audience of the text. The number of minor sentences per genre was overwhelmingly high in everyday conversation, with 15. Conclusions The statistical tests of the results of the above analysis show that the grammatical categories performed by the culminative suffixes in the 15 genres have significant differences in the variance of their ratings, and that, although the culminative suffixes do not combine, minor sentences also fulfill the interpersonal functions of culminative suffixes.
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