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Interpreting Imperatives

Part of the Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy Book Series (volume 88)

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-2269-9

ISBN: 978-94-007-2268-2

Publisher: Springer Netherlands - Springer Journals

Sep 5, 2011

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Chapter 1Setting the Scene

Kaufmann, Magdalena

Pages: 1 –27

[This chapter explores the classification of natural language sentences into declaratives, interrogatives, imperatives (and possibly further types) as it is commonly applied both by descriptive grammarians and by theoretical linguists. It is argued that, to be crosslinguistically applicable,...
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Chapter 2How to Handle Imperatives in Semantics

Kaufmann, Magdalena

Pages: 29 –72

[Standard approaches to identify the denotations of natural language expressions fail for imperatives, which don’t relate directly to either truth or information exchange. In a first step, possible strategies to provide a semantic interpretation for imperatives are classified according to three...
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Chapter 3Imperatives as Graded Modals

Kaufmann, Magdalena

Pages: 73 –128

[This chapter offers an introduction to Kratzer’s treatment of modal expressions in possible worlds semantics. It spells out a logical form (LF) for imperative sentences that takes into account their aspectual, temporal, and modal properties and provides a compositional interpretation. In...
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Chapter 4From Modalized Propositions to Speech Acts

Kaufmann, Magdalena

Pages: 129 –168

[This chapter starts out with an explanation of how the context dependence inherent in Kratzer’s account of modal expressions can be used to derive the wide range of speech acts that can be associated with imperative clauses. Then the propositional at issue-meaning is endowed with an additional...
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Chapter 5Possibility Readings

Kaufmann, Magdalena

Pages: 169 –191

[The interpretation of imperative clauses as expressing necessity of particular modal flavors accounts well for all uses of imperatives that serve to constrain the future courses of events. This chapter explores imperatives that, at first glance, are at odds with this, as they serve to widen the...
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Chapter 6Embedding Imperatives

Kaufmann, Magdalena

Pages: 193 –254

[The last chapter deals with a variety of cases in which what constitutes the form type of unembedded imperatives appears embedded into a larger expression. This is particularly interesting as imperatives are often considered root phenomena (i.e., impossible to embed), while the propositional...

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