{"id":274,"date":"2008-10-20T05:00:35","date_gmt":"2008-10-20T09:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=274"},"modified":"2008-10-20T11:51:26","modified_gmt":"2008-10-20T15:51:26","slug":"ling-lunch-1023-patrick-grosz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2008\/10\/20\/ling-lunch-1023-patrick-grosz\/","title":{"rendered":"Ling-lunch 10\/23 - Patrick Grosz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Please join us for this week’s Ling-lunch:

\nPatrick Grosz<\/A>

\n“Particle-izing Imperatives”

\nThursday, Oct. 23

\n12:30-1:45

\n32-D461


\n>The semantics of imperatives has been in the focus of recent research such as
\nPortner (2005, 2007) and Schwager (2005, 2006). Schwager assumes a covert
\nperformative modal with universal force. Portner claims that imperatives do not
\nencode modal force and suggests a pragmatic account in which imperatives
\ncontribute to the hearer?s To-Do List and a rational speaker aims to realize
\nas many entries on her To-Do List as possible. To account for the difference
\nbetween universal, “commanding” imperatives and existential, “permissive”
\nimperatives, Schwager (2005) develops a pragmatic account that crucially
\nassumes that the hearer has already wanted to carry out the action expressed in
\nthe imperative, but has felt that it was prohibited to do so (see also Han 2000
\nin this context). In contrast, Portner (2007) suggests that such differences
\nare linked to various sections of the hearer’s To-Do List, corresponding to
\ndifferent ordering sources (e.g. orders are deontic and invitations\/permissions
\nare bouletic, referring to the hearer’s wishes). Crucially, both assume that
\nimperatives always express “necessity” and the feeling of “possibility” is a
\nderived effect. In this talk I show that this cannot be correct.<\/p>\n

>In this talk I revisit the semantics of imperatives in the light of the
\nGerman discourse particles JA (pronounce: “stressed JA”, homophonous with ja
\n‘yes’) and ruhig (homophonous with ruhig ‘quietly’). These elements occur only
\nin imperatives and in modalized declaratives, but not in non-modalized
\ndeclaratives. They restrict the modal type of the modal operator they occur
\nwith, and are sensitive to modal force (JA only combines with universal force
\nand ruhig with existential force). I show that the distribution of JA and ruhig
\ncan only be accounted for by assuming that imperatives contain a covert element
\nthat introduces modal necessity or modal possibility. The empirical evidence
\nthus favors an approach that assumes an element introducing modal
\nquantification (such as Schwager’s) over an approach that does not involve
\nquantification (such as Portner’s). However, it also requires a fundamental
\nrevision of Schwager, in that we need to assume the imperative operator to be
\nlexically ambiguous between a universal necessity reading and an existential
\npossibility reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Please join us for this week’s Ling-lunch: Patrick Grosz “Particle-izing Imperatives” Thursday, Oct. 23 12:30-1:45 32-D461 >The semantics of imperatives has been in the focus of recent research such as Portner (2005, 2007) and Schwager (2005, 2006). Schwager assumes a covert performative modal with universal force. Portner claims that imperatives do not encode modal force […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-talks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions\/276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}