Halm Tamás (NYTI)

Free-Choice Items in Imperatives in Hungarian and Beyond  

Absztrakt:

The topic of my talk is the semantics and pragmatics of imperatives, with focus on free-choice items: FCIs are licensed in weak (permission / acquiescence / indifference) imperatives but not in strong imperatives. I provide a new model for FCIs in imperatives, building upon the dependent indefinite analysis of FCIs (Giannakidou 2001) and introducing a revised version of the weak semantics - strong pragmatics approach to imperatives (Portner 2007, 2012, von Fintel and Iatridou 2017). I show based on observations concerning FCIs in imperatives and other independent evidence that the dynamic pragmatic component of the Portner-von Fintel-Iatridou framework for the interpretation of imperatives needs to be significantly revised in order to fully account for the relevant facts. Leaving the denotational semantic component intact, I argue (pace von Fintel and Iatridou 2017) that in imperatives containing FCIs, and indeed, in weak imperatives in general, the pragmatic force of the utterance is not directed at the To-Do-List of the addressee, but rather, at a separate component of the common ground which I term the List of Actions Under Consideration by the addressee.