Imperatives and other directive strategies - Simone Heinold · PDF fileImperatives and other directive strategies INTRODUCTION Simone Heinold (J.W. Goethe University of Frankfurt)

Imperatives and other directive strategies INTRODUCTION

Simone Heinold (J.W. Goethe University of Frankfurt)

Daniël Van Olmen (Lancaster University)

46th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea

Split, 18-21 September 2013 – Workshop 9

Why this workshop?

• unfortunately…

• “Scant attention is paid to the imperative in most of the major landmarks of the linguistic literature, both in generative and other frameworks.” (Van der Wurff 2007: 2)

• “The imperative … does not receive a lot of attention in most chapters [of Rothstein & Thieroff’s (2010) volume Mood in the Languages of Europe].” (Van Olmen 2012: 228)

Why this workshop?

• still…

• “The imperative … appears to hold some fascination for Ph.D. students.” (Van der Wurff 2007: 2)

• Han (2000), Rahardi (2002), Moon (2001), Jensen (2003), Diehl (2004), Mastop (2005), Baum (2006), De Clerck (2006), Schwager (2006), Schalley (2008), Van Olmen (2011a), Charlow (2012), …

• “Articles dealing with the imperative have been –and continue to be– published at a regular rate.” (Van der Wurff 2007: 2)

• at least thirty articles since 2010

• + Aikhenvald (2010), Kaufmann (2012) and Takahashi (2012)

• but little attention to other directive strategies

Questions

• imperatives as such

• do imperatives cover the same functions in all languages?

• imperatives vs other directive strategies

• what are the differences?

• what motivates the use of other directive strategies?

• other directive strategies as such

• do similar alternative constructions do the same thing in different languages?

Imperatives as such

• obvious answer: no!

• some examples

• imperatives in the past tense (Van Olmen forthc.)

(1) Had gebeld! At liever wat minder! (Dutch)

had called ate preferably a.little less

‘You should have called!’ ‘You should eat a little less.’

(2) Kənt kōl lamma kənt fəl-bēt. (Syrian Arabic)

you.were eat.IMP when you.were in.the-house

‘You should have eaten when you were home!’

Imperatives as such

• narrative use of imperatives (Fortuin 2000)

(3) Ego zhdut, a on i opazdaj na celyj

him they.wait but he and come.late.IMP.PERF one whole chas. (Russian)

hour

‘They waited for him, but he was one whole hour late.’

• maximal imperative paradigms (van der Auwera et al. 2005)

(4) Ol-ø / -koon / -kaamme / -kaa / -koot! (Finnish)

be-IMP.2SG -3SG -1PL -2PL -3PL

‘Be! / Let him be! / Let’s be! / You people be! / Let them be!’

Imperatives as such

• universal vs existential imperatives (Grosz 2011)

(5) Geh da ja hin! Geh da ruhig hin! (German)

go.IMP there PRTCL to go.IMP there PRTCL to

‘Go there!’ (necessity) ‘Go there’ (possibility)

(6) Vi-iny-ga vi-gira! (Nivkh)

go-MOD-CONVERB.COND go-PERM.2SG

‘If you want to go, go (I allow you to).’

Imperatives as such

• importance

• typological perspective

• variation in imperative paradigms captured by and explained in terms of a map (e.g. van der Auwera et al. 2004, Goussev 2005)

• “Can the ways in which the basic imperativeʼs core meaning of command extends into other functions, like the hardly directive ones of wish and acceptance, be captured by some semantic/pragmatic map?” (Van Olmen 2011b: 676)

• semantic definition

• as a prototype (e.g. Fortuin 2000) , with a very abstract meaning (e.g. Dancygier & Sweetser 2005) or …

• as a speech act (e.g. Aikhenvald 2010, van der Auwera 2006), as an underlying (necessity) modal (e.g. Kaufmann 2012) or …

Imperatives as such

• related papers in the workshop

• Baraby: Imperative evidentiality

• about Innu, an Algic language

• imperative distinguishing

• immediate vs delayed realization

• indirectness or, in other words, reportedness

• Van Olmen: Mood, modals and modification

• about English and Dutch

• imperative’s functional potential and usage

• comparable and parallel corpus data

• differences in modification, vagueness, indirectness and modality

IMPs vs other directive strategies

• morphology

• overlap, non-existence or ambiguity of forms in paradigms (Birjulin & Xrakovskij 2001, Heinold 2012)

(7) Frag-Ø! / Frag-t! (German)

ask-IMP.SG ask.IMP.PL

‘Ask!’

(8) Tu/vous vas/allez à la maison. (French)

you.SG/you.PL go.PRES.IND to the house

‘You are going home.’

Vas/allez à la maison.

go.PRES.IND/IMP to the house

‘Go home!’


• other strategies for non-existing/ambiguous forms

(9) Er soll jetzt gehen. / Jetzt alle heimgehen!/ Alle raus! (German) he must now go.INF now all go.INF all out

‘He should go home now. / Now everybody go home! / Everybody out!’

(10) Qu’il sorte! / Tout le monde sort! (French)

that.he leaves.SUBJ all the world leaves

‘Let him leave! / Everybody go!’

• but Finnish too has other strategies for such forms, e.g. 3rd infinitive + illative construction (Hyvärinen 1989)


• syntax & semantics

• negative first principle (Horn 1989: 449, Van Olmen 2010)

(11) Kill him –oops– not! (English)

(12) Vermoord haar nou toch/niet! (Dutch)

kill.IMP her now yet/not

‘Just kill her already! / Don’t kill her!’

Niet doen!

not do.INF

‘Don’t!


• different types of addressee (cf. vocatives vs ‘real subjects’ in Brinkmann 1971, Fries 1983, Bennis 2006, Heinold 2012, Gärtner forthc.)

(13) Alle aufstehen! (German)

everybody get.up.INF

*Alle steht auf!

everybody get.IMP.PL up

Steht alle auf!

get.IMP.PL everybody up

‘Everybody get up!’


• verb classes (Rooryck & Postma 2007, Heinold subm.)

(14) Auf-gestanden! / Weg-getreten! / Los-gelaufen! (German)

up-stood away-stepped off-walked

‘Get up! / Step away! / Start walking!’

?Gestanden! / ?Getreten! / ?Gelaufen! stood! stepped walked! ‘Stand! / Step! / Walk!’


• functional differences

• meaning (e.g. Heinold 2012)

• full paradigm in Finnish but still ‘double’ forms

• different strategies for different meanings

• some strategies specializing for one specific meaning

• politeness

• imperative often considered very face-threatening

• e.g. impersonal strategies more polite (Brown & Levinson 1978, Aikhenvald 2010)

• but Dutch past participle (Rooryck & Postma 2007) and German infinitive (Engel 1996) rude


• urgency (Svahn 2009, Heinold subm.)

• participles as forms conveying urgency of request

• and promptness with which it must be fulfilled

(15) Den Boden gefegt! (German) the floor swept

‘Sweep the floor!’

• types of language and/or text

• written vs spoken language

• military language

• infinitives on signs

• email conversations



• Sansiñena & De Smet: The imperative vs free-standing que-clauses in Spanish

• directive and optative meanings vs. declarative uses

• varieties of Spanish (Spain, Argentina, Chile)

• illocutionary force

• Stathi: The imperative and the infinitive in German

• functional and formal reasons for each strategy

• morphological and syntactic factors


• Heinold: Directive past participles in German

• special properties and constraints of past participles

• contexts of directive past participles

• different usages of past participles depending on the (grammatical) context

Other directive strategies as such

• again, obvious answer: no!

• some examples

• ability questions (Aikhenvald 2010: 258-259)

(16) Can you pass me the salt? (English)

(17) Ty mozhesh ubratj? (Russian)

you.SG can clean.up

‘Can you clean up? (you should have done it already, I’m angry with you)’


• directive infinitive

• “Infinitives imply strong commands and proscriptions. They are frequent especially in written instructions.” (Aikhenvald 2010: 281)

(18) Lišon! Lišon! ‘Amarti le-xa. (Modern Hebrew)

sleep.INF sleep.INF I.told you-MASC.SG

‘Sleep! Sleep! I have told you.’

• Dutch

• applicability/appropriateness of SoA for the hearer in view of the context (Fortuin 2003)

• strong correlation with negation (Van Olmen 2010)


• insubordination

• “the conventionalized main clause use of what, on prima facie grounds, appear to be formally subordinate clauses” (Evans 2007: 367)

(19) Se me dice la pagina… (Italian)

If me you.tell the page

‘If you tell me the page…’

• directivity = one of its typica l target ‘meanings’

(20) Enga ú-mon-á! (Nkoya)

PROH[< even if] you-see-PROG

‘Don’t see!’


• issues

• characterizing the differences

• politeness (e.g. Kasanga 2006)

• types of deonticity

• speech acts (e.g. Heinold 2012)

• …

• explaining the differences

• culture (e.g. Matsumoto 1988 on different concepts of face)

• competing constructions / distribution of labor

• conventionalization (e.g. Evans 2007)

• language-specific grammatical factors

• …



• Svahn: Past- and perfective-based directive strategies

• in a range of European and Asian languages

• similarities in function and form

• differences in origin and productivity

• link with the expression of certain futurity by past/perfective markers?

• D’hertefelt: Deontic meanings of conditional and complement insubordination in Germanic languages

• differences in deontic meaning

• linked to the semantics of conditionality and complementation

• differences in functions between languages


• De Clerck: Directivity in varieties of English

• business correspondence in ICE-corpora

• differences in the use of a wide range of directive expressions

• linked to politeness

• relevant for communication in a global English bussiness context

To conclude

• questions or comments?

• presentations

• about 20 minutes + 10 minutes discussion

• pointer available

• last slot

• general discussion

• publication plans

Enjoy the workshop!

References

• Aikhenvald, A.Y. 2010, Imperatives and Commands. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Baum, D. 2005. The Imperative in the Rigveda. PhD dissertation. Leiden: Leiden University.

• Bennis, H. 2006. Agreement, Pro and imperatives. In P. Ackema et al. (eds), Arguments and Agreement. New York: Oxford University Press, 101-123.

• Birjulin, L. & V. Xrakovskij. 2001. Imperative sentences: Theoretical problems. In V. Xrakovskij (ed.), Typology of Imperative Constructions. Munich: Lincom Europa, 3-50.

• Brinkmann, H. 1971. Die deutsche Sprache. Gestalt und Leistung. Düsseldorf: Schwann.

• Brown, P. & S. Levinson, 1978. Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Charlow, N.A. 2012. Practical Language: Its Meaning and Use. PhD dissertation. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan.

• Dancygier, B, & E, Sweetser, 2005, Mental Spaces in Grammar. Conditional Constructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• De Clerck, B. 2006. The Imperative in English: A Corpus-based, Pragmatic Analysis. PhD dissertation. Ghent: Ghent University.

References

• Diehl, J.F. 2004, Die Fortführung des Imperativs im biblischen Hebräisch. Munster: Ugarit-Verlag.

• Engel, U. 1996. Deutsche Grammatik. Heidelberg: Groos.

• Evans, N. 2007. Insubordination and its uses. In I. Nikolaeva (ed.), Finiteness: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 366–431,

• Fortuin, E. 2000. Polysemy or Monosemy: Interpretation of the Imperative and Dative-Infinitive Construction in Russian. PhD dissertation. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University.

• Fortuin, E. 2003. De directieve infinitief en de imperatief in het Nederlands [The directive infinitive and the imperative in Dutch]. Nederlandse Taalkunde 8, 14–43.

• Fries, N. 1983. Syntaktische und semantische Studien zum frei verwendeten Infinitiv. Tübingen: Narr.

• Gärtner , H. forthc. Infinite Hauptsatzstrukturen. In J. Meibauer, M. Steinbach & H. Altmann (eds.), Satztypen des Deutschen. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

• Grosz, P. 2011. German particles, modality, and the semantics of imperatives. In M. Lima & Smith (eds.), Proceedings of NELS 39. Amherst, MA: GLSA, 335–339.

References

• Goussev, V. 2005. Tipologiya specializirovannykh glagoljʼnykh form imperativa [The Typology of Specialized Verbal Forms of Imperatives]. PhD dissertation. Moscow: Russian State University for the Humanities.

• Han, C.-H. 2000. The Structure and Interpretation of Imperatives: Mood and Force in Universal Grammar. New York: Garland.

• Heinold, S. 2012. Gut durchlesen! Der deutsche Imperativ und seine funktionalen Synonyme: Ein Vergleich mit dem Finnischen [Gut durchlesen! The German imperative and its functional synonyms]. Deutsche Sprache 12, 32-56.

• Heinold, S. subm. Directive past participles in German: Aspectual constraints for a gradual acceptability.

• Horn, L.R. 1989. A Natural History of Negation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

• Hyvärinen, I. 1989. Zu finnischen und deutschen verbabhängigen Infinitiven: Eine valenz-theoretische kontrastive Analyse. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

• Jensen, B. 2003. Imperatives in English and Scandinavian. PhD dissertation. Oxford: Oxford University.

• Kasanga, L.A. 2006. Requests in a South African variety of English. World Englishes 25, 65–89.

• Kaufmann, M. 2012. Interpreting Imperatives. Dordrecht: Springer.

References

• Mastop, R.J. 2005. What Can You Do? Imperative Mood in Semantic Theory. PhD dissertation. PhD dissertation. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.

• Matsumoto, Y, 1988. Reexamination of the universality of face. Journal of Pragmatics 12, 403–426.

• Moon, G.G.-S. 2001. Grammatical and Discourse Properties of the Imperative Subject in English. PhD dissertation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.

• Rahardi, K. 2000. Imperatif dalam Bahasi Indonesia. Jakarta: Duta Wacana University Press.

• Rooryck, J., & G. Postma, 2007. On participal imperatives. In W. van der Wurff (ed.), Imperative Clauses in Generative Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 273-296.

• Schalley, Ewa. 2008. Imperatives: A Typological Approach. PhD dissertation. Antwerp: University of Antwerp.

• Schwager, M. 2006, Interpreting Imperatives. PhD dissertation. Frankfurt, Main: University of Frankfurt.

• Svahn, A. 2009. The perfective imperative in Japanese. A further analysis. MA thesis. Lund: Lund University.

• Takahashi, H. 2012. A Cognitive Linguistic Analysis of the English Imperative: With Special Reference to Japanese Imperatives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

References

• van der Auwera, J. 2006. Imperatives. In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 565-567.

• van der Auwera, J., N. Dobrushina & V. Goussev. 2004. A semantic map for imperative-hortative. In D. Willems, B. Defrancq, T. Colleman & D. Noël (eds.), Contrastive Analysis in Language: Identifying Linguistic Units of Comparison. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 44–66.

• van der Auwera, J., N. Dobrushina & V. Goussev, 2005. Imperative-hortative systems. In M, Haspelmath, M.S. Dryer, D. Gil & B. Comrie (eds.), The World Atlas of Language Structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 296-299.

• Van der Wurff, W. 2007. Imperative clauses in generative grammar: An introduction. In W. van der Wurff (ed.), Imperative Clauses in Generative Grammar: Studies in Honour of Frits Beukema. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1-94.

• Van Olmen, D. 2010, Typology meets usage: The case of the prohibitive infinitive in Dutch. Folia Linguistica 44, 471–508.

• Van Olmen, D. 2011a. The Imperative in English and Dutch: A Functional Analysis in Comparable and Parallel Corpora. PhD dissertation. Antwerp: University of Antwerp.

• Van Olmen, D. 2011b. Review of Aikhenvald’s (2010) Imperatives and Commands. Linguistic Typology 15, 670-680.

References

• Van Olmen, D. 2012. Review of Rothstein & Thieroff’s (ed.) (2010), Mood in the Languages of Europe. Studies in Language 36, 225-230,

• Van Olmen, D. forthc. De imperatief in de verleden tijd [The imperative in the past tense]. Nederlandse Taalkunde.

Imperatives and other directive strategies - Simone Heinold · PDF fileImperatives and other directive strategies INTRODUCTION Simone Heinold (J.W. Goethe University of Frankfurt)

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