The Meaning of Imperatives†
نویسنده
چکیده
This article surveys a range of current views on the semantics of imperatives, presenting them as more or less conservative with respect to the Truth-Conditional Paradigm in semantics. It describes and critiques views at either extreme of this spectrum: accounts on which the meaning of an imperative is a modal truth-condition, as well as various accounts that attempt to explain imperative meaning without making use of truth-conditions. It briefly describes and encourages further work on a family of views lying somewhere in the middle. On such views, an imperative will semantically determine, without having as its meaning, a modal truth-condition, which figures centrally in accounting for various aspects of its meaning.
منابع مشابه
A Preference Semantics for Imperatives
There is a rich canon of work on the meaning of imperative sentences, e.g. Dance!, in philosophy and much recent research in linguistics has made its own exciting advances. However, I argue here that three kinds of observations about imperatives are problematic for approaches from both traditions. I contend that these shortcomings stem from an entirely standard assumption of these semantic theo...
متن کاملEvolutionary Explanations of Indicatives and Imperatives
Recently there has been some interest in studying the explanation of meaning by using signaling games. I shall argue that the meaning of signals in signaling games remains sufficiently unclear to motivate further investigation. In particular, the possibility of distinguishing imperatives and indicatives at a fundamental level will be explored. Thereby I am trying to preserve the generality of t...
متن کاملSimon M. Huttegger Evolutionary Explanations of Indicatives and Imperatives
Recently there has been some interest in studying the explanation of meaning by using signaling games. I shall argue that the meaning of signals in signaling games remains sufficiently unclear to motivate further investigation. In particular, the possibility of distinguishing imperatives and indicatives at a fundamental level will be explored. Thereby I am trying to preserve the generality of t...
متن کاملEvolutionary Explanations of Indicatives and Imperatives
Recently there has been some interest in studying the explanation of meaning by using signaling games. I shall argue that the meaning of signals in signaling games remains sufficiently unclear to motivate further investigation. In particular, the possibility of distinguishing imperatives and indicatives at a fundamental level will be explored. Thereby I am trying to preserve the generality of t...
متن کاملPermission and Choice
When it comes to permission imperatives, a basic question that must be answered is whether they should receive the same basic analysis as strong imperatives (i.e., those which express commands and the like). If the answer is positive, the difference should lie in some aspect of the context. Portner (2004, 2008), Schwager (2005b), and maybe Mastop (2005) take this view. If it is negative, a perm...
متن کامل