Permission 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 permission imperative has a different meaning from a strong imperative. For example, Grosz (2009) argues that permission imperatives contain a weak (possibility) modal, in contrast to strong imperatives, which contain a necessity modal. (Many other authors discuss the analysis of permission, but not primarily or clearly in the context of imperatives; we’ll examine some of their ideas below.)