On choice-offering imperatives

The law of propositional logic that states the deducibility of either A or B from A is not valid for imperatives (Ross’s paradox, cf. [9]). The command (or request, advice, etc.) in (1a) does not imply (1a) (unless it is taken in its alternative-presenting sense), otherwise when told the former, I would be justified in burning the letter rather then posting it. (1) a. Post this letter! 6⇒ b. Post this letter or burn it! Intuitively the most natural interpretation of the second imperative is as one presenting a choice between two actions. Following [2] (and [6]) I call these choice-offering imperatives. Another example of a choice-offering imperative is (2) with an occurence of Free Choice ‘any’ which, interestingly, is licensed in this context. (2) Take any card! Like (1a), this imperative should be interpreted as carrying with it a permission that explicates the fact that a choice is being offered. Possibility statements behave similarly (see [8]). Sentence (3b) has a reading under which it cannot be deduced from (3a), and ‘any’ is licensed in (4). (3) a. You may post this letter. 6⇒ b. You may post this letter or burn it. (4) You may take any card. In [1] I presented an analysis of modal expressions which explains the phenomena in (3) and (4). That analysis maintains a standard treatment of ‘or’ as logical disjunction (contra [11]) and a Kadmon & Landman style analysis of ‘any’ as existential quantifier (contra [3] and [4]) assuming, however, an independently motivated ‘Hamblin analysis’ for ∨ and ∃ as introducing sets of alternative propositions. Modal expressions are treated as operators over sets of propositional alternatives. In this way, since their interpretation can depend on the alternatives introduced by ‘or’ (∨) or ‘any’ (∃) in their scope, we can account for the free choice effect which arises in sentences like (3b) or (4). In this article I would like to extend this analysis to imperatives. The resulting theory will allow a unified account of the phenomena in (1)-(4). We will start by presenting our ‘alternative’ analysis for indefinites and disjunction.