There are three different ways in which nondeclaratives have been integrated into formal theories of meaning. These are: the performative analysis, which treats them as explicit or modal performatives and attempts to reduce them to statements; the parametric analysis, distinguishing a sentence type expression M from a ‘sentence radical’ p, together forming a meaningful expression [M,p]; and the...

Deontic logic has so far been almost exclusively interpreted by a possible worlds semantics and ideality or preference relations between the worlds. In distinguishing itself from attempts at a logic of norms or logic of imperatives, deontic logic has portrayed its formulas as ‘deontic propositions’, true or false statements about what is obligatory, permitted or forbidden according to some unsp...

The term “performative” is used in at least two different senses. In the first sense, performatives are generatives, i.e. expressions by the use of which one creates new deontic states of affairs on the ground of extralinguistic conventions. In the second sense, performatives are operatives, i.e. expressions which contain verbal predicates and state their own utterances. In the article, both th...

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. Po...

Australia 2 ABSTRACT The paper explores an attempt by a small team of staff within the School of Management at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) to transform the only postgraduate third sector management program offered in Australia, in response to powerful external pressures for change. After analysing the nature of these contextual imperatives for the transformation of the program, th...