The function of non-canonical imperatives in the languages of Europe

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a. The sentence type should form a system, so that there should be corresponding versions of a sentence in each type. This means that if there is a declarative sentence like “You speak the truth”, there ought to be an interrogative counterpart like “Do you speak the truth” and an imperative ditto “Speak the truth!” and, maybe also an optative “may you speak the truth!” b. Similarly, the types should be mutually exclusive, i.e. there should be no combinations of two sentence type markers in the same sentence. Sentences cannot be both declarative and interrogative or imperative at the same time. For practical reasons, it is not possible to tell someone what to do and convey truth in one and the same sentence (this however is a matter of discussion, what exactly each clause in a sentence represents when several types are used, for instance whether the subordinate clause in “tell him [that I saw him last night]” is declarative or part of the command in the main clause). c. As we have noted, there should be a conventional association with a speech act. This is more straightforward; imperatives are usually associated with commands and requests, interrogatives with questions or inquiries, and declaratives with statements or judgments. Indirect speech acts, as we’ve seen, transcend these boundaries somewhat, but this line of distinction holds quite well for direct speech acts. What constitutes a sentence type varies from one language to another; while all languages in Europe have declarative, interrogative and imperative speech acts, not all of them allow for optative or potential speech acts, for instance. In Romance languages, the optative or rather its function tends to be expressed in the subjunctive mood, while in Finno- Ugric languages like Finnish and Estonian, the optative is a speech act in its own right however archaic its usage (as mentioned earlier, this is referred to as the jussive in Estonian, although its functions overlap to a great degree with those of the Finnish optative). In light of all the material accounted for above, it would seem that imperatives are to be discussed as speech acts, and not moods. To quickly recap: Imperatives have an intonation contour, morphology, word order, and/or negation different from other speech acts, and grammatically possess both limitations and possibilities unavailable to declaratives or interrogatives. 14
So how do non-canonical imperatives correspond to this speech act As we will see, the reason why we even call these jussive (Palmer, 2001) functions imperatives in the first place is because of their adherence to the features associated with the imperative. 4. The first person plural imperatives Following the second person imperatives in frequency in the world’s languages is the imperative in the first person plural. Outside of the Germanic and Slavic languages, most languages in Europe feature this personal, inflected form of the imperative, as do many other languages outside of this geographical region. It is sometimes referred to as an inclusive imperative, as a command where the speaker includes himself. Sometimes, this inclusivity is seen as a “I am doing this, and so are you” type of sentiment, and including a second person, the listener, in doing a task would be expected, as this signifies the standard or canonical function of the imperative. If one contrasts this with the exclusive, first person singular, imperative this way, it would make sense to consider this viewpoint. Regardless of how one views it however, the inclusive refers to the imperative functions in the first person plural. The functionality of this form of the imperative differs somewhat from that of the second person forms. As I am going to illustrate in following subsections, the most common functions it takes are either hortative, voicing a suggestion to the group in which the speaker is included to perform an action, or issuing a command to the group with the reassertion that the speaker himself is going to perform said task, i.e. an inclusive command, thus differentiating the command from that of the second person imperatives. There are several functions attached to the first person plural imperative expressed differently through means not quite as overt as their grammatical inflection. Sometimes, all that separates an encouraging, hortative first person imperative from an indirect command is super-segmental, the intonation contour and eye contact, for example, as proposed by Aikhenvald (2010), among others. The difference between a statement like “let’s all go have fun at the beach!” and “come on, let’s clean this rotten mess up!” is apparent in the speaker’s attitude through factors such as body language, intonation and tone of voice. 15
Page 1 and 2: UPPSALA UNIVERSITY Bachelor’s The
Page 3 and 4: Abbreviations 1INF First infinite I
Page 5 and 6: 1. Background and purpose The imper
Page 7 and 8: mind passing me the salt”, or a s
Page 9 and 10: There is a depth in using language
Page 11 and 12: optative paradigm (called the jussi
Page 13 and 14: Now, what I found were tendencies i
Page 15 and 16: Irish: Labhraím leis anois. Labhra
Page 17: Table 3.2: the differences between
Page 21 and 22: imperative. French is further dissi
Page 23 and 24: 4.2 The hortative functionality of
Page 25 and 26: Irish: Ithim bia! Ithim bia eat/1SG
Page 27 and 28: Table 5.2 Sentence types in Irish D
Page 29 and 30: This function arguably is more impe
Page 31 and 32: Table 5.4: Forms of the imperative
Page 33 and 34: Finnish: (Hän) kysyköön kysymyks
Page 35 and 36: and requests for permission are not
Page 37 and 38: Russian (courtesy of Hansen in Roth
Page 39 and 40: Resignation and admission of the sp
Page 41 and 42: References Abraham, Werner and Leis

The function of non-canonical imperatives in the languages of Europe

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