This paper investigates cross-linguistic variation in embedded imperatives in terms of syntactic environments in which they can(not) appear, focusing on the availability of embedded imperatives in the clausal complement of verbs and nouns, and relative clauses. I demonstrate that there are four distinct types of languages regarding the possibility of embedded imperatives. I also suggest that th...

Truth is undefined for imperative statements. However, if imperatives implicitly reference a fact, they can be rephrased as truth-valuable declaratives explicitly referencing that fact. But are there such facts? Kenny held that any imperative references a set of wishes held by its imperator. I extend his thesis by proposing that imperator wishes are facts implicitly referenced by imperatives an...

“Surrender; therefore, surrender or fight” is apparently an argument corresponding to an inference from an imperative to an imperative. Several philosophers, however (Williams 1963; Wedeking 1970; Harrison 1991; Hansen 2008), have denied that imperative inferences exist, arguing that (1) no such inferences occur in everyday life, (2) imperatives cannot be premises or conclusions of inferences b...

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...

Imperatives may be interpreted with many subvarieties of directive force, for example as orders, invitations, or pieces of advice. I argue that the range of meanings that imperatives can convey should be identified with the variety of interpretations that are possible for non-dynamic root modals (what I call ‘priority modals’), including deontic, bouletic, and teleological readings. This paper ...

The aim of this paper is to get rid of a nasty ambiguity between commands and permissions associated with imperatives (necessity/constraining of options vs. possibility/widening of options). I argue that a uniform semantics in terms of necessity together with certain assumptions about the context can account for the different effects on the pragmatic side. The difference is explained by employi...

The objectives of the project are 1) to enhance the capability of civil society organizations in economic policy advocacy work, and 2) to pursue specific policy reform agenda based on the needs of the sector. In the last three years, in each of the sub-sector, the project is implemented through the MultiStakeholders’ Team (MST) which consists of a key NGO partner, a subject specialist (technica...

In this paper, we address two questions concerning negative imperatives in Korean: . (i) what is the morpho-syntactic nature of mal in negative imperatives?; and (ii) why is it impossible to form negative imperatives with short negation an? We will argue that the clause structure of imperatives include a projection of deontic modality and a projection of imperative operator encoding illocutiona...