A syntactic analysis of interpretive restrictions on imperative, promissive, and exhortative subjects

• Published in: Natural language and linguistic theory Vol. 30; no. 4; pp. 1231 - 1274
• Main Authors: Zanuttini, Raffaella, Pak, Miok, Portner, Paul
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01.11.2012; Springer Netherlands; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Agreement; Agreement (Grammatical); Clauses; Descriptive studies and applied theories; Grammar; Grammatical clauses; Imperative sentences; Language; Licenses; Licensing; Linguistics; Natural Language Processing (NLP); Noun phrases; Philosophy of Language; Pragmatics; Pronouns; Semantic analysis; Semantics; Semantics and pragmatics; Social Sciences; Syntactic Analysis; Syntactic Structures; Syntactics; Syntax; Syntax Pragmatics Interface; Syntax Semantics Relationship; Theoretical linguistics; Theory; New York; United States > US; Chicago Illinois; Exhortatives; Person features; Italian; Imperatives; Agree; Bound pronouns; To-do list; Korean; Sentence final particles; Promissives; Clause types; Speech acts; Jussive head; Agreement; English; Bhojpuri; Jussives; Modals; Subjects; Directive force; Subject predicate; Syntactic analysis; Grammatical agreement; Bound pronoun; Speech act; Semantics; Pragmatics; Syntax
• ISSN: 0167-806X; 1573-0859
• DOI: 10.1007/s11049-012-9176-2

This paper investigates the interpretive restrictions on the subjects of imperative, promissive, and exhortative sentences—what we call the "jussive" clause types. It argues that the data cannot be explained by a theory that appeals only to semantic and pragmatic factors, and that an account crucially involving syntax is required. We propose that jussive clauses contain a functional head that bears a person feature. This head is an operator that, when in a sufficiently local configuration, binds the subject and enters an agreement relation with it. The restrictions in person features exhibited by the subjects are a consequence of this agreement relation. Moreover, we show that the syntactic structures produced by our analysis are compatible with a compositional semantics that yields the correct interpretation for imperatives and other jussives.