On the Semantics of Imperatives in Persian

Abstract

The present paper aims to analyze the imperatives in Persian form a formal semantics viewpoint. Basically, as well as the ‘directive’ meaning as their default reading, the imperatives express a variety of other illocutionary forces. Due to this effect, therefore, this paper attempts to explain the multiplicity of interpretations of this clause type in Persian in a systematic way. To this end, following Kratzer’s (1977, 1979, 1981, 1986, 1991, 2012) Possible-Worlds Semantics approach to modality and modelling Schwager’s (2005, 2006) comparison of imperatives on the basis of the modals, it is shown in this paper that the imperative clause in Persian has the ‘Command’ reading underlyingly, but it may express other illocutionary forces like ‘Prohibition’, ‘Request’, etc. under the influence of situational contexts where it is used. Indeed, the imperative clause has a ‘modal operator’ which resembles the modal verb ‘must’. This operator expresses ‘necessity’ as the ‘modal force’ regarding the ‘Common Ground’ between the speaker and the addressee as the ‘modal base’ and is limited by some ‘preference-related’ constraints as the ‘ordering source’. Such an approach means that accounting for the different interpretations of the imperatives implies a conflation of semantics with pragmatics at some level of analysis.

Keywords

• imperatives
• modal verb
• modal operator
• deontic modality
• epistemic modality
• possible-worlds semantics