Force, negation and imperatives

Abstract

This article presents an account of the cross-linguistic variation in the availability of negative imperatives. By imperatives, I refer to sentences with a distinctive imperative morphology on the main verb and/or a distinctive syntax. In many languages (e.g., Italian, Modern Greek, and Spanish), imperatives cannot be negated. Instead, negative commands are expressed with negative subjunctives and/or infinitivals. However, in German, French, English, Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian, imperatives can be negated. I argue that some languages rule out negative imperatives because the syntax of the language derives a structure which maps onto an incoherent interpretive representation. The analysis I propose builds on the intuition that the directive force contributed by the imperative mood cannot be negated. The negative imperative Don't call! means I require that you not call; it does not mean I do not require that you call. This judgment was already noted by Frege, consequently positing that illocutionary force operators cannot be negated. Pursuing this idea further, I propose that negative imperatives are unavailable in some languages because the syntax derives a structure in which the operator encoding directive force arrives within the c-command domain of negation, where it is interpreted as being negated. As this is incoherent, the structure is ruled impossible. The proposed analysis has implications for the mapping between syntax and semantics of imperatives in particular. In general, it provides evidence that the set of available syntactic structures in a language is restricted by uniform mechanisms for semantic interpretation across languages.

$$\neg$$ (A&B). Gapping, negation and speech act operators

“…This is impossible (for a discussion of this e.g. for imperatives see Han, 2001;Zeijlstra, 2006 For the actual ellipsis I am assuming a syntactic copying account (see Repp 2005).…”

11. The Greek Jespersen’s cycle: Renewal, stability and structural microelevation

“…The availability of negative morphological imperatives, referred to as True Negative Imperatives or simply prohibitives, is a parameter according to which languages can vary (Joseph and Philippaki-Warburton 1987;Zanuttini 1991Zanuttini , 1997aZanuttini , 1997bRivero 1994;Rivero and Terzi 1995;Tomić 1999;Han 2000Han , 2001Zeijlstra 2004Zeijlstra , 2006. In the history of Greek, True Negative Imperatives (TNIs) were available both in Attic Greek (31) and in Hellenistic Koine (32), although surrogate forms through the subjunctive were also attested.…”

The composition of INFL

“…In many languages, including Greek, dedicated imperatives are incompatible with negation, as shown in (59) In languages where negation is a functional head below IP, negation blocks mvaluation from V (as in English, where this results in do-support), whereas in languages where negation is above IP it blocks COMP-valuation (see Miyoshi 2002;Bošković 2004). Interestingly, negative commands are expressed with negative subjunctives or infinitives across many languages (Joseph and PhilippakiWarburton 1987;Laka 1994;Zanuttini 1991Zanuttini , 1994Zanuttini , 1997Rivero 1994;Rivero and Terzi 1995;Han 2000Han , 2001Tomić 2001). 53 On our analysis these constructions form a natural class with imperatives.…”