Free choice inference in imperatives: the preference allocation hypothesis

• Autores: Eleni Staraki
• Localización: Lingua: International review of general linguistics, ISSN 0024-3841, Nº 205, 2018, págs. 90-112
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The aim of this paper is twofold: to assess the role of choice in imperatives by looking at imperatives themselves as well as imperatives with items such as any and or, and to show that choice is not granted invariably. I argue that free choice inference in imperatives can be efficiently analyzed as an allocation of preference in a decision-making frame. In support of the proposed analysis, I show that imperatives suggest preference and by being a nonveridical modal space they induce a preference allocation frame in either of two ways: preference-to-authority or preference-to-addressee (this means that choice/preference is determined (or delegated) by the authority or by the addressee) (e.g., Staraki, 2015b). Thus, an essential component in free choice in imperatives, as I argue, is preference allocation which is triggered by a shift of preference from one to another conversational participant in a decision-making frame. The allocation of preference is then forced into a free choice inference. Evidence will be provided that the indefinite any and the disjunctive or are overt exhaustifiers which imply logical relations among the set of alternative intensional states contributed by imperatives and postulate inferential exhaustification — a modest extension of Giannakidou's (2001) exhaustive variation — as a weak requirement on any and or, i.e., as a conversational implicature