Draft for Sinn und Bedeutung 17. Not for distribution or citation.

Imperatives: What To Do
Nate Charlow
1 Introduction
This paper defends dynamic accounts of the imperativeaccounts that (i) treat imperatives as having
conventionalized performative-cum-directive use/force, (ii) privilege that conventional use in an analysis
of their meaningagainst objections, some old, others new.
1
Some of these problems are easily
dispatched, but othershaving to do with non-standard uses of imperatives, as well as considerations
from the semantics of conditional imperativesare not. To defend dynamic accounts of imperatives
against the threat these problems pose, I rst identify a new candidate for what the conventional
use of imperatives might be; imperatives, I argue, conventionally function to make their prejacents
necessitated by a salient body of preferences. I develop an apparatus for generating non-standard
interpretations that, by treating conventional uses as interpretive defaults, is compatible with the idea
that imperatives conventionally necessitate. I show how this leads to a natural (and novel) story about
the semantic values of imperativesone that is, by design, exactly as exible as the main competitor
to the dynamic account, the modal account, which is easy to implement compositionally, and which
yields ready accounts of the semantics and conventional use of imperatives embedded in indicative
conditionals, under quantiers, and so on.
2 The Menu
This section describes the most inuential version of the dynamic account, Portners, and describes an
objection leveled against it by its main competitor, the modal account.
2.1 Dynamic Accounts
Dynamic accounts of the imperative are broadly motivated by the perceived unsuitability of the truth-
conditional paradigm to account for facts that seem central to the meaning of imperatives. Portner
(2007), e.g., has written:
Without any concern for formal theories of discourse, one could accept the following descrip-
tion of language use: In some cases, the utterance of an imperative imposes an obligation
on the addressee, and once one has accepted P as an obligation of , one will have to judge
must(P()) true (provided that must has the relevant reading, of course, i.e., in view of s
obligations). That is, any contextual parameters which determine the truth conditions for
sentences with must will have to be adjusted so as to guarantee must(P())s truth.
Indeed, we might (and Portner does) say something even stronger than this: imperatives like (1) are
obligatorily interpreted as doing something to the contextual parameters which determine the truth
conditions for sentences containing obligation-describing modals like (2).
2
(1) Take out the trash
1 Many of the ideas here are developed at greater length in Charlow (2011), from which some of the material below is borrowed.
2 Some such parameters (e.g., the modal base) are used in the interpretation of both obligation-describing and, e.g., epistemic
modals (Kratzer 1981). For a variety of reasons, modication of the modal base is not an optional interpretation for imperatives.
(For the record, I think that it is not an optional interpretation for most modal sentences either.)
1
2
(2) You should take out the trash
The kinds of meanings furnished by truth-conditional semantics seem ill-suited to representing
what imperatives are typically used to do. Such meanings are static entitiesset-theoretic constructions
out of intensional models, with no inherent force (cf. Potts 2003). Insofar as imperativesunlike,
e.g., declarativeswear their (specically obligation-creating) function on their sleeves, a theory of
their meaning should assign things that are suited to determining their (specically obligation-creating)
function as their interpretations.
This is not to commit ourselves to the rubric of Dynamic Semanticsto assigning update functions
as the semantic values of imperative sentences (thus treating force as syntactically encoded). Portner
(2004, 2007), e.g., understands the semantic value of an imperative to be a property (dened only for
the addresseeroughly, an action
3
), while endorsing the existence of a canonical relationship between
semantic type and force. Declaratives express propositions, hence are canonically used to proffer
propositions for acceptance (addition to ones beliefs, to the Common Ground, etc.). Imperatives
express actions, hence are canonically used to proffer actions for performance (addition to ones To-Do
List). Letting c be a context, T
c
a function from agents to their To-Do Lists,
c
the addressee of c, and
c[] the result of updating c in accordance with an utterance at c.
Update Your To-Do List
When
c
is an action, T
c[]
=T
cTc(c){
c
}
c
Both Portner and I count this as a dynamic view of imperative meaning because, though it involves a
semantics for imperatives broadly within the truth-conditional paradigm, it conventionalizes impera-
tives To-Do List-strengthening force, by embedding the semantic theory in a further interpretive theory
(in Portners case, a theory linking semantic types to forces or update instructions).
2.2 Modal Accounts
Various authors (Schwager 2006a,b; Kaufmann & Schwager 2009) have found this move too quick, for
several different reasons. In this section, I want to outline one argument for the modal account by way
of introducing it; although I argue that the argument is unpersuasive, it helps to see some of what is at
stake between dynamic accounts and their detractors.
According to this argument, it is not right to say that imperatives wear their obligation-creating
(commanding) function on their sleeves. Imperatives easily express not only commands or requests,
but also wishes, advice, curses, etc. Therefore their semantic interpretation cannot strictly determine
the speech act they are used for (Kaufmann & Schwager 2009: 242). Echoing this point, imperatives
(like, indeed, both declaratives and interrogatives) are suited for a surprisingly wide variety of uses
besides obligation-creation (see esp. Wilson & Sperber 1988).
Come earlier (if you like)! (permission) Have an apple! (invitation)
Talk to your advisor soon! (advice) Take Broadway (to get to 14th)! (instruction)
Get well soon! (good wish) Throw it, just you dare! (dare/threat)
The above authors take this to push us toward a semantics for imperatives, like Kratzers (1981)
semantics for root modals, that allows us to distinguish these different avors of imperatives.
Kratzers semantics for modals accomplishes this by holding that:
3 Barker (to appear) concurs that imperatives express actions, although his broader theory is quite different from Portners.
2
3
Modals are interpreted relative to two conversational backgrounds (sets of propositions, i.e.,
sets of sets of worlds)a modal base f
c
and ordering source g
c
which together characterize
a domain of quantication for the modal at c, w
f
c
(w) characterizes a set of relevant possibilities, as follows:

f
c
(w)
g
c
(w) orders the possibilities in

f
c
(w), as follows:
u _
gc(w)
v iff p g
c
(w) : v p p g
c
(w) : u p
Idealizing greatly, a necessity modal (e.g., should, must) can be treated as a universal quantier
over min(

f
c
(w), _
gc(w)
), i.e., over _
gc(w)
-minimal worlds in

f
c
(w)
The different interpretations of the following sentence (as expressing an obligation or piece of advice)
can be traced to differences in the ordering source:
(3) You should call your father
The deontic interpretation of the modal is generated by interpreting (3) relative to a deontic ordering
source: the set of things that are your duty. The advice interpretation is generated by interpreting (3)
relative to a teleological ordering source: the set of goals you hope to achieve. By analyzing imperatives
as modal sentences, we are, the authors suggest, able to accommodate the wide variety of uses that
imperatives can have in discourse.
But these authors are simply mistaken that this represents any argument against Portner or in
favor of a modal account of imperatives. Just as the force-type ASSERTION covers a variety of speech
acts (emphatic assertion, hedged assertion, and so on), the force-type TO-DO LIST-STRENGTHENING
covers a variety of speech acts. The notion that dynamic accounts like Portners must hold that
semantic interpretation... strictly determine the speech act [imperatives] are used for thus rests
on a fallacy. Indeed, Portners account (see his 2007; to appear) is designed specically to account
for this sort of interpretive exibility. Portners To-Do Lists determine ordering sources for modals.
Obligation imperatives update the portion of the To-Do List that determines the addressees duties,
advice imperatives the portion that determines her goals. This account is exactly as exible as any
accountincluding the modal accountwhich explains variation in the use of imperatives by appeal
to ordering source variation.
4
So the objection from varied use, as least as formulated by opponents of dynamic accounts, gets no
traction against Portners account. There are, however, better objections to the dynamic accountones
that will require some considerable work for the dynamic account to overcome.
3 Problems with the Dynamic Account?
The appeal of modal accounts against dynamic accounts is, as yet, unestablished. In this section, I
want to outline two major reasons for concern about dynamic accounts. The rst is that dynamic
accounts lack a satisfying treatment of the meaning of conditional imperatives (unsurprisingly, since
the paradigm for theorizing about the meaning of indicative conditionals requires that their consequents
express propositions). The second is that dynamic accountsat least Portners version of the dynamic
accountdo have trouble accounting for the various uses to which imperatives can be put (although
for reasons different from those suggested above).
4 Indeed, Portners (to appear) allows even more ne-grained distinctions in interpretation than this. Portner also suggests that
contexts represent information about how the speaker understands her relation to the ordering source selected for update (as
reected in her grounds for issuing the imperative). Though advice and invitations, e.g., both select bouletic ordering sources,
a speaker giving advice assumes she is an epistemic superior about how to pursue her addressees goals, while an invitation
assumes she has authority to prevent addressee from realizing her desires.
3
4
3.1 Conditional Imperatives
Conditional imperatives (CIs) like (4) are honest-to-goodness indicative conditionals (conditionals
being thus typed according to their antecedents; see Schwager 2006a,b).
(4) If you turn the A/C on, shut the window
At rst glance, standard semantics for the indicative conditional (Stalnaker 1968, 1975; Lewis 1973;
Kratzer 1991), though they vary considerably, would seem available only on the assumption that the
consequent of the indicative conditional contributes a truth condition to the computation of the meaning
of the indicative.
This impression is strengthened by the apparent inadequacy of the obvious ways of adapting
Portners analysis to CIs. The obvious options are these. For simplicity, we (i) idealize by treating
imperatives as having propositional complements, (ii) assign CIs uninterpreted logical forms of the
form !.
Conditional Imperatives as Unconditional. An utterance of ! proposes

c
for addition to the To-Do List
T
c[!]
=T
cTc(c){
c
}
c
Conditional Update. An utterance of ! proposes a conditional update: update
with ! if c accepts
T
c[!]
=

T
cTc(c){
c
}
c
if c accepts
T
c
otherwise
Neither option is satisfactory. The rst option implausibly treats ! and !( ) as equivalent.
(For why this is implausible, see Parsons 2011; Charlow 2010.) As for the second, unconditional
imperatives tend to establish unconditional requirements (i.e., typically, an utterance of ! makes
it the case that should(), for a salient interpretation of should). Similarly, CIs tend to establish
conditional requirements (i.e., typically, an utterance of ! makes it the case that should(),
for a salient interpretation of should), even (indeed, especially) when c does not accept the antecedent.
The conditional update strategy has the update idling when c does not accept the antecedent.
As Kaufmann & Schwager (2009) note, the modal account affords the following possibilities for
the semantic values of CIs:
Kratzer Conditionals. The antecedent restricts the domain of quantication for !
(following Kratzer 1991)
! :=!

!
c
=w.min(

f
c
(w)
c
, _
gc(w)
)
c
Strict-ish Conditionals. CIs are strict (or strict-ish) conditionals:
5
! :=

!
!
c
w.
w
(

f
c
(w)
c
) !
c
(where
w
is a selection function that
picks from a set p the most normal worlds relative to w in p)
5 This analysis is most naturally implemented in the framework of Stalnaker (1968, 1975); Lewis (1973). But it is possible to
implement it in Kratzers analysis by treating the modal ! as nested under a generic epistemic or circumstantial necessity modal;
for proposals in this vein, see von Fintel & Iatridou (2005); Kaufmann & Schwager (2009). The differences between these
approaches are subtle and will not concern us here.
4
5
Kaufmann & Schwager favor the latter analysis, for two reasons. First, the former predicts that (5)
is valid (for them, necessarily true), on a par with (6):
(5) If you smoke, smoke!
(6) See to it that: ()
The latter obviously escapes this: if we treat CIs as strict conditionals, (5) is true only if ! is true at
every relevant -world (or perhaps every relevant -world that meets some further condition, like being
sufciently normal). Since it is certainly possible that, at every world where you smoke, it is not the
case that you should smoke, the latter account of CIs does not predict (5) valid.
Second, they note that the following sequence is clearly consistent:
(7) a. If you lose your job, take a lower-paying one
b. But if you lose your job and have a comparable offer, dont take a lower-paying one
That is to say: an imperative of the form ! may be consistent with one of the form () !.
The former analysis of CIs has trouble accommodating this. Notice that
min(

f
c
(w)
c
, _
gc(w)
)
c
implies
min(

f
c
(w)
c

c
, _
gc(w)
)
c
when the relevant domains of quantication are non-disjoint (for if there is some v in both domains
of quantication, then v satises both and , which is a contradiction). So, unless the relevant
domains of quantication are disjoint, (7a) and (7b) are inconsistent. This, however, seems false: it has
it that (7a) implies that worlds where you lose your job and lack a comparable offer are preferred to
worlds where you lose your job and have a comparable offerinformally, that, given that you lose
your job, you prefer lacking a comparable offer to having one!
The latter analysis has no trouble whatever predicting the consistency of the sequence: it is an
instance of the Stalnaker-Lewis semantics for conditionals, and that semantics (famously) predicts
the invalidity of antecedent-strengthening (for the reason that every sufciently stereotypical world
where you lose your job may be a world where you do not receive a comparable offerit would be
considered abnormal, at least for the purposes of advising someone what to do in the event of losing
their job, to lose your job and be able to retain your professional station). In short, by treating CIs as
strict-ish conditionals, we can treat sequence (7) as a Sobel Sequence, and help ourselves to the classic
account of their acceptability as outlined in, e.g., Lewis (1973).
In sum, treating CIs as strict-ish conditionals yields a tractable semantics for CIs, while helping us
to avoid certain obvious problems that might arise simply by adapting Kratzers restrictor semantics for
indicative conditionals to CIs. To contrast, the dynamic account seems to lack an obvious story about
CIs, something due in large part to the fact that the main paradigm for theorizing about the semantics of
indicative conditionals is incompatible with the dynamic account. There is, moreover, a real possibility
that the ability of the modal account to account for data like the acceptability of sequence (7) is due to
its use of apparatus that is foreclosed to dynamic accounts.
3.2 Varied Uses, Again
This section explores varieties of uses of imperative sentences that cannot be handled, as the earlier
objection from varied use was handled, by generalizing the kind of force utterances of imperatives
have. I will argue that imperatives can be used to make assertions and issue permissions, and that
neither of these interpretations can be understood in terms of any directive speech actneither To-Do
List addition, nor anything other speech act in the vicinity.
5
6
Instructions What is the meaning of an imperative that subordinates, whether syntactically or just
implicitly, a purpose clausewhat I will dub an instruction imperative?
(8) (To get to Union Square from here) Take Broadway to 14th
To get a partial handle on this, lets consider the following dialogue.
(9) A: How does one get to Union Square from here?
B: Take Broadway to 14th.
Suppose A has no desire to get to Union Squareshe is asking out of curiosity. Suppose B knows this.
What is the point of Bs utterance? On the face of it, it is to inform A that a (the best?) way to get to
Union Square from here is by taking Broadway to 14th. Bs utterance is, in other words, interpreted
as resolving the issue raised by As question; it is interpreted as an assertion (and is intuitively not
interpreted as a proposal for A to add the goal of taking Broadway to 14th to any body of goals she
has). To handle such dialogues, Portner must in each case identify an ordering source that Bs utterance
targets for update. In this case, at least, no such ordering source appears to present itself.
6
There is, further, a sense that the force of Bs utterance is issue-resolving (hence, informative), as
well as both non-directive. Notice that linguistic assent and denial are clearly licensed as replies to
imperative instructions in dialogue.
(12) A: How does one get to Union Square from here?
B: Take Broadway to 14th (for example).
A: Actually, thats wrong. Broadway is closed today. (or: You know, youre right. Id
forgotten that you can get to Union Square via Broadway.)
Linguistic assent and denial are relational speech acts: they establish a specic relation between their
agent and prior assertions in a discourse; they are, we might say, anaphoric to prior assertions (see esp.
Asher & Lascarides 2001, 2003). By contrast, the sorts of relational speech acts we would expect to be
licensed if some sort of addition to an ordering source had been proposed are not licensed.
(13) A: How does one get to Union Square from here?
B: Take Broadway to 14th (for example).
#A: Sure, okay.
This sort of test allows us to distinguish instruction imperatives from advice imperatives (which may,
for all we have said, work as Portner has suggested).
(14) A: I really want to make more progress on this paper.
B: Talk to your advisor more often.
A: Sure, okay.
6 Portner (pc) suspects Bs utterance to be elliptical for you should/may take Broadway to 14th. Against this, consider:
(10) Pour faire un souf, procdez comme suit
(11) Pour faire un souf, vous devriez procder comme suit
These sentences seem to be very close in meaning, but the former cannot be elliptical for the latter. As a matter of syntax,
procdez is an inected imperative, while procder is an uninected innitive.
6
7
Notice that the same points hold for strong modals in similar contexts.
(15) A: How does one get to Union Square from here?
B: You must take Broadway to 14th.
A: Actually, thats wrong. Broadway is closed today.
(16) A: How does one get to Union Square from here?
B: You must take Broadway to 14th.
#A: Sure, okay.
(17) A: I really want to make more progress on this paper.
B: You must talk to your advisor more often.
A: Sure, okay.
It would be reasonable to expect these phenomena to have a common explanation. Notice that the
modal account explains them readily: instruction imperatives behave like assertions because, like their
modal counterparts, they are assertionsnamely, assertions about ways to realize goals.
Permissions. The salient interpretation of an imperative like the following is as the removal of a
prior prohibition or requirement on the addressee by an authority:
(18) Take the day off!
Portner (to appear) claims to have a ready account of how such imperatives receive their salient
interpretations: according to him, a speaker imposes a requirement in order to overcome the reluctance
of the addressee to undertake an action in his interests. Informally, the idea that permission imperatives
function to overcome addressee reluctance is ne, so far as it goes. But if we try to make good on this
informal analysis by appeal to the alleged To-Do List-strengthening function of imperatives (glossed
here by Portner as impos[ing] a requirement), we nd good reason to doubt that Portners analysis is
sufciently general to cover all cases of permission interpretations of imperatives.
Portners analysis does succeed in predicting the characteristic force of a permission imperative !
(i.e., making it true that is permitted) where there is, roughly, a standing prohibition on (i.e., the
proposition that is an element of the ordering source)a fact that Portner makes the centerpiece
of his account of permission imperatives. How does this work? When an ordering source contains
mutually exclusive propositions (e.g., the propositions that and ), that ordering source will tend to
rank and worlds roughly as equals. More carefully, such an ordering source must treat any world
as incomparable to any world. Recall that w _
gc(w)
v iff p g
c
(w) : v p p g
c
(w) : w p.
Let x be a -world, y a -world. Notice that since x
c
and y
c
and both
c
and
c

g
c
(w), p g
c
(w) : x p p g
c
(w) : y p and p g
c
(w) : y p p g
c
(w) : x p.
Whence it follows that x ,_
gc(w)
y and y ,_
gc(w)
x. Whence it follows that:
x

c
: y

c
: x

gc(w)
y

or y

gc(w)
x

Such an ordering source lacks a preference between and , hence will tend to permit both.
Portners account founders on the fact that permission interpretations of imperatives clearly can
obtain in contexts lacking such standing prohibitions; an addressees reluctance to realize can
be a function of many things besides a standing prohibition on (e.g., uncertainty about speakers
desires). A paradigm use of permission imperatives is to establish a strong permission for to make
7
8
expressly permitted when it is already weakly permitted:
(19) (B looks unsurely at the fruit plate)
A: Its okay. Have an apple!
() A: Its okay. You may take an apple!
The permission imperative and the performative may are, it seems, functionally equivalent in contexts
like this: (i) they function to introduce a strong permission into the discourse; (ii) neither requires a
standing prohibition be in force to be felicitous.
7
In such cases, Portner (to appear) proposes that a standing prohibition is accommodated. In other
words, permission imperatives presuppose the presence of a standing prohibition. Such a presupposition
is unsupported by the data. For instance:
(20) A: Its ok. Have an apple.
B: #Hey, wait a minute! I havent been told I cant have an apple.
Indeed, Bs response here is odd precisely because As grounds for issuing the imperative need not be
to counterbalance a standing prohibition. A may just, e.g., be expressly permitting something that was
antecedently weakly permitted.
What is required of the modal account to accommodate permission imperatives is not quite clear
(since permission imperatives will presumably still be analyzed as necessity modals, and permissions
are standardly represented with possibility modals). Perhaps something can be said here (see, e.g.
Schwager 2005). It seems clear, however, that the dynamic account is in a bad way.
4 Debugging Dynamic Accounts
This section will sketch a dynamic account that is roughly in the vein of Charlow (2011); Starr (2011).
According to this account, the conventional function of imperatives is to necessitate their prejacent
with respect to a salient plan, body of goals, or body of preferencesto make the prejacent required
by the relevant object. The framework is readily adapted to constructions like CIs that have proved
troublesome for dynamic accounts, as well as new constructionse.g., imperatives embedded under
quantiersthat have not gured largely in the debate.
I do not, however, claim that all the sundry uses of imperatives can be accounted for using this
rubric. Some imperativespermission imperatives most clearlymust be interpreted specically
as failing to necessitate their prejacents, in virtue of the fact that the speakers goal in uttering the
imperative is not to cause its prejacent to be necessitated by a relevant body of preferences. I propose
a framework, due largely to Asher & Lascarides (2001), for generating such interpretations. The
framework respects (indeed, reies) the idea, central to the dynamic account, that the conventional
function of an imperative is to necessitate.
4.1 The Case of Interrogatives
There is an odd asymmetry in the imperatives and interrogatives literature. I know of no one who
proposes, on the basis of the examples like (21), to do away with partition (question) semantics for
interrogativesa semantics which is predicated on the fact that interrogatives conventionally serve to
introduce issues into a discourseand assign interrogatives less use-constrictive semantic values.
(21) Can you pass the salt?
7 Portner replies (pc): In this case, B would have dont take an apple on her [To-Do List], not as an explicit prohibition, but just
out of caution. This is implausible. Being cautious about something doesnt mean planning, even provisionally, not to do it.
8
9
The paradigmatic use of (21) is not to introduce any issue; it is to make a request. Presuming we retain
the standard semantics for interrogatives, on which interrogatives are assigned partitions (questions) as
their semantic values, what might be going on in a case like this?
Here is a rough idea. Let c be a typical context, S
c
be cs speaker, and A
c
be S
c
s addressee. A
request interpretation for S
c
s utterance is generated, and a question interpretation voided, by means of
the following chain of conversational reasoning. (A note on idiom: I use proffer as a relatively neutral
label for whatever speech act(s) a speaker is, in the nal instance, interpreted as expressing. When the
question is expressed by a speaker, without being proffered, it is voided.)
i. (21), in virtue of its clause-type, contributes a question to its interpretation at c.
ii. S
c
is presupposed at c to know this questions answer. It is inferred that S
c
does not intend to
be interpreted as proffering this question. So S
c
is not interpreted as proffering a question.
iii. The fact that (21) contributes a question whose subject matter, loosely speaking, is the
state of affairs in which A
c
sees to it that S
c
has the salt (together with some background
knowledge of S
c
s psychological state) generates the conclusion that S
c
desires the salt, and
would like A
c
to realize the salient state of affairs.
8
The voiding of a speech act does not mean that it is unavailable as the antecedent for relational
or anaphoric speech acts. Although it is infelicitous to assent to a request using the sorts of replies
that would be appropriate for a polar (yes/no) question, a question act can serve as the antecedent
for anaphoric speech acts (hence licensing yes/no replies) without the speaker of that question being
interpreted as proffering that question; as Asher & Lascarides put it, though the interrogative utterance
proffers a request, it nevertheless bears the linguistic hallmarks of a question (2001: 185).
9
(23) A: Please pass the salt.
#B: Yes. [#No.]
(24) A: Can you pass the salt?
B: Yes. [B passes the salt]
4.2 On Defaults
The structure of the account I will be pursuing here is plotted as follows.
10
We will use and >
indicate, respectively, monotonic (indefeasible) and non-monotonic (defeasible) interpretive inferences.
8 For stories in a similar vein, see Gordon & Lakoff (1975); Searle (1975). In the helpful idiom of Morgan (1975); Asher &
Lascarides (2001), the request interpretation, initially generated as a conversational implicature, is eventually short-circuited
by being lexicalized. As Asher & Lascarides note, this also explains the relative ease of getting the request interpretation for
such constructions, when compared to semantically equivalent paraphrases like (22):
(22) Do you have the ability to pass the salt?
If the request interpretation of (21) merely an implicature, such an interpretation should be readily available for its paraphrase
(22), since Paraphrases typically have the same calculable implicatures (Asher & Lascarides 2001: 184).
Signicantly, this sort of view opens up the possibility for a different explanation of both (i) how (21)s request interpretation
is triggered, (ii) how (21)s question interpretation is voided. Regarding (i), if (21)s request interpretation is conventionalized, Sc
will express, simply by uttering (21), a request that Ac pass the salt. Regarding (ii), in making this request, Sc will presuppose
that Ac is able to pass the salt; generally, one cannot rationally request that A do X unless one presupposes that A is able to do
X. Hence a question interpretation of (21) is unavailable (as one of its answers will be known to be presupposed by Sc). This
sufces to void the interrogative force of (21).
9 What about examples like (13), where it seems the conventionally expressed speech act is unavailable as an antecedent for later
anaphoric speech acts? Instruction interpretations are, I will argue later, a special case.
10 This account draws heavily on Asher & Lascarides (2001, 2003), in particular their emphasis on speech act-related goals. As
we saw above, Portner (2007, to appear) also gives speaker goals a prominent role in explaining interpretive variability.
9
10
CLAUSE TYPE SEMANTIC TYPE
SEMANTIC TYPE > SPEAKERS GOALS
SPEAKERS GOALS USE/SPEECH ACT TYPE
That is to say: (i) a clauses type (declarative, interrogative, ...) determines the type of its semantic
value (proposition, partition, . . .); (ii) a clauses semantic type normally determines the type of its use
(assertion, question, ...); and (iii) types of use are individuated in terms of properties of the speakers
communicative goals. There is a conventional, but defeasible, relationship between clause type and use
type: since clause type determines semantic type, semantic type typically determines speaker goals,
and speaker goals determine use type, it follows that clause type typically determines use type.
Some notation. Let be any clause-typed sentence and c be any context of utterance; lowercase let-
ters u, v, x, y, z . . . designate utterancess, with speaker(u) the speaker of u, addressee(u) the addressee
of u, and context(u) the context of utterance of u. Then:

c
:= s model-theoretic denotation at c
J := has interpretation J at any context whatever
>
c
J := has interpretation J at context c
>J := J is a conventional interpretation for
If an utterance u consists of the sentence being uttered at c,
c
:= u.
u : means u is of clause-type , while u : means us denotation is of type .
u : ! := u is imperative; u : ? := u is interrogative; u : := u is declarative
u : s (where s is the type of subsets of W) :=u denotes a proposition
J thus counts as a conventionalized interpretive feature of just if, roughly, at any normal or default
context c, >
c
J. Claims of the form >J will be termed interpretive defaults. What is the force of
saying that some fact or other is an interpretive default for a clause?
On defaults. Interpretive defaults, although overridable, do not admit of active cancelation; non-
cancelability will be treated here as the characteristic linguistic hallmark of an interpretive default.
What I will mean by this is that it is not possible to coherently attempt to override an interpretive
default for a sentence in the course of uttering ; if conventionally expresses , then any attempt
to cancel at any context whatever will lead to incoherence at that context. The lack of coherence
typically manifests as linguistic infelicity as in (25), while, conversely, coherent cancelation typically
manifests as linguistic felicity as in (26).
(25) #He didnt quit smoking. Indeed, he never smoked at all.
(26) Some hipsters smoke. Indeed, all do.
Contra Kaufmann & Schwager (2009), need not strictly determine its interpretation, i.e., at any
context whatever. For to conventionally express , it is required only that an interpretation assigned
to at a context be coherent with . So, for instance, holding that (21) conventionally expresses a
question does not require that (21) be interpreted as expressing a question at any context. It requires
only that any use to which (21) be put be compatible with (i.e., not necessarily non-cancelable with
respect to) the question it conventionally expresses.
10
11
Crucially, adding information about speaker goals may block the inference from clause type to use
type (in which case we say that default is overridden). If normal goals for uses of are given by G
(and G yields interpretation I), but the speakers actual goals at c are non-normal (and described by
G

), we have: >G; (G) I; therefore, >I; but (G

) ,>I and ,I. It is important to

note the role of the non-monotonicity of > in securing this result: from >I it does not follow that
(G

) >I. An interpreter can, relying on a default of the form >J, generate interpretation J for
. Enriching the interpreters information about the context (in particular, its information concerning
the communicative goals of the speaker) can, however, generate a different interpretation for .
11
On voiding. How is an interpretation on which a conventional interpretation for an utterance is voided
in favor of an alternative interpretation constructed? In what sense can a speaker express a question
with, e.g., a polar interrogative (thus licensing yes and no replies), without being interpreted as
proffering a question? I suggest that voiding happens when attributing to the speaker intention to
proffer both the conventional interpretation and alternative interpretation results in representing the
speaker as irrational. Formally:
Voiding Types
u >, u >
context(u)

, and ,=

if, for some non-actual utterance u

:
i. u >
context(u)
J
speaker(u)

ii. u :
iii. v(v : >J
speaker(v)
)
iv. u

>J
speaker(u

v. u

vi. x((J
x
J
x
) J!!
x
)
The key conditions here are (iii) and (vi). (iii) says that normally an utterance of type would be
accompanied with an intention . (vi) says that the intentions expressed by and are rationally
incompatible. Notice this chain of interpretive reasoning is, in one sense, non-ampliative (i.e., destruc-
tive). An utterances initial interpretation can fail to be proffered as part of its nal interpretation, if
constructing the nal interpretation means inferring a speech act of rationally incompatible type.
It is important to notice that speech acts of types and

are not themselves assumed to be

incompatible (else we have active cancelation of the utterances conventional interpretation, which is,
11 It is worth noting that this apparatus is available, not just to Portnerwho does not see force as semantically or lexically
encodedbut also to a fan of Dynamic Semanticswho does. According to Portner, imperatives characteristic conversational
role is not assigned at the level of semantic interpretation (or even interpretation of the clause, as such), but rather as a result of
deploying a general conversational norm linking utterances of a specic semantic type (proposition, partition, etc.) with specic
types of conversational roles (assertion, issue-introduction, etc.).
Indirect Clause Type-Interpretation Link
u : ! u : IMP
u : IMP >I
speaker(u)
I
addressee(u)
R(u)
u : ! >I
speaker(u)
I
addressee(u)
R(u)
Accounts of imperatives within the Dynamic Semantic traditionviews which assign update functions as a matter of clausal
interpretation (e.g. Veltman 2008; Starr 2011)will tend to endorse sentences linking clause-types to conversational roles as
axioms, while views closer to Portners will endorse them as derived consequences of other axioms.
Direct Clause Type-Interpretation Link
u : ! >I
speaker(u)
I
addressee(u)
R(u)
11
12
recall, disallowed). The voiding is not done as the result of being interpreted as proffering a speech
act that is incompatible with the utterances conventional interpretation. It is done at the level of
intention-attribution: a speaker who proffers speech acts of types and

is represented as having
rationally incompatible intentions. The question expressed by (21) is not canceled by the request that it
expresses (please pass the salt). An interpreter (and a context) could easily accept/integrate both of
these speech acts without lapsing into irrationality. But a speaker who is interpreted as expressing both
would have to be interpreted as irrational: she would be interpreted as having an intention (to nd out
whether the addressee can pass the salt) that, in making the request, she takes to already be realized.
This, I claim, is what triggers a re-interpretation on which (i) the speaker is not interpreted as intending
the goal associated with the conventionalized speech act, (ii) the speaker is interpreted as expressing
another speech act that would achieve the goal she is interpreted as having.
4.3 Necessitation
There is reason to think that imperatives have necessitation acts as part of their conventional meaning,
in the sense just elaborated, even when it is not proper to interpret a speaker of an imperative as
attempting to necessitate its prejacent. Necessitation acts, even when voided, remain detectablethey
are non-cancelable (although, I will suggest, voidable) features of the meaning of imperatives. This,
joined with the picture of interpretation we have sketched (together with some additions), allows us to
explain permission and instruction interpretations of imperatives.
Data. Although we have yet to provide any formal understanding of necessitation acts, we can take
it on faith the following speech act is incoherent with a proposal to make necessary relative to a
relevant body of preferences P.
Proposing to make P-permitted
We can also take it on faith that performative uses of the modals may and must count as proposals
to make their complements permitted and necessary, respectively, relative to some salient body of
preferences. If necessitation acts are part of the conventional meaning of imperatives, we predict:
Cancelation of Necessitation Is Incoherent
A modal expressing a speech act incoherent with the necessitation act expressed by
an imperative is inadmissible when preceded by an utterance of that imperative
When we look at imperatives that are evidently not interpreted as expressing necessitation acts,
i.e., permission and instruction uses, we nd this prediction conrmed. First, permission uses.
(27) a. #Take tomorrow off, but you may also come in tomorrow.
b. #You may come in tomorrow, but take tomorrow off!
The inadmissibility of (27a) and (27b) is telling. Why, if permission imperatives simply express
permissionif imperatives do not conventionally contribute a necessitation act to their interpretations
would these sequences be infelicitous? Permitting an employee to take the following day off is, of
course, not incoherent with permitting the employee to come in.
Similarly for instruction uses. Notice that an instruction interpretation of take Broadway to 14th is
available even (indeed, especially!) when it is known that there are many ways to get to Union Square.
In such cases, the instruction imperative can often be paraphrased with a weak necessity modal, i.e.,
12
13
as to get to Union Square, you should take Broadway to 14th. Suppose we are in such a context. The
following is still incoherent.
(28) #Take Broadway to 14th. But you may take 5th Avenue, instead.
The weak necessity interpretation of the instruction imperative conveys something like to get to Union
Square using the least effort, you must take Broadway to 14th (cf. von Fintel & Iatridou 2008). This
certainly seems to be consistent with the most obvious interpretation of the second clause, which
establishes a permission to ignore the advice proffered by the instruction imperative; one can (and often
does) give advice while granting permission for the addressee to ignore it, as in (29).
(29) You should take Broadway to 14th. But you may take 5th Avenue, instead.
Even in a context primed to generate the weak necessitation interpretation of the instruction imperative,
(28) is infelicitous. Positing a conventionalized necessitation act for the instruction imperative explains
the infelicity: since the second clause involves an attempt to cancel a non-cancelable necessitation act,
we predict, apparently correctly, the inadmissibility of (28).
Permission as voiding. Recall (19), repeated here, in which an imperative utterance is used to
establish a strong permission.
(30) (B looks unsurely at the fruit plate)
A: Its okay. Have an apple!
The speaker of (30), A, is interpreted, Ive argued, as intending to establish merely a strong permission
for B (relative to a salient body of preferences, which we will gloss, simply, as what A requests).
Nevertheless, her utterance conventionally expresses a necessitation act: the act of proposing that
some salient body of preferences (here, it would seem, the desires of the addressee, given that As
imperative seems by default to express a suggestion) come to require the taking of an apple. The
intention characteristically associated with utterances of imperatives is the successful performance of
such a necessitation actin this case, a suggestion.
Now, these actsthe permission and the suggestionare strictly compatible. There is obviously
nothing incoherent about a context (so nothing incoherent about generating a context) in which:
In view of As requests, B is strongly permitted, but not required, to take an apple.
In view of Bs desires, B is required to take an apple.
Nevertheless, there is something irrational about a speaker who has these states as communicative
goals. If A wants B to want to take an apple, she should bring about this state of affairs with a request.
But then her requests would require B to take an apple. So, the goal characterizing the necessitation
act conventionally associated with As imperative is irrational, given As goal to make it strongly
permitted, but not required, that B take an apple. Since A is interpreted as having the latter goal (and is
presumed to be rational), it is inferred, as an accommodation strategy, that A does not intend the goal
characterizing the necessitation act. The speaker is thus interpreted as expressing simply the speech act
characterized by the remaining intention, i.e., the establishment of a strong permission.
A worry: it is difcult to infer a permission interpretation when a speaker utters (31), even when it
assumed that the speaker does not wish to establish a requirement for the addressee to leave, but rather
13
14
a mere permission for the addressee to leave.
(31) (B looks unsurely at the door. A wants to let B know its ok to leave.)
#A: Leave the room at once!
The difference is that (31) involves thoroughgoing incoherence: given the obvious, emphatic force of
the utterance, it is hard to see the necessitation act conventionally expressed as a suggestion. So (31)
expresses, as a matter of As intentions, a mere permission for B to leave at once (so that B is permitted,
but not required, to leave at once), as well as, as a matter of the imperatives conventional meaning, a
requirement for B to leave at once. These speech acts seem to pertain, moreover, to the same body
of preferences, namely, what A requests. But no single body of preferences can both not require and
require the addressee to leave at once. On the most accessible reading, (31) amounts to an attempt to
cancel the speech act conventionally expressed by the imperative.
4.4 Instruction and the Semantics of Imperatives
Instruction imperatives are often licensed in the presence of a salient goal.
(32) A: How does one get to Union Square from here?
B: Take Broadway to 14th.
Asher & Lascarides address this fact briey, suggesting an analysis along the following lines (2001:
206). According to this analysis, there is a default axiom of the following form:
Inferring Request-Elaboration
(D, u, u

: !) > R-Elab(D, u, u

)
The default should be read as follows: when utterance u

is uttered in reply to an utterance u that is

part of an antecedent discourse D and u

is typed as an imperative, interpret u and u

as related by the
R-Elab relation. Letting c be a context characterized by D, u, u

and assuming that u

: !, R-Elab is
cashed out as follows:
R-Elab(D, u, u

) iff:
i. u >
c
J
addresseec

ii. u

>
c
J
speaker
c
J
addresseec
R(u

)
iii. R(u

)
Informally, R-Elab holds between u and u

at c iff the speaker of u

requests her addressee to realize

some state of affairs that in turn realizes the addressees salient, earlier-expressed goal.
This analysis will not do, for the simple reason that the speech act associated with R-Elab is a
kind of requesting! In particular, it is understood as a suggestion: the speaker of u

proposes that the

speaker of u come to desire R(u

), as a way of achieving her intention that . This fails to explain why

relational speech acts that (i) would be licensed if the speaker were interpreted as expressing a request
(e.g., acquiescence) are not generally licensed on instruction interpretations, (ii) would not be licensed
unless the speaker were interpreted as making an assertion are, however, licensed.
A semantics. The fact that instruction imperatives are paraphrasable (or closely paraphrasable)
using necessity modals is suggestivesuggestive enough that I propose to take a cue from the modal
account and identify their semantic values. On their instruction interpretations, imperatives can
14
15
express modal propositions. Where I differ from the modal account is in claiming that, on normal
interpretations, imperatives express (relative to a context and world of assessment) functions from
bodies of preferences into 0, 1namely, the function mapping a body of preferences to 1 iff that
body of preferences necessitates the imperatives prejacent. Instruction interpretations of imperatives
are, I suggest, generated by feeding a salient body of preferences to the compositional semantic value
of the imperative.
It is worth noting that this is exactly the semantic value we would engineer for imperatives,
given our central claim that imperatives conventionally necessitate their prejacents. Since imperatives
conventionally propose the necessitation of their prejacents, we could say that the semantic function
of an imperative is to characterize a property of a body of preferences: the property of necessitating
the imperatives prejacent. Similarly, since declaratives conventionally propose the addition of their
propositional prejacents to the addressees beliefs (or common ground), the semantic function of a
declarative is to characterize a property of a belief-state: the property of accepting the declaratives
propositional prejacent.
A compositional treatment. I propose the following compositional implementation of this basic
idea. Treat the imperative operator ! and the modal operator as of the same semantic type; this is
the kernel of truth in the modal account. Where imperatives and modal sentences differand where
the modal account goes wrongis in the former having a argument place (represented with a variable
X) that is bound by -abstraction.
12
For genuine modals, the argument place is lled by the ordering
source. For imperatives, the argument place is normally unlled.
Here is how one compositional implementation of this idea might work. The left tree gives a modal
logical form, while the right gives an imperative logical form (relative to a xed context and world of
assessment). (I suppress the modal base for simplicity.)

g
p
g
st,t stt,t
p
s,t

st,stt,t
-ab : X
st,t

X
p
X
stt,t
p
s,t

st,stt,t
,

is the type of a function from objects of type into objects of type

. Type s is the type of

possible worlds, while type t is the type of verdicts, i.e., 0, 1. Propositions are treated as of type s, t,
while bodies of preferences (ordering sources) are treated as of type st, t, i.e., sets (equivalently,
characteristic functions) of propositions.
Generating instruction interpretations. Here is an informal pass at the sort of account a semantics
in this vein might endorse for (32). As utterance makes salient a very specic body of preferences: one
containing just the goal that A gets to Union Square. B replies with an imperative, which expresses
a function from bodies of preferences to propositions. The body of preferences made salient by As
utterance goes in as this functions argument. The result is that a proposition is ultimately computed as
the semantic value of the utterance. The default connection between utterances that express propositions
12 If were working in a Categorial or Variable-Free Grammar (like, e.g., Jacobson 1999), we could alternatively treat the open
argument place as expressing the identity function X
st,t
.X and generate the correct meaning for the sentence by combining
this semantic value with that of its sister node by the composition operation fgX.f(g(X)).
15
16
and the speech act of assertion is then exploited, so that B is interpreted as asserting this proposition,
namely, that the relevant body of preferences necessitates taking Broadway to 14th.
There is a sense in which this semantic re-interpretation can be represented as occurring at the
level of speech acts, as, e.g., an assignment of the following sort of interpretation (which Ill style
I-Elab) to Bs utterance. Let T be the type of bodies of preferences, T the type of propositions, and
an actual body of preferences (and, as before, c the context characterized by D, u, u

). Then,
(D, u, u

u >
c
u

: T, T) > I-Elab(D, u, u

)
I-Elab(D, u, u

) iff:
i. u >
c

ii. : T
iii. u

: T, T
iv. u

c
= u

() : T
The latter denition makes use of some new notation: adding a context subscript to the value of
for an utterance. This is just meant to designate the semantic value of the utterance at the context,
accounting for contextual argument-lling. What these denitions together say, then, is that I-Elab is
a default interpretation for an imperative when (i) the prior utterance u makes salient something of type
T and (ii) u

semantically expresses a function of type T, T. Inferring I-Elab means semantically

reinterpreting u

, by supplying the contextually salient body of preferences to u

.
Instruction imperatives are strange, in that, unlike request interrogatives and permission imper-
atives, they (i) do not seem, as seen in example (28) to allow active cancelation of the speech act
conventionally expressed by the sentence, (ii) nevertheless, do not seem, as seen in example (13) to
allow anaphoric reference by relational speech acts to the speech act they conventionally express. I do
not know why this would be, but I do not think it necessarily poses a problem for my account.
4.5 Conditional Imperatives, Etc.
On the suggested way of doing things, formulating a schematic semantics for CIs is trivial: CIs express,
relative to a context and world of assessment, functions from bodies of preferences (ordering sources)
into 0, 1. Which bodies of preferences are mapped to 1 by the semantic value of !? Those
bodies of preferences that necessitate conditional on i.e., those bodies of preferences that make a
sentence of the form true. It is obvious that any such semantics for CIs is exactly as exible
as the modal accounts semantics for CIs.
More difcult (but also orthogonal to the desirability of dynamic accounts against modal accounts)
is saying what, precisely, the conventional use of a CI consists in. In view of the semantics for CIs we
have suggested, we are committed to saying, at least, that ! conventionally proposes to make
necessitated, conditional on proposes to make it the case that . But how does it do this? In
Section 3.1 we saw two options for dynamic accounts of CIs, both unsatisfactory:
Treat CIs as adding a conditional to the To-Do List
Treat CIs as conditionally adding to the To-Do List
It is, in my view, a mistake to view this as a problem for dynamic accounts. What it shows is that
the To-Do List, as understood by Portner, lacks sufcient structure to play an appropriate role in the
semantics of conditionals of the form . Obviously, CIs typically do generate conditional
16
17
necessities. Just as obviously, To-Do Lists cannot represent the fact that a conditional necessity holds.
There is no reason to think that a more sophisticated understanding of the parameter that imperatives
target for update will have the same problem. Indeed there is every reason to think the opposite: once
we know what it is for a conditional necessity to hold relative to a preference system, we will have
some idea of what change must occur in that system in order to make a conditional necessity hold with
respect to it.
13
There is a more general moral here for future work in imperatives from the dynamic perspective.
Imperatives come in many forms beyond those we have examined in this paper. They can, for instance,
take genuinely narrow scope with respect to quantiers (Charlow 2010).
(33) Everyone
i
take their
i
seat
(34) Someone
i
give me their
i
seat
Such constructions are puzzling for everyone, but especially for dynamic accounts (in view of the fact
that ! and ! are manifestly not equivalent). What speech act does a sentence like (33) express? It
is very hard to say. But we can say at least this: an utterance of an imperative of the form x!Px
conventionally proposes to make it the case that xPx. What is it for it to be the case that xPx?
Once we answer this question, we gain a very real foothold in the project of trying to identify what
precisely an utterance of an imperative like (33) may be conventionally used to do. This methodology
generalizes readily to imperatives of arbitrarily complex forms.
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