Part of
Verb and Context: The impact of shared knowledge on TAME categoriesEdited by Susana Rodríguez Rosique and Jordi M. Antolí Martínez
[IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature 34] 2023
► pp. 327–350
Edited by Susana Rodríguez Rosique and Jordi M. Antolí Martínez
[IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature 34] 2023
► pp. 327–350
The role of context in imperative form choice
When languages have more than one dedicated imperative, the distinct forms often correspond to different person/number combinations. But what happens when there is variation between two forms for the same person/number combination, e.g. 2nd person singular? This chapter analyzes the competing 2sg imperatives in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), which illustrate this situation. BP permits this option in both affirmative and negative contexts, where the historical imperative tu form for 2sg alternates with the 3sg present subjunctive form used with the 2sg pronoun você (cf. Lamberti & Schwenter 2018). Through the multivariate analysis of an experimental survey, we argue that the variation between the two forms can be accounted for in terms of the semantic-pragmatic notion of presumed settledness (Hoff 2019), i.e. speaker confidence about how the future will unfold, and can be operationalized in terms of contextual characteristics such as markers of temporal immediacy and addressee specificity. More broadly, we suggest that these characteristics are relevant to accounting for contrasts between imperative forms across languages such as those with “delayed/deferred imperatives” (Aikhenvald 2014).
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Empirical study of BP imperatives
- 2.1Method
- 2.2Results-descriptive statistics
- 2.3Results: Inferential statistics
- 2.4Summary of the empirical study and an important caveat
- 3.Presumed settledness
- 4.Contributions
-
Acknowledgements -
Notes -
References
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra
2010 Imperatives and commands. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
2014 “On future in commands.” In Future Times, Future Tenses. Oxford Studies of Time in Language & Thought, Philippe De Brabanter, Mikhail Kissine and Saghie Sharifzadeh (eds), 205–218. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Bagno, Marcos
1999 Preconceito lingüístico: O que é, como se faz. São Paulo: Edições Loyola.
Bates, Douglas, Maechler, Martin, Bolker, Ben and Walker, Steve
2015 “Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4.” Journal of Statistical Software 67 (1): 1–51. 
Bustamante-López, Isabel and Niño-García, Mercedes
1995 “Impositive speech acts in northern Andean Spanish: A pragmatic description.” Hispania 78: 885–897.
Butt, John and Benjamin, Carmen
2013 A new reference grammar of modern Spanish. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Davies, Mark and Ferreira, Michael
Davies, Mark and Raposo Preto-Bay, Ana Maria
2008 A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese. New York: Routledge.
Haverkate, Henk
1979 Impositive sentences in Spanish: Theory and description in linguistic pragmatics. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Hoff, Mark
2019 Settledness and mood alternation: A semantic-pragmatic analysis of Spanish future-framed adverbials. Doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University.
2020 “Present/future tense variation in contemporary Italian: The role of settledness.” Revue Romane.
Ms. “Variable expression of the future in Hexagonal French: The role of settledness.”
Hoff, Mark and Schwenter, Scott A.
Forthcoming. “Settledness and morphosyntactic variation across Romance.” Volume Title TBD. Berlin: Language Science Press.
Jary, Mark and Kissine, Mikhail
2014 Imperatives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, Daniel E.
2009 “Getting off the GoldVarb standard: introducing Rbrul for mixed-effect variable rule analysis.” Language and Linguistics Compass 3 (1): 359–383.
Johnson, Mary
2013 The pragmatic variation between two negative imperatives in Argentinian Spanish. Doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University.
2016a “Epistemicity in voseo and tuteo negative commands in Argentinian Spanish.” Journal of Pragmatics 97: 37–54.
2016b “Pragmatic variation in voseo and tuteo negative commands in Argentinian Spanish.” In Forms of address in the Spanish of the Americas, María Irene Moyna and Susana Rivera-Mills (eds), 127–148. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kaufmann, Stefan
2002 “The presumption of settledness.” CLS 38: 313–328.
2005 “Conditional truth and future reference.” Journal of Semantics 22: 231–280.
Kratzer, Angelika
1981 “The notional category of modality.” In Words, worlds, and contexts, Hans-Jürgen Eikmeyer and Hannes Rieser (eds), 38–74. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Lamberti, Luana and Schwenter, Scott A.
2018 “Testando o papel da referência temporal na forma do imperativo em português.” Revista LinguíStica 14 (2): 231–258.
Murray, Sarah
2016 “Two imperatives in Cheyenne: some preliminary distinctions.” In Papers of the Forty-Forth Algonquian Conference (2012), Monica Macaulay, Margaret Noodin and J. Randolph Valentine (eds), 242–256. Albany: SUNY Press.
Oliveira, Josane Moreira de
2017 “O imperativo gramatical nas capitais do Nordeste: análise sociolinguística de dados do ALiB.” In Estudos sobre o português do Nordeste: língua, lugar e sociedade, Norma da Silva Lopes, Josane Moreira de Oliveira and Lúcia Maria de Jesus Parcero (eds), 27–44. São Paulo: Blucher.
Poplack, Shana and Turpin, Danielle
1999 “Does the futur have a future in (Canadian) French.” Probus 11 (1): 133–164.
R Core Team
2017 “R: A language and environment for statistical computing.” Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. [URL]
Santos, Wendel Silva dos
2020 Percepções sociolinguísticas acerca da variação subjuntivo/indicativo em São Luís e São Paulo. Doctoral dissertation, Universidade de São Paulo.
Scherre, Maria Marta Pereira
2008 “O imperativo gramatical no português brasileiro: reflex de mudança linguística na escrita de revistas de quadrinhos.” In Anthony Julius Naro e a lingüística no Brasil: uma homenagem acadêmica, Sebastião Votre and Cláudia Roncarati (eds), 306–319. Rio de Janeiro: 7 Letras.
Schwenter, Scott A., Hoff, Mark, Dickinson, Kendra V., Bland, Justin and Lamberti, Luana
2018 “Experimental evidence for 2sg direct object pronoun preferences in Brazilian Portuguese.” Revista LinguíStica 14 (2): 259–290.
Tagliamonte, Sali and Baayen, R. Harald
2012 “Models, forests, and trees of York English: Was/were variation as a case study for statistical practice.” Language Variation and Change 24: 135–178.
Thomason, Richmond and Gupta, Anil
1980 “A theory of conditionals in the context of branching time.” The Philosophical Review 89 (1): 65–90.