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Optative markers as communicative cues

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Abstract

Optative utterances convey a desire without containing any items that lexically encode it. This paper addresses the apparent obligatoriness of certain particles (such as but, just, or only) in English and German optative utterances with the shape of an if-clause. I argue that these seemingly obligatory particles do not compositionally contribute to the optative semantics of such utterances. Rather, these particles contribute non-truth-conditional meaning that is independent from optativity. However, this additional meaning increases the availability of the intended (but marked, and pragmatically blocked) optative reading; the particles effectively serve as cues for optativity. I argue that such cues are obligatory unless the utterance context sufficiently favors an optative reading. Using German doch as a case study, this is modeled in the form of a general constraint Utilize Cues, which is derived from independent principles of successful communication and may have applicability beyond optatives (e.g., in imperatives and exclamatives).

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  1. Deutsches Seminar, University of Tübingen, Wilhelmstr. 50, 72074, Tübingen, Germany

    Patrick Georg Grosz

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Grosz, P.G. Optative markers as communicative cues. Nat Lang Semantics 22, 89–115 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-013-9101-1

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