TEHETSÉGTÁMOGATÁS A PÁZMÁNY PÉTER KATOLIKUS EGYETEM KILENC TUDOMÁNYÁGÁBAN
TÁMOP-4.2.2/B-10/1-2010-0014
UTAZÁSI JELENTÉS KONFERENCIASZEREPLÉSHEZ
Utazó(k):
Tánczos Orsolya
A konferencia neve,
honlapja, rendező
intézménye:
Az utazás időpontja és
időtartama:
14th Annual Conference of the English Department, University of
Bucharest, English Department
Az előadás témája:
Dependent imperatives exist: Evidence from FinnoUgric
Az előadás absztraktja:
Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem
1088 Budapest, Szentkirályi u. 28.
www.ppke.hu
www.ujszechenyiterv.gov.hu
2012. május 31-június 3.
4 nap
Dependent imperatives exist: Evidence from Finno-Ugric
Orsolya Tánczos (PPCU) & Diána Varga (PPCU)
Keywords: embedded imperatives, illocutionary acts, language contact
Introduction: It has been a recurrent claim in the literature that, universally,
imperative mood cannot occur in dependent clauses (e.g. Sadock and Zwicky
1985, Platzack and Rosengren 1998, Han 1998), however other part of literature
argues that embedded imperative sentences exist in some languages (e.g.
Röngvaldson 2003, Platzack 2008, Rus 2005, Han and Lee 2002). Since the
interpretation of ‘imperative mood’ involves a performative component, this view
is closely related to the more general claim that performative acts cannot be
embedded (e.g. Hooper and Thompson 1973).
Background: One confounding factor is that in many languages the imperative
and the subjunctive moods are difficult to distinguish syntactically and
morphologically. Another difficulty lies in properly identifying which syntactic
contexts truly qualify as dependent. Clauses cited as examples of dependent
imperatives are often in fact root clauses syntactically, characterized by ‘root’
phenomena (for an overview of which, see Heycock 2006). These include nonrestrictive relative clauses, reason disjunct clauses, and various types of clauses
complementing verbs of reporting (found in Old Scandinavian, Röngvaldson
2003; and in Korean, Portner 2007, Han and Lee 2007; but to a limited extent also
in German Schwager and Poschmann 2008, and in English, Crnic and Trinh
2009).
Aims and claims: In this paper we present novel empirical evidence from two
Finno-Ugric languages, Hungarian and Udmurt, suggesting that imperatives can in
principle occur in dependent clauses like in Slovenian (Rus 2005) or in Korean
(Han and Lee 2002), and not only under the predicate ‘say‘ as in English (Crnič
and Trinh 2009) or ‘sagen’ in German (Schwager and Poschmann 2008) but under
assertives with a directive meaning (e.g.‘tell’), directive (‘order’), others (e.g. ‘want’,
‘convince’, for Hungarian see the details in Tóth 2006). According to the data we
propose an analysis involving an illocutionary force in the embedded clause.
Empirical facts: Both in Hungarian and Udmurt in imperatives the verb is
inverted to the left of certain verbal modifiers like goal complements (1), while in
both indicatives (2) and subjunctives (3) the verb appears to their right. A special
negative marker is employed in imperatives, which is limited to imperatives in
Udmurt, and is unavailable in indicatives in Hungarian (4). The verb bears a
special inflection that is restricted to imperatives in Udmurt, and which is absent
TEHETSÉGTÁMOGATÁS A PÁZMÁNY PÉTER KATOLIKUS EGYETEM KILENC TUDOMÁNYÁGÁBAN
TÁMOP-4.2.2/B-10/1-2010-0014
from indicatives in Hungarian (1-2). The subordinating complementizer can be
omitted in imperatives in Udmurt, while in Hungarian it can be omitted in
imperatives and indicatives, but crucially, not in subjunctives (5).
Syntactical analyses: Analyzing the empirical data from Hungarian and Udmurt
– with the same syntactic behaviour in both types of clause (7), we assume a
directive illocutionary force operator in the highest projection of the CP domain
following Han (1998), in our analysis in ForceP (Rizzi 1997) both in the beginning
of the matrix (6a) and the embedded clauses (6b). This operator is responsible for
the special semantics and word order of the imperatives in Hungarian and in
Udmurt moving the verb before the modifier or the negation and the operator
also triggers the irrealis modality appearing as subjunctive mood in Hungarian and
imperative verb-form in Udmurt in their surface positions. In the embedded
clause this operator is selected by the predicate of the matrix clause.
Conclusion: We close by suggesting that it is not accidental that Hungarian and
Udmurt should share the property of permitting dependent imperatives: this may
be a result of language contact between ancient Hungarian and ancient Permic
(Redei 1964). Our empirical conclusion that imperatives can occur in dependent
clauses supports the position that all illocutionary acts can be embedded (Krifka
2011). Beyond this we conclude by discussing the conditions of ‘that’
complementizer’s distribution in both languages.
Várható-e az előadás
megjelenése?
Ki lesz a kiadvány
szerkesztője és kiadója?
Intézményi/pályázati
támogatások összege,
százaléka:
Igen
University of Bucharest
120 000 Ft
2012-06-05
………………………………………
dátum
Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem
1088 Budapest, Szentkirályi u. 28.
www.ppke.hu
www.ujszechenyiterv.gov.hu
Tánczos Orsolya
…………………………………..
aláírás