Imperatives and Other Directive Expressions in Latin: A Study in the Pragmatics of a Dead Language (Amsterdam Studies in Classical Philology, Vol 2)

As the recent hausse in pragmatic studies shows, linguistic attention is increasingly focussing on aspects of language use. Making use of recent insights developed within speech act theory, discourse analysis, and sociolinguistics, this book deals with the various expressions that were used in Latin to per-form so-called directive speech acts, i.e. orders, requests, advice, proposals, sug-gestions, etc. On the basis of a large corpus of comedy, correspondence, and instruction texts the expressions concerned (imperatives, subjunctives, future indicatives, as well as modal expressions and vari-ous other lexical expressions of directivity) are investigated against the background of the verbal interactions in which they typically occur. As regards its contribution to Latin linguistics, the present study adds a number of re-finements to our knowledge of this well-documented lan-guage, for instance with respect to the reference of the subjects of the so-called impera-tive II ending in -to, the conventionalized speech act functions of interrogative quid and quin directives, and the diachronic process of conventionalization of velim requests. Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of Contents 8 Preface 12 1. Introduction 14 1.1 Directives in Latin: a first sketch 16 1.2 Aim and content of the present study 24 1.3 Corpus and data 25 2. Directives as speech acts 36 2.1 Speech acts 36 2.1.1 Speech acts and illocutionary acts 37 2.1.2 Illocution and perlocution 39 2.1.3 Felicity conditions 42 2.2 Directives among other types of speech acts 45 2.2.1 The status of speech act types 45 2.2.2 Criteria for distinguishing speech act types 47 2.2.3 A typology of speech acts 50 2.2.4 Speech acts about facts 51 2.2.5 Speech acts about emotions 53 2.2.6 Speech acts about actions 55 2.2.7 Final observations 57 2.3 Directive Subtypes 58 2.4 Directives in interactional structure 62 2.4.1 Interactional units 63 2.4.2 Directives in various interactional positions 68 2.4.3 Reactions to directives 71 2.4.4 Conclusion: the maximal directive exchange 73 3. The expression of illocutionary force 76 3.1 Linguistic form and speech act function 76 3.2 Sentence type and illocutionary force 80 3.2.1 The 'sentence type = illocutionary type' approach 81 3.2.2 A non-illocutionary approach to sentence type 84 3.3 Illocutionary expression: outline of an alternative approach 86 3.4 The expression of directive illocutionary force 91 3.4.1 Semantic properties 92 3.4.2 Sentence types in directives 93 3.4.3 Lexical properties 95 3.5 Implicitness and conventionality in directive expressions 99 3.5.1 Implicit directive expressions 99 3.5.2 Implicitness, indirectness, and politeness 103 3.5.3 Conventionality in directive expressions 106 3.6 The remainder of this study 109 4. Grammatical expressions of directivity 110 4.1 Distribution 110 4.2 Sentence type and verbal mood 111 5. Imperative directives 120 5.1 Distribution 122 5.2 The simple imperative 124 5.2.1 Directive Subtypes 124 5.2.2 Contextual and linguistic indications 126 5.2.3 Sarcastic directives 128 5.2.4 The imperative in non-directive speech acts 130 5.2.5 The so-called conditional use of the imperative mood 133 5.3 The imperative II in -to 135 5.3.1 Temporal and conditional non-immediacy 135 5.3.2 Reference of the subject agent 143 5.3.3 Directive subtypes 149 5.4 The second person subjunctive 151 5.4.1 Diachronic limitations 153 5.4.2 Prohibitive directives 154 5.4.3 Dependency on the surrounding context 155 5.4.4 Directive subtypes 164 5.4.5 Perfect versus present subjunctive 168 5.5 The first person plural subjunctive 171 5.6 Conclusion 176 6. Declarative directives 178 6.1 Distribution 181 6.2 The future indicative 182 6.3 The periphrastic gerundival construction 191 6.4 Conclusion 198 7. Interrogative directives 200 7.1 Demarcating interrogative directives from other speech acts 201 7.2 Distribution 209 7.3 Linguistic properties of interrogative directives 211 7.3.1 Directive sentence interrogatives 211 7.3.2 Directive partial interrogatives 217 7.4 Interrogative directives in Latin discourse 227 7.4.1 Optional interrogative directives 227 7.4.2 Binding interrogative directives 230 7.4.3 Etiam in binding directives 235 7.4.4 Interrogative directives in context 238 7.5 Summary and conclusion 241 8. Directives expressed by lexical means 246 8.1 General characterization 248 8.2 Distribution 252 8.3 Speech act expressions 255 8.3.1 Performatives 260 8.3.2 Metadirectives 271 8.4 Modal expressions 292 8.4.1 First person volitional expressions 294 8.4.2 The imperative volitional expression noli 309 8.4.3 Expression of possibility: potes and potin 314 8.4.4 Expressions of necessity 326 8.5 Non-modal evaluating expressions 335 8.6 Conclusion 340 9. Evaluation and conclusions 342 Bibliography 344 Index locorum 358