How Much Room for Discourse in Imperative? The Lens of Interface on English, Italian and Spanish*

Abstract

This paper discusses root phenomena in imperative clauses, assuming as diagnostics conversational dynamics and the type of discourse categories that are admitted in their C-domain, through a systematic comparative interface investigation in three languages (English, Italian and Spanish) based on an original experimental work. This novel perspective sheds new light on the syntax-semantics mapping and the interface (syntax-prosody) properties of imperative clauses, embedding the relevant proposal in a cartographic framework of analysis. Based on a twofold distinction of root phenomena – those which are widely allowed in Common Ground-active (Type I) contexts and those which can occur in non-Common Ground-active contexts (Type II) – it is proposed that imperatives are non-Common Ground-active propositions with no update potential, thus allowing only Type II root phenomena. Syntactically, imperative clauses are dominated by a super-ordinate Speech Act Phrase, including the Speaker and the Addressee as co-arguments, which explains the blocking effects identified in imperatives.