Conditional imperatives in Dutch and Russian

Abstract

The article provides an insight into the differences and similarities between the Dutch and the Russian "Conditional Imperative" by relating both of them to different regions of a semantic map. The article hypothesizes to exist for directive and conditional meaning presenting three such differences between the Dutch and the Russian conditional use of the imperative. A common constraint of the Dutch and the Russian conditional imperative conditions is that neither is compatible with a pragmatic conditional relation. Semantic maps can be an important tool for the study of grammaticalization, since they may predict the different stages of diachronic change. For the development from directives to conditionals, the research on the Dutch and Russian conditional imperative suggests that the "grammaticalization chains" are relevant. Differences between similar constructions across languages may then be regarded as resulting from the different degree to which such language-specific constructions have grammaticalized. In order to substantiate the semantic map presented in the article, one needs to look at more languages and at actual diachronic developments.