On the Grammar of Optative Constructions

ISBN-13: 9789027255761 / Angielski / Twarda / 2012 / 346 str.

Patrick Georg Grosz

Opis

This monograph is one of the first theoretical studies of optatives. Optative constructions express desire without an overt lexical item that means desire . The author specifically investigates optatives with the syntax of embedded clauses that contain prototypical particles such as only . He rejects the view that optativity arises compositionally from the standard semantics of embedded clauses and prototypical particles. The following system is proposed: Desirability is due to a generalized scalar exclamation operator EX. Furthermore, clausal properties such as factivity/counterfactuality are encoded in a Mood head, which co-determines morphological mood and complementizer choice. Finally, the prototypical particles that optatives contain are truth-conditionally vacuous presupposition triggers. As a result, these meaning components do not interact directly, but their meanings converge, with the consequence that they prototypically co-occur. This monograph is of interest for formal semanticists, syntacticians, pragmaticists and morphologists, and especially relevant for research on mood and particle semantics."