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The present article proposes a syntactic and semantic analysis of assertive clauses that comprises their truth-conditional aspects and their speech act potential in communication. What is commonly called “illocutionary force” is differentiated into three structurally and functionally distinct layers: a judgement phrase, representing subjective epistemic and evidential attitudes; a commitment phrase, representing the social commitment related to assertions; and an act phrase, representing the relation to the common ground of the conversation. The article provides several pieces of evidence for this structure: from the interpretation and syntactic position of various classes of epistemic, evidential, affirmative and speech act-related operators, from clausal complements embedded by different types of predicates, from embedded root clauses, and from anaphora referring to different clausal projections. The syntactic assumptions are phrased within X-bar theory, and the semantic interpretation makes use of dynamic update of common ground, differentiating between informative and performative updates. The object language is German, with particular reference to verb final and verb second structure.
In the management of cooperation, the fit of a requested action with what the addressee is presently doing is a pervasively relevant consideration. We present evidence that imperative turns are adapted to, and reflexively create, contexts in which the other person is committed to the course of action advanced by the imperative. This evidence comes from systematic variation in the design of imperative turns, relative to the fittedness of the imperatively mandated action to the addressee’s ongoing trajectory of actions, what we call the “dine of commitment”. We present four points on this dine: Responsive imperatives perform an operation on the deontic dimension of what the addressee has announced or already begun to do (in particular its permissibility); local-project imperatives formulate a new action advancing a course of action in which the addressee is already actively engaged; global-project-imperatives target a next task for which the addressee is available on the grounds of their participation in the overall event, and in the absence of any competing work; and competitive imperatives draw on a presently otherwise engaged addressee on the grounds of their social commitment to the relevant course of actions. These four turn shapes are increasingly complex, reflecting the interactional work required to bridge the increasing distance between what the addressee is currently doing, and what the imperative mandates. We present data from German and Polish informal and institutional settings.
In their analysis of methods that participants use to manage the realization of practical courses of action, Kendrick and Drew (2016/this issue) focus on cases of assistance, where the need to be addressed is Self’s, and Other lends a helping hand. In our commentary, we point to other forms of cooperative engagement that are ubiquitously recruited in interaction. Imperative requests characteristically expect compliance on the grounds of Other’s already established commitment to a wider and shared course of actions. Established commitments can also provide the engine behind recruitment sequences that proceed nonverbally. And forms of cooperative engagement that are well glossed as assistance can nevertheless be demonstrably oriented to established commitments. In sum, we find commitment to shared courses of action to be an important element in the design and progression of certain recruitment sequences, where the involvement of Other is best defined as contribution. The commentary highlights the importance of interdependent orientations in the organization of cooperation. Data are in German, Italian, and Polish.