On deontic source

I could conclude the discussion of the category of the imperative above by claiming that there is a high level of interlanguage agreement across the ENSs, the RESs, and the DESs in perceiving the scenario at hand in terms of Prohibition. However, it would not be prudent to make any conclusive suggestions about the respondents’ assessments of the Window scenario without considering the issue of deontic source.

As has been mentioned in section 3.5.6.3, the deontic / alethic source surfaces in the form of the categories of motivation and justification, both of which should be understood as the rationale behind producing a request. While the deontic source is linked to the frames based on deontic modality (i.e.

Permission, Prohibition, Obligation, and Cancellation of obligation), the alethic source goes with the alethic frames (i.e. Possibility, Impossibility, Necessity, and Non-necessity). Since the Window sce-nario was designed within the frame involving Prohibition, I shall consider the two above-mentioned categories in terms of the deontic source.

[47]

As can be clearly seen from [47], the number of instances of the category of motivation is too small to draw any meaningful conclusions. As far as its functional counterpart, justification, is con-cerned, the analysis revealed a range of utterances that syntactically can be both warning and justifica-tion. Thus, many of these linguistic realisations have been construed in terms of warning (the subcat-egory of obedience conditions), justification, or both. Some of the instances allowed a straightforward rendering in terms of warning (see [48]). However, the ELFD also contains ambiguous utterances, which seem to license both readings (see [49]).

[48]

*P98: Boss !

*P98: Don’t open the window . *P98: It will fall out . *P98: It’s pretty dangerous .

In [48], it seems reasonable to construe It will fall out in terms of warning:

‘I hereby tell you that if you realise your intention, it is possible for the win-dow to be on the ground.’

whereas It’s pretty dangerous can be said to provide a further justification of the warning, hence the paraphrase:

‘I hereby tell you that if you realise your intention, somebody will be hurt.’

At the same time, there are examples where, from the perspective of sentential grammar, the same utterance, It will fall out, is rendered as the justification for the preceding warning:

[49]

*P99: Don’t open that window ! *P99: It’s broken .

*P99: It’ll fall out .

And still, there are cases where, for instance, It’s broken is analysed in terms of justification, which is mainly licensed by the conjunction because (see the attached Excel-file II.1):

[50]

*P11: Please don’t open it . *P11: Because it’s broken .

In order to avoid these ambiguous readings, I have therefore decided to treat the instances of warning and justification in the Window situation under a combined heading (see [47]) rather than separate headings. The two categories appear to be very similar in that, without exception, their lin-guistic realisations for the Window situation seem to provide a deontic source that justifies issuing Prohibition.

It must be pointed out that my analysis of these instances in terms of warning / justification does not exclude other possible and reasonable ways of construing them. And yet, the present study revealed that the participants of the ESPTs largely employed the category of warning than justification (see the attached Excel-documents II.1, II.2, & II.3):

[51]

Warning Justification In all

British 25 7 32

Russians 15 11 26

Danes 20 5 25

Since warnings appear to be part of the deontic frame involving Prohibition (see [3.2]), the findings in [51] seem to support the conclusions in [46], namely that the majority of the imperative constructions in the ELFD render a prohibitive reading.

5.2.1.2.3. Satisfaction conditions

The last issue that needs to be considered with respect to the interlanguage assessment of the frame behind the Window situation is the category of satisfaction conditions (see [42] above).

First of all, it is important to repeat that the English modal can is ambiguous in terms of its modal affiliation, which is why it was not possible to determine whether the declarative utterances with cannot instantiated deontic Prohibition or alethic Impossibility. Consider the example (see the attached Excel-document II.3):

[52]

*P110: The window’s broken . *P110: Can’t open it .

The ELFD revealed the largest number of the declarative utterances like [52], which obviously has a less coercive effect on the hearer than the prohibitive mustn’t.

On the other hand, the ELFD exhibited a number of utterances, such as No!, which used to initiate a communicative event containing a negative imperative. Most importantly, the negative par-ticle no seems to underpin a prohibitive reading of the whole communicative event. Notably, in Xra-kovskij’s (2001) classification of prohibitives, the negative particle no is construed in terms of the prohibitive marker.

In the present paper, the utterances like No no no! in [53] are construed as the ‘best-bid-for-a-solution-to-a-problem’ decision model in that syntactically they represent neither the ‘solving-a-prob-lem’ decision model, nor the ‘stating-a-prob‘solving-a-prob-lem’ decision model. Yet, by the same token as You’re welcome these utterances allow three different reading within the pragmatic wheel, namely those of Symptom (speaker’s acceptance), Signal (satisfaction conditions), and Model (in casu, warning). Let me illustrate the point in the example from the BED (see Appendix VII):

[53]

Moreover, the analysis revealed a few cases of a ‘reversed’ Prohibition, as in [54], obviously func-tioning as an indirect, and hence more polite, way of preventing the hearer from opening the window.

[54]

*P5: Please don’t open it ! *P5: It’ll just fall down . *P5: We can open the door . *P5: But don’t touch the window .

Ironically, the ELFD revealed only one communicative event with the modal verb must, which, according to the IF-approach, licences the prohibitive reading of a request:

[55]

*P112: I know it’s hot in here .

*P112: But please don’t touch the window . *P112: It’s broken .

*P112: If you touch it .

*P112: It will end up on the floor and damage somebody perhaps . *P112: So you mustn’t touch it .

As far as the last example is concerned, by employing a declarative sentence with the modal must the speaker is claimed to adopt the ‘objective’ voice of society and speak with the third-person voice, as it were (see Arnsberg & Bentsen, 2009: 83ff).

Besides expressing prohibition by means of the negative particle no and the negative modal must, the sample revealed an instance of a performative prohibitive construction ([56]) in the RED and a curious example of a passive prohibitive construction ([57]) in the DED (see the attached

Excel-doc-ument II.1 & II.2):

[56]

*P24: Mr Carlsson .

*P24: I kindly ask you to not [!] open the window . *P24: Because it would be damaged .

[57]

*P64: Sorry .

*P64: This one is broken .

*P64: It’s not meant to be opened .

*P64: I don’t know who forgot to put a sign on it . *P64: but we’ll take care of that .

[57] is particularly noteworthy in that the speaker seems to issue a prohibition indirectly on the basis of a particular set of rules, rather than her subjective judgement of the hearer’s intentions. In this respect, [57] is similar to [55] in that P64 likewise seems to verbalise Prohibition by adopting the objective ‘voice of society’ and to prohibit her boss from opening the window on behalf of the entire society (see similar examples from the RMTD in [68] & [69]).

All in all, the participants of the ESPTs seemed to avoid the prohibitive declarative sentence form, giving preference to requests involving less imposing and hence more polite Possibility and Im-possibility. Consider the overall results for the category of satisfaction conditions realised syntactically in the form of a declarative sentence structure and pragmatically in the form of various prescriptive and descriptive frames:

[58]

Prohibition Impossibility Necessity Possibility Non-obliga-tion

Declarative utterances in all

British 4 5 1 10

Russians 1 1 4 2 8

Danes 1 5 2 1 1 10