Re: THEORY: Are commands to believe infelicitous?

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Tim May <butsuri@M...> wrote:
> Forgive my ignorance - I don't know that much about pragmatics -
but
> it's not clear to me why felicity conditions are important with
> respect to imperatives (as they clearly are with performatives
like "I
> now pronounce you...").  What consequences does it have,
> linguistically, if a command is infelicitous in this sense?
I Googled on "felicity conditions" and found out that, while Austin
initially introduced the
terms "locutionary", "illocutionary", "perlocutionary", "felicitous",
 and "infelicitous" regarding performatives, Searle later not only
created a taxonomy of illocutionary acts, but also systematized
felicity conditions.

Searle said felicity conditions were Preparatory, Propositional,
Sincerity, or Essential conditions.

Among illocutionary acts for which he gave felicity conditions was a
request.

Letting S stand for the Speaker, H stand for the Hearer (or rather
the Addressee), and A stand for the Future Act; Searle's felicity
conditions for a request were as follows.

Preparatory:  H must be able to perform A.
Propositional:  S predicates a future act A of H.
Sincerity:  S wants H to perform A.
Essential:  The utterance counts as an attempt by S to get H to do A.

It is the Preparatory felicity condition which may be missing in
some commands to adopt certain mental states.

Does this answer your question, Tim?

-----

Tom H.C. in OK