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Re: THEORY: Are commands to believe infelicitous?

From:Tom Chappell <tomhchappell@...>
Date:Saturday, June 11, 2005, 16:32
Hello, everyone in Conlang. While I was in Oklahoma I couldn't use my e-mail. Among
other consequences, I didn't know about rejected postings. Here is one of them.
I hope it is not too out of date.
--- 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 don't know much about pragmatics either. I may have gotten it wrong. Maybe somebody who actually has a textbook should go to the definitions and find out what maxims are violated by an imperative that cannot possibly be obeyed; and what you call such a violation, if not "infelicitous".
> That said, I think I basically agree with you that believing, in > what > I feel to be the core sense of the term, is not something that a > person can be ordered to do under normal circumstances. (An > exception > - not involving anything other than natural humans - might be when > someone is under hypnosis.) > > In my never-fully-worked-out conlang LC-01, imperative morphology > can > only apply to agentive verbs, which are in turn all derived by > means > of "causative" affixes. In this language, the closest one could > come > to a command to "believe" would be closer, literally, to "cause > yourself to believe", perhaps with a sense along the lines of > "convince yourself".
Thanks for the idea. I look forward to seeing it.
> I read a dissertation once which I think might interest you. It's > on > evidentiality in Tibetan, and performatives and their felicity > conditions come up more than once. >
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/general/dissertations/GarrettEdwardDissertationUCLA2001.pdf Thanks very much for the reference. When I get to a better computer I will look it up. ----- Tom H.C. in OK (but I'm back home in MI now.) Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Tim. --------------------------------- Discover Yahoo! Stay in touch with email, IM, photo sharing & more. Check it out!