Volition ascription to the addressee in a diachronic perspective

Abstract Pragmatic studies have recently shown that volition ascription to the addressee corresponds to specific strategies and deserves more attention. This paper discusses a series of post-volitional developments attested by second-person forms of the Latin verb uolo (‘I want’). Whilst these grammaticalisation phenomena — some of which are also attested cross-linguistically — have mainly been dealt with separately, this paper shows that they can be treated in a unified manner, as all originally employ volition ascription as a conversational strategy. In Latin, uolo constructions featuring the verb in the second person allowed the speaker to offer the addressee options to choose from or, in the case of prohibitive sentences, to preclude them from a specific choice. In this way, this paper sheds new light on volition ascription strategies as a pragmatic device and their diachronic developments in Latin as well as cross-linguistically.