Imperatives and Deontic Modality: An Inferential Expressivist Perspective

Abstract This paper is divided into two main parts. In the first part, I defend a non-descriptivist account of imperatives, based on Paul Portner’s idea that imperatives serve to manage speakers’ to-do lists. I show that, once we recognize the multiplicity of operations that can be performed on a to-do list, the account can explain weak uses of imperatives without postulating additional structure on the to-do list or another list alongside it. In the second part of the paper, I present a logical framework which integrates the dynamic forces associated with declaratives, imperatives, and rejections thereof. I use this framework to inferentially explain the meaning of deontic modals such as must in terms of imperatives. The resulting inferential expressivist account has the resources to explain performative uses of must and hitherto unaccounted for data about their occurrence pattern.