On the syntax of addressee in imperatives: insights from allocutivity

Abstract

Zanuttini ( 2008), and Zanuttini et al. ( 2012) claim that all imperatives host the Jussive head, an imperative-specific 2nd person projection which agrees with the subject to restrict it to the addressee. This paper argues against the proposed link between clause type and addressee encoding by examining imperatives with allocutivity in Punjabi which exhibit two unique properties: first, these imperatives lack 2nd person imperative agreement and appear instead with allocutivity, which is available across clause-types. Secondly, they can only be used in contexts with a specific addressee, whose (non)-honorific status vis-à-vis the speaker is well-defined. I argue that allocutivity in Punjabi does not underlie an additional person probe distinct from the subject agreement probe. Instead, there is a unique person probe in the C-T domain, labeled Pers ⁰, which agrees with the addressee/ Adr upon failing to agree with the subject. Extending this syntax of allocutivity to imperatives, the presence of obligatory allocutivity in the imperative underlies a unique Pers ⁰, which in the absence of a co-occurring person probe, i.e. the Jussive head, mediates an agreement relation between the Adr and the minimally specified pro subject to restrict the latter to the addressee. Furthermore, I show that the allocutive head/Pers ⁰ is distinct from the Jussive head in that it not only hosts a 2nd person feature, but also a [status] feature which encodes the speaker-addressee relation. Valuation of both these features by the Adr restricts allocutive imperatives to specific addressee contexts.