Prédicats superlatifs à l'impératif

Fabienne Martin (1)

1 Universität Stuttgart [Stuttgart]

It is well known that some psychological verbs, like 'frapper' ('strike') or 'méduser' ('astound') cannot be used in imperatives (cf. '??Méduse-moi!', '??Astound me!'). According to the traditional account, the problem is due to the fact that the entity denoted by the subject of the verbs at hand does not exhibit the agentive properties that the addressee of an imperative is supposed to have. However, it is not clear that the subject of all object Experiencer psych-verbs acceptable in imperatives (cf. 'Etonne-moi!', 'Surprise me!') is more agentive thant the one of problematic verbs. Besides, some stative verbs are acceptable in imperatives ('Sois belle!' 'Be beautiful!'), which casts further doubts on the idea that imperatives really diagnose agentivity. The author starts from the observation that verbs which are less acceptable in imperatives are superlative predicates: they express an event of a very high degree, and their adjectival participle is not compatible with 'très' (cf. '*très médusé', 'very astounded', versus 'très surpris', 'very surprised'). According to the analysis proposed, the problem of 'superlative imperatives' comes from the fact that superlative predicates have an expressive component which tends to be interpreted in the scope of the directive illocutionary operator. Therefore, ungrammaticality does not result from a lack of agentivity, but from a conflict between the expressive value of superlative imperatives and the illocutionary directive force of imperatives.

Mots clés: imperatives; psychological verbs; object experiencer psych-verbs; agentivity; agentive verbs; illocutionary force; superlative predicates; lexical pragmatics

Domaines: Linguistique

Fabienne Martin. Prédicats superlatifs à l'impératif. Travaux de Linguistique : Revue Internationale de Linguistique Française, 2007, 55, pp.119-132. ⟨hal-00453579⟩