Lecture 1 Fundamentals of grammar

Permissives are sentences containing a permission or asking for a permission.
e.g. You may take this apple.
Prohibitives contain prohibition. e.g. You are not allowed to go outside
after 10 p.m.
Quesitives are sentences containing a question. e.g. What’s your name?
It should be noted that the specifics of pragmatic contents of an utterance
can impose some formal restrictions on the sentence. For example, a constative can
never be a question, promisives and menacives always refer to future and contain
future tense forms.
Performatives
An interesting type of illocutionary speech act is that of performatives.
These are speech acts of a special kind where the utterance of the right words by
the right person in the right situation effectively is (or accomplishes) the social act.
In some cases, the speech must be accompanied by a ceremonial or ritual action.
Whether the speaker in fact has the social or legal (or other kind of) standing to
accomplish the act depends on some things beyond the mere speaking of the
words. These are felicity conditions.
Here are some examples from different spheres of human activity, where
performatives are found at work. These are loose categories, and many
performatives belong to more than one of them:
Universities and schools: conferring of degrees, rusticating or excluding students
The church: baptizing, confirming and marrying, exorcism, commination (cursing) and Excommunication
Governance and civic life: crowning of monarchs, dissolution of Parliament,
passing legislation, awarding honours, ennobling or decorating
The law: enacting or enforcing of various judgements, passing sentence, swearing
oaths and plighting one’s troth
The armed services: signing on, giving an order to attack, retreat or open fire
Sport: cautioning or sending off players, giving players out, appealing for a dismissal or declaring (closing an innings) in cricket
Business: hiring and firing, establishing a verbal contract, naming a ship
Gaming: placing a bet, raising the stakes in poker
In these expressions, the action that the sentence describes (nominating,
sentencing, promising) is performed by the sentence itself; the speech is the act it
effects (unlike in so-called constantives that only carry a piece of information). In contrast, perlocutionary speech acts cause actions that are not the same as the
speech.