Mood and the analysis of non-declarative sentences

Abstract

Early speech-act theorists regarded illocutionary force as a properly semantic category. Sentence meaning was identified with illocutionary-force potential: to give the meaning of a sentence was to specify the range of speech acts that an utterance of that sentence could be used to perform. Typically, declarative sentences were seen as performing assertive speech acts (committing the speaker to the truth of the proposition expressed), and imperative and interrogative sentences were seen as performing directive speech acts (requesting action and information, respectively). Within this framework, pragmatic theory, the theory of utterance interpretation, had at most a supplementary role: to explain how the hearer, in context, chose an actual illocutionary force from among the potential illocutionary forces semantically assigned to the sentence uttered.