Outscoping the Directive Force of Imperatives

Abstract

Tiwa, a Tibeto-Burman language of India, has an obligatory wide scope disjunction particle that must outscope the directive force of imperatives. I argue that the behavior of wide scope disjunction in Tiwa provides evidence in favor of theories of imperative meaning that derive directive force from an operator in the semantics proper (e.g., Kaufmann 2012) over purely pragmatic theories (e.g., Portner 2004, 2007). Specifically, I argue that the disjunction must be able to outscope the imperative operator in order to capture the attested reading.