A note on the paratactic analysis of mood

Donald Davidson (1979) considers three constraints to which every

adequate account of mood should conform. And he suggests a certain

paratactic analysis of sentences in various moods. In what follows

here we question the adequacy of Davidson’s suggestion with respect to

one of the considered constraints.

Pace Davidson, let us agree that it is utterances of linguistic

expressions that have specific truth-value and semantics. Davidson’s

adequacy constraints on a theory of mood are the following (Davidson,

1979: 115-116):

a) The theory should account for the common element between

corresponding utterances in various moods. It should account for the

common element between the utterances

‘You put on your hat’,

‘Put on your hat!’

and

‘Do you put on your hat?’

b) The theory of should account for a common element between various

utterances in the same mood. It should account for a common element

between the utterances

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‘Put on your hat!’

and

‘Eat your food!’.

And this element should connect with the force of the utterance so

that to explain our intuition of a relation between mood and use.

c) The analysis of utterances offered by the theory should be one that

can be embedded in truth-conditional semantics.

Let us proceed with his suggestion concerning a semantic account

of non-indicatives. Davidson accepts that non-indicatives do not have

a truth-value. They are embedded in truth-conditional semantics by

receiving a paratactic analysis. A paratactic analysis of a non-

indicative suggests that it should be decomposed into two utterances

of indicative sentences, one of which refers to the other by

containing a demonstrative and, each of which has a truth-value

(Davidson, 1979). Davidson calls the first utterance the indicative

core and the second one, which specifies a transformation of the first

indicative utterance, the mood-setter. A semantic treatment of non-

indicatives consists, then, in a specification of the truth conditions

of the indicative core and the mood-setter. A provisional formulation

of the paratactic analysis for an utterance of the imperative ‘Put on

your hat!’ is the following:

You put on your hat. This is an imperative.

It can easily be seen that the analysis satisfies

constraints a) and c). The analyses of the utterances ‘You put on your

hat’ and ‘Put on your hat!’ given by

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You put on your hat. This is an indicative.

You put on your hat. This is an imperative.

show that the two utterances have a common indicative core. Thus

constraint a) is satisfied. In addition, both the indicative core and

the mood setter have a truth-value. Thus constraint c) is satisfied.

From this point onwards we consider possible interpretations of the

mood-setter so that a paratactic analysis of utterances in various

moods be compatible with constraint b).

The question relevant to the point is what kind of

transformation the mood setter signifies. One answer is trivially

rejected. This is that the mood setter signifies a purely grammatical

transformation. This answer would suggest that the indicative core of

an imperative should be read as being in a certain grammatical mood.

For example, the mood-setter

transformation of the indicative core ‘You put on your hat’ of the

imperative ‘Put on your hat!’ would be that the indicative core

should be read as an imperative. It is obvious that this

interpretation of the mood setter turns the mood- setter redundant.

Davidson suggests that a mood-setters specifies a certain force.

In his own words, “Mood-setters characterise an utterance as having a

certain illocutionary force” (1979: 120).

The mood-setter signifies that the utterance of the indicative

core is issued with a certain illocutionary force, where the

illocutionary force conforms with the syntactic structure of the

analysed sentence. That is, where the syntactic structure of the

original sentence is imperative, the mood-setter specifies that the

utterance of the indicative core is a command; where the syntactic

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structure of the original sentence is interrogative, the mood-setter

specifies that the utterance is a question. As far as indicatives are

concerned, Davidson suggests

“we accept the semantic independence of indicatives from their

accompanying mood-setters by not trying to incorporate the mood-

setter in a simple sentence in the indicative.” (Davidson, 1979:

119-120).

So, while mood-setter and indicative core are indicatives and,

so, bearers of truth-value, their utterance is not an assertion.

Accordingly, the paratactic analysis of an utterance of the

imperative ‘Put on your hat!’ would be:

You put on your hat. This is a command.

We can see now the suggested connection between mood and force.

The mood-setter characterises an utterance of the imperative as having

the force of a command. However, the utterance of the mood-setter is

not an assertion that the speaker is commanding. The suggestion allows

for cases of use of imperatives to make assertions or to do other

things1. The mood-setter of the utterance “Notice that Joan is wearing

her purple hat again” uttered on a certain occasion with a certain

intonation and carrying assertoric force characterises the utterance

as a command, but the utterance of the mood-setter is simply false.

Davidson’s paratactic account of mood has been criticized on

1 We remind the reader that cases in which interrogatives are used to make statements or indicatives are used to issue commands constitute the counterexamples which are part of Davidson’s criticism against Dummett’s account of mood as a conventional sign of force. (Davidson, op. cit., Dummett 1973, Dummett, 1993).

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various grounds2. Here we focus on constraint b). We will gloss that

the account of the mood-setter stated above needs to be modified so

that a paratactic analysis of non-indicatives be compatible with an

account of mood satisfying constraint b). Let us see first what we

consider to be a problem with the suggested analysis. Consider a

command given by use of the imperative “Put on your hat!” and a

request made by use of the imperative “Eat your food!”. Taking mood-

setters to characterise an utterance as having a certain force, allows

for one of the following analyses of the utterances “Put on your hat!”

and “Eat your food!”:

A. You put on your hat. This is a command.

You eat your food. This is a request.

B. You put on your hat. This is a command.

You eat your food. This is a command.

Case A fails to satisfy constraint b). The analysis of the two

imperatives does not exhibit any common element between them.

With case B we have the following objection. The utterance of the

mood-setter of the imperative “Eat your food!” is false, while there

is no clear sense in which the case is abnormal. The analysis in case

B shows an utterance of the imperative with the force of a request to

be a case in which the connection between mood and force breaks down.

However, we would expect from an account of mood to hint at a

connection between imperatives and requests.

2 We consider the most difficult problem of Davidson’s paratactic analysis of mood to be that of accounting for distribution of mood-setters over molecularutterances (conditional, disjunctive) and mixed mood utterances (conditional imperatives). See Boisvert, D. and Ludwig, K. (2006).

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We suggest a modification of Davidson’s account along the

following line3. The mood- setter is a disjunctive indicative

utterance, and thus a truth-bearer, characterising an utterance as

having a force belonging to a family of forces.

The analysis of the two imperatives “Put on your hat!” and “Eat your

food!” we suggest is as follows:

You put on your hat. This is a command, a request, an advice, an

order, a begging, …or an exhortation.

You eat your food. This is a command, a request, an advice, an order,

a begging, …, or an exhortation.

Notice that the present proposal meets all constraints a), b), and c).

Abbreviating, we could call the relevant catagories of forces,

imperative, indicative, interrogative, signifying simply that the

imperative family of force is the one hinted at by the mood-setter of

an imperative, the interrogative family is the one hinted at by the

mood-setter of an interrogative. And mood-setters are disjuntive

utterances specifying certain forces.

Needless to say, such account of mood admits of further

elaboration. One may ask for unifying conditions of the relevant

categories. For instance, Deidre Wilson and Dan Sperber (1988) argue

that the imperative category of forces is characterisable in terms of

complex propositional attitudes of regarding as both desirable and

potential, while Robert Harnish (1994) suggests that the relevant

3 An account of mood similar in this respect is offered by Hornsby (1986). However Hornsby takes mood to be a conventional indicator of a cluster of forces.

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categories of force signified by mood are individuated on the basis of

compatibility conditions between possible illocutionary act and

attitude of the speaker. Both suggestions introduce unifying

conditions for imperatives which rely on an identification of

categories of propositional attitude, i.e. the category of regarding

as desirable in conjuction with the category of regarding as

potential, compatibility between a certain category of illocutionary

act and a category of propositional attitude. The Davidsonian

framework could embody such a suggestion by assigning to the mood

setter the function of specifying a certain kind of attitude or

combination of kinds of attitude the speaker has towards the utterance

of the indicative core. Let us add here that Davidson’s suggestion for

an incorporation of a Tarski like truth theory with an axiomatic

decision theory does contain the material for determining the kind of

attitude a speaker has towards the indicative core of his utterance

(Davidson 1985, 1990). In such an integrated theory of decision and

interpretation the attitude of desirability is determined by a utility

function for the speaker, while the attitude of regarding as potential

is determined by a subjective credibility function for the speaker.

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