ABOUT PREVENTIVE MEANING. COMMUNICATIVE ANALYSIS

• Authors: Rodak R.
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

Apart from imperative and prohibitive expressions, a special type of imperative, called preventive, has been distinguished in language as a result of research on the imperative and its mutual relations with the controversial categories of aspect and negation. The formal representation of preventive structures is a second-person negated imperative of perfective verbs, e. g. 'nie skalecz sie' (do not cut yourself), 'nie przezieb sie' (do not catch a cold), 'nie popsuj tego' (do not spoil this), etc. Their meaning is most often defined on the basis of a semantic invariant which is realized as 'persuading the receiver to perform a specific action in accordance with the will of the speaker'. In the present article, structures of this kind are analysed from the communicative grammar perspective, especially with reference to fundamental principles of verbal-interaction grammar. As a specific type of imperative, preventives function in direct interpersonal communication. At the interpersonal level (following M.A.K. Halliday's classification) they represent a specific type of speech act with various functions. The analysis carried out in the article shows that the speaker, by performing particular acts with a broadly understood preventive meaning, may implement certain conversational (behavioural) strategies which help him/her to influence the behaviour of the interlocutors or other persons connected with the interlocutors by means of verbal action. The analysed preventive expressions can be classified as acts establishing the manner of action (warning, advice, prohibition), persuasive acts (suggestion, request, demand, command) or as commissives expressing threat. They may also constitute indirect speech acts. A correct interpretation of such acts depends on contextual elements specifying the circumstances, which accompany the performance of an action or on certain types of complements, implicated by the predicate.

Keywords

EN

COMMUNICATIVE GRAMMAR; IMPERATIVE / PREVENTIVE (POLISH) EXPRESSIONS

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk
• Journal: Slavia Orientalis
• Year: 2006
• Volume: 55
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 261-277
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Rodak R.

• R. Rodak, Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Instytut Filologii Wschodnioslowianskiej, al. Mickiewicza 11, 31-120 Kraków, Poland

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

06PLAAAA01363059