Bohemica Olomucensia

Modal particles in imperative sentences in spoken Czech

Epistemic attitudes, expressed by epistemic particles in addition to modal verbs and verbs of thought, are a component of the semantic structure of statements typically with a declarative form, i.e. of indicative or conditional statements, signalling the (real or conditional) validity of content. Epistemic particles express different degrees of the speaker's certainty about the validity of the statement content. However, we also find particles of epistemic modality in constructions with the imperative form of the verb. The morphological imperative is the primary means of expressing mainly two communicative-attitudinal categories: command and prohibition. However, the area of the broadly defined directiveness is functionally diverse. The imperative is used to express various attitudes - order, advice, recommendation, permission, warning, proposal, wish. The article shows how modal particles in imperative sentences participate in the realization of various attitudinal values. Modalized imperative statements are illustrated by transcriptions of spoken dialogues contained in corpora of informal spoken Czech ORAL V1 and ORTOFON v3.

Keywords: modality; epistemic particles; proposition; imperative; spoken speech; Czech National Corpus