How are non-declarative sentences understood? How do they differ semantically from their declarative counterparts? Answers to these questions once made direct appeal to the notion of illocutionary force. When they proved unsatisfactory, the fault was diagnosed as a failure to distinguish properly between mood and force. For some years now, efforts have been under way to develop a satisfactory account of the semantics of mood. In this chapter, we consider the current achievements and future prospects of the mood-based semantic programme.

Distinguishing mood and force

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 linked to the performance of assertive speech acts (committing the speaker to the truth of the proposition expressed), while imperative and interrogative sentences were linked to the performance of directive speech acts (requesting action and information, respectively). Within this framework, pragmatics, the theory of utterance interpretation, had at most the supplementary role of explaining how hearers, in context, choose an actual illocutionary force from among the potential illocutionary forces semantically assigned to the sentence uttered.