The First-Person Singular Imperative In Chukchi

In this paper, I consider the semantics and distribution of the first-person singular from in the Chukchi language. The main aim of the present study is to describe different contexts in which this form can be used and provide a formal analysis to its syntactic and semantic properties. I show that the distribution of this form is non-trivial and challenging for the current theories of the Imperative. In addition to standard uses in root (non-embedded) contexts, this form can appear dependent clauses with a desiderative predicate and in rationale clauses. Although the availability of embedded of Imperative forms have been reported for a number of languages (for an overview see [Kaufmann 2014]), I am not aware of any studies that would state the possibility of using such forms in rationale clauses. Taking as a starting point the theory developed in [Stegovec 2018], I propose and examine a hypothesis that the productivity of the form in root contexts is due to the fact the imperative modal operator can have event antecedents