oa Forumlezingen in imperatieven: lexicale constructies of productieve syntaxis?

In this paper we study three frozen imperative constructions in Dutch (geef op!, opgehoepeld!, and opgepast!) and inquire their highly specific reference properties: all arguments disallow for displaced reference, similar to what we see in animal communication (‘forum-readings’). We show that these seemingly idiosyncratic, frozen, and isolated properties can be derived from principles drawn from productive language competence. We show that the block on displaced reference realizes an endpoint on a scale of forum-readings. The extreme properties are compositionally imported into the construction by a resultative particle (e.g. op) that projects a specifier that is non-thematic. Dutch imperative adverbs (toch, maar, eens) are classified according to their quantificational properties. They import distinct possibleworld semantics of which the forum reading is a special case. The null spellout of arguments in the op-construction is tied to the one-phase nature of these utterances.