Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

188 L. MICHELLE CUTRER

With ask, the unmarked interpretation is that of a directive, which has

undergoer control. A to be allowed clause is often required in order for ask

to function as a request for permission, as the complement verb allow

suggests a power relationship between the "allower" and the "allowee".

However, pragmatic conditions may override this requirement. As a direc­

tive, ask puts certain felicity conditions on the participants: the director

must be in a position of control over the directee. If the information about

the participants is not compatible with this interpretation, then an actor

control reading is possible.

In (46) above, many speakers interpret ask as a request for permission,

even though there is no to be allowed phrase. Real world knowledge of a

power relationship between a teacher and child predicts that the actor, the

little girl, will be controller. A little girl is more likely to ask for permission

to sit down, than to direct a teacher to sit down. As the speaker is aware

that ask can have two functions, the request function is chosen as the

interpretation. An even stronger weighting of pragmatic factors is provided

by the following sentence.

(47) The little girl who was standing in the corner asked the teacher to

sit down.

Pragmatic considerations make a "request for permission" interpretation

even more likely. Thus, pragmatic factors, the relative saliency of the

imagined contexts can override the unmarked directive interpretation,

which predicts undergoer control, for many speakers.

The weighting of pragmatic considerations and the degree of marked-

ness of the actor control reading varies among speakers. For some speak­

ers, ask always requires a to be allowed phrase or indirect question in the

complement, in order to have actor control. Other speakers do not have

such a restriction. The teacher, the undergoer, is interpreted as controller,

and the meaning of the sentence appears to be nonsensical or contrary to

what is expected in a real world situation.

3.3 Arbitrary control in indirect questions

In FVV (1984), the verb ask was analyzed as having either actor or under­

goer control due to the variation in the semantics of the verb. When ask

functions as a directive speech-act verb, undergoer control is predicted.

Otherwise, actor control is predicted. However, this explanation is insuffi­

cient to account for the following examples.