Jary and Kissine examine the meaning of imperative sentences, taking the existing relevance-theoretic semantic analysis, in terms of the desirability and potentiality of the described state of affairs, as their point of departure. In their view, a complete account of the interpretation of imperatives has to explain how they can result in the addressee forming an intention to perform an action, and this requires the theory to make room for ‘action representations’ (in addition to factual representations, such as assumptions). They claim that the imperative form is uniquely specified to interface with such action representations.

In this chapter, Thorstein Fretheim discusses a Norwegian modal adverb, gjerne, which he maintains is polysemous, in that it has two related meanings, both of which are conventionalised and stored in the lexicon. This case of polysemy seems to be different from the polysemy of open-class words (nouns, verbs, adjectives), which is typically explained in relevance-theoretic terms as involving pragmatic adjustments of an encoded concept. Fretheim argues that the two meanings of gjerne are better analysed as encoded procedures, so as constraining the hearer’s interpretation process rather than contributing a concept to that interpretation.