Modelling the syntax-discourse interface. A syntactic analysis of please

Many scholars have proposed a Speech Act Phrase (SAP) high in the left periphery that is said to encode aspects of the discourse context, including illocutionary force. However, the potential identity of the head of this projection is up for debate. I propose that please is a candidate for the overt SA head in English. Distributional, interpretive and acquisition data show that there are (minimally) two types of syntactically-integrated please. One is a functional head that marks an utterance as a request. The other is an adverbial whose use is determined by contextual factors and that marks politeness.