This study, first published in 1998, provides a close investigation of central syntactic issues in the English imperative clause type. It argues that the imperative has largely regular syntactic behaviour within a conventional conception of English clause structure. This title will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.

This study, first published in 1998, provides a close investigation of central syntactic issues in the English imperative clause type. It argues that the imperative has largely regular syntactic behaviour within a conventional conception of English clause structure. This title will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.

This book investigates long-standing problems in the syntactic analysis of the English imperative. This work argues that the imperative has a largely regular syntax which is fully compatible with current formal grammars of English. The putative differences reside primarily in three domains -- the behavior of the auxiliary verbs "have" and "be", the options for subjects, and the word order in negative and emphatic clauses. This study addresses each of these controversial domains and argues that the behavior of the imperative is unexceptional in each case. The work assimilates the syntax of the English imperative to better-established analyses of English originally developed for other areas of the language.