Grammatical and discourse properties of the imperative subject in English

This dissertation presents an investigation of the grammatical and discourse properties of the imperative subject in English. The work argues that the imperative clause and its subject are morphosyntactically unexceptional, and that the seemingly irregular behavior of the imperative subject cannot be explained without recourse to semantic and discourse-pragmatic notions.; Chapter 2 investigates the morphosyntactic status of the imperative subject. Building on the conception that the defining features of subjecthood are distributed over a number of discrete syntactic positions, it argues that all of the positions canonically associated with subjecthood are projected in the imperative clause and hence that imperative subjects are standard syntactic subjects.; Chapter 3 explores the semantic and discourse-pragmatic properties of the imperative subject, with special emphasis on how these properties interface with the syntactic behavior of the imperative subject. In particular, it investigates the following three phenomena: (1) the possibility of non-addressee reference for imperative subjects, (2) the “optionality” of overt imperative subjects, and (3) the variation in pronominal agreement. It is shown that all three phenomena are motivated by semantic and/or discourse-pragmatic considerations.; Chapter 4 presents an analysis of negative imperatives. It claims that negative imperatives have two possible semantic interpretations with corresponding reflexes in the syntax. It demonstrates that the use of overt subjects in negative imperatives are governed by the same discourse-pragmatic principles that govern the use of overt subjects in affirmative imperatives. The analysis presented in this chapter corroborates the conclusions reached in the previous two chapters—namely, that semantic and discourse-pragmatic factors, rather than syntactic factors, underlie much of the “idiosyncratic” behavior that imperative subjects display.