Embedding Imperatives in English

Abstract

Although it has generally been claimed otherwise (cf. Katz and Postal 1964, Sadock and Zwicky 1985, Palmer 1986, Rivero and Terzi 1995, Platzack and Rosengren 1998, Han 1998 among others), it holds that embedded imperatives exist in English. We describe their main characteristics and provide an account of these by relying on Schwager’s (2006) propositional analysis of imperatives, where imperatives are treated as modalized sentences. The imperative modal is thereby relativized to eventualities (cf. Hacquard 2006).