Headed by a 94-page introduction by Wim van der Wurff (‘Imperative clauses in generative grammar: An introduction’), this volume brings together ten papers, most of which were presented at a conference held at the University of Leiden in June 2001 (Imperatives and Functional Projections: A Workshop for Frits Beukema).
In his introduction, van der Wurff gives a highly readable, comprehensive survey of the phenomena studied under the name of imperatives, critically discussing the most popular and/or most promising strategies to explain them. Van der Wurff's presentation benefits from the distinction made between different stages of the generative enterprise, each of which had its own research foci and explanatory strategies. Only more recent work, which has converged on a clearly form-based understanding of imperatives as syntactically identifiable clause types, is presented according to the different topics studied. Van der Wurff refrains from drawing an explicit boundary as to which syntactic forms are to be called imperatives; nevertheless, an understanding emerges as the discussion unfolds. Van der Wurff makes clear the various connections between different topics, including the contributions in the volume in his discussion. While these contributions focus individually on different aspects, jointly they cover the entire range of topics. The contributions are presented in alphabetical order, which is suitable in light of numerous cross-references (which, pleasingly, are often explicitly made). Only two pairs of papers are so closely related that presenting them alongside one another (as is done in this review) might have been preferable. All contributions are preceded by detailed and comprehensible abstracts.
The first chapter, ‘On the periphery of imperative and declarative clauses in Dutch and German’, by Sjef Barbiers, and the fourth chapter, by Hilda Koopman, entitled ‘Topics in imperatives’, both offer explanations for the fact that Dutch imperatives (i) disallow left-peripheral topics (in contrast to the closely related verb-second language German), and (ii) allow right-peripheral objects without doubling by (demonstrative) pronouns (partly in contrast to Dutch declaratives). Barbiers relates (i) to the presence of an (un)interpretable imperative feature on the verb that correlates with the morphosyntactic difference between Dutch and German (and for which he adduces evidence from Middle Dutch). He argues that the functional category C(omplementizer) uniformly contains an uninterpretable imperative feature that must be checked, either by a verb carrying an interpretable imperative feature (as in German) or by a covert imperative operator merged in its specifier position (as in Dutch), which then renders the specifier position of CP (SpecCP) unavailable for topic movement of any sort. The further assumption that the deletion of D(eterminer)-correlates of dislocated constituents at Phonological Form requires specifier–head agreement with a demonstrative-marked head (per assumption, C or the imperative verb) will correctly predict the slightly different behaviour of imperatives and indicatives when it comes to topic drop. Barbiers's account looks promising, but the proposed extension to German is somewhat confusing. In contrast to what the author claims, imperatives with clause-initial datives (e.g. Dem Jungen gib das Buch nicht! ‘Don't give the boy the book!’) are in fact acceptable both with topic and focus intonation. However, again in contrast to what is claimed, Barbiers's account actually predicts this: since German imperative SpecCP is available for fronted topics, the dative object need not be base-generated in a dislocated position and no D-correlate has to be deleted. I thus agree with the author that the analysis can be extended to German, albeit for different reasons than those given by Barbiers.
Koopman argues that right-peripheral objects are not specific to imperatives. Rather, they arise through the interaction of right dislocation and topic drop. On the basis of various reconstruction effects, she shows right dislocation to involve movement into a position high in the left periphery, followed by remnant movement of the phrase that contained the topic, which is followed by a further movement step placing the constituent that contains the finite verb into the specifier of a Force projection in order to type Force accordingly. The verb-first constraint, observed in Dutch imperatives, is implemented as the requirement that the finite verb be found within the topmost level of the projection moved to SpecForce (for which she suggests FinP), whereas typing of Dutch ForceDecl and German Force can find the verb embedded in FinP under pied-piping of a dominating Topic Phrase. This account, together with Koopman's (1996) assumption that the specifier and head of a projection may not both be filled overtly in order for linearization to be possible, correctly predicts the verb-first and verb-second word orders found.
In ‘Featuring the subject in Dutch imperatives’, Hans Bennis derives the agreement pattern of Dutch simple imperatives (which can display Ø-inflection, second person polite -t or second person plural -en) with covert and overt subjects in full analogy to the situation in other clause types. The only special property of imperatives is that their C-position contains a second-person feature that can be assigned to pro under Agree. The analysis rests on a theory of agreement that employs (un)interpretable and (un)specified features. Crucially, agreement may take place only between elements carrying the exact same set of features (cf. Chomsky Reference Chomsky and Michael2001), in order to block uninflected imperatives from co-occurring with subject pronouns characterized as polite or plural. In contrast, pro may be interpreted as (and behaves like) a second-person plural or polite subject due to ‘abstract semantic features’ (131).
In ‘Clitic climbing in Spanish imperatives’, Marcel den Dikken & Mariví Blasco consider the distribution of clitic climbing with the aspectual verbs ‘come’ and ‘go’ in Spanish and Hungarian. They argue that in both languages, clitic climbing from an infinitival complement to the aspectual verb is possible only if the latter is ‘marked for Tense’. Since there is arguably no Tense marking in Spanish imperatives and the Hungarian simple present tense, clitic climbing is disallowed in these cases, while it is fully grammatical with the other tense or mood forms. Even if independent arguments for the absence of Tense are not uncontroversial (for instance, incompatibility with negation holds for Spanish imperatives, but not for Hungarian present tense), the correlation is certainly striking.
In ‘Embedded imperatives’, Christer Platzack addresses the observation that embedded imperatives are found in Old Scandinavian but not in any of its modern descendants. He adopts a feature-driven version of the Minimalist Program and argues for a phrase-structural configuration (which he calls pseudo-OV) in which the non-finite verb is in a position lower than the object, but finite verbs always precede their objects. The account correctly predicts the obligatory presence of the second-person subject, the position of the imperative verb in front of the object, and shared restrictions in the kinds of objects that can occur in embedded infinitives and pseudo-OV clauses. While capturing the syntactic facts, the account remains silent about the apparent semantic restriction (observed in Schwager Reference Schwager2005) that all instances of Old Scandinavian imperative embedding involve full agreement between the context of utterance and the reported situation (e.g. ‘I tell you now that’).
In ‘How to say no and don't: Negative imperatives in Romance and Germanic’, Gertjan Postma & Wim van der Wurff address the long-standing puzzle why languages differ as to whether the ordinary form of the imperative can be combined with the ordinary form of negation. They point out a thus far unnoticed correlation between languages that do not allow compositional negative imperative formation and languages that adopt the same element for anaphoric and sentential negation. Based on Dutch child language, they introduce a distinction between boulemaic and epistemic negation that, in adult language, has grammaticalized into an A′- and an A-projection, respectively. If there is only one lexical negator, the two projections are merged into one. Since the resulting projection has both A- and A′- features, it induces a relativized minimality effect on the movement of the verb, which Postma & van der Wurff assume qualifies as an instance of A′-movement. While the patterns of correlation from twenty-three Romance and Germanic languages are definitely stunning, the details of the analysis are perhaps somewhat less compelling. The non-standard distinction between A- and A′-head-movement raises the question whether any other minimality effects can be observed. Following Zanuttini (1997), the fact that negation may or may not intervene with head movement has been taken as evidence for X°- vs. XP-negators; and while Zanuttini (Reference Zeijlstra1997) and Zeijlstra (Reference Zeijlstra2004) are mentioned in van der Wurff's introduction, they are not referenced in Postma & van der Wurff's article (cf. also Wratil Reference Wratil2005 and Zeijlstra Reference Zeijlstra2007).
The contributions by Eric Potsdam, ‘Analysing word order in the English imperative’, and Laura Rupp, ‘“Inverted” imperatives’, defend contrary solutions to the problem of English emphatic and negated imperatives that allow both subject–auxiliary and auxiliary–subject order (You do(n't) vs. Do(n't) you). Potsdam claims that the two word orders correspond to subject and auxiliary positioning in declaratives and interrogatives, respectively, with the subject in the specifier of the Inflection Phrase (IP) and the auxiliary in I or C. Rupp argues that the different word orders are due to the position of the subject, which can either stay in the specifier of a functional projection between VP and the auxiliary merged in I, or raise to the specifier of IP. Under both analyses, optionality is captured by assuming an optional strong feature triggering the movement of either the auxiliary (Potsdam) or the subject (Rupp). Arguing against the more conservative analysis, Rupp employs data concerning quantifier scope and the placement of adverbials like scarcely, merely. She also offers an explanation for why clause-initial Don't you cannot be realized as Do not you (unless not is constituent negation), according to which non-contracted negation will intervene with the checking of subject agreement features. In contrast, Potsdam, arguing in favour of the I-C analysis, reconsiders the quantifier data and turns them into an argument for the parallelism between inverted imperatives and interrogatives. Moreover, he adduces data where the same adverbials that are considered by Rupp motivate exactly opposite conclusions. Both authors suggest that ultimately, certain non-syntactic factors will have to be taken into consideration to draw any conclusions from the adverbial data.
In ‘On participle imperatives’, Johan Rooryck & Gertjan Postma consider a phenomenon of Dutch syntax that is obscured by what they show to be pragmatic, semantic, syntactic, morphological and lexical restrictions. They claim that participle imperatives result because the fronting of a participle phrase is another possibility to license imperative force in C. Semantically, these imperatives consist of negation, an aspectual predicate (‘continue’) and a deictic element (‘here’, ‘this way’). The deictic element in participle imperatives is motivated by properties observed independently for the Dutch particle op ‘upon’ by den Dikken (Reference Dikken1998). The lexical restriction of participle imperatives to particular verbs correlates with the property of occurring in configurations where part of the verb's lexical meaning has been shed. The incompatibility of participle imperatives with overt negation falls out correctly from the ban against two (non-contrastive) negators in the same clause if the elements of the complex are syntactically active. Although the interrelation between the complex semantic make-up and the syntactic structure is not made entirely clear, Rooryck & Postma draw highly accurate generalizations with respect to a prima facie idiosyncratic phenomenon.
The final paper, ‘Pronominal clitics and imperatives in South Slavic’, by Olga Mišeska Tomić, addresses clitic placement with the imperative verb in Standard Macedonian, North-Western Macedonian, Serbian/Croatian, Bulgarian and Slovenian. It is shown that the correct placement in positive imperatives follows from the strength of a Mood operator to the left of an Agreement Phrase (AgrP), where the imperative mood feature of the verb is checked. Tomić further suggests that languages where the same word order is found in negative and in positive imperatives have a weak negation operator (as in Serbian/Croatian, Slovenian and Standard Macedonian). North-Western Macedonian, however, differs in having a strong negation operator that inverts the order found in positive imperatives.
All of the studies in this book carefully explore well-delimited areas within a broader context and avoid appeal to spurious semantic or pragmatic mechanisms (as found especially in the older literature on imperatives). Nevertheless, the relationship between morphosyntactic third-person subjects and addressee relatedness is more complicated than suggested at various places (cf., for example, Bennis's assertion that ‘[w]e then expect that the subject position in English imperatives is available for all nominal constituents that may denote the addressee’ (127)). Quantifiers like anyone/someone (of you) do not ‘denote the addressee’ and thus cannot agree with a second-person feature (for a semantically appropriate specification of the relevant feature in terms of quantifier domains, see Schwager Reference Schwager2005, and for an entirely different approach to the addressee relatedness of imperative subjects, Jensen Reference Jensen2004). The volume predominantly discusses Dutch and English but is enriched by detailed considerations of South Slavic, Romance, Hungarian, Scandinavian and German. Regarding the latter, a few questionable grammaticality judgments have made their way into the book: in addition to Barbiers's questionable claim about dative topicalization, we find that Koopman excludes focus intonation on DAS gib mir mal zurück! ‘Give me THAT back!’, which (in her context) is judged acceptable by all native German speakers that I consulted. Irrelevant to the issue under consideration, Den Peter besuch doch mal eins!, literally, ‘The Peter visit.impadv adv once!’ (75), attributed to Reis & Rosengren (Reference Reis and Rosengren1992), is not to be found there, nor is it grammatical.
Irrespective of these minor slips, and independently of whether all of the technical details will prevail (or of the question which of the conflicting ones will), the volume demonstrates impressively that apparently idiosyncratic phenomena, as observed in such notoriously shortened forms and sentences as imperatives, can receive technically sound analyses that make clear, falsifiable predictions and allow for new insights into other, allegedly less problematic clause types. Interesting novel data and largely compelling arguments are presented in a highly perspicuous way. The introduction is one of the best overviews of the topic available. If I were to conclude with an imperative, it would definitely be a call to pay attention to this valuable collection.
