Interface issues in the English imperative

Two puzzles in the syntax of the English imperative are treated here as consequences of interface conditions. The first concerns the inability of certain predicates to take an overt subject in the imperative. The second concerns the ungrammaticality of certain negative and emphatic imperatives with an overt subject. The investigation yields a deeper understanding of the role of LF and PF ineffability in the grammar. A widely encountered generalization holds that the overt subject is optional in the English imperative. Evidence is presented that this generalization is problematic on two counts. First, the presence vs. absence of an overt subject actually correlates with a subtle aspectual distinction. Related to this phenomenon, some imperatives actually disallow an overt subject. This work argues that overt subject licensing in the imperative occurs in a phrase projected from an aspectual feature that is incompatible with the semantic representation of stative predicates. Therefore, the restriction against overt subjects in imperatives with such predicates reflects not a failure in the syntactic component, but ineffability at the LF-interface, where the meaning representation of the predicate is incompatible with it the syntactic context it is embedded in. A second major puzzle in the imperative is that the overt subject is disallowed in negative/emphatic imperatives with do (not), yet allowed in negative imperatives with don't. This restriction on the occurrence of the overt subject is argued to stem from a disruption that the subject argument causes for the satisfaction of a morphological adjacency requirement of the sentential negation head [NEG], or its affirmative counterpart, [AFF].

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2002

Author dc:creator

• Flagg, Elissa Jill, 1974-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Alec Marantz.

• Linguistics and Philosophy.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/8156
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/8156

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/8156