This book studies the properties of imperative clauses in the context of a theory of Universal Grammar. The analysis, based on data from a wide range of languages, accounts for patterns in the interaction of imperative mood with phenomena like negation, restrictions on grammatical subjects, and the possibility of embedding imperative clauses.

• 1: Introduction and aims


• 2: Descriptive properties of imperatives


• 3: Previous analyses


• 4: Why a new analysis?


• 5: Modality


• 6: The Speaker


• 7: The Addressee


• 8: True imperatives


• 9: Surrogative imperatives: subjunctives


• 10: Surrogate imperatives: infinitives


• 11: Embeddedness


• 12: Conclusions

Daniela Isac is Associate Professor of Linguistics at Concordia University, where she has been teaching since receiving her PhD in 2000 from the University of Bucharest. Her interests include syntactic theory, the syntax-semantics interface, and the foundations of linguistics as cognitive science. She is the co-author, with Charles Reiss, of i-Language: An Introduction to Linguistics as Cognitive Science (OUP, 2008; 2nd edition 2013).