Imperatives and commands: A cross-linguistic view

The chapter offers a cross-linguistic approach to commands as a speech act, and the structure of imperatives in their various guises, focusing on canonical (second person) and non-canonical (other person-oriented) imperatives. It also addresses imperative specific categories and meanings, and social functions of imperatives, as well as possible restrictions on their formation and uses. Negative imperatives, or prohibitives, may differ from positive imperatives in terms of their semantics and structure. If imperative forms sound too harsh, essentially non-command forms can be deployed in their stead as command strategies. The chapter sets the scene for the volume, and also contains a summary of subsequent chapters within it.