An approach to the syntax and semantics of the imperative in English
This study provides a categorial analysis of the syntax and the semantics of the imperative in English, using two related grammatical models of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar and Montague Semantics. With regard to syntax, aspects of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar are extended to the construction. The analysis shows that possible imperative subject noun phrases, except where they are pronouns, contain post-modifiers. A noun phrase which lacks this characteristic does not therefore occur as a subject in it. The examination of the verb phrases reveals that they constitute a unique category, as demonstrated by the nature of the constituents themselves, and the syntactic behaviour the elements that occur in them. The various imperative sentence structures and their major components are captured by a set of Phrase Structure rules. The analysis sheds light on many aspects of the syntactic nature of the construction. The semantic analysis of the construction, through an extension of Montague Semantics, identifies the kinds of semantic types that its major constituent categories are. It is observed that although the imperative subject noun phrases and the verb phrases are susceptible to a surface compositional
Egbe, Daniel Isimhenmhen
Linguistics
An approach to the syntax and semantics of the imperative in English. This study provides a categorial analysis of the syntax and the semantics of the imperative in English, using two related grammatical models of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar and Montague Semantics. With regard to syntax, aspects of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar are extended to the construction. The analysis shows that possible imperative subject noun phrases, except where they are pronouns, contain post-modifiers. A noun phrase which lacks this characteristic does not therefore occur as a subject in it. The examination of the verb phrases reveals that they constitute a unique category, as demonstrated by the nature of the constituents themselves, and the syntactic behaviour the elements that occur in them. The various imperative sentence structures and their major components are captured by a set of Phrase Structure rules. The analysis sheds light on many aspects of the syntactic nature of the construction. The semantic analysis of the construction, through an extension of Montague Semantics, identifies the kinds of semantic types that its major constituent categories are. It is observed that although the imperative subject noun phrases and the verb phrases are susceptible to a surface compositional
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