Imperatives

An imperative is a grammatical form that is specialized to elicit a behavior from the addressee. Imperatives are one of the four well-recognized sentence types, the other three major types being declaratives [Syntax- Section 1.1], which are used to make an assertion, exclamatives [Syntax- Section 1.4], which are used to express surprise, and questions [Syntax- Section 1.2], which are used to obtain information. A potential confounding factor is that sometimes a question can be used to express a command (‘Could you pass me the salt, please?’) and, conversely, an imperative can be used to elicit information from the addressee (‘Tell me the name of the President.’). Still, languages develop grammaticalized forms that are typically associated with imperatives and these forms are the topic of the present Section in which we abstract away from the specific uses that these forms may have.