Encoding the addressee in the syntax: evidence from English imperative subjects

Vocatives

“…Several studies in formal grammar conclude that a pragmatic head that maps the [addressee] c-commands the imperative clause and enters in a head agreement relation with the functional head to which the imperative verb moves (isac 2013;Zanuttini 2008;Speas & tenny 2003 a.o.). there is empirical evidence for such agreement that comes mostly from co-reference restrictions of pronouns to second person.…”

“…*o fititis me tin adia ela mazi mu! Greek the student with the license come.imp.2sg with me the reasoning in isac (2013), following Zanuttini (2008), is that the definite Dp needs Case, and that cannot be provided by the phi deficient tº of imperatives. the rescuing configuration would have the Dp licensed in Spec, finp(modp), since finº has (but does not transfer) the phi features.…”

34. Research results from on-line dialect databases and dynamic dialect maps

“…the papers in Van der Wurff 2007) and the analysis of imperatives in Zanuttini (2007) and Portner (2004), Barbiers (to appear) argues that cross-linguistically the hidden second person subject must occupy the clause-initial position preceding the verb, except in language varieties in which there is a unique imperative form of the verb, such as in German and Middle Dutch. In languages of the latter type, the silent subject pronoun remains in its postverbal position and the clause-initial position is available for full fronted constituents such as dat book 'that book' in (2).…”

A broken metaphor in Java

“…In English, and many other natural languages, the subject of an imperative is implicit [5]. For example, you might say Stand up! where the question of who should stand up is implicitly whoever you are talking to.…”