A Cognitive Linguistic Analysis of the English Imperative

This volume offers the first comprehensive description of English imperatives made from a Cognitive Linguistic perspective. It proposes a new way of explaining the meaning and function of the imperative independently of illocutionary act classifications, which allows for quantifying the strength of imperative force in terms of parameters and numerical values. Furthermore, the book applies the theory of Construction Grammar to account for the felicity of imperatives in complex sentences. The model of description explains explicitly a wide range of phenomena, including frequency of use, prototypical vs. non-prototypical uses of the English imperative and the choice between longer vs. shorter directives including the imperative. A Cognitive Linguistic Analysis of the English Imperative: With Special Reference to Japanese Imperatives is intended for both researchers and students interested in the English imperative and Directive Speech Acts at large and for the linguists working within the Cognitive Linguistics and/or Construction Grammar approach.

Bernard De Clerck, University College Ghent, in Functions of Language, Vol. 20:1 (2013).:
[...] this volume provides an interesting multi-faceted approach to functional, semantic and formal aspects of the imperative in English (and to a lesser extent in Japanese). By looking at the same object of study from different angles the reader arrives at a better understanding of the imperative both in terms of the attested behaviour and the motivations behind it.