English Imperatives: Lakoff’s Stative vs. Non-Stative Distinction
Imperative Constructions in English
Lakoff notes that the imperative construction in English has a wide variety of uses. Its main function is to express commands or requests, such as: Be careful! However, it also has a number of other uses, which Jespersen refers to as pseudo-imperatives.
Conditional Imperatives
One common use is the conditional imperative:
- Be careful and your insurance company will love you. – This is understood in the same way as: If you’re careful, your insurance company will love you.
- Similar to negative conditionals: Be careful or your insurance company won’t love you. – This is understood as: If you’re not careful, your insurance company won’t love you.
Other Pseudo-Imperatives
Consider examples like: Be happy that you have only three exams next Monday. These are not true imperatives; they can neither be interpreted as commands/requests, nor can they take the tag “will you”: *Be happy about that, will you? (although true imperatives can: Be polite, will you?). A plausible source for such pseudo-imperatives would be: You should be happy that you have only three exams next Monday.
This is similar to the negative variety of the “welcome-advice” imperatives: Don’t be ashamed because you flunked your generals. This implies: You shouldn’t be ashamed because you flunked your generals.
Distinguishing True and Pseudo-Imperatives
Traditional grammarians mention such facts. Unfortunately, their lack of concern for ungrammatical sentences caused them to miss a crucial phenomenon: Verbs and adjectives that can occur in true imperative constructions are not the same as those that can occur in pseudo-imperative constructions.
- Doubt that you will succeed, and you will not succeed. (If you doubt that…) – Compare with: *Doubt that you will succeed.
- Appreciate literature or college girls won’t like you. (If you don’t appreciate literature…) – Compare with: *Appreciate literature.
All verbs can occur in pseudo-imperatives, but only some occur in true imperatives. The ability of a verb/adjective to take true imperatives correlates exactly with the ability of that word to occur in a number of other, seemingly unrelated constructions.
The Syntactic Property of Stative
To account for these correlations, Lakoff postulates the syntactic property of stative. Verbs and adjectives are categorized as either stative (e.g., know, tall) or non-stative (e.g., slice, careful).
Stative and Non-Stative Verb Properties
Progressive Auxiliary
Certain verbs do not take the progressive auxiliary:
- I am learning that. / *I am knowing that.
Most adjectives do not take the progressive auxiliary (e.g., *He is being tall), but some do (e.g., He is being careful). This restriction holds for the participle of the progressive auxiliary, but it does not hold for all participles ending in -ing (e.g., His being tall delighted him, which are transformationally derived participles).
Crucially, adjectives and verbs that can take the progressive auxiliary are those that can take true imperatives (i.e., non-stative). Conversely, those that cannot take the present progressive are exactly those that cannot take true imperatives (i.e., stative).
“Do Something” Pro-Form
Many verbs can take the pro-form “do something” (e.g., listening to music):
- What I did was listen to the music. / *What I did was hear the music.
Most adjectives may not take a “do something” pro-form (e.g., *What he did to please me was to be tall), but some do (e.g., What he did to please me was to be careful).
Non-stative verbs/adjectives can take “do something” pro-forms. Stative verbs/adjectives cannot take the “do something” pro-form.
Subject Subcategorization and Adverbials
Verbs/adjectives that are subcategorized with respect to subjects can only occur with non-stative verbs:
- John sliced the salami enthusiastically.
- *John doubted the fact enthusiastically.
Additionally, non-stative verbs may occur with the adverbial “for someone’s sake.” The main verb in each clause of an “instead of” phrase must also be non-stative.
Conclusion
A close study of English syntax reveals that adjectives and verbs have a large number of lexical properties in common, particularly concerning their stative or non-stative nature.