Takashi, Hidemitsu (2000) “English Imperatives and Passives” in Constructions in Cognitive Linguistics: Selected Papers from Fifth International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Amsterdam 1997 (eds.) Ad Foolen & Frederike van der Leek: 239-258. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamin Publishing Company.

1. Introduction

Early generative grammar work claimed that English imperatives disallow the passive forms syntactically (cf. Lees 1964), based on facts like those in (*Be helped by Jill) above. However, later pragmatic and descriptive work found that this restriction is far from absolute (cf. Bolinger 1997; Davies 1986). – 239

2. English imperatives and their four features

In English, the ‘imperative’ refers to a construction which occurs only in main clause, normally has no grammatical subject and contains the verb in its basic form. – 240

[Takahashi] characterized English imperatives in terms of four essential features, hypotheticality, non-past, second person and force exertion. – 240

Force Exertion: the degree of (directive) force that the speaker is applying (at the utterance time of an imperative) toward the addressee’s carrying out the action. – 240

3. A cognitive (image-schema) model of imperatives

3.1 Action chain model

i. The imperative is comprised of two separate (though interrelated) subevents, which combine to from a dynamic chain of action;

ii. The speaker and the addressee both participate in this action chain as indispensable entities – the speaker as head, the addressee as a second entity engaged in further action;

iii. The imperative makes explicit only the addressee’s action and leaves implicit the two key entities; nor does it overtly code the application of directive force. – 242

3.2 Canonical event model

The simplest transitive clause contains two participants which play semantic roles, agent and patient, respectively. These participants are engaged in a kind of energetic interaction in a specific conceptual domain called a ‘setting’ chosen to be highlighted by a conceptualizer. A transitive clause such as John ate the apple in the kitchen, where John acts as an agent and participates in an energetic interaction of eating an apple which is patient in the ‘kitchen’ setting. – 243

To obtain a Canonical Event Model of the imperative, let us specify the setting and the semantic roles of participants. As for the setting, the first subevent is restricted to an extremely narrow speech situation, the here-and-now of speaking, only populated by the speaker and addressee. It would be reasonable then to analyze this subevent as occurring in a deictic setting. On the other hand, the second subevent (or the addressee’s action) is hypothetical is native, regardless of whether or not the addressee’s act will be reanalyzed in the objective world. For this reason, the second subevent may be treated as taking place in a hypothetical setting (or mental space). – 243

The speaker can be analyzed in terms of cause-agent, and the addressee in terms of cause-agent. The rationale behind this treatment is that in the prototypical scene of an imperative, the addressee is triggered to act or undergo a substantial change in state by the utterance of an imperative – 244

The prototype IMPERATIVE

i. The speakers exerts a high (near [+1]) directive force in deictic setting towards the addressee, who will thereby perform an action in hypothetical setting.

ii. The speaker plays a semantic role of causer-like agent, and the addressee cause-like agent. – 244

The schematic IMPERATIVE

i. The speaker exerts a varying degree of force (ranging from [+1] to [-1] in deictic setting toward the addressee, who will thereby be engaged in a certain situation in hypothetical setting.

ii. The speaker and addressee may play an agentive as well as non-agentive role. – 245

(A) Imperatives are atypical when the speaker’s force in non-directive (or mixed with other kinds of force). […] (B) When the subject is a non-agent such as an experiencer, theme or patient or when the understood subject is generic as in Shake before using, the imperative progressively deviates from its norm. (C) Events (highly dynamic situations) better fit the image schema of prototype imperatives than states as in Be sick (and they’ll put you in bed). - 246

4. English imperatives and passives

It is well established that an active clause more readily passivies if it is more transitive, i.e. when the patient is directly affected by the activity in question. – 247

The passive critically involves an agent (or something close to it such as an experiencer), which is invariably defocused either syntactically or lexically. Second, the passive with be is in principle more static than its active counterpart, alhtough this does not mean that the be-passive only refers to a state. Third, the subject tends to be a patient. – 247

The prototype passive

i. The subject is directly affected by an external agent.

ii.  The subject plays the semantic role of patient. – 247

The subject’s patienthood, the defocused participant’s agency and overall affectedness normally go hand in hand. One almost automatically follows from another, since prototypical patient is a participant absorbing the energy transmitted from without and thereby undergoing a change in state. – 248

Hypothesis: The passive construction does not clash with the imperative syntactically but on conceptual grounds, i.e., the clash occurs between prototypes. – 249

5. Japanese imperatives and passives