Subject: sum : imperatives without you subjects

content - length : 3573 summary of responses to my query on imperatives without you subjects my original query asked for references and suggestions concerning apparent imperatives with indefinite noun phrase subjects like : do n't anybody move . all the band members leave the room now . all in favor say " aye . " many thanks to all the respondents : suzanne kemmer , susan fischer , bob frank , jussi karlgren , steven schaufele , larry horn , arnold zwicky , alan huffman , christer platzack , marie egan , michael flier , bruce nevin , kripka sundar , and rosta , kimberly weiss , bruce downing , anton sherwood , bernard comrie , inger rosengren , chase wrenn , peter coopmans horn , fischer and flier suggested checking the subject status of anybody , all etc by looking at tags , where it seems that the under - lying you reappears , whereas tags with anybody and all sound bad . do n't anybody move , will you / * will they ? all in favor say " aye , " won't you / * won't they ? this correlates with the fact that the indefinites can be understood as specifying the reference of you such that anybody equates with ' any one of you ' , all with ' all of you ' and so on . in a similar vein , rosta , sundar , schaufele and comrie suggest that anybody and all are the lexical realization of a pragmatic addressee you and a presupposed agent you . weiss , nevin and sherwood analyze the examples as containing a vocative anybody and all with a corresponding regular 2nd person imperative . huffman and wrenn see these apparent imperatives as subjunctive sentences , so that the occurrence of anybody and all does n't require any special comment . egan and karlgren point out the existence of 1st and 3rd person imperatives in greek and german . thus in german : gehen wir ins kino roughly ' let 's go to the movies ' contains 1st person plural wir ' we ' with imperative gehen . this too would suggest that imperatives with 3rd person subjects present no anomaly . these respondents and others mentioned above cited the references below . downing , bruce . 1969 . vocatives and 3rd - person imperatives in english . papers in linguistics 1 , 3 : 570-92 . zwicky , arnold . 1987 . rev . of davis . the english imperative . linguistics 25 , 4 : 805-810 . zwicky , a . 1988 . on the subject of bare imperatives in english . on language % stockwell festschrift % , ed . by duncan - rose et al . croom helm . beukema , f . & p . coopmans . 1989 . a gb perspective on the imperative in english . journal of linguistics 25 : 417-36 . zanuttini . 1991 . u of pennsylvania dissertation . platzack , chr . & i . rosengren . 1994 . on the subject of imperatives . sprache & pragmatics . to appear . takahashi , hide . to appear . language sciences . thank you to all who responded . once i ' ve had a look at the various references , i may offer a further comment to linguist . best wishes , neal norrick tb0nrn1 @ mvs . cso . niu . edu
