Imperative mood

"Imper" redirects here. For the Romanian village, see Plăieşii de Jos.

The imperative mood (abbreviated IMP) expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.

Morphology

Formulation of the English imperative simply uses the bare infinitive form of the verb. The infinitive form usually corresponds to the second-person present indicative form, with the exception of "to be. The subject of these sentences is usually understood as you (the second person) except in the case of "Let's" which implies first person and at least a second person. Other languages such as Latin, French and German have several inflected imperative forms, which can vary according to grammatical categories such as:

• Distinct conjugation patterns;
• Grammatical number;
• Distinct grammatical persons.

For instance, Latin regular forms can exist:

• amā (singular); amāte (plural) ← from infinitive amāre, to 'love'
• monē (singular); monēte (plural) ← from monēre, to 'advise' or 'warn'
• audī (singular); audīte (plural) ← from audīre, to 'hear'
• cape (singular); capite (plural) ← from capĕre, to 'take'
• rege (singular); regite (plural) ← from regĕre, to 'reign'.

Some consider this richness of forms useful for a better understanding, particularly because no subject pronoun normally specifies with the imperative.

Usage

The use of the imperative mood may be seen as impolite, inappropriate or even offensive in certain circumstances. Commonly, polite speech will instead express the same thing as a question or statement, such as:

• Could you come here for a moment?
• It would be great if you made us a drink.
• I beg you to stop.

and not as demands, such as:

• Come here.
• Go and make me a drink.
• Stop!

Politeness strategies (for instance, indirect speech acts) can seem more appropriate in order not to threaten a conversational partner in their needs of self-determination and territory: the partner's negative face should not appear threatened. As a result, the imperative mood does not require someone to be direct, confrontational, nor over-bearing.

The imperative mood's appropriateness depends on such factors as psychological and social relationships, as well as the speaker’s basic communicative intention (illocutionary force). For example, the speaker may have the simple intention to offer something, to wish or permit something, or just to apologize, and not to manipulate their conversational partner. In such cases, people will not place restriction on the use of imperative:

• Come to the party tomorrow!
• Just eat the apple if you want!
• Have a nice trip!
• Pardon me.

First-person plural form

In some languages, including French and Spanish, in addition to the second-person imperative form shown above, there also exists a first-person plural (we) imperative form. This form, similar to the second-person imperative form, except conjugated in the first-person plural, usually translates to English as let's (short for let us). For example, the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, includes the words Marchons, marchons! (Let's march, let's march!). Irish has imperative forms in all three persons and both numbers, although the first person singular is most commonly found in the negative (e.g. ná cloisim sin arís "let me not hear that again"). In Finnish, there are two ways of forming a first-person plural imperative. A standard version exists, but it is typically replaced colloquially by the impersonal tense. mennä -to go menkäämme -let's go (standard) mennään -let's go (colloquial)

Indicative and prohibitive mood

The prohibitive mood (abbreviated PROH) negates the imperative mood. The two moods often seem different in word order or in morphology.

English

In English, the imperative mood uses the same word order as the indicative mood, while the prohibitive mood uses a different word order if you appears in the sentence.

		Indicative	Imperative / Prohibitive
			−you	+you
			do		will
Affirmative		You go.	Go!	You go!	You will go!
Negative	not	You do not go.	Do not go!	-	You will not go!
	-n't	You don't go.	Don't go!	Don't you go!	You won't go!

French

Similarly, French uses different word order for the imperative and prohibitive moods:

• Donne-le-leur ! (Give it to them!)
• Ne le leur donne pas ! (Don't give it to them!)

The prohibitive has the same word order as the indicative. See French personal pronouns#Clitic order for detail.

Hebrew

In Hebrew, the imperative mood is derived from the 2nd-person indicative future tense inflections, generally by removing the ת־‎ 2nd-person prefix of אית״ן prefix set (which indicates future verbs). In Modern Hebrew the future mode is often used instead of the imperative. The negative consists of al אל (like the negative do not) + verb in the future mode. In Classical Hebrew negatives are sometimes consists of the negation lo ("no/not", Hebrew: לא), e.g. לא תרצח ("Thou shalt not kill") in the Ten Commandments.

	Future Indicative	Imperative / Prohibitive
Affirmative	telekh – תלך (You will go)	lekh – לך (Go!)
Negative	lo telekh – לא תלך (You will not go)	al telekh – אל תלך (Don't go! / You shall not go)

Japanese

Japanese uses separate verb forms as shown below. For the verb kaku (write):

	Indicative	Imperative / Prohibitive
Affirmative	書く kaku	書け kake
Negative	書かない kakanai	書くな kakuna

See also the suffixes 〜なさい (–nasai) and 〜下さい/ください (–kudasai).

Mandarin

Standard Chinese uses different words of negation for the indicative and the prohibitive moods. For the verb 做 zuò (do):

	Indicative	Imperative / Prohibitive
Affirmative	做 zuò	做 zuò
Negative	不做 búzuo	别做 biézuò

Sanskrit

In Sanskrit, लोट लकार (lot lakar) is used with the verb to form the imperative mood. To form the negative, न (na) is placed before the verb in the imperative mood.

References

• Austin, J. L. How to do things with words, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1962.
• Schmecken, H. Orbis Romanus, Paderborn, Schöningh 1975, ISBN 3 506 10330.