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If you start an imperative with "you", does it become a statement or stay as an imperative?

Here are some examples:

You put the book on the shelf.

You get help.

By the way, I'm still on the "sort-of" subject of imperatives.

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Pinkcat2244
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    It's worth noting that in everyday speech, i.e. idiomatic speech, no one would say those yous. We'd simply say "Get help!". Now, if someone asked "Hey, where did my book go?", then it's possible (though a bit wordy) to say "You put the book on the shelf". – Dan Bron Jan 23 '16 at 14:30
  • Having said all that, you might find our sister site [ELL.se] more helpful for learning the nuances of English as a second language. This site (EL&U) is mostly focused on he needs and questions of native speakers and academics. – Dan Bron Jan 23 '16 at 14:31
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    @Dan Bron I meant sometimes people like myself say, "this is what you do.You draw a line here...." I pretty sure I've heard other people say before. I know that people don't usually say, but that's not exactly what I was talking about. – Pinkcat2244 Jan 23 '16 at 14:33
  • Yes, in giving instructions, the leading you is idiomatic. Though in that case I'd say the instructions are more descriptive than prescriptive (i.e. they don't come across as orders). – Dan Bron Jan 23 '16 at 14:35
  • I am a native speaker. I was just wondering that because I've heard people start a command with "you" in a way to give instructions. So I was like, "does that make it a statement or still imperative". – Pinkcat2244 Jan 23 '16 at 14:36
  • I'd say a set of instructions, an algorithm, lives in a kind of ambiguous grey area between imperative and declarative. – Dan Bron Jan 23 '16 at 14:37
  • Ok. Also is it the same when someone says, "Everyone have a seat." Or if you're in the South, "Y'all have a seat". That's what my teachers say, so does that still make it a command? I know that imperatives usually start with verbs so that's why I wanted to make sure. Haha – Pinkcat2244 Jan 23 '16 at 14:42
  • If it's a command, it's imperative, by definition. So yes, those are imperative. – Dan Bron Jan 23 '16 at 14:43
  • So, an imperative doesn't have to start with a verb to be imperative? That basically what I've been wondering. Haha – Pinkcat2244 Jan 23 '16 at 14:54
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    @Araucaria okay – Pinkcat2244 Jan 23 '16 at 19:11
  • @Pinkcat2244 OK, I'll write you an answer then. It's a good question. – Araucaria - Him Jan 23 '16 at 19:13
  • @Pinkcat2244 There you go :) – Araucaria - Him Jan 23 '16 at 19:28
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    @Araucaria I already saw it and I already upvoted it ;) Thanks for the education, as always! – Dan Bron Jan 23 '16 at 20:15
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    @Araucaria No need for thanks, it was well-earned. Out of curiosity, returning to a list of instructions, as in baking a cake, eg "First, you pour th flour in a mixing bowl. Then you crack 3 eggs into the mix. Then you ...". Are those usages classified as imperatives? Intuitively, they seem to occupy some weird middle-ground. – Dan Bron Jan 23 '16 at 20:19
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    @DanBron I agree that they seem in betweenish. The grammar would seem to indicate that they're instances of the present simple, though. The reason is that we might see something like You don't put the sugar in till after the butter has melted, but probably not Don't you put the sugar in till after the butter has melted. So, erm, that's what I think, but I'm not absolutely sure. – Araucaria - Him Jan 23 '16 at 20:23
  • The sense of your sentences is unclear. "Who put the book on the shelf?" "You put the book on the shelf," is not an imperative, but simply a statement of what occurred. If it is, instead "You! Put the book on the shelf!" then that's imperative. – Hot Licks Jan 23 '16 at 21:56
  • @Hot Licks I meant it in a way that's like giving directions. For example, "this is how you draw a triangle: you put the line here..." – Pinkcat2244 Jan 24 '16 at 01:28
  • @Pinkcat2244 That would be an example of when we use the present simple for fixed sequences of events. Here the you really means anyone, or people in general. If we wanted to be very formal, we could use the word one instead of the word you there. Notice that in this situation we would get a third person S on the verb. "One draws a line ...". Also if we want to negate the sentence we would get "You don't put the line like this, you put the line like this", we wouldn't say "Don't you put the line like this, you put the line like this". This shows it's present simple, not imperative. – Araucaria - Him Jan 24 '16 at 11:51
  • @Araucaria does that mean that saying, "You put the line here" is incorrect? – Pinkcat2244 Jan 24 '16 at 14:43
  • @Pinkcat2244 No, not at all that's perfectly correct! It's especially useful to use the present simple like this when you are showing or demonstrating how to do something. You'll see TV chefs doing this all the time, for example :) – Araucaria - Him Jan 24 '16 at 16:22
  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – Yoichi Oishi Feb 12 '16 at 02:07

2 Answers2

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Short Answer

An imperative remains an imperative, even when it is preceded with you as Subject and even if it has a third person Subject:

  • You be careful now. (second person Subject)
  • Everybody be quiet please. (third person Subject)

Full Answer

The term imperative is used to describe this grammatical construction. To describe the social act - the typical illocutionary force of such utterances - we use the term directive or command. Very often we can issue directives without using imperatives:

  • Would you take a seat please?

The sentence above is a directive, not a question. However, it uses an interrogative clause, not an imperative. It uses the grammar we normally see in questions. So we need to be careful to distinguish between imperative a word that describes a grammatical construction and terms like command or directive, which describe the type of social act or behaviour.

We can use some simple data from the imperative examples in the short answer to show that they are imperatives and not just sentences using the present simple. Notice that they both use the plain form of the verb BE. The verb in an imperative must be in the plain form. If these sentences were normal declarative sentences with the present tense of the verb BE, we would expect the verb to agree with the Subject, but it doesn't:

  • You be careful now. (Imperative)
  • You are careful now. (Declarative using present tense)
  • Everybody be quiet please. (Imperative)
  • Everybody is quiet. (Declarative using present tense)

Imperatives do not need to have an overt Subject. However, if we do use an overt Subject with an imperative, it is still an imperative. Sometimes we will not be able to tell whether imperatives using you are imperatives just by looking at the written form. The second person present simple and plain form of a verb are identical (apart from for the verb BE). However, it will normally be clear which is intended from the situation, or from the intonation if the sentence is a spoken one. Of course with a third person imperative, we will always know, because the third person S will be missing from the verb in an imperative:

  • You eat the sausages! I'm full. (imperative)

  • You're so greedy. You eat the sausages. You eat the eggs. There's never enough for anyone else. (declarative)

  • Everybody take turns. (imperative)

  • Everybody takes turns. (declarative)

We can always identify an imperative when it uses the verb BE, because these clauses will always use plain form be, not present tense is or are.

A handy test

If you want to know if a sentence you have used yourself is an imperative or a normal declarative sentence, then there is a useful test you can do. Consider the Original Poster's following example:

  • You put the book on the shelf.

If the Original Poster wants to know if their sentence is an imperative or a declarative, they can negate the sentence. If their sentence was intended as a normal declarative sentence, we should see the word don't appearing after the Subject. But if their sentence was intended as an imperative, we will see the word don't appearing before the Subject:

  • You don't put the book on the shelf. (Declarative sentence)
  • Don't you put the book on the shelf. (Imperative sentence)

References

You can read all about imperatives here in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language by Huddleston and Pullum, 2002.

Araucaria - Him
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  • This answer is impressive in form and detail. Unfortunately, I believe the answer to be vaguely wrong. Imperatives have no subject, or their subject is implied, if you prefer. You put the book on the shelf is a bad imperative, and Everybody take turns is just poor English. – thb Jan 23 '16 at 21:43
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    @thb Why don't you have a look in the grammar book in the link? It's a well known fact that impratives can have overt Subjects. You'll find it discussed in A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Oxford Modern English Grammar and so on and so forth. Here's the entry from the Cambridge English Dictionary. Scroll down to the section called "Imperatives with subject pronouns". – Araucaria - Him Jan 23 '16 at 21:50
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    Well, you've got me there. – thb Jan 23 '16 at 21:52
  • @thb It's interesting, isn't it! – Araucaria - Him Jan 23 '16 at 21:53
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    @Araucaria Wow that was really helpful. Thank you. My second day on here wasn't so bad! – Pinkcat2244 Jan 24 '16 at 01:24
  • @Pinkcat2244 You probably still want to wait another day or so before giving anyone the green tick! You might still get lots of useful answers to your interesting question! :-) – Araucaria - Him Jan 24 '16 at 11:53
  • @Pinkcat2244 By the way, you haven't registered your account yet. My account wasn't registered for a bit when I started here, and it caused me a few hiccups - like I couldn't vote up answers, for example, or go to the chatroom to get any help from people :) – Araucaria - Him Jan 24 '16 at 12:09
  • @Araucaria ok, I guess I will. – Pinkcat2244 Jan 24 '16 at 14:45
  • Araucaria, "Don't you put the book on the shelf." is the sentence you gave as an example of imperative. To rewrite it, using "do not" instead of "don't", we must write "Do you not put the book on the shelf.", keeping the word order as if it were a question, right? Thanks in advance! – Loviii Oct 09 '19 at 13:44
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    @Loviii It's a very rare thing to use an negative imperative with a subject and without a contraction! However, it does occur occasionally. The answer is that the not stays is the same place, it doesn't follow the same pattern as questions. An example might be: "Do not anybody move!" My intuition tells me that such examples don't exist with the pronoun you in modern English, but that's just my intuition. – Araucaria - Him Oct 09 '19 at 23:30
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There can be no subject in an imperative. Thus, "You get help" is simple present tense, even when spoken as a command. Eg. in an emergency a person might activate the gathering crowd:

You get help. You get water. You do this. You do that, while I try to revive him.

If you want to preserve the imperative use a comma:

You, get help! Hurry!

In other languages the distinction is important, because the verb changes whether it is imperative or not. In English, not so much.

Born2Smile
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  • I was aware that imperatives can have no subject, by the way. When you said "simple present tense even when spoken as a command", are you saying it can technically be a statement/declarative or just a present tense imperative/command. I might have read it wrong but it just confused me a little. @Born2Smile – Pinkcat2244 Jan 23 '16 at 18:25
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    This answer cannot be correct if you think about it carefully. The verb BE is a good verb to use to test if something is a plain form or a present tense. With the verb BE, you get You be careful (plain form, imperative), not You are careful (present tense). – Araucaria - Him Jan 23 '16 at 18:34
  • @Araucaria: Perhaps you are right, but I would have judged the sentence You be careful to be vaguely ungrammatical. Test it this way: He be careful; I be careful; we be careful; and so on. Doesn't work. I would say that the answer with the comma is right. – thb Jan 23 '16 at 21:40
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    @thb The reason we be careful is ungrammatical is just because ordinary imperatives don't allow we etc as subject. – Araucaria - Him Jan 24 '16 at 00:34