1887
Volume 9, Issue 2
  • ISSN 1384-6655
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9811
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Abstract

This paper reports the findings of a corpus-based study oflet-imperatives in English. Unlike the ordinary lexical verbletmeaning “allow”, theletoflet-imperatives serves merely to mark illocutionary meaning. In ‘first person inclusives’, the variant with us-contraction is found to have increased in popularity over recent decades. Furthermore the occurrence of cases wherelet'scan not be interpreted as a contraction oflet ussuggests that syntactic reanalysis has reached an advanced stage amongst some speakers. ‘Open’let-imperatives, which despite their distinctively optative or deontic-assertive force are grammatically closer to ordinary imperatives, are found to have decreased in popularity in recent decades.

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/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.9.2.07col
2004-01-01
2025-02-19
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): corpus; imperative; inclusive; let; let's; person
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