ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the theoretical preliminaries for the investigation of the syntax of the English imperative which is to follow. The analysis of the imperative is embedded in a theory of syntax roughly corresponding to the Principles and Parameters Theory of the early 1990’s. The chapter offers an analysis of the syntax of English adverbs. It provides an explicit system in which to investigate adverb placement as a reliable probe on English syntax. The chapter also presents observations from Ray Jackendoff 1972 regarding possible adverb positions in English finite sentences. It attempts to provide an analytical basis for the distributional patterns. Jackendoff 1972 develops a classification of adverbs in English based on their positional distribution in a clause. A primary desideratum for any syntactic proposal regarding adverb placement is that it reflect the apparent link between an adverb’s meaning, or what it modifies, and its syntactic position.
