ABSTRACT
The most theoretically central topic in the generative syntax literature on English imperatives has been the status of imperative do, don't, and do not in relation to their tensed clause counterparts (Chomsky 1975, Cohen 1976, Schmerling 1977, Lasnik 1981, Davies 1986a, Pollock 1989, Zhang 1990, and Zanuttini 1991 among others). At issue is the extent of the syntactic similarity between the occurrences of do in the imperatives in (1) and the corresponding declaratives in (2). The a examples illustrate an emphatic use of do while the b and c examples illustrate its use with negation.
