Abstract
This paper investigates postverbal imperative subjects (e.g., get you to school), ungrammatical in standard English but grammatical in certain contexts in dialects of Scottish and Belfast English. Henry (1995) reports that unaccusative verbs generally allow postverbal subjects in Belfast English, but in the Scottish English (ScotE) dialect considered here, only a very restricted subset of verbs allow it. Moreover, in ScotE, the preposition away can appear without an overt verb (I’ll away to my bed); this also allows a postverbal subject in imperatives (away you to school). The ScotE data cast doubt on Henry’s (1995) proposal that the licensor of postverbal subjects is weak agreement. The paper argues that the subjects in these constructions are actually external arguments of small clauses (of which goal PPs are taken to be a subset following, e.g., Beck & Snyder 2001). The differences between dialects are located in the structure of resultatives; Belfast English allows Case to be assigned to the subject of small clauses in resultative constructions via a functional head endowed with a causation feature, allowing them to remain in situ in imperatives. In standard English, the causation feature is directly merged onto the verb, not allowing for Case assignment and forcing raising of the subject of the small clause. The ScotE data is argued to arise from the availability of a very ‘light’ verb which is realized as get in some contexts and as silence in others.
Highlights
In her pioneering 1995 microcomparative work on Belfast English, Alison Henry discusses the fact that, for some Belfast speakers, overt imperative subjects can appear in a position following certain verbs (1).[1] This paper has had a long gestation period and more people have probably given me useful comments and feedback on it than I can remember to list here, but I would like to thank audiences at the LAGB annual meeting in 2015, Ghent University, Simon Fraser University, and NTNU Trondheim; and Terje Lohndal and Jen Smith and Gary Thoms for very useful comments and data/intuitions
If the above proposals are on the right track, this predicts a difference between resultatives built on basically intransitive verbs such as drink and those built on obligatorily transitive verbs such as elect: the former do not, but the latter do identify the subject of the small clause with the theme of the event
To remain neutral on the matter here, I show this projection as FP in (52). This movement is optional in Belfast A, because the subject of the small clause can get Case in situ from the functional head hosting [causetrans] as in (48); but in standard English, the requirements of the Case Filter force overt imperative subjects to raise to this higher position
Summary
In her pioneering 1995 microcomparative work on Belfast English, Alison Henry discusses the fact that, for some Belfast speakers, overt imperative subjects can appear in a position following certain verbs (1). Scottish English permits a construction where the preposition away can appear without an overt motion verb, in a type of construction which seems familiar from other Germanic varieties or from earlier varieties of English (5) This construction can be used as an imperative (6), and licenses post-‘verbal’ subjects (7) (see Henry 1995: 58–59, 77, for a similar construction in some Belfast dialects):. (b) Away you and see who that is at the door These are the only contexts in which postverbal imperative subjects are licensed in the variety of Scottish English under investigation here. It is argued that Belfast English has a structure for resultatives involving a syntactically realized (but silent) [cause] feature on a functional head which can assign Case to the subject of the small clause within the resultative This subject can, by dint of this, remain in situ in imperative constructions, and is not required to move to a preverbal position. Where I am aware of further dialectal or idiolectal variation I note this, as well as noting places where the proposed analysis is flexible enough to accommodate variation, or where it would predict variation to be ruled out
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