The unembeddability of imperatives in Korean: Two different types of imperative morphology

Abstract

This article presents additional data in support of the fact that imperatives cannot be embedded in Korean. It demonstrates that the language employs two different types of imperative morphology: one that occurs in main clauses and the other that occurs in embedded environments, and that their occurrence is mutually exclusive. That being the case, the main imperative morphology is a bona fide illocutionary force marker that is syntactically encoded in the main clauses only, whereas the embedded imperative morphology simply serves as a clause-type indicator with no illocutionary force.

Keywords

• imperative
• unembeddable
• clause type
• speech act projection
• korean