Imperative
An imperative sentence gives anything from a command or order, to a request, direction, or instruction. Imperative sentences are more intentional than exclamatory sentences and do require an audience; as their aim is to get the person(s) being addressed either to do or to not do something. And although this function usually deals with the immediate temporal vicinity, its scope can be extended, i.e. you can order somebody to move out as soon as you find yourself a job. The negative imperative can also be called the prohibitive and the inclusive plural imperative, the hortative. It is debatable whether the imperative is only truly possible in the second person. The vocative case of nouns can be said to indicate the imperative as well since it does not seek information, but rather a reaction from the one being addressed. An imperative can end in either a period or an exclamation point depending on delivery.
- Look at me.
- After separating them from the yolks, beat the whites until they are light and fluffy.
Read more about this topic: Sentence Function, Communicative Vs. Informative, Communicative Sentences
Famous quotes containing the word imperative:
“Because humans are not alone in exhibiting such behavior—bees stockpile royal jelly, birds feather their nests, mice shred paper—it’s possible that a pregnant woman who scrubs her house from floor to ceiling [just before her baby is born] is responding to a biological imperative . . . . Of course there are those who believe that . . . the burst of energy that propels a pregnant woman to clean her house is a perfectly natural response to their mother’s impending visit.”
—Mary Arrigo (20th century)
“If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech.”
—bell hooks (b. 1955)