This book investigates long-standing problems in the syntactic analysis of the English imperative. Most earlier works within the generative tradition have claimed that the syntax of imperatives idiosyncratically and irreducibly differs from that of other English clauses. This work argues that, on the contrary, the imperative has a largely regular syntax which is fully compatible with current formal grammars of English. The putative differences reside primarily in three domainsthe behavior of the auxiliary verbs