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English does not allow an imperative to be used in a subordinate clause:

  1. Eat that pizza!
  2. *There's a pizza on the table, which eat! (="which I order you to eat")
  3. *I told you eat that pizza!

(A superficially similar variant of 3 is grammatical: "I told you, eat that pizza!" - but here the imperative clause is not subordinate.)

But there's no obvious reason why this should be so. Pragmatically, an imperative is usually paraphrasable by a declarative, e.g. "I order you to Verb" or "You must Verb", and such declaratives are subordinatable like any others. Indeed, Ancient Greek allows subordinate imperatives to a limited extent (examples from Smyth's Greek Grammar, p. 411):

  1. kratêrés eisin ... hôn krât' érepson "There are mixing bowls ... the rims of which fill!" (="the rims of which you must fill")
  2. oîsth' hò drâson? "Do you know what do (impv.)?" (="Do you know what you are to do / what I'm telling you to do?")

So: which other languages allow subordinate imperatives? (By "imperative" here I mean a morphological form whose main or sole function is to express a directive speech act. There are languages where "subjunctive" forms of various kinds can be used to express commands in both main and subordinate clauses, but I'm not asking about those.) Are subordinate imperatives cross-linguistically rare, or do they only happen to be rare in modern European languages? And if they are rare, why should this be? (Presumably the answer should have to do with the differing pragmatic status of the content of main and subordinate clauses: e.g. in declarative sentences, the content of a subordinate clause often cannot be directly affirmed or denied, which seems relevant somehow.)

TKR
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  • What about this sentence? "Help me!" was the only thing he could say. Here "Help me!" is the subject of the main sentence, "was the only thing", so it it is a subjective clause, isn't it? :) – Yellow Sky Dec 17 '13 at 21:55
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    @YellowSky I'm not at all sure that direct quotations should be regarded as a kind of subordinate clause, since they're completely autonomous from the rest of the sentence: basically anything can go inside the quotes, including material in a different language or in no language at all. – TKR Dec 17 '13 at 22:06
  • You are absolutely right, I'm sorry, I was just kidding. But seriously speaking, Russian allows real imperatives to be used in a subordinate clause, just like in your Greek examples, and I think it was Greek syntax that influenced Russian that way. I can compose my own examples, but let me find real ones in the Russian Corpus, and I'll submit an answer. – Yellow Sky Dec 17 '13 at 22:15

1 Answers1

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In Russian, it is possible to use imperatives in different kinds of clauses, including attributive clauses (like your English example 2). Both of your Greek examples can well be translated into Russian with imperatives in the same positions as in Greek. The Russian language lacking Subjunctive and Optative moods, its imperative can be used in their meaning, such cases I will exclude from my answer, although Russian is brimming with them. I will give examples with the imperatives used only as direct commands.

In the following examples imperatives will be italicized.

First, my translations of your examples.

English example 2:

*There's a pizza on the table, which eat! (="which I order you to eat")

Лежит там пицца на столе, которую ты поедай немедля.

Greek 1:

There are mixing bowls ... the rims of which fill!

Посуда там стоит, которую ты до краёв наполни.

Greek 2:

Do you know what do?

Ты знаешь, что сделай?

And there are some examples from the Russian National Corpus:

1. Выложите лакомство в фруктовую вазу, края которой украсьте так, как вам подскажет фантазия. - "*Put out the delicacies on a dish, the rims of which decorate the way your fantasy suggests."

2. Возвратись теперь в своё владение, в котором ожидай меня (...). - "*Now go back to your domain, in which wait for me."

3. Все действия могут проходить по определенным принципам и правилам, которых придерживайтесь в реальном бою. - "*All the actions can take place according to certain principles and rules, which keep in a real combat."

From a letter by Anton Chekhov:

Привези мою фуражку маленькую, которую возьми у Ольги. - "*Bring me my small cap, which take from Olga."

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Yellow Sky
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  • Only a few of these translated Russian sentences doesn't sound in a Yoda-style. The first one is especially clumzy and ugly. But Russian imperative is a way different thing, though. The examples for the Corpus are not quite grammatical. – Manjusri Dec 18 '13 at 17:42
  • @Manjusri - Really? :D So, the cooking example is not quite grammatical, but Chekhov's one is OK? That's why you downvoted it? – Yellow Sky Dec 18 '13 at 18:50
  • Yes, the sentences you have 'translated' are clumzy and ungrammatical. – Manjusri Dec 19 '13 at 04:16
  • @Manjusri - Unlike you, I'm a native speaker of Russian, and these sentences are OK for me. Also, before posting my answer, I consulted with native Russian linguists who teach Russian, and they also said those sentences are OK. If you feel you are right, please, point to the mistakes in those sentences and say what rules of Russian they break. – Yellow Sky Dec 19 '13 at 08:26
  • The examples are typical for conversational Russian. However, the normal structure for modern conversational Russian is just imperative, without a relative pronoun. Your English 'translation' suggests a relative pronoun plus 2nd person imperative. The structure itself is a kind of cross-breed between conversational and spoken registers in standard Russian, which were an exaple of typical sociolinguistic shift (see also a quotation from Chekhov's letters). 'Translation' nr 2: plural subject, unexact translation, ambiguous structure. – Manjusri Dec 19 '13 at 08:47
  • Of all your faux pas the clumziest is your asttempt to fit an unnatural bookish construction to the conversational structure. I am not focusing here on the Topic:Commentary structures, which are typical for Japanese, Chinese and Russian. The most natural way to say it would be smth like Там пицца на столе, поедай немедля. Там стоят посудины, наполни их до краёв. The source for 3rd quotation from the Russian corpus is unclear. – Manjusri Dec 19 '13 at 08:50
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    In my English translations the subjects are not plural, they are imperative, just the way TKR used them in his question, the English translation weren't meant to be correct according to the rules of English. Perhaps, my mistake was not to put asterisks there, I'll correct that. And what is natural in Russian is just subjective, at least for Chekhov it was natural to use an imperative after a relative pronoun. – Yellow Sky Dec 19 '13 at 09:26
  • The imperative subjects are either plural or singular, at least in Russian (if there is such a thing as plural imperative subjects at all). The structures like [sentence 1] + plural imperative subject + imperative are not a good Russian, anyway (judging by the freequency of their appearence in the corpus). – Manjusri Dec 19 '13 at 09:47
  • @Manjusri - Again, sentence 1 from the Corpus has the same structure as the sentence by Chekhov. And "good" is just subjective, you need something more substantial, like a link to a grammar, to show the sentence is wrong. And how do you know about the frequency? Do you have a prooflink to prove that is rare? Mind, I didn't quote sentences with imperatives in conditional clauses, wich are innumerable, like this famous one by Mayakovsky, "Да будь я и негром преклонных годов и то, без унынья и лени, я русский бы выучил только за то, что им разговаривал Ленин." – Yellow Sky Dec 19 '13 at 10:24
  • It is not. With да the word будь is a desirative form and, in any case, it is not a valid example of a subordinate clause, either. And I don't think the phrase 'so much you could chew it with your arse' (which is a literal translation of your strange 'example') is a good sample of Russian. So, you are either to prove the validity of your examples by a link to a corpus you have used, or you have to admit that you have gone too far with your 'examples' which cannot be proven by any other source. – Manjusri Dec 19 '13 at 11:17
  • I'm not to do anything. And I have already given the links to the Corpus. I simply doubt you are an expert in Russian, since you aren't a native speaker and you haven't given a single link that proves I'm wrong. – Yellow Sky Dec 19 '13 at 11:30
  • Like I said, I have no native language. And, just like I said, if you are not to prove your point, than it is a mere blah blah blah. I think our further communication has no sense, because I prefer to deal with people I respect and who respect me, and this is none of the cases. You just have no sense of dignity. – Manjusri Dec 19 '13 at 11:43
  • And, speaking about 'things which are OK', I would add up that many things which might seem to be OK, are in fact not, especially speaking about things which are OK for many 'native Russian speakers'. – Manjusri Dec 19 '13 at 11:49
  • @Manjusri - Thank you for your most kind reply. Taking into account you're not a linguist, you've done pretty well so far. I've proven everything I said, I can't understand what other proofs you need. So long. – Yellow Sky Dec 19 '13 at 11:53
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    Conversations like this should take place in chat, not in comments. Those of us who don't speak Russian can get nothing whatever out of this exchange. – TKR Dec 19 '13 at 18:28