East Asian Linguistics Workshop: Imperatives for the Past?: An Analysis on Past Imperatives and Negative Imperatives and Their Relation

Ryo Nomura is a PhD Candidate in Japanese Linguistics in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University. His study analyzes the relation between negative imperatives and imperatives which refer to a past action or event (henceforth past imperative) in Japanese. This study accomplishes two goals: (i) make clear the criteria for the categorization of past imperatives and re-count how many negative imperatives are past imperatives. (ii) analyze why negative imperatives are inclined to be past imperatives, focusing on the nature of the negative sentence and the predicates’ aspects. This study sheds new light on imperative research, which often treats positive and negative imperatives altogether. Moreover, even though this study focuses on Japanese negative imperatives, it appears possible to find a similar result in other languages, assuming that the major functions of negative imperatives are similar.