Negation in imperative clauses

Imperative clauses in the Nordic languages typically display V1 word order. The referential subject is normally absent, with the exception of Icelandic, where it is normally overt (Einarsson 1967:159, Thráinsson 2007:6). According to Thráinsson (2007:6), the imperative verb is followed by a reduced from of the second person pronoun, except in very formal style, where the pronoun can be absent, or pronounced in its full form. Based on examples found in the reference grammars and some other sources, negative adverbs may appear either after the finite verb, as is typical in Swedish (Teleman et al. 1999), see (1), and Danish (Heltof & Hansen 2011), see (2), or it can either follow or precede the verb, as in Norwegian (Faarlund et al. 1997), see (3).


Introduction
Imperative clauses in the Nordic languages typically display V1 word order.The referential subject is normally absent, with the exception of Icelandic, where it is normally overt (Einarsson 1967:159, Thráinsson 2007:6).According to Thráinsson (2007:6), the imperative verb is followed by a reduced from of the second person pronoun, except in very formal style, where the pronoun can be absent, or pronounced in its full form.Based on examples found in the reference grammars and some other sources, negative adverbs may appear either after the finite verb, as is typical in Swedish (Teleman et al. 1999), see (1), and Danish (Heltof & Hansen 2011), see (2), or it can either follow or precede the verb, as in Norwegian (Faarlund et al. 1997) Faarlund et al. 1997:590, 874) In Faroese, there are two imperative types; one imperative-inflected and one with the infinitive form.
They behave differently with respect to negation: The imperative-inflected verb precedes the negative adverb, see (4a,b), and the infinitive verb used as an imperative follows the negative adverb, see (4c,d).
(4) a.The fact that there is a fair bit of variation both within and between the Nordic languages in the realisation of negation with imperatives, suggested that this was a topic worth testing in the ScanDiaSyn Dialect Survey.Below, we report on the variation between the two word orders Neg-Imp and Imp-Neg as it appears in the Nordic Syntax Database and the Nordic Dialect Corpus.

Nordic Syntax Database (NSD)
The position of the negation in relation to the finite verb in imperative clauses has been tested in the NSD with the sentences in ( 6) and ( 7), among Norwegian, Swedish, and Faroese informants.We see that the order with negation following the verb is accepted without exception in Sweden, Finland and on the Faroe Islands (where it is, however, judged as marginally possible in the location of Fuglafjørður on the island of Eysturoy).In Norway, the construction is most often rejected in the southernmost parts of the country in the counties of Hordaland (Bergen, Bømlo, Voss, Fusa), Rogaland (Karmøy, Stavanger, Hjelmeland, Gjesdal), Vest-Agder (Lyngdal, Kristiansand), Aust-Agder (Vennesla, Larvik, Sirdal, Vegårshei), and parts of the east: Buskerud (Rollag and Ål).Otherwise, it is often judged as marginally possible across the rest of the country, with the exception of the counties of Troms and Finnmark where it is almost always accepted.

Nordic Dialect Corpus (NDC)
There are not many hits for imperatives in the Nordic Dialect Corpus.There are none for Icelandic and Danish, but there are some in Faroese, Norwegian and Swedish.The word order in which the verb follows the negation is found both in Norway and in the Faroe Islands, but not in Swedish.One important difference between these two countries is that whereas the verb following the negation in imperative clauses in Norwegian dialects is finite (inflected for imperative), see ( 9), the verb in this position in Faroese is non-finite, see (10).Negated imperatives with the structure of ( 9 However, the test sentence ( 7) is not identical in structure to (11).The latter contains a subject, which is rare with imperatives.It is a proper subject that has undergone subject-verb inversion.Further, there is a direct object meg 'me' here.We would go as far as claiming that the structure with subject and object is limited to a few lexical items, like spørre 'ask', tro 'believe', which can occur in this set phrase: Imperative + du 'you' + meg 'me'.This would explain why the negation appears clause-finally; there is no place for it inside this fixed construction.Notice that it would actually also be ungrammatical to have

Garbacz, Johannessen
Negation in imperative NALS Journal 258 the negation pre-verbally with this construction.We think this construction is part of a different register, or is used to create a special effect.This would also explain why the informant rejects this word order in the NDC.As a final note we would like to mention that the word order in ( 11) is the same as that of polarity questions.However, we have listened to this utterance in the NDC, and it is clearly a discourse imperative.
The picture that emerges from both the NSD and the NDC is that the word order in imperative clauses in Swedish dialects is typically Imp-Neg.In Norwegian dialects the word order attested in the speech corpus is overwhelmingly Neg-Imp, with only one attested case of Imp-Neg.The Neg-Imp is also the one that is most clearly accepted in the Norwegian part of the syntactic database, while the Imp-Neg word order is marginally accepted, with the exception of the southeastern part of the country.On the Faroe Islands, the only attested word order in non-finite imperative clauses is Neg-Imp.There are no occurrences of the combination of a finite verb inflected for imperative and the negation.

Age variation in the NSD
We have tested the sentences with respect to a possible age variation.Starting with the Neg-Imp order, in Map 6a, we find that the young informants in the Faroe Islands do not completely reject this word order.
There are also four places in Sweden (Svealand and Norrland) plus Åland in Finland where this order is accepted.In addition, several young people across Sweden and Finland give this structure a medium score, although the overall pictures is still one of rejection in the latter two countries.In Norway there is a high acceptance rate and no variation across the whole country.
are found in the corpus, however, the word order with the negation following the finite verb is only attested in Sweden, in the locations of Leksand (in the province of Dalarna) and Sorunda (in the province of Södermanland), see the sentences in (8) and the locations in Map 3t give up, just work hard!' (sorunda_ym1) Map 3: Imp-Neg-order in Swedish dialects as attested in the NDC.(White = attested.) ) are found 11 times across the whole of Norway, in the counties of Hordaland (Bømlo), Nordland (Herøy N), Oppland (Jevnaker), Rogaland (Karmøy, Sokndal), and Finnmark (Vardø), see Map 4. In the Faroe Islands, the negated imperatives of the non-finite type exemplified in (10) are found in the locations of Fuglafjørður on the island of Eysturoy and Sandur on the island of Sandoy, see Map 5. Map 4: Neg-Imp-order in Norwegian dialects as attested in the NDC.(White = attestation.)Negation preceding the non-finite verb in imperative clauses on the Faroe Islands as attested in the NDC.(White = attestation.)Thereare no instances of the finite imperative verb following or preceding the negation in the Faroese part of the NDC.For Norwegian dialects, the only instance of the negation following the imperative verb is found in the speech of a young man from Bergen (the West Norwegian county of Hordaland).Notably, the same informant rejects this kind of construction in the test sentence in (7), judging it as ungrammatical in his dialect.