to be or not to be...

[Susanne Dopke]

I didn't like the "infinitive" explanation for imperatives which came
around last week. If we look to other languages we mostly find that the
singular imperative is the stem of the verb, the plural often coincides
with 2nd plural, eg. in German and French. It just so happens that
English uses the stem form for the infinitive and most of its present
tense forms.
Susanne

Susanne Dopke (PhD)
P.O Box 11A (Linguistics)
Monash University VIC 3800
Australia
phone: +61-3-99052298 or 9439 4148
fax: +61-3-99052294