# Freeze! Nobody move(s).



## LQZ

While listening to a short story in the British Council, I came across this. 

Scenario: Rats were robbing the bank of Britain. 

It is the end of the day. Cashier was counting the money. "Freeze! Nobody *move*". 


Dear all, 

Should "move" be "moves"? If not, could you please explain to me? Thanks.



LQZ


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## majlo

No, the phrase is "Nobody move!". It's imperative which takes the first verb form.


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## boozer

LQZ, this is like ordering a number of people to stand up: you say "Stand up!". If you want them to move, you say: "Move!". If you don't want any of them to move, you say "Nobody move!". Imperative mood, as majlo points out.


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## entangledbank

It's an interesting little phenomenon: imperative with a subject, and it can be second or third person. Both of these are right:

Nobody move your hands!
Nobody move their hands!


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## LQZ

Thanks, everyone.


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## JungKim

entangledbank said:


> It's an interesting little phenomenon: imperative with a subject, and it can be second or third person. Both of these are right:
> 
> Nobody move your hands!
> Nobody move their hands!



I take it that, in the latter sentence, "nobody" is considered the third person.
But even in that sentence "nobody" refers to anybody who actually hear the speaker. If so, shouldn't it be considered the second person?


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## Loob

Are you suggesting "Nobody move their hands!" is wrong, JungKim? It's inescapably third person.


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## JungKim

No, I'm not saying that it's wrong or anything. 
What I'm asking is whether you could call "nobody" there the third person when it actually means "none of *you *guys".


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## velisarius

There's an interesting piece on imperatives here:
http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2014/10/imperative.html

_The "Cambridge Grammar of the English Language" explains that when an imperative is addressed to “somebody” or “all those in the front row,” the subjects “are also interpreted as ‘somebody among you,’ ‘all those of you in the front row.’ ”
"So don't be misled by subjects expressed in the third-person. These are still second-person constructions."_


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## JungKim

Thanks, velisarius. That was a very informative read, the link.
So I guess that's why you can't really say: "The boy come and talk to me" in the imperative when "the boy" is the real third person, i.e., he's not present or can hear the utterance. Am I on the right track?


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## sdgraham

I don't really know what track you are trying to represent, but I don't see how you can have an imperative when there's nobody to address. 

"The boy come and talk to me" is not English in any sense whatsoever.


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## PaulQ

JungKim said:


> I take it that, in the latter sentence, "nobody" is considered the third person.


nobody = not one person/no [single] person. 
The word "body" can be used (although it is old-fashioned and colloquial) to mean "a person"  

A: "What! There is no restaurant in this village? A body could starve here!"


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## wandle

The viewpoint expressed in that Grammarphobia link, even though the authors quote several grammatical texts in support of it, is too radical and reductionist for me. There is a third person imperative in English; it simply does not have a separate verb ending: it is morphologically identical with the second person imperative. Well known examples are: 'God save the Queen!' and 'Rule Britannia!' (note: no comma in either expression).

The authors of the blog are saying that whenever an imperative expression uses third person terms, these must be interpreted as really referring to a second person or persons. We have to ask, Why? However, they neither ask nor answer that question. If the argument were valid, it would follow that there could never be any third person imperatives in any language: but this is certainly not the case, because other languages have third person imperatives with a separate morphological verb ending. They cannot be interpreted reductively.

The difference between those languages and English is not that they have a means of expression of which English is incapable, but that they express it in one form and English in another.


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## PaulQ

wandle said:


> Well known examples are: 'God save the Queen!' and 'Rule Britannia!' (note: no comma in either expression).


This is the subjunctive*. The subjunctive does not take verbal endings regardless of the subject.

Nobody (vocative) move (negative imperative. The negation is caused by *no*body. = Not one person should move.)


*It might be worth a small PhD to discuss the subjunctive and the imperative being the same form - one use of the subjunctive is to (apparently) command the uncommandable - 'God save the Queen!' Although 'God save the Queen!' = "May God save the Queen." and "Nobody move" = "Nobody should move." - where 'should = must."


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## wandle

If these third person expressions are interpreted as subjunctive, then second person imperatives will also be subjunctives: in other words, there is no such thing as an imperative at all. Again, this is too reductionist for me. Subjunctive and imperative are clearly distinct in Indo-European philology. English retains the distinct meanings, though often without separate forms. We can feel the distinction of meaning beneath the surface similarity.


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## velisarius

I think the OP example might be a different case from the "God save the Queen!" type, (however we describe that), because the "nobody" being commanded not to move is present, and the speaker is addressing them directly. I think that might warrant calling it an imperative.


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## JungKim

Wandle, I'll take up your second paragraph first and then your first.


wandle said:


> The authors of the blog are saying that whenever an imperative expression uses third person terms, these must be interpreted as really referring to a second person or persons. We have to ask, Why? However, they neither ask nor answer that question.
> ...


I respectfully disagree that they neither ask nor answer that question. In fact, they sort of do both in the first two paragraphs of their answer:


> Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as the “third-person imperative.” But *there are second-person imperatives that are addressed to third-person subjects*, as we’ll explain.
> 
> The imperative mood is used for expressing commands, requests, and so on. So *by its very nature an imperative is directly addressed to someone*, and *an imperative sentence typically has the second-person “you” as its implied subject.*


 (Boldface mine.)

Which I think means, whenever an imperative is addressed to a third-person subject that does not imply the second-person "you", that the imperative does not work -- as in my own example (*_The boy come and talk to me._) presented in post #10 -- to the point where it "is not English in any sense whatsoever," as suggested by sdgraham in his subsequent post. There, sdgraham's reasoning for dismissing the sentence as ungrammatical, I think, couldn't have been clearer: "I don't see how you can have an imperative when there's nobody to address."

Now your first paragraph:


wandle said:


> There is a third person imperative in English; it simply does not have a separate verb ending: it is morphologically identical with the second person imperative. Well known examples are: 'God save the Queen!' and 'Rule Britannia!' (note: no comma in either expression).


I'm not a big fan of the term 'subjunctive', in part because -- other than some historical stuff, which is not my concern at all -- people, grammarians or not, tend to throw in the term and explain away whatever they really can't otherwise, when etymologically speaking all it means is it's some sort of subordinate thing. But then, there're those "subjunctives" that are not really subordinate to anything such as 'God save the Queen!' and 'Rule Britannia!' Talk about a mess!

So let's, for the sake of convenience, say these are not subjunctives but imperatives. If so, I would argue that there is this second-person "you" lurking behind the supposed third-person subject in both of these cases. That is, you are essentially directly speaking to "God" and "Britannia". These subject are not like "the boy" in my own ungrammatical example in post #10, where the speaker is not speaking directly to "the boy."


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## PaulQ

This all seems unnecessarily complicated. Nobody move! = "No person should move!" where should ≈ must.


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## velisarius

What if it were "everybody"?

_John, George, Paul, and Ringo, move!_

Addressing the same set of people: _Everybody move!_ Still addressing those four people: _Nobody move!_ - the meaning is_ Not one of you people move!_


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## PaulQ

All/each one of you should move.

(Again I suspect that the vocative plays a part.)


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## wandle

Let me treat post 17 as parts (a) and (b).

Part (a)

The quotations from Grammarphobia are simply assertions: they just say that any imperative is addressed directly to the recipient as a second person (as if saying that makes it true). They do not raise, let alone answer, the question why we should accept that view.

As I mentioned earlier, if that view were true, there could never be any third person imperatives at all: but they do exist in indisputable form and are a feature of Indo-European languages.

Part (b) 





JungKim said:


> That is, you are essentially directly speaking to "God" and "Britannia".


I disagree. Each of these, like the topic phrase 'Nobody move!' is best seen, I believe, as a third person imperative in the Indo-European tradition.

My case is this. We know from comparative linguistics that the third person imperative exists in a distinct morphological verb ending in a number of Indo-European languages. That cannot be explained away as really a second person imperative, because the two separate forms of imperative (2nd and 3rd) exist side by side, each with its own distinct verb ending.

English belongs to that family but has lost many of its orginal separate morphological endings (in nouns and adjectives as well as verbs). It is more logical and economical to regard 'Nobody move!' as a true third person imperative which has lost its separate ending than to suppose that English, unlike other languages, cannot have a third person imperative. Why regard English as essentially different from other  members of the family?


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## Loob

Wandle and  I often disagree - but here I agree with him.

In _God save the Queen _we have a third-person imperative ~ which you can call subjunctive if you prefer.

In _Nobody move their hands! _we also have a third-person imperative ~ which you can also call subjunctive if you prefer.

Main-clause "third person imperative" is extremely limited in scope: _nobody, anybody, somebody, everybody _+ archaisms.

I'd say that veli's link is wrong to say that imperatives expressed in the third person are "second-person constructions".  For me, they're "third-person constructions" with, sometimes, second-person meaning.


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## JungKim

Loob said:


> ...
> For me, they're "third-person constructions" with, sometimes, second-person meaning.


When exactly is that "sometime"? 
Do you mean that in "God save the Queen", "God" is the third-person subject with the third-person meaning, whereas in "Nobody move their hands!", "Nobody" is the third-person subject with the second-person meaning?


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## PaulQ

entangledbank said:


> It's an interesting little phenomenon: imperative with a subject, and it can be second or third person. Both of these are right:
> 
> Nobody move your hands!
> Nobody move their hands!





JungKim said:


> No, I'm not saying that it's wrong or anything.
> What I'm asking is whether you could call "nobody" there the third person when it actually means "none of *you *guys".


I take your point. It is second person and this accounts easily for the imperative.

It also accounts for entangledbanks interest, because, in those circumstances, but "*your* hands" (the hands of all of you) and *their *hands (the hands of "nobody", which is 3rd person) both work.

Velisarius's post is most helpful.


velisarius said:


> There's an interesting piece on imperatives here:
> http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2014/10/imperative.html
> 
> _The "Cambridge Grammar of the English Language" explains that when an imperative is addressed to “somebody” or “all those in the front row,” the subjects “are also interpreted as ‘somebody among you,’ ‘all those of you in the front row.’ ”
> "So don't be misled by subjects expressed in the third-person. These are still second-person constructions."_


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## wandle

PaulQ quotes velisarius and velisarius quotes the Grammarphobia blog, which quotes or refers to more than one grammar text, saying that when the third person is used, the second is really meant, but none of those quotes or posts offers a reason why we should think that.


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## JungKim

wandle said:


> PaulQ quotes velisarius and velisarius quotes the Grammarphobia blog, which quotes or refers to more than one grammar text, saying that when the third person is used, the second is really meant, but none of those quotes or posts offers a reason why we should think that.


Maybe you'd want to look at it the other way around.
Instead of looking for a reason, which I believe the blog did an excellent job of offering, just look at the outcome when the third-person subject without any second-person meaning implied is used in the imperative mood. Case in point: "The boy come and talk to me" in post #10.


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## PaulQ

Wandle,

I am naturally sadden that you can find there is no reason for our combined conclusion. Can I suggest that we should think it because (i) it applies Occam's Razor and (ii) it is a satisfactory explanation that (iii) ties the various apparent anomalies neatly together and (iv) renders them in terms of presently understood guidance - Oh, and I did add a little of my own. (Did I mention Occam's Razor?)


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## wandle

If Occam's razor is being applied to cut away the third person, that seems to me more like an amputation than a haircut.

This thread contains an interesting discussion. It was started by Pertinax, relying on Huddleston and Pullum CGEL.


Pertinax said:


> it seems to me that third-person imperatives (as understood by H&P 2002) should be classified conceptually and historically as imperatives.





Pertinax said:


> Rodney Huddleston, the sole author of Ch 10 of the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, does distinguish between "third-person imperatives" (pp927-928) and fossilized third-person "optative subjunctives" (p944) (his terms).





Pertinax said:


> The third-person imperative is also explored here (1996, 2003):
> http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/potsdam/papers/GLOT.pdf


berndf was saying that such uses should be seen as third person subjunctives which he sees as a more economical classification within the Germanic family of languages.


berndf said:


> I, therefore, much prefer a classification system which sticks more closely to attested forms where the third person present subjunctive has different meanings, among them imperative and jussive ones.



Both of those contirbutors agree however that they are third-person uses. The Grammarphobia blog wants to eliminate the third person from the picture. That move seems to me to go too far.


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## PaulQ

wandle said:


> berndf was saying that such uses should be seen as third person subjunctives which he sees as a more economical classification within the Germanic family of languages.


That quote seems a little selective, as if cherry-picked... Berndtf actually says


> *But there never was an attested third person jussive or imperative form. *This meaning has always been represented by the present subjunctive.


How would you distinguish between.


John! Pick up the paper
God save us all!
Nobody move!


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## siares

wandle said:


> It is more logical and economical to regard 'Nobody move!' as a true third person imperative which has lost its separate ending than to suppose that English, unlike other languages, cannot have a third person imperative. Why regard English as essentially different from other members of the family?


I've really enjoyed reading this; evolutionary principle of parsimony flawlessly applied. The result might be wrong, the principle isn't. 
The from-within-language utilitarian view would be to conclude whatever is least complicated to use, kind of like mnemonics. I myself will take it too if need be, but I will not want to forget this reasoning.


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## wandle

PaulQ said:


> That quote seems a little selective, as if cherry-picked...


Sorry, that is not a valid comment. What you have quoted in post 29  is a fair comment of my own, not a quote from berndf.
The quote from berndf which I did give is one in which he summarises the point which you quoted from him: it is saying the same thing as your quote from him. My own comment on berndf's position accepts that is what he said and also includes more of his view:


wandle said:


> berndf was saying that such uses should be seen as third person subjunctives which he sees as a more economical classification within the Germanic family of languages.
> 
> 
> berndf said:
> 
> 
> 
> I, therefore, much prefer a classification system which sticks more closely to attested forms where the third person present subjunctive has different meanings, among them imperative and jussive ones.
Click to expand...




PaulQ said:


> How would you distinguish between.
> 
> 1.  John! Pick up the paper
> 2.  God save us all!
> 3.  Nobody move!


Simple: (1) is second person; (2) and (3) are third person.


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## JungKim

Wandle, thanks for the link and the discussion.
After reading through the link and the discussion so far, I think I need to clarify what I actually _intended_ to ask back in post #6, which I apparently was not so successful in asking.

In order to better ask my intended question, I will use the same sentence: "Nobody move their hands!"

My question: Is it a possible imperative in today's English to utter "Nobody move their hands!" in the following context?

Context: You're living in a city where millions of people live. And for some unfathomable reason, you'd like to make everyone in the city stop moving their hands. And you utter the sentence with the intention of ordering all the people in the city to stop moving their hands, although nobody hear your utterance.

Please disregard the absurdity of the context when judging the grammatical validity of the sentence.


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## wandle

JungKim said:


> My question: Is it a possible imperative in today's English to utter "Nobody move their hands!" in the following context?


Is this something someone might say and people would understand? Yes, though a more likely context would be a bank robbery, as in the original example (if we substitute humans for rats): the robber would be trying to stop anyone pressing an alarm button.


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## JungKim

If that's possible, why isn't "The boy come and talk to me" in post #10?


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## JungKim

I don't know why I'm not getting any response to my earlier post. Anyone please?


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## PaulQ

Because everyone, anyone, no one, nobody, everybody, anybody and probably some other similar words do not always function as pure nouns but more as a form of address. See velisarius's post #19.

If you think about it, "Nobody" is said in order to attract everybody's attention.


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## JungKim

PaulQ said:


> Because everyone, anyone, no one, nobody, everybody, anybody and probably some other similar words do not always function as pure nouns but more as a form of address. See velisarius's post #19.
> 
> If you think about it, "Nobody" is said in order to attract everybody's attention.



That, I understand, Paul.

That post of yours, however, doesn't address anything about my question in post #32 or wandle's answer in post #33, let alone my question in post #34, I think.

Please go ahead and give me your answer to my questions in posts #32 and 34, will you?


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## PaulQ

In your theoretical question at #32, the answer is, "Yes, that would be the correct form in order to command them not to move their hands or anything else".

I have just answered your #34 in my #36.


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## JungKim

I got one more question to ask.

Is it possible to replace "nobody" with "no one" and say "No one move their/your hands!" in the same context of robbery?


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## PaulQ

Yes, it is. (In any case, bank robbers are notorious for their disregard for the finer points of language. )


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## wandle

JungKim said:


> If that's possible, why isn't "The boy come and talk to me" in post #10?


It is just as possible in grammar, but it is not idiomatic (i.e. it is not in ordinary use).


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## JungKim

wandle said:


> It is just as possible in grammar, but it is not idiomatic (i.e. it is not in ordinary use).


Since sdgraham declared that "[it] is not English in any sense whatsoever," which was like a couple weeks ago, nobody has ever challenged his dismissal of the construction, and that included yourself, wandle. And now, you're saying that it's possible in today's English grammar? I'm confused, to say the least.


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## Forero

I look at this issue semantically.

"Long live the King", "God save the Queen", and "be that as it may" are all third person. They are not commands since they do not address the King, the Queen, or "that". At least to me they don't.

But "Nobody move!" is a command. It means "Don't anybody move!" = "Don't move, anybody!" and is addressing the same "whoever has ears to hear" as "Freeze!", "Somebody help me!", or "Help me, somebody, anybody!".

And even if I say "Nobody move their hands!", it still means "Don't anybody move your hands!", so it is still a command, an imperative. (Pronoun agreement can operate quite independently of meaning, e.g. "Somebody left their boots on the radiator again, so they are no longer welcome here.").

_Don't you move your hands!
Don't any of you move your_/_their hands!
Don't anybody move your_/_their hands when I'm looking at you_/_them!
Boy, come and talk to me._

_Don't any of them move their hands!
Don't he move his arm!
The boy come and talk to me._

Evidently "nobody", "somebody", "anybody" and agreeing "their", "them", etc., can refer to a person being addressed, but "any of them", "he", and "the boy" cannot.


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## wandle

JungKim said:


> Since sdgraham declared that "[it] is not English in any sense whatsoever," which was like a couple weeks ago, nobody has ever challenged his dismissal of the construction, and that included yourself, wandle.


I have steadily maintained the existence of the third person imperative within the Indo-European family of languages and specifically in English.

Those who say that a verb can only be imperative if it is used in the second person are denying the possiblity of a third person imperative.
The most obvious difficulty with that is the fact that in other languages belonging to the same family as English the third person imperative exists as a distinct morphological form. 

It is just an accident of development that it does not have a distinct form in English: but that is a common phenomenon in English (for example, the first person indicative singular has the same form as the plural).


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## PaulQ

wandle said:


> The most obvious difficulty with that is the fact that in other languages belonging to the same family as English the third person imperative exists as a distinct morphological form.


So basically, you see no evidence for a "third person imperative" in current English?


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## Packard

Everyone seems to be making the assumption that future bank robbers pay attention during grammar lessons.  I don't think good or bad grammar play any part of this dialog.  It is just guys yelling to be obeyed.

It could also be AK-47 wielding robbers who spray the ceiling with bullets and yell out:

_Nobody moves!  Nobody gets hurt!
_
It's not good grammar but sounds perfectly idiomatic to me (especially during a bank robbery).


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## Loob

I think I'm losing track of where this thread is going.  In particular, JungKim, I was puzzled by your "if nobody hears an order, is it still an order?" post 32.  Philosophically - probably not; linguistically - of course!

Being a bear of very little brain, I'll stick to my thesis: if the sentence uses a third person qualifier, then it's third person:
_Nobody raise their hands - third person.
Nobody raise your hand(s) - second person._

Having read the EHL links posted by wandle, it also strikes me that sometimes subjects other than _somebody/nobody/everybody_ can participate in third person imperatives.  The following seems possible to me:
_Stop, everyone! Now ... boys blow their whistles; girls wave their hands in the air!_


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## wandle

PaulQ said:


> So basically, you see no evidence for a "third person imperative" in current English?


That comment appears to assume that only morphology is evidence. However, usage, history of language and comparative studies are all significant.


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## PaulQ

Indeed. But in current English, it is not there.


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## Forero

Loob said:


> I think I'm losing track of where this thread is going.  In particular, JungKim, I was puzzled by your "if nobody hears an order, is it still an order?" post 32.  Philosophically - probably not; linguistically - of course!
> 
> Being a bear of very little brain, I'll stick to my thesis: if the sentence uses a third person qualifier, then it's third person:
> _Nobody raise their hands - third person.
> Nobody raise your hand(s) - second person._


Both of these mean the same thing, and the correct verb form is _raise_, not _raises_, and the reason is that it is a command. And _nobody_, like _no one_, is obviously singular, addressing each person, not all persons, within earshot. The original "Nobody move!" is the same type of sentence.





> Having read the EHL links posted by wandle, it also strikes me that sometimes subjects other than _somebody/nobody/everybody_ can participate in third person imperatives.  The following seems possible to me:
> _Stop, everyone! Now ... boys blow their whistles; girls wave their hands in the air!_


This sounds "off" to me. Whereas I have no problem with _their_ each person addressed by "nobody" (= "not anybody"), I do have a problem with _their_ referring to boys or girls being addressed. In other words, "girls wave their hands" sounds to me like a statement, not a command, making it quite different from "Nobody move!". The singular form of "girls wave their hands" would be "each girl waves her hand(s)" (a correct statement), not "each girl wave her hand(s)" (a malformed command).


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## Loob

That's OK, Forero!  I think JungKim is asking us, in this thread, to try to work out where the boundaries lie....

(I may be wrong.)


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## wandle

PaulQ said:


> Indeed. But in current English, it is not there.


The usage is there: 
_'Nobody move!' 'God save the Queen!' 'Devil take the hindmost' 'God bless us all'_ etc.

These are different from: 
_'Let right be done'_ (periphrastic imperative), _'So be it'_ (subjunctive), _'May the best man win' _(periphrastic subjunctive) etc.

The historical and comparative study of language shows us that the third person imperative is by no means unique to English. There is nothing impossible about it.


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## JungKim

Nobody here has ever said that the third-person form of a word or a phrase is incompatible with the imperative mood in English. I know I haven't. I mean, who in this thread has ever objected to the validity of the following sentence? 


> Nobody move their/your hands!



But all here but wandle think that the following sentence doesn't work in today's English:


> The boy come and talk to me!



So the issue is not whether a third person is compatible with the imperative but why certain kinds of third person are.



wandle said:


> ...
> Those who say that a verb can only be imperative if it is used in the second person are denying the possiblity of a third person imperative.
> ...



Wandle, nobody is denying the possibility of a third person imperative if you're referring to "Nobody move their/your hands!".

But everybody but you is denying it if you're referring to "The boy come and talk to me!".



Loob said:


> I think I'm losing track of where this thread is going.  In particular, JungKim, I was puzzled by your "if nobody hears an order, is it still an order?" post 32.  Philosophically - probably not; linguistically - of course!


If you believe that linguistically it's an order when nobody hears an order, you'll have to explain to me why it's not possible to say "The boy come and talk to me!", or do you think it's possible?
If you think it's possible, how about "He come and talk to me!"



Loob said:


> Being a bear of very little brain, I'll stick to my thesis: if the sentence uses a third person qualifier, then it's third person:
> _Nobody raise their hands - third person.
> Nobody raise your hand(s) - second person._


So you think that "nobody" is the second person in the latter, just because it uses a second person qualifier "your". Your distinction does not really address the fact that both of these examples actually mean the same thing, addressed to the same group of people. And there are cases where you don't use any qualifier as in: "Nobody move!"



Loob said:


> Having read the EHL links posted by wandle, it also strikes me that sometimes subjects other than _somebody/nobody/everybody_ can participate in third person imperatives.  The following seems possible to me:
> _Stop, everyone! Now ... boys blow their whistles; girls wave their hands in the air!_



No matter how far you try to stretch your examples, you can always replace "their" with "your" in your legitimate imperative examples: 
_Stop, everyone! Now ... boys blow *your* whistles; girls wave *your* hands in the air!_

Which means that the third person subjects in your examples are not truly third person but second person at least semantically, as suggested by Forero.
(Cross-posted.)


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## JungKim

wandle said:


> The usage is there:
> _'Nobody move!' 'God save the Queen!' 'Devil take the hindmost' 'God bless us all'_ etc.
> 
> These are different from:
> _'Let right be done'_ (periphrastic imperative), _'So be it'_ (subjunctive), _'May the best man win' _(periphrastic subjunctive) etc.
> 
> The historical and comparative study of language shows us that the third person imperative is by no means unique to English. There is nothing impossible about it.



In your "God" and "Devil" examples, don't you think that the speaker believes at the time of speaking that "God" or "Devil" would actually hear what they say? Or at the very least, the speaker somehow believes at the time of speaking that they are speaking directly to "God" or "Devil" regardless of whether "God" and "Devil" are physically present? If so, "God" and "Devil" can be said to be second person at least semantically.

The "Let right be done" example has a hidden subject "you" and "right" is not the real subject.

The only one that I have hard time understanding is "So be it", which is better understood as a fixed phrase, rather than an example of the imperative mood.

"May the best man win" sounds to me like the speaker asks some sort of permission to "God" or whomever they seek permission from. So essentially, it's more of a question like "May I leave now?" than a command.


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## JungKim

Packard said:


> Everyone seems to be making the assumption that future bank robbers pay attention during grammar lessons.  I don't think good or bad grammar play any part of this dialog.  It is just guys yelling to be obeyed.
> 
> It could also be AK-47 wielding robbers who spray the ceiling with bullets and yell out:
> 
> _Nobody moves!  Nobody gets hurt!
> _
> It's not good grammar but sounds perfectly idiomatic to me (especially during a bank robbery).



Granted, bank robbers might not have learned anything during any grammar lessons back in school. But I do think that all the using English and all the living in a world where English is their mother tongue for their entire life is more than enough to make the bank robbers speak prefect _spoken_ English. 

Somehow I understand how your example is grammatical and idiomatic.
If I were to analyze the grammar behind it, I'd say that issuing a command does not require the imperative mood in English.

"Nobody moves!" is a statement of fact, which is forceful in context enough to sound like a command.
"Nobody gets hurt!" is also a statement of fact, which is just as forceful but not enough to sound like a command per se.

The robbers might have said instead:
_Nobody will move!  Nobody will get hurt!_
_Nobody's gonna move!  Nobody's gonna get hurt!_

And the list goes on.


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## wandle

JungKim said:


> But all here but wandle think that the following sentence doesn't work in today's English:





> The boy come and talk to me!


I have said that it is not idiomatic: not in ordinary use.
That means that such an expression is not normally used in current English.


JungKim said:


> Wandle, nobody is denying the possibility of a third person imperative if you're referring to "Nobody move their/your hands!".


Heaven preserve us! There are several people denying the existence of a third person imperative.

The Grammarphobia blog says that such a case is really a second person imperative.

*PaulQ* says


PaulQ said:


> in current English, it is not there.



Forero says that if the expression is third person, then it is  not a command; and if the expression is a command, then it is second person, not third. In other words, he says there is no third person imperative.

*sdgraham* says


sdgraham said:


> I don't see how you can have an imperative when there's nobody to address.



Come what may, I stand by the third person imperative.


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