imperative clause + question tag – English Grammar Profiler
In the English Grammar Profile, B2 point 28 in the category of QUESTIONS is defined as:
affirmative or negative tag after an imperative clause to soften the imperative.
*Some examples don’t seem to soften but instead add a touch of sarcasm.
iWeb corpus doesn’t allow searching for such a complex string.
We can start with getting , _vm _p ?
1 , SHALL WE? 8052
*By far the most common imperative is ‘let’s’
2 , WOULD YOU? 3553
Collocates to the left _vv0:
2 GET 16 3 WANT 12 4 MEAN 9
5 EAT 9
*Clearly this grammar is informal and is hard to find in GoogleNews at all, so here are a couple of examples in iWeb:
- Timmy, get that door, would you ? – Well, you lost your shoe, sweetheart.
- We met at the open house last week. Get some guts, would you? I got some cheese. Give me a break.
__________________
3 , CAN YOU? 2074
4 , WILL YOU? 1852
Sit down and shut up, will you?
listen
5 , WOULD IT? 1258 6 , CAN IT? 1206 7 , CAN WE? 702 8 , CAN THEY? 607 9 , CAN I? 575 10 , WILL YA? 544 11 , WOULD THEY? 534 12 , COULD IT? 474 13 , WOULD WE? 384 14 , WILL IT? 380 15 , COULD YOU? 329 16 , SHOULD IT? 268 17 , CAN HE? 264 18 , WOULD HE? 234 19 , COULD THEY? 224
20 , WILL THEY? 192
There are no examples in the PELIC corpus for this grammar.