Typological analysis of the imperative paradigms in the Slavic languages

The topic that the present article studies is the verbal category ‘imperative mood’, characteristic of all contemporary Slavic languages. The paper attempts to make a typological classification of Slavic imperative paradigms with regard to various distinctive criteria, defined in the course of the analysis. It investigates the level of unification and structural analogy; but at the same time it raises the question of formal-semantic asymmetry when the imperative forms find their grammatical realization in the nucleus of modality. The unique place of Bulgarian among other kindred languages in respect of the great diversity of analytical forms, a result of the specific intralinguistic changes, is pointed out. The concluding part of the study presents some of the recent tendencies in the functioning of Slavic imperatives.