imperative clause + question tag

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

  Lifehacker Australia
Let’s get into it, shall we? First of all, what does ‘burnout’ entail?

*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.

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