Wednesday, March 8, 2017

grammar - What's the subject in "You, go to the store"?

In the following sentence, what is the function of "You"?





You, go to the store.




I know the sentence is in the imperative mood, and that generally means there is an implicit second-person subject. If we dropped the initial "You", the subject would be that implicit subject.



While "you" matches that second-person subject, that seems just incidental and it seems like it is just an expression of address that happens to match the implicit subject.



Is it the subject, or merely a vocative expression? Or in other words, is the subject the "You" in the sentence, or is it the implicit subject from the imperative mood?

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