Abstract
Imperative sentences are used to express commands, requests, advice, suggestions, permission, invitations, etc. This paper attempts a constructionbased account of families of positive imperative constructions in the Shunzhi edition of the Lizhi ji順治刊荔枝記, the seventeenth century script of a play, written in Southern Min dialects. In the bulk of the paper the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of various positive imperative constructions are elaborated on and considerable attention is devoted to fleshing out the similarities and differences among them and the interaction between imperative constructions and phase (Aktionsart).