“Now let’s you eat something” - the particulization of let’s: evidence (not only) from the English-Czech parallel corpora

The status of let in let-constructions has been widely discussed in the literature (Collins, 2004; Xiang & Liu, 2018). Most studies demonstrate that the expression let can take on diverse syntactic, semantic and pragmatic functions. Apart from belonging to the class of lexical verbs, it can occur as an illocutionary marker of directives (in so called ordinary imperatives, and first person inclusive imperatives) and optatives (in open-let imperatives), exhibiting different grammatical properties and reaching different levels of grammaticalization (Hopper & Traugott, 1993, pp. 10–14, ). 

The lowest degree of grammaticalization of let is shown in ordinary imperatives (as in Let me tell you why), in which this expression retains its permissive meaning and takes implicit you as a subject and a question tag will you/won’t you (Collins, 2004, p. 300). However, in many uses let has diverged from a lexical verb – it has been semantically bleached and fossilized in syntax (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002, p. 935). Its particle-like status is evident in negative constructions where let +’s is negated by don’t that follows it, as in let’s don’t go there (COCA, SPOK_2006). 

Strong evidence for its syntactic reanalysis may be found in a specific subtype of let-constructions, in which let fused with the contracted form of the personal pronoun us (’s) syntactically and semantically, as in “Now let’s you eat something” (InterCorp). Such usages are considered highly informal and acceptable only for some speakers (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002, p. 934), yet fully integrated into the language system. In this type of constructions let’s is followed by a pronoun, functioning as subject, and the contracted form is “no longer associated with us” (Quirk et al., 1985, p. 148). These grammatical properties indicate that let’s is not construed as a verb and functions as a marker of the illocutionary force of the utterance. 

 While considerable attention has been paid to the discourse and syntactic functions of let’s whose reference to the first person plural pronoun us is still traceable, uses such as ‘Now let’s you eat something’ have remained underexplored. Therefore, this paper attempts to address the gap. It will demonstrate that let’s can be used in all types of let-constructions (ordinary imperatives, first person inclusive imperatives and open let-imperatives). Also, it can express speaker’s inclusiveness, addressee’s inclusiveness and both the speaker’s and addressee’s inclusiveness. 

To provide a description of functions of let’s and to identify a particular type of the let-construction, the following corpora will be used. The first source of data is represented by the monolingual corpora: the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), The British National Corpus (BNC) and the Spoken BNC2014 where the sequences with let’s followed by any type of pronoun will be manually checked. As there is some indeterminacy between the individual functions of let’s, the analysis will also be based on the Czech translations of English uses of let’s + pronoun, involved in the parallel corpora InterCorp (v16ud – English/Czech) accessed via KonText interface (the query [word = "let's"] [upos="PRON"]).

The results obtained from the corpus analysis suggest that the use of the sequence of let’s + pronoun is limited only to American English (except for let’s + all). Furthermore, the expression let’s is rather restricted in the pronoun selection. It mainly occurs with the first and second person singular and plural pronouns and indefinite pronouns, e.g. let’s you and me/us/me/you/everybody), referring to the speaker and/or the addressee(s). It can occur in all three types of let-constructions, yet it is most frequent when it functions as a grammaticalized marker of inclusive directives. 

Such a conclusion is also supported by the data from the parallel corpora. They reflect the particle-like status of let’s, demonstrating that let’s mainly corresponds to inflectional endings (person and mood markers) in Czech. It translates most frequently as the ending of the present indicative (e.g. -me: všichni se usadíme – let’s everyone take a seat), thus toning down the face-threatening character of the directive force of the utterance (see also Collins, 2004, p. 302).