>>>>Babelfish, actually. Thanks for the correction -- I have to keep it in mind the next time I have a stopover in Amsterdam. The abbreviation lol is literally "laugh out loud", which is an "imperative sentence" since it doesn't have a subject. It works, though, if you are ordering someone to laugh out loud right now, although that's not the context of this abbreviation. What-ever.
>>>
>>>Whatever? :)
>>>Now I'm even more puzzled. Do you english speakers realize the confusion for all others? Whenever I read LOL, I assume it means "Laughing out loud", which actually means "I am laughing out loud". Your explanation would imply that someone is ordering ME to laugh out loud??
>>
>>I think Pertti is trying to pull a me on you here, attempting to apply logic to language - "no subject, therefore imperative". Yeah, right.
>
>English truly seems to be the only language where a double positive can change the meaning of a sentence into negative. As in "yeah, right."
>
>But "imperative sentence" is a grammatical construct. Really. Could make a Wikipedia entry about, to give some weight, if like. <g>

It is a construct, but a lol inserted in a middle of a sentence surely isn't one, simply because it's not a sentence, it's an insertion, and IIRC it's "laughING out loud". Probably comes from all the IRC /me syntax.

Speaking of sentences, is "you get a life" a short or a long sentence?