Re: Imperatives... does this work?

Pablo David Flores wrote:

>That makes sense. My L1 (Hokkien) works that way sometimes, too. :-)
>I suspect it's an IE phenomenon to change quoted imperatives into
>infinitives or some other verb form, but someone better-clued should step
>up and (dis)prove me.
Okay. That's all I really was in doubt about... I was unaware of any
languages using it this way.

>English goes for the infinitives. Spanish prefers the subjunctive,
>which is at least a finite form. That's because Sp only has a
>second person real imperative; the other persons are taken from
>the subjunctive mood.
Hmm... it may be nearly the same thing then. Rhean has the full six forms in
the imperative. If it didn't, I probably wouldn't have got it into my head
to use such a construction.

>For Rhean, you could maybe use an alternative way: a particle that
>marks reported speech.
Em, no. I'm not having any difficulty marking reported speech. In a way,
|du| meaning "that..." or "the fact that..." is like a particle for reported
speech, but it's also used in constructions like "think that..." "know
that..." etc.

Zduais' du davgarat i mac'iku kuriri.
OR
Du davgarat i mac'iku kuriri zduais'.
He said that he'll be coming into town tomorrow.

Direct quotes are no problem either, really. No special particle is needed:

Zduais' o "Davgarat i mac'iku kurirmi"
OR
"Davgarat i mac'iku kurirmi" zduais'.
He said "I'll be coming into town tomorrow."

(The |o| in the first example has nothing to do with speech, it simply marks
the object when it is out of place in the sentence. When the object is in
its usual place before the verb, as in the second sentence, the |o| is not
used.)

The original problem was one of "indirect" imperatives. I think it's best
summed up by saying that the imperative will always be inflected for the
person who is being told to do something. This should make sense out of
those first and third person examples I posted.

NS

_________________________________________________________________
Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail.
http://www.hotmail.com