Re: Various Commands (was Uralic Negative Verbs)

On 4/8/06, John Vertical <johnvertical@...> wrote:

> "Past imperative" would most likely end up being "I wanted you to ... " I'm
> not sure about the conditional; it could stack into an optative of sorts, or
> just end up as a conditional imperative (do X if ...)
Or "I/you/she/they should have, ought to have done..."

Esperanto can do something like this by using the -int-
past participial suffix with the imperative auxiliary "devi",
-- usually in the conditional mood though:

Vi devintus iri.
Vi dev-int-us ir-i
2   IMP-past-V.COND go-V.INF

You should have gone.

In gzb this is trivial, one just adds the imperative
particle after the past tense particle (or perhaps
before it):

runx-zox   mje  mwe  tq.
go-V.ACT past IMP    2

In a world with time-travel, of course, such
constructions would be read/heard differently
-- as meaning "Don't have gone!"
"Undo your having gone!"   "Make it such
that you didn't go!"

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry