Re: Various Commands (was Uralic Negative Verbs)

> >I don't think it's
> >even possible to actually order oneself. Alternately, it's trivial -
> >everything a person does is "ordered" by hirself... but these are mental
> >orders. I mean, a language can sure allow for a first person imperative
> >construction, but it can be only used to announce an already existing
>urge;
> >never to inform oneself of it. This is what makes true 1SG imperativs
> >impossible.
>if one can use an imperative with the
>3rd person, it is hardly much of a stretch to use it for the 1st person.
>In fact the English construction using "let" provides a certain
>continuity between the two.
>
>True, imagining it as a command is not exactly accurate, but as
>natural languages (like Finnish) have 3rd pers. imperative forms
>(which also cannot really be interpreted as commands*), then the
>extension to first person I think is really justified.
>Harold
I'm not trying to say that it's impossible that grammatical categories
called "imperativ" can never be applied to 1st person; that would be absurd.
Only that they're never commands. And since commands are the most typical
usage of imperativs, I view these (and yes, 3p too) as "marginal" or
"idiomatic", or indeed "non-true" usage.

The Finnish "3p imperativ" actually used to be optativ, but was reanalyzed
after the other forms fell out of usage.

AFMCL, in uwjge orders are expressed with the help of specific 2p
pronouns... so "eat your veggies!" would look something like "you-IMP are
eating your veggies". (Sorry for the lack of translations, but my lexicon's
still very unstable.)

John Vertical

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