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Re: past tense imperative

From:Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
Date:Friday, April 15, 2005, 13:47
Hi!

René Uittenbogaard <ruittenb@...> writes:
> A couple of days ago, I was struck by an interesting grammatical construction > in Dutch. Dutch has a construction in which an imperative can be used in > the past perfect: > > Had dat dan gezegd! - You should have told me so! > Was dan niet gegaan! - You shouldn't have gone!
Cool! German cannot do that, that's for sure! Very concise -- I think I'll have to keep that it mind for conlanging. It's a bit strange, of course, since the action contained it the command is obviously already terminated, so 'imperative' is a strange word here.
> AFAIK, in other languages, the imperative always seems to be used > with the present tense. > > Are there other languages in which this phenomenon is known?
No idea. **Henrik

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Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>