Re: past tense imperative

René Uittenbogaard wrote:

>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!
>
>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?
>
>René
There's a "past tense" in the imperative mood in French.. But it's only a
name, when analysed it's obvious that it's in fact imperative, perfective,
and future

Anyway, what I know is that it's always hard to translate that form, is
there a future imperative equivalence I'm not awared in English?

present -> travaille! = work!
past -> ai travaillé! = ~have worked!~ (would it really mean something in
english?)

In a full sentence, it could be:

Toi! Ai travaillé quand je serai revenu! = You! I want you to have worked
when I'll be back


Anyway even if that's not a past imperative like you wanted but it's not a
present imperative..

- Max

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