Re: past tense imperative

Hi!
Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> writes:
> 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.
Thinking again, I'd probably include an imperative in some irrealis mood
in past perfect in a conlang.  Thus in German, I'd approximate that
with 'Konjunktiv' ('subjunctive' in English?):

   *Hätt' das dann auch gesagt!
   *Wär dann halt nicht gegangen!

Of course, these are ungrammatical, but nice for a conlang, as I said.

**Henrik

Reply