Re: OT: Imperatives (Was: Re: OT: German Imperatives)

Teoh:
<<
Wait, is Epiq a new conlang? I don't remember hearing about it before
(but then I haven't been reading very much of CONLANG recently).
 >>

Kind of.  I started working on it at Berkeley, and really picked up
on it when I found a grammar and dictionary of Inuktitut at UCSD.
I used it in Relay 10:

http://steen.free.fr/relay10/

And I put up just about all the information I've got on it here:

http://dedalvs.free.fr/epiq/main.html

Teoh:
<<
Is there any reason to switch from perfect to imperfect in the
imperative?
 >>

Because technically it's the future tense, and I'm not sure really how
to deal with that.  I need to actually use the language more and
think about what makes sense; what fits.  You have to choose one
of three options:

-irrealis
-perfect
-imperfect

It seemed to me that there's a difference between irrealis and
perfect/imperfect--where the irrealis is a kind of wish or hope
about the future, whereas the perfect/imperfect focus on an
action *actually* happening in the future.  It may be that this
will become *the* distinguishing characteristic between an
imperative and an ordinary future tense.  At this point, once
I decided to use either the perfect or imperfect, it seemed to
me that the perfect focuses on the endpoint/completion of an
action, and the imperfect focuses on the action itself (that the
action should at some time occur--should be started).  That's
why I went with the imperfect.

Jeff wrote:
<<
Depends on your perspective, really. In (Peninsular) Spanish, with
formal forms of address (using the polite "2nd person" pronouns
"Usted" (sg) and "Ustedes" (pl), you use 3rd person agreement on the
verb (since the forms originate in the formula "Vuestra Merced" "Your
Grace" and, accordingly, refer obliquely to a second person using a 3rd
person term).
 >>

I always thought it came from Arabic "ustaadh" [?us.'taaD], a
way to address someone with respect.  It always seemed like
far too much of a coincidence that two words pronounced
almost identically and with almost the exact same usage should
be totally unrelated.  Apparently history says it's so, though.

Teoh:
<<
Tatari Faran imperatives are mostly indicated by an overt change in word
order, from the V2 indicative order to verb-initial:

1)	tse na  ka'am tsiutuen usun      sei tsa.
	2sp RCP eat   worm     water:GEN CVY COMPL
	You ate/are eating the fish. (Indicative)

2)	ka'am tse na  tsiutuen usun      sei.
	eat   2sp RCP worm     water:GEN CVY
	Eat the fish[*]. (Imperative)
 >>

You know, it seems to be common for imperatives that the verb,
wherever it lives usually, gets moved to the front.  To the extent
that this is natural, perhaps Epiq may need another imperative
form--a short form that's less polite/more urgent than the long
form.  (This would, of course, allow it to move to the front.)

-David
*******************************************************************
"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/

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