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

On Tue, May 15, 2007 at 12:06:19PM -0700, David J. Peterson wrote:
[...]
> And, yes, this is very OT, and I apologize.  Ob Conlang, I've
> never done anything interesting at all with imperatives.
Hmm. Then I probably haven't either, since that comment made me wonder,
"What is there that might be interesting about imperatives?"


> Well, perhaps one thing.  In Epiq, the future tense of the second
> person is used to form imperatives (present or future). We can do the
> same thing in English, I suppose, but there is no other dedicated
> morphological process for imperatives in Epiq:
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).


> m@kwa kakanoXani.
> /fish(acc.) eat(past, active, perfect, non-evidential, 2sg.sbj.)/
> "You ate the fish."
>
> m@kwa kapaloXani!
> /fish(acc.) eat(future, active, imperfect, non-evidential, 2sg.sbj.)/
> "Eat the fish!"
[...]

Is there any reason to switch from perfect to imperfect in the
imperative?

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)

The complement is usually omitted in imperatives, unless strong emphasis
is desired:

3)	ka'am tse na  tsiutuen usun      sei tsa!
	eat   2sp RCP worm     water:GEN CVY COMPL
	Eat the fish (or else)!

Unlike the English transliterations thereof, the Tatari Faran
imperatives that contain 2nd person pronouns are actually considered
more polite than those without:

4)	ka'am tsiutuen usun      sei!
	eat   worm     water:GEN CVY
	Eat the fish! (Less polite than (1))


Hmm, it seems that I do have a lot of interesting things to say about
imperatives after all. :-)

[*] ObConculture: Fara has no large bodies of water with which to
identify with a sea or ocean, except a large lake in Southern Fara which
is usually toxic due to submerged active fumaroles. Because of this,
seafood is unknown to the san faran, and edible fish are rare. The
native term for fish reflects the san faran's view toward this
situation: _tsiutuen_ means "worm" or "maggot", and _usu_ means "water";
hence, _tsiutuen usun_ - "water worm" or "water creature", those strange
things that like to swim in the lake even though it's often poisonous.


--T

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