Re: Mood names ...

On Mon, Jan 20, 2003 at 09:33:54PM +0000, Andreas Johansson wrote:
[snip]
> Besides the easy ones (indicative, imperative, interogative, subjunctive), I
> use "abilitative" for the adverb corresponding to English "can, be able to"
> and "desiderative" for the one corresponding to "want to". Is this good
> usage, or are there other terms I should better be using for these?
I'd replace "abilitative" with "potentive". Just IMHO. (It sounds more
Latinesque to me. "Ability" sounds too modern. :-P)

> Also, there's three moods I have no idea what I should call. They, roughly,
> corresponds to English "ought to", "need to" and "must". The difference
> between the two later is a bit blurry, but basically the former indicates an
> inner need of the subject, the later an outside compulsion. Eg _ta raig koi_
> "I must eat (because otherwise I starve)" vs _ta raig tsin_ "I must eat
> (because someone forces me to)", _ta_ being the pronoun "I" and _raig_
> present tense finite verb "eat(s)".
[snip]

Perhaps obligative? Sorry, I'm not good enough with words to come up with
3 degrees of obligatives. :-)


T

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