Re: USAGE: Circumfixes

En réponse à Philippe Caquant :


>Well, syntactically, there are only 3 persons in
>French imperative:
>- 2nd singular (ex: sache !)
>- 1st plural (ex: sachons !)
>- 2nd plural (ex: sachez !)
>
>When someone needs to express an imperative at the 3rd
>person, he uses subjunctive preceded by "que":
>- qu'il sache !
>- qu'ils sachent !
>
>So "qu'il sache" may play the role of an imperative,
>nevertheless it is a subjunctive.
You keep quoting me out of context in order to prove your point. That won't 
work. I *never* claimed that "qu'il sache" was not a subjunctive, quite the 
contrary, I claimed *exactly* that it was a subjunctive. I was there 
talking about "puissiez" and "veuillez" which were incorrectly analysed as 
subjunctives on the website, and which I argued are really 2nd personal 
plural imperatives. You're only confirming my point with what you just 
wrote ("sachez", which has also the same form as the subjunctive, and that 
you call 2nd person plural imperative). You're actually agreeing with me here.


>You can find a note about it in "Le nouveau
>Bescherelle, L'Art de conjuguer, Dictionnaire de
>12.000 verbes" (ed.1981), on page 56 ("Verbe savoir"):
>"A noter l'emploi curieux du subjonctif dans les
>expressions; je ne sache pas qu'il soit venu; il n'est
>pas venu, que je sache".
I've never trusted the Bescherelle. But everything you're saying won't 
change the fact that this expression is unknown to me and to probably 95% 
of the French population. That's the only important thing.
__________________________________________________________________________
En réponse à Remi Villatel :



>>"Slave étant dit, apprends à esposer les faits d'un
>>ton suce sein, mon pote !"
>
>"slave" = instead of "cela" (that) that we often pronounce [sla].
This is also a "clin d'oeil" to a tendency of spoken French to add liaison 
consonants between a word ending with a vowel and one beginning with a 
vowel, even when it has no business being there, or to use the wrong 
liaison vowel (and when it happens, approximately any consonant, except 
perhaps stops, can be used ;)) . I remember a comic theatre play from a 
while ago that I liked very much. Its title was "le gros n'avion", with the 
"n" indicating such a "wrong" liaison ;) ).


>-------------------
>Phew! I had a hard time on these ones. However, English isn't my first
>natlang so feel free to criticize each and every word. ;-)  Except one
>thing: I know that the plural of "mouse" is "mice".
Another French author which used the same kind of "invented French 
language", but is considered more "literary" by the intelligentsia, is 
Boris Vian. I have "l'écume des jours" here. A great book. But with Vian, 
not only the language but the world where the characters live has little to 
do with reality as we experience it ;)) .

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang. 

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