Re: USAGE: Circumfixes

--- Christophe Grandsire said:
(...)
> For many irregular verbs,
> the 2nd person plural
> imperative has been taken from the subjunctive
> ("être": "soyez" and
> "avoir": "ayez" are two other examples). That
> *doesn't* mean you can
> analyse them as subjunctives. They are imperatives,
> and seen as such by a
> majority of speakers. The origin of an expression
> doesn't matter when we're
> talking about its current use. So the site is
> incorrect in treating them as
> subjunctives. They are plain imperatives.
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.

> - "savoir": as I said, I've never heard or read the
> expression "je ne sache
> pas que".
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".


=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


	
		
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