Re: Verbal distinctions

Quoting Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>:

> At 03:46 PM 8/19/03 +0200, Andreas wrote:
>
> >Same; Paraphrase with _zrón_; _ta zrón shu seno kenk_ "I
> >want that he was alive" (assuming I get the English correctly - I take it
> to
> >indicate a wish that "he" had been alive at some past point in time).
>
> As far as getting the English correctly goes, you'll want to use the verb
> "wish" here rather than "want."  (I wish I could explain the reason, beyond
> just saying that "I want that" is unidiomatic.  I'm sure there's more two
> it than that, but I can't grasp it myself.)
The use of "want" rather than "wish", and of the indicative in the second
clause, is simply an attempt on my part to be as literal as possible; the
translation did not aim at being good English.

> "I wish that he was alive," is a widely used (albeit slightly
> ungrammatical) way of expressing a wish that the person were alive at the
> present time.  The truly correct syntax is, "I wish that he were
> alive."  (And if you say it this way, your grammar will be better than
> about 90% of all Americans.  I'm not kidding.)  The "were" here in place
> of  the ususal "was" is the subjunctive mood in English and is used to
> indicate a contrary-to-fact condition.
So the English construction necessarily implies that "he" was in fact dead? If
so, the Tairezazh should rather be _ta zrón shu seno kenk lep_ "I want that he
were alive". (Again, "want" is used because I feel it's the most literal
translation of the Tairezazh verb.)

> If you want to express that you currently desire that someone had been
> alive at some previous time, you use the past perfect subjunctive (and the
> subjunctive in the past perfect doesn't happen to look any different than a
> past perfect would look in the indicative.)  You would say, "I wish that he
> had been alive."
>
> And if you say, "I wished that he had been alive," you have expressed that
> you wished at some time in the past that someone had been alive at that
> time (but he wasn't.)
>
> "I wished that he were alive," expresses much the same idea as the previous
> example.
>
> O hope I haven't been too confusing.  I also hope that I haven't been
> offensive by correcting your English.  These are truly very difficult
> constructions (which native English speakers don't always get right), and I
> am really glad that I am no longer required to construct similar sentences
> in Latin; that was always something of a headache.
I don't take offense at having my English correct (as long as it's done
politely) - how else am I supposed to learn. But I think you misunderstood my
original question (which, grantedly, could have been clearer), which was
whether "I wish him to have lived" signifies that the speaker wishes that "he"
was alive at some past point in time - not, f'rinstance, that a wish that "he"
is currently alive (which a similar Swedish construction means).

                                                     Andreas

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