Re: Imperative vs Jussive vs Hortative

Most French conjugator-dictionaries list these under the same tense,
but French doesn't have a 3rd person.  French would use the
subjunctive, and you would say "Qu'ils puissent manger du ga^teau",
literally "That they may eat cake".

Esperanto, my L3, doesn't mark person for this group of tenses but
calls it the jussive.

As for actual differences, I don't really think there are any.  All
three seem to express the same idea of "I command these people to
perform this action."

On 12/27/05, Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:
> As far as I can tell, the imperative, jussive and hortative cases have
> roughly the same semantic connotation, except they're split by person,
> thus:
>
> Hortative: 1st person plural inclusive (Let's eat!)
> Imperative: 2nd person (Go!)
> Jussive: 3rd person (Let them eat cake!)
>
> Is that all there is to it, or am I missing some subtle (or not so subtle)
> distinction? I notice the jussive and hortative are formed with "let" in
> English, but is that part of a larger pattern, for instance?
>
>
>
>
> Paul
>