Re: THEORY: third-person imperatives

Oh dear, I should've known that my quoting from the Pater Noster might lead
us off into theological discussion. I didn't intend this, I wanted to
present the three petitions as _linguistic_ examples. I'll just requote
before commenting on responses:

hagiasthe:to:        to onoma sou
hallow+PASS+3RD-IMP  the name of-you

elthato:      he: basileia sou
come+3RD-IMP the kingdom of-you

gene:the:to:            to thele:ma sou, ho:s en ourano:i kai epi ge:s
come-into-being+3RD-IMP the will of-you, as   in heaven   even on earth
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At 2:07 am -0400 27/4/99, Nik Taylor wrote:
[....]
>Well, as I've understood it, it's more like "may thy name be hallowed",
>that is, "may thy name be honored among humans" or something to that
>effect.
....which one would expect to optative mood in Greek.
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At 4:14 pm +0200 27/4/99, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
>   Date:         Tue, 27 Apr 1999 06:59:07 +0100
>   From: "Raymond A. Brown" <raybrown@...>
>
>   hagiasthe:to:        to onoma sou
>   hallow+PASS+3RD-IMP  the name of-you
>
>In Danish, the verbs in these three phrases are put in the present
>subjunctive, and I guess that it's the same in English even though you
>can't really tell.
It is the same in English; you can tell only by the fact that though the
subjects are singular nouns (cf 'Thy kindom come' ~ 'thy kindom comes
[indic.]), the verb appears without final -s or in the case of 'to be' is
simply "be" (cf. 'Hallowed by the name' ~ 'hallowed is thy name' [indic.]).

The Latin version also, of course, has subjunctives; many (European)
languages use the subjunctive for the "3rd pers. imperative" or "jussive"
as it is perhaps better termed.
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At 12:05 pm -0400 27/4/99, Padraic Brown wrote:
[....]
>
>I'm not entirely certain _why_ the subjunctive is used here (we are taught
>that the name _is_ holy, the plan _is_ in effect and the kingdom _is_ at
>hand); so I think it's basically up for argument and discussion what sort
>of forms these are.
No argument, I'm afraid, about what form the original Greek is.

>Personally, I've always thought of them along the
>lines of a supplicatory "polite command", though not necessarily second
>person.
Nothing in the Greek to convey politeness - and, conversely, nothing to
convey impoliteness!  Just that politeness doesn't come into the original.
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At 12:12 pm -0400 27/4/99, Nik Taylor wrote:
[....]
>Basically.  In Lutheran theology, these are the "petitions", the Lord's
>Prayer being broken up into seven petitions, plus the doxology (for
>thine is the kingdom ...); it's parallel to "Give us this day our daily
>bread", etc., except that the last four are second-person (you give us,
>you forgive us, you lead us not, you deliver us), while the first three
>are third-person (not *"hallow thy name", but "thy name be hallowed")
Exactly - and not just Lutheran theology.  In the "Catechism of the
Catholic Church" (the Catechism prepared following Vatican II) PART FOUR,
Section Two , Article 3 is titled "The Seven Petitions" [of the Lord's
Prayer].  I guess, indeed, this must be common to all 'mainstream'
Christian theology.

The last four petitions are 'normal' second person imperatives in Greek:
dos he:min - give us....
aphes he:min - forgive us....
me: eiseneNke:is he:mas... don't take us into...
rhysai he:mas.... free us....

(Ok - I know the third one is 2nd. sing. subjunctive - that's because
negative imperatives were expressed that way).

But in Greek the first three petitions are also expressed in the
_imperative_ mood, since ancient Greek had 3rd person endings (singular &
plural) for this mood besides the normal 2nd person forms.

Whatever one may think or wish or theologize, the first three in the Greek
(I know the _oral_ original of the prayer would've been in Aramaic - but it
was first written down in Greek) are no more & no less than 3rd singular
imperative.

[The doxology BTW is not part of the Greek original - but got added to some
versions later from the habit of adding doxologies to psalms & other
portions of scriptures used in worship.  But the above Catechism does have
Article 4: The Final Doxology  :) ].
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So, to get back to the start of this thread: there is IMHO a need for a
language to be able to express such forms and, indeed, several conlangers
have told us how their langs do that.  We can't, I think, simply scrap them
and rephrase with 2nd person imperatives.

Ray.