Re: THEORY: third-person imperatives

   Date:         Tue, 27 Apr 1999 20:35:32 +0100
   From: "Raymond A. Brown" <raybrown@...>

   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.

Of course not. But just because classical Greek has both optatives and
3rd person imperatives, there's no urgent need for any other language,
nat- or con-, to have the same distinction. English happens to express
both of these senses (and some others) with the "let"-construction;
Romance languages use the subjunctive for it (and for a different set
of other purposes).

Call the "let"-construction a 3rd person imperative if you must, but I
still think it's just an optative/hortative construction.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)