Re: THEORY: third-person imperatives

Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:

>    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.
> Call the "let"-construction a 3rd person imperative if you must, but I
> still think it's just an optative/hortative construction.
I think what his underlying implication was that a language should be able
to handle those *meanings*, whether it be through a subjunctive or 3rd person
imperatives, or whatever.  He wasn't, I think, saying that a language has to have
a form of the imperative verb for the third person -- just the general meaning.


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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
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