Re: THEORY: third-person imperatives

"Raymond A. Brown" wrote:

> 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.]).
Which is to say, the English present subjunctive is simply the same
as the infinitive -- much the same as in German, where one set of
subjunctives (Konjunktiv I) is simply the infinitive stem plus the regular
subjunctive personal endings:

er spielt = he plays (indicative)  (infinitive: = spielen)
er spiele = he play, may he play, etc.
er ist = he is (infinitive = sein)
er sei = he be

> 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.
Right -- I think that much has been demonstrated.  Hmm... but what about
*first* person imperatives?  Would these, too, be unable to be expressed
by anything other than modal auxilliaries like "must"?  (As for whether such
a thing could even exist, one might say that such a statement represents that
one is in the act of deciding that one must indeed do something; for me,
"must" implies that one has just an obligation, which does not imply that
any action will result from that)


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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
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