Re: THEORY: third-person imperatives

On Sat, 24 Apr 1999 16:34:33 -0500 Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
writes:
>Hey, I was just wondering how people here handle the third
>person imperative.  In my Greek class, we're getting things like
>timat=F4 oun ho ge d=EAmos ton Hom=EAron kai ton Euripid=EAn
>"Therefore, have the people honor Homer and Euripides"
>(I know, I know, a really contrived sentence... but it serves
>the point.)
>
>In Degaspregos, one would just use the third person pronoun
>or noun with a imperative mode verb:
>Sunote, dugatros teoso leobosna teutososna gnoiat
>'Son, have your daughter know of the life/history of your tribe'
>Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
Hmm...i'm not sure about this.  One simple way would be to just use the
imperative "tense" vowel with the third-person pronoun.  So therefore it
would be something like:

_ei-o-bar, ize-yed tze a-bar liiyolk-a tza'amil-a tze-a_

(vocative)-(male)-child, she(imperative)-know your
(female)-child life(situation)-the of'tribe/people-the your-the

"son, have your daughter know of the lifestyle of your people"
(slightly different sentence than yours)

With the verb _iz|e-yed_ "she (imperative) know" being the important one
here.
However, especially with this sentence, this form seems unnatural to me.
The imperative isn't really on the daughter, but on the son/father, who
is being told to cause his daughter to know - so therefore i would
translate it by the meaning, as something more like:

_ei-o-bar, eze: ga'izii-yed tze a-bar..._

(vocative)-(male)-child, you(imperative, verbless)
that'she(future)-know your daughter

The verbless subject-tense complex _eze:_ ( the : represents a written
accent and the lengthening that goes with it, /EzE:/ ) means something
like "do!", in the same way that _ezu:_ means "you did", _eza:_ means
"you are (doing)", _ezoi:_ means "you (in general) do" and _ezii:_ means
"you will".

So the above sentence means something more like "son, do something so
that your daughter will know..."

I can't think of any situation where a true third-person imperative would
be needed that couldn't be redefined (or better defined?) as a
second-person imperative affecting a third person.


-Stephen (Steg)
 _,tu izii-nged i izii-ta~b, i izii-tein deiyus sudiltao,._

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