3rd-person imperatives

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Cursus
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3rd-person imperatives

Post by Cursus »

Wheelock didn't really discuss them, so I'm wondering if these are basically synonymous with the jussive subjunctive. For example, could "Let him/her/it love Julia" be rendered either as "Juliam amet" or "Juliam amato"? The subjunctive sounds much more natural, and my grammars don't really address the difference, if there is one.

anphph
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Re: 3rd-person imperatives

Post by anphph »

The -to/-nto forms are more accurately described as future imperatives. They can have a more general, imprecise range, in which case they would fit your description as "3rd person imperatives" (they are famously popular forms for legal declarations), but consider expressions such as "scito" — "know [you]", or "haveto" — "hail", and you will understand that it is primarily a second-person force that's being implied.

Then you get dragged on to what exactly does it mean to have "an imperative looking towards the future", as if all imperative actions didn't look towards the future. That uncertainly was undoubtely present in the language from Classical times on, to the effect that it became a formal use, restricted to certain domains (legal, religious), except in some verbs where the present imperative is not used (I mentioned "scire", but "esse" as well — I'm sure "es lætus!" is attested somewhere, but the common form is certainly "esto lætus!").

anphph
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Re: 3rd-person imperatives

Post by anphph »

A quick google turned up this one, it seems to be quite well explained, pacing a few grammars against each other, and even facing up to some of the ambiguities (and what he calls 'schools of thought') which I glossed over in my post above.

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~struck/classe ... ative.html

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Cursus
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Re: 3rd-person imperatives

Post by Cursus »

It never occurred to me to look up "future imperative." Silly Latin.

That info (and A&G's description of them now that I knew what to look for) lead me to think they're not really interchangeable. Thanks for for providing that.

So would it be fair to say the difference between "Juliam amet" and "Juliam amato" would be something like "Let him/her/it love Julia" and "[Someone] loves Julia (in general)" or "Let/have [someone] love Julia (in some odd legal context)"?

anphph
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Re: 3rd-person imperatives

Post by anphph »

Juliam amet! - Let him love Julia.

Juliam amato! a) You, love Julia! b) *

* In legal contexts it would usually be something like, "Si quis romanus introiverit urbem, Juliam amato." — "If a Roman enters the city, he must go and love Julia / let him love Julia."

horus92
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Re: 3rd-person imperatives

Post by horus92 »

The 2nd person future imperative is very common with some verbs (esse, scire for example) and generally not unused (I love this one in Cicero for the alliteration: "[hoc genus iniuriae] suo non nominis pondere penditote", basically the same as the present imperative.

3rd person future imperative is pretty much exclusive to archaicizing legal language. I don't even remember Plautus ever using it. But yeah it's like a jussive subjunctive.

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