What happened to the third person imperative?

Greek Koine and Biblical and Medieval Greek
1

I have a few questions about the (especially) later history of the third person imperative:

Is the third person imperative inherited from PIE or an hellenic innovation?
Did the forms survive right through the Koine period?
What was it functionally replaced by? What are the earliest examples of functional replacements that we have?

2

This is an interesting question it would be nice to have an answer to (though I don’t have one :frowning: ),

3

I’ll answer the second question: of course it did. Plenty of examples in the NT, e.g., ὃ οὖν ὁ θεὸς συνέζευξεν ἄνθρωπος μὴ χωριζέτω, the colloquia (for the most part composed about 2 centuries after the NT), the papyri, and other Koine literature.

4

Thanks, Barry.

5

I haven’t got to that part of the Cambridge Grammar of Medieval and Early Modern Greek yet, but I don’t need to: the 3rd person imperative was replaced by the subjunctive, introduced either by να < ἵνα, as is the default, or with the hortative ας < ἄφες. So:

ὃ οὖν ὁ θεὸς συνέζευξεν ἄνθρωπος μὴ χωριζέτω

in Modern Greek is:

ό,τι λοιπόν ο Θεός ένωσε, να μη χωρίσει άνθρωπος (whatever then God united, a person should not separate)
ό,τι λοιπόν ο Θεός ένωσε, ας μη χωρίσει άνθρωπος (whatever then God united, let a person not separate)

6

You also asked for the origine:

“Is the third person imperative inherited from PIE or an hellenic innovation?”


In Meier-Brügger, Michael Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft 9. Auflage De Gruyter 2010 (=https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=3Yj_fQg66awC&hl=nl&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA20)

I found:

"Uridg. ist ferner eine 3.Sg. wie them. *bher-e-tôd ‘er soll tragen’.

(= Proto-Idg 3. Sg Imperative thematic *bher-e-tôd ‘he has to bear/carry’ = Greek φερετω).

So the 3.Pers.Imperative goes back to early Indogermanic.

Regards

Jean Putmans