Rara #147

Legacy number: 147

 Number  147
 Phenomenon  an imperative of distant future, as opposed to an imperative of near future;

formed from near-future imperative verb forms plus the ablative singular of
the pronoun *to-, -to:d 'from there, afterwards'

illustration:
tu epistulam hanc a me accipe atque illi dato: (Plautus, Pseudolus)
'take you this letter from me [now] and give it to him [later]!'
 Found in  Old Indian (Sanskrit), Ancient Greek, and Latin (a family possession, i.e., jointly innovated in (a subset of) Indo-European, and lost in other members of the family?)
 Domain  morphology: inflection — mood, tense
 Type  rarum
 Keywords  imperative, future
 Source  Szemerényi, Oswald (1953). The future imperative of Indo-European. Revue
Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire 31: 937-954.

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Discussion
Notes
I would be surprised if some such distinction weren?t more common.
Comment
Frans Plank · 21 Sep 2006
I would be surprised if some such distinction weren't more common.