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rarum 147

Posted in Raritätenkabinett

rarum 147: 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]!’

Where found
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
Subdomain
mood, tense
Keywords
imperative, future
Type
rarum
Universals violated
Source
Szemerényi, Oswald (1953). The future imperative of Indo-European. Revue
Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire
31: 937-954.

One Comment

  1. FP
    FP

    I would be surprised if some such distinction weren’t more common.

    1. May 2020

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