Conversation started Jul 24, 2015 at 21:51.
Anonymous
Jul 24, 2015 21:51
It only occurs in main clauses in fossilized constructions, which can be considered outside the grammar of modern English
Anonymous
> Long live the king!
Anonymous
> God bless you.
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
Oh, yes.
Anonymous
These don't obey the rules we use to put words together in English today.
Anonymous
Instead, they're pre-built units we keep in our heads more or less the same way we keep other vocabulary items in our heads.
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
Jul 24, 2015 21:52
When people translate the phrase God bless you into Thai, they have to add May.
Long live the king! is more like May the King live long! in Thai.
I'm not sure why.
Maybe phrasing an idea with may or beg is more compatible with Old Thai.
I upvoted JL's answer!
Anonymous
Yay!
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. Optatives!
Anonymous
You know you're just encouraging me to keep saying gibberish like optatives! when you star my messages like that :-)
Anonymous
Optative mood
The Optative mood (abbreviated OPT) is a grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope. It is similar to the cohortative mood, and is closely related to the subjunctive mood. English has no morphological optative, but there are various constructions with optative meaning. One uses the modal verb may, e.g. May you have a long life! Another uses the phrase if only with a verb in the past or past subjunctive, e.g. If only I were rich! Another uses the present subjunctive, e.g. God save the Queen! Examples of languages with an optative mood are Biblical Hebrew, Ancient Greek, Albanian, Armenia...
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
Hee
Oh, "..., Sanskrit, and Turkish."
> English has no morphological optative, but there are various constructions with optative meaning.
I think I can say the same thing about Thai for a lot of things.
Even tenses.
> The Japanese optative is formed by using a conditional such as ba (-ば) or tara (-たら).
Hee
Anonymous
Jul 24, 2015 22:02
@DamkerngT. Well, there's nothing stopping you from defining tense in a language-particular way, if it helps you discuss the language more simply
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
nods -- My point was about Thai having no morphological forms.
Anonymous
Although modern linguists tend to restrict tense to a system of inflection whose main purpose is locating a situation in time, this definition isn't used by all linguists
Anonymous
The tense-time contrast is fairly useful when discussing English.
Anonymous
In another language, it might not be a distinction worth making.
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
nods -- So, I think maybe it'd be considered correct if I say something like, "Thai has no morphological tense, but there are various constructions with tense meaning."
:D
Anonymous
Jul 24, 2015 22:04
Of course, even in English, not everyone uses the word tense that way.
Anonymous
@DamkerngT. Sure. I like to say "locate a situation in time"
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
nods
Anonymous
For short, I would go for "with time meaning", although I don't know if everyone would like that :-)
Anonymous
Might be too vague, anyway.
Damkerng T.
Damkerng T.
I like it!
Anonymous
Jul 24, 2015 22:04
But it's all okay. Labels Are Not Definitions.
Anonymous
When we use labels, we also tell people what they mean, or we assume they can arrive at the definitions we're using either through prior knowledge or by consulting a reference work.
Anonymous
But the more technical we get, the more likely we're defining things in a particular way that needs some explanation.
 
Conversation ended Jul 24, 2015 at 22:05.