[minstrel: Vivat the Dream]

[hrjones at socrates.berkeley.edu]

On Thu, 8 Jul 1999 yarrowp at mscd.edu wrote:

> > Actually, vivat is the singular, he (or she) lives.  Vivant is the plural,
> > they live.
> > 
> I believe in this usage they have the force of the imperative: "(May)
> he/she/they live!"  Same as our "Long live ---!"  For that matter, IIRC
> "Banzai!" is about the same: "(May you live) ten thousand years!">>
> 
> Thank you for this note.  Does anyone know why we don't actually use the 
> imperative?  "Vive" for singular, "Vivete" for plural?

If Latin had it, the appropriate verb form to use would be the optative
(used for expressions of desire or hope for the relevant action), but in
Latin the optative appears to have merged with the subjunctive (used for
"non-real" situations generally).  The use of the imperative is a bit more
restricted in Latin -- in particular it's only available for the second
person (singular and plural). So even question of meaning aside, it would
be impossible to use the imperative for a meaning of "may he/they live"
because there are no imperative verb forms available in Latin for he/they.
If they person you're cheering on is directly present, then you could
theoretically use the second person forms ("may you [all] live"). But
there's a different distinction involved as well. The imperative implies
that the speaker has the power to demand that the action occur -- the
subjunctive/optative only expresses the speaker's wish or intention that
it occur. It might be appropriate for a person peforming CPR to demand
"Vive!", but for a general expression of positive wishes, the subjunctive
expresses the sense of what's going on better. (An even better example,
perhaps, is that one uses the subjunctive/optative when requesting things
of deities -- definitely not the imperative in this case! And one might
understand vivat/vivant more as an appeal to a higher power to grant long
life to the beneficiary.)

Tangwystyl

*********************************************************
Heather Rose Jones         hrjones at socrates.berkeley.edu
**********************************************************


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