[minstrel: Vivat the Dream]

[hrjones at socrates.berkeley.edu]

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

> Thank you, Tibicen and Tangwystyl.  I think it was the "carries the force 
> of the imperative" from an earlier poster that distracted me.  Subjunctive 
> looks different in some languages (Greek IIRC) than present tense.

It looks different in Latin too:

Present indicative	Present subjunctive
vivo			vivam
vivis			vivas
vivit			vivat
vivimus			vivamus
vivitis			vivatis
vivunt			vivant

The confusing thing is that 1st declension verbs (amo, amas, amat, etc.)
have the "a" stem in the present indicative (and "e" in the subjunctive)
while 3rd declension verbs (such as vivo) have "a" in the subjunctive and
(for the most part) "i" in the indicative.

It's the sort of thing that made Latin the bane of countless generations
of school children -- whereas my immediate reaction was to try to develop
"mathematical" formulas for producing the different forms based on stem
differences. (Guess why I became a linguist.)

Tangwystyl

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


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