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<p>Posted by <b><!--poster-->Panu Petteri Höglund</b>
on <!--date-->5:32 9/14/01
<p>In reply to: <a href="165.html">Pangram</a> posted by Mark Rosenfelder</b> on 1:11 9/13/01
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I would just like to point out that the Modern Icelandic equivalents to
will/would (<i>mun/mundi</i>) and shall/should (<i>skal/skyldi</i>) do have
infinitives. My Icelandic is too rusty to give you examples of actual
usage, but there is a big Icelandic grammar in English, printed, if I
remember right, in the fifties, which includes lots of texts (it is
called "Icelandic - Grammar, Texts, Glossary").
<p>Even in Finnish, the equivalent verbs have infinitives, at least in the
dictionary - they are impersonal and belong to mainstream conjugations,
so that the infinitive could be inferred even if it did not exist in
actual usage. But I am hard pressed to find any real usage outside
contrived and unnatural examples.
<p><i>5:34 9/14/01</i>
<p>Oh, sorry - I didn't notice it was IMPERATIVE not INFINITIVE. But modal
auxiliary verbs could definitely have an imperative, I think - to add
nuances.
<hr><i>Mark responds:
<p>I think so too, though the meanings requires some convoluted thought.
<b>Lachane</b> seems to be a meta-moral statement: it should be the case that something ought to be! Pragmatically, maybe it would just serve as an intensive. But perhaps this is why the language creator shouldn't write paindromes and pangrams; it's too easy to change the language, even subtly, to make them work!
<p>In some English dialects, the modals seem to function as their own
infinitives, as in "I might could do that."
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<b>Panu Petteri Höglund</b>
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