date

24 Aug. 1813 Logic 2
24 Aug. 1813

Logic

2

Ch. Language-Grammar

Conjugation, Grammar

2

The imperative form is /seems to be/ improperly put upon the same line with and designated by the same name as those other forms which as above are termed moods.

That which it expresses is, in all cases, the existence of a will an act of volition to a certain effect on the part of the discourse /speaker or writer/.

For the designation of this will the term imperative considered as applied to all the modifications of which the expression of that will is susceptible, is in a remarkable degree defective; and, by reason of that deficiency, improper, improper in no fewer than three out of four cases.

Be the case what it may, such will, so expressed, will have for its object either some event, or some state of things. In speaking of this event, or state of things, either some person will be considered in the light of a person by whose will and consequent agency it will or would be made to take place or not; if not, the will expressed is of that sort which is called a wish, and the mood by which expression is given to it has been termed the optative.

In the other case, the person in consequence by whose agency it is supposed that the event, or state of things in question would be made to take place, is either the person to whom the discourse is addressed, or some other person; in this latter case, likewise, the mood comes under the same denomination, the optative.

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    When the person by whose agency it is supposed that the event, or state of things in question would be produced, is a person to whom the discourse is addressed, the relation borne to him, in the order of power, by him who speaks, may either be that of a superior, that of an equal, or that of an inferior. It is in that case alone in which the relation borne by him, as above, is that of a superior, nor in that, but when the superiority is so marked /decided/ and acknowledged as to give to the expression of his wish, so denoted, the character and denomination of a command, that the term imperative can with propriety be applied to it.

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