Conditional imperatives in Latin Comedy

Συγγραφείς

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12957/principia.2026.98693

Λέξεις-κλειδιά:

Conditional imperatives, Latin, Plautus, Terence

Περίληψη

Traditionally, conditional imperatives are imperative verbs that can be glossed as subordinate conditional clauses. This procedure, however, can be misleading, since the possibility of substitution doesn’t guarantee that functional traits will be preserved. Subordinate conditional clauses and their main clauses present some semantic and pragmatic features that can be found in sets of independent clauses: although syntactically independent and conveying different speech acts, two independent clauses can be semantically dependent and part of a larger interactional unit that hierarchizes the speech acts as main and subsidiary acts. Using this procedure of functional equivalence, instances of conditional imperatives in Latin Comedy are analysed, with the conclusion that not all cases reported in the literature should be considered conditional imperatives, since they are not functionally equivalent to subordinate conditional clauses, and there are more economical ways to describe them.

Βιογραφικό Συγγραφέα

Alex Mazzanti Jr., Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

Professor de Língua e Literatura Latina na Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Doutor e Mestre em Letras Clássicas pela Universidade de São Paulo. Graduado em Letras (Português, Latim e Grego) pela mesma Universidade. Realizou estágio de pesquisa no exterior na Universidade de Oxford e pesquisa de pós-doutorado na Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Membro do Grupo de Estudos de Línguas Indo-Europeias Antigas (GELIEA). 

Αναφορές

ADAMS, J. N. Female speech in Latin comedy. Antichthon, v. 18, p. 43–77, 1984.

BARSBY, J. (ed.). Phormio. The Mother-in-Law. The Brothers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

BENNETT, C. E. Syntax of early Latin. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1982 [1910-1914]. 2 v. em 1.

BOLKESTEIN, A. M. Problems in the description of modal verbs. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1980.

CRISTOFARO, S. Subordination. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

CULICOVER, P. W.; JACKENDOFF, R. Semantic subordination despite syntactic coordination. Linguistic Inquiry, v. 28, n. 2, p. 195–217, 1997.

DE MELO, W. (ed.). Plautus. 5 v. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011–2013.

JARY, M.; KISSINI, M. Imperatives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

RISSELADA, R. Imperatives and other directive expressions in Latin: a study in the pragmatics of a dead language. Amsterdam: Gieben, 1993.

Λήψεις

Δημοσιευμένα

2026-07-30

Πώς να δημιουργήσετε Αναφορές

MAZZANTI JR., Alex. Conditional imperatives in Latin Comedy. PRINCIPIA, Rio de Janeiro, n. 49, p. 74–88, 2026. DOI: 10.12957/principia.2026.98693. Disponível em: https://www.e-publicacoes.uerj.br/principia/article/view/98693. Acesso em: 31 ιουλίου. 2026.

Τεύχος

Ενότητα

Artigos