Optatives

[nschneid]

Some of the suspicious Verb=Inf matches in #284 are (AFAICT) subjunctive optatives:

• Praise be
• Long live Irony
• god forbid

There are also proverbs with bare-form verbs like

• Monkey see, monkey do

I guess all of these should be 3rd person present tense, Mood=Sub?

cf. #194, #357

[nschneid]

• [x] "First come, first serve"
• [x] "if we're still dating come December": subjunctive with "December" as subject?
• [x] "Act in haste, repent at leisure"

[nschneid]

@amir-zeldes OK with these all being subjunctive?

[amir-zeldes]

I think the following are subjunctive:

• Praise be
• Long live
• God forbid
• come December

Monkey see, monkey do is apparently originally meant to be Jamaican pidgin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_see,_monkey_do

So I'm not sure it should be seen as subjunctive. "First come, first serve" is a probably erroneous but frequent variant of the version with -d as "served", so I think the "come" is subjunctive, but the second part is arguably a typo for a VBN. See:

https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/pardon-the-expression/first-come-first-served-vs-first-come-first-serve/

I think "act in haste, repent in leisure" is second person without a subject, not third person, so even though it's meant as a hypothetical, it might be better to classify it as an imperative conditional (like "study hard and you'll succeed").

[nschneid]

So I'm not sure it should be seen as subjunctive.

Along the lines of "Long time no see"? Maybe VerbForm=Inf by default for those.

"First come, first serve" is a probably erroneous but frequent variant of the version with -d as "served", so I think the "come" is subjunctive, but the second part is arguably a typo for a VBN. See:

https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/pardon-the-expression/first-come-first-served-vs-first-come-first-serve/

It doesn't strike me as an error even if it originated with the -ed form. Merriam-Webster lists both versions of the expression: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/first%20come%2C%20first%20served

To hazard an interpretation: 'They that come first, we/the staff will serve first': could both verbs be VBP?

I think "act in haste, repent in leisure" is second person without a subject, not third person, so even though it's meant as a hypothetical, it might be better to classify it as an imperative conditional (like "study hard and you'll succeed").

So like "act in haste and you'll repent in leisure"—imperative "act", indicative "repent"?

[amir-zeldes]

Yeah, these are really corner cases, so I think it comes down to opinion more than a clear cut reason. I'm sort of etymology-focused as a default, and only consider re-analysis when the environment makes the etymologically correct version untenable. I'm fine if you want to accept the "serve" version as grammatical, but my hunch is that it's historically wrong and just comes from phonetic erosion.

Inf qua base form for 'pidgin' forms sounds fine. I'm not sure if repent is then indicative or still morphologically imperative, it's still 2nd person without a subject... Makes me miss those complex Indo-European paradigms English sadly ditched 🤔

[nschneid]

One test for English imperatives is don't negation. "Act in haste, don't repent in haste"? Or to coin one with a more straightforward meaning: "Don't eat your vegetables, don't get dessert"? Doesn't sound idiomatic (I would say "Don't eat your vegetables, (and) you don't get dessert"). So I think I'll leave "repent" as VerbForm=Inf.

[nschneid]

"come December": "December" is attached as obj but it's the subject right?

(CGEL says it can be understood as grammaticalized from subjunctive+subject to preposition+object, but I assume we don't want to go that far for UD:

)

[amir-zeldes]

Definitely subject IMO. I would not say it's plausible to suggest it's now a preposition, for example it doesn't coordinate with preps easily:

• at, before and after the end of the year
• ??come, before and after the end of the year

And in general I think we should avoid surprising analyses like these without strong evidence, most users will probably assume and expect that come is annotated as a verb.

[rueter]

• [x] "First come, first serve"
• [x] "if we're still dating come December": subjunctive with "December" as subject?
• [x] "Act in haste, repent at leisure"

It hadn't occurred to me that the last of the three could be understood other than second person: "act in haste" "repent at leisure."

[nschneid]

• ??come, before and after the end of the year

True. Safer to call "come"+NP an idiom whose word order and semantics are PP-like.

It hadn't occurred to me that the last of the three could be understood other than second person: "act in haste" "repent at leisure."

I agree they're referring to an addressee, and "act" is an imperative used conditionally, but is "repent" imperative? It is expressing an action that the addressee will be forced to undertake as a consequence. I think we usually use the future tense for that (Do that and you'll regret it!, ??Do that and regret it!). Maybe Read this and weep is similar (can be expanded to Read this and you'll weep).

[amir-zeldes]

I agree they're referring to an addressee, and "act" is an imperative used conditionally, but is "repent" imperative?

I'm not totally sure, but maybe we could see it as a hypothetical sequence of events, in which case they're both imperative, like "go and see". So in the (bad) world where you act in haste and then repent, they're telling you: go ahead, do those two actions (and then you'll see how bad it would be). I'd be curious if IE langs with proper mood marking have such an expression, then we could see if the apodosis is really subjunctive in a related language?

[nschneid]

Closing as I think we have an acceptable solution given the lack of a clear test