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let
What's the subject of "let"? Is it "I"?
Let's go out tonight. What is the thinking behind using "let" here? Lets you and him make peace. Lets you go before me and see what mappens. (Midwestern American use.)
>>What's the subject of "let"? Is it "I"?
Let's go out tonight.<< It is historically "us", and is cognate with and equivalent to Dutch "laat ons", Low Saxon "laat us" or "laat uns", and Swedish "lat oss" (for examples in other Germanic languages).
I got confused for a second there, sorry. Oh, those are morphologically imperative, with an implicit second person subject.
>>Lets you and him make peace.
Lets you go before me and see what mappens.<< These to me are ungrammatical without a preceding subject, and then the "-s" would have to be the third person singular present marking. However, there may very well be dialects in which reanalysis has taken place such that "let's" has lots its verb-like vestiges. |