Re: a verb aspect--what's it called?
| From: | H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, October 10, 2000, 21:17 |
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On Tue, Oct 10, 2000 at 04:48:39PM -0400, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
[snip]
> Enlighten me--what is the optative?
The optative marks an action that the speaker wishes to happen. Sometimes
it also marks a potential event. In Attic Greek, one of the uses of the
optatives is in swearing -- something like "may the gods curse you" would
have "curse" in the optative.
Disclaimer: the only knowledge of Greek I have is from a 1st year course,
so please correct me if I'm totally pulling this out of thin air :-P
T