Re: Optative? (was: Re: Development and Use of the Silindion Optative)

Ray Brown scripsit:

> As you can see, apart from the protasis (if-part) of remote future
> conditions, it was never necessary to use the optative in subordinate
> clauses. By the Hellenistic period, the optative was moribund & it has
> disappeared completely from modern Greek.
#35 in Nick Nicholas's collection of signatures:

	Nick Nicholas, TLG, UCI, USA. opoudjis@opoudjis.net
	http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis
	"Most Byzantine historians felt they knew enough to use the optatives
	 correctly; some of them were right." --- Harry Turtledove.

	The renowned byzantinist and science fiction author, in Turtledove,
	H. 1982. The Chronicle of Theophanes. Philadelphia: University of
	Pennsylvania Press. p. xiii.

See http://ptolemy.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/Play/sig.html for the rest of the
collection.  ("Opoudjis" = "'opou'-guy" in Cretan dialect, after the word
Nick did his dissertation on.)

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
Consider the matter of Analytic Philosophy.  Dennett and Bennett are well-known.
Dennett rarely or never cites Bennett, so Bennett rarely or never cites Dennett.
There is also one Dummett.  By their works shall ye know them.  However, just as
no trinities have fourth persons (Zeppo Marx notwithstanding), Bummett is hardly
known by his works.  Indeed, Bummett does not exist.  It is part of the function
of this and other e-mail messages, therefore, to do what they can to create him.

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