Re: Optative? (was: Re: Development and Use of the Silindion Optative)
| From: | Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, August 1, 2004, 20:09 |
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On Sun, 01 Aug 2004 21:38:03 +0200, Carsten Becker
<post@...> wrote:
> Hey everyone! I'm back from Kiel!
Welcome back!
> What is "optative"?
From Trask:
optative /Qpt@tIv/ adj. 1. The mood category expressing realizable wishes
or hopes, as exemplified by the rather formal English *May we succeed*.
Some languages exhibit a distinct grammatical form for this purpose. 2.
The conventional name for a morphologically distinct set of verb forms in
Ancient Greek and Sanskrit serving a variety of purposes, including the
optative in sense 1.
Paul
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