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

On Sunday, August 1, 2004, at 09:13 , Paul Bennett wrote:

> 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.
Spot on  - tho when I was a youngster our teacher said /Qp'teitIv/. I
heard both this & Trask's pronunciation over the past half century   ;)

====================================================
On Sunday, August 1, 2004, at 09:56 , Philippe Caquant wrote:

> In Ancient Greek, optative was a mood.
Yep - exactly so - contrasting with indicative, subjunctive & imperative
moods of the finite verb.

> There was
> optative present, future, aorist and perfect.
Yep - tho the traditional names are a bit misleading as they suggest
tenses. In fact tense in the proper sense occurred only in the indicative
mood. With the other moods, it's a question of _aspect_.

> Ex :
> didoie:n = I wish I could give (present, athematic
> verb)
> dedo:koimi = I wish I had finished to give (perfect)
>
> (from Grammaire Grecque, Allard & Feuillatre, Hachette
> Ed)
The perfect was fairly uncommon but, yes, it expressed a future wish that
something would be over done with: "I wish I was through giving".

The so-called present & aorist optatives were the most common in this
usage, i.e. to express wishes for the future.
didoie:n = Oh that I might give (often, repeatedly, continuously)
["present" optative]
doie:n = Oh that I might give (on some specific occasion) [aorist optative]

The difference between the 'present' & aorist aspects was similar to that
between imperfective & perfective in the Slav languages.

As well as expressing future wishes, the optatives (nearly always present
or aorist optatives) were also used as main verbs in the apodosis of
'remote future' conditions, "if I worked hard/ were to work hard, I would
pass my exams" (cf. straight future: "If I work hard, I'll pass my exams")
.

In fact, in ancient Greek, the verbs in _both_ parts of the condition
would be optative in remote futures.

Note: the 'future optative' was _never_ used in either of these ways.

> In Latin, if I remember, they used 'Utinam' +
> (subjunctive ?)
>
Yep - with the subjunctive. Also in Greek, the optative was often preceded
by 'eithe'/'aithe'/'ei gar'/'ai gar' (according to dialect) & in Latin
'utinam' could be omitted if the meaning was obvious, e.g. uiuat Caesar!

The main difference between Classical Latin & Ancient Greek was that
whereas Latin used subjunctive both for future wishes and for unrealizable
present & past wishes (I wish I was there; I wish I had been there), Greek
use the optative only for future wishes, using 'eithe' etc with past
_indicative_ tenses for the unrealizable present or past wishes.

But, note Trask's second definition above.

By far the most common use of the optative mood in ancient Greek was in
various _subordinate_ clauses when the main verb was in a past tense.  We
were taught at school automatically to replace the subjunctive mood by the
optative in such cases. Many ancient Greek writers did just that; but
quite a few didn't bother & always retained the subjunctive whatever the
tense of the main verb.

Some writers also replace indicative verbs in subordinate clauses
(especially various forms of reported speech) by the optative if the main
verb was past. Many did not. The future optative occurs only in this usage.

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.

Ray
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