Optative Mood

4 Key excerpts on "Optative Mood"

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  eBook - ePub

  Going Deeper with New Testament Greek, Revised Edition

  An Intermediate Study of the Grammar and Syntax of the New Testament

  • Andreas J. Köstenberger, Benjamin L Merkle, Robert L. Plummer(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • B&H Academic

    (Publisher)

  47

  Voluntative Optative

  The voluntative optative is used to express a prayer/benediction, blessing, or wish. Negatively, it can be used to express abhorrence (e.g., μὴ γένοιτο ). The voluntative is the most common category of the optative, including 35 of the 68 occurrences (15 of which include μὴ γένοιτο ).48

  1. Benediction: χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη πληθυνθείη (“May grace and peace be multiplied to you”; 1 Pet 1:2).

  2. (Imprecatory) Prayer: τὸ ἀργύριόν σου σὺν σοὶ εἴη εἰς ἀπώλειαν (“May your silver be destroyed with you”; Acts 8:20).

  3. Blessing: δῴη ἔλεος ὁ κύριος τῷ Ὀνησιφόρου οἴκῳ (“May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus”; 2 Tim 1:16).

  4. Abhorrence (

  μὴ γένοιτο)

  : Paul asks the rhetorical question, “What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace?” His response is emphatic: μὴ γένοιτο (“Absolutely not! ”; Rom 6:15).49

  Deliberative Optative

  The second most common use of the optative (about 12 occurrences) is with indirect (rhetorical) questions. This usage is found exclusively in Luke’s writings.50

  • αὐτοὶ δὲ ἐπλήσθησαν ἀνοίας καὶ διελάλουν πρὸς ἀλλήλους τί ἂν ποιήσαιεν τῷ Ἰησοῦ (Luke 6:11)

  They, however, were filled with rage and started discussing with one another what they might do to Jesus

  Note that this a not a direct question but is an indirect question. A direct question would be: “What will we do?”

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  eBook - ePub

  The Handbook of Portuguese Linguistics

  • W. Leo Wetzels, Sergio Menuzzi, João Costa, W. Leo Wetzels, Sergio Menuzzi, João Costa(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  dictum, of what is said; the evaluation might be one of certitude, doubt, supposition, ordering, etc. This section concentrates on the subjunctive and the indicative, the best studied moods in Portuguese. In particular, we show that the traditional view—according to which the indicative expresses reality, and the subjunctive, non-reality—is inadequate.

  Traditional grammars consider the indicative the “default” mood, in opposition to the subjunctive, which is considered the “marked” one. The subjunctive is often described as the mood of subordination, for it occurs mainly in subordinated clauses.3 This suggests that the subjunctive requires the scope of certain types of operators. Indeed, a large amount of literature has been devoted to finding out what distinguishes the relevant contexts.

  The first observation is that some predicates select either the indicative or the subjunctive, exclusively, as in (1), whereas in other cases both moods are allowed—but with different interpretations, as in (2):

  The indicative in the relative clause in (2) is felicitous in a context where there is a certain house with kennel which someone wants to buy. With the subjunctive, the sentence does not refer to any particular house (only the non-specific, de dicto, reading of “a house” is available).

  Syntactically, it is important to characterize the structures in which one but not the other mood is grammatical—as in (1)—and those in which both moods are allowed, as in (2), where the difference in meaning cannot be ignored. Semantically, one wants to have a better understanding of what distinguishes the meaning of the subjunctive and the indicative structures. Though in this chapter the focus is on the semantic side, it is a fact that meaning is syntactically encoded in natural languages.

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  Voice and Mood (Essentials of Biblical Greek Grammar)

  A Linguistic Approach

  • Mathewson, David L., Porter, Stanley E.(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Baker Academic

    (Publisher)

  The assertive attitude is grammaticalized by the indicative mood form, and the nonassertive is grammaticalized by a series of nonindicative mood forms, labeled by grammars as subjunctive, optative, and imperative moods. Unlike in English, in Greek the indicative mood is indicated not by a configuration of lexical items in a particular order but by a set of verbal endings. As already seen above, the indicative mood grammaticalizes the attitudinal semantic feature of assertion and is used to indicate the author’s intention to portray the action as reality (whether or not this corresponds to a factual basis in reality). The indicative mood largely indicates epistemic modality, making a judgment on the factual status of the proposition. However, unlike some language systems, 2 Greek does not indicate the evidence or reasons or manifest an evidential modality through its choice of formal endings, or levels of certainty or assertiveness, only manifesting one set of formal endings for the indicative mood. Greek grammaticalizes nonindicative or nonassertive attitude through a system of choices among three moods, which will be further developed below. It will be demonstrated that the subjunctive mood grammaticalizes the semantic feature of projection or visualization. The Optative Mood overlaps semantically with the subjunctive mood by indicating projection or visualization but seems to carry the additional semantic feature of contingency. 3 That is, the action is seen as more vague, hesitant, and contingent on other factors. Finally, the imperative mood grammaticalizes the semantic feature of direction. It can be seen as the furthest removed from assertion in relationship to reality, in that it only directs an action

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  The Grammar of English Grammars

  • Goold Brown(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  Some of these auxiliaries convey other ideas than that of power in the agent; but there is no occasion to explain them severally here. The potential mood, like the indicative, may be used in asking a question; as, " Must I budge ? must I observe you? must I stand and crouch under your testy humour?"— Shakspeare. No question can be asked in any other mood than these two. By some grammarians, the potential mood has been included in the subjunctive, because its meaning is often expressed in Latin by what in that language is called the subjunctive. By others, it has been entirely rejected, because all its tenses are compound, and it has been thought the words could as well be parsed separately. Neither of these opinions is sufficiently prevalent, or sufficiently plausible, to deserve a laboured refutation. On the other hand, James White, in his Essay on the English Verb, (London, 1761,) divided this mood into the following five: "the Elective," denoted by may or might ; "the Potential," by can or could ; "the Determinative " by would ; "the Obligative," by should ; and "the Compulsive," by must. Such a distribution is needlessly minute. Most of these can as well be spared as those other "moods, Interrogative, Optative, Promissive, Hortative, Precative, &c.", which Murray mentions only to reject. See his Octavo Gram., p. 68. OBS. 4.—The Subjunctive mood is so called because it is always subjoined to an other verb. It usually denotes some doubtful contingency, or some supposition contrary to fact. The manner of its dependence is commonly denoted by one of the following conjunctions; if, that, though, lest, unless. The indicative and potential moods, in all their tenses, may be used in the same dependent manner, to express any positive or potential condition; but this seems not to be a sufficient reason for considering them as parts of the subjunctive mood. In short, the idea of a "subjunctive mood in the indicative form," (which is adopted by Chandler, Frazee, Fisk, S. S

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