The survival of the optative mood in the Greek of the New Testament

What is it about?

Ancient Greek had a verbal mood, called 'optative', which eventually disappears from the language (it is not there in Modern Greek). This does not happen suddenly, but it is the result of a gradual decline, which starts after the Classical (5th c. BCE) period. Virtually all available scholarship on the subject focusses on this decline, but in this article, we choose to focus on the survival of the optative in fixed expressions and specific types of speech acts. A speech act is a type of utterance that performs an action (for instance: a wish, a request, an order) besides conveying information. The Greek of the New Testament, which is the original language in which the Gospels were written, represents an excellent testing ground, as there are a few verbs in the optative. Through a detailed analysis of the data, and further evidence from ancient grammatical thought, sociolinguistics, and language contact perspectives, we re-evaluate this phase of the history of the optative and argue that the optative stops being categorised as a mood and survives in fossilised constructions associated with specific speech acts (called pseudo-directives and pseudo-questions).

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Photo by Skyler Gerald on Unsplash

Photo by Skyler Gerald on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This is the first comprehensive and the most up-to-date study of the optative in New Testament Greek which is informed by contemporary theory.

Perspectives