Living without an irrealis

What is it about?

An important grammatical feature that separates Old Church Slavic from the languages of the other five first millennium CE Indo-European versions of the Gospels is the absence of a third mood, outside of the indicative and imperative, to encode irrealis contexts. For speakers of Modern English, such contexts are, with few exceptions encoded by means of modal verbs. A particularly clear distinction may be drawn in English between purpose clauses, where no actual result is stated to have occurred (I arrived early in order to get a seat) (irrealis), and result clauses, where an actual outcome is indicated (I arrived early, so that I got a seat). Another category where a similar distinction comes into play in English is in indirect questions (I wondered how he would solve the problem) as opposed to a factual statement (I know how he solved the problem). This article will investigate the entire range of contexts where the original Greek text employs a subjunctive in order to document the manner in which Old Church Slavic handles irrealis contexts, comparing this to the way such contexts are handled by the other languages recording the Gospel text.

Featured Image