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Concept
Optative mood
Summary
The optative mood (ˈQptətɪv or Qpˈteɪtɪv; abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope regarding a given action. It is a superset of the cohortative mood and is closely related to the subjunctive mood but is distinct from the desiderative mood.
English has no morphological optative, but various constructions impute an optative meaning. Examples of languages with a morphological optative mood are Ancient Greek, Albanian, Armenian, Georgian, Friulian, Kazakh, Kurdish, Navajo, Old Prussian, Old Persian, Sanskrit, Turkish, and Yup'ik.
Although English has no morphological optative, analogous constructions impute an optative meaning, including the use of certain modal verbs:
May you have a long life!
Would that I were younger.
Periphrastic constructions include if only together with a subjunctive complement:
If only I were rich!
I would sing if only I weren't tone deaf.
The optative mood can also be expressed elliptically:
(May) God save the Queen!
(May you) Have a nice day.
(May) God bless America.
The cohortative verb phrases let's (or let us) represent a syntactical mood as a subset of the optative mood:
Let's try it.
Let us pray.
The optative is one of the four original moods of Proto-Indo-European (the other three being the indicative mood, the subjunctive mood, and the imperative mood). However, many Indo-European languages lost the inherited optative, either as a formal category, or functional, i.e. merged it with the subjunctive, or even replaced the subjunctive with optative.
In Albanian, the optative (mënyra dëshirore, lit. "wishing mood") expresses wishes, and is also used in curses and swearing.
Wish: U bëfsh 100 vjeç! (May you reach/live 100 years)
Curse: Të marrtë djalli! (May the devil take you)
Optative (Ancient Greek)
In Ancient Greek, the optative is used to express wishes and potentiality in independent clauses (but also has other functions, such as contrary-to-fact expressions in the present). In dependent clauses (purpose, temporal, conditional, and indirect speech), the optative is often used under past-tense main verbs.
Official source
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