The Variation of Classical Greek Wishes

Abstract

This paper examines several unobserved variations of realizable Classical Greek wishes which radically change our conception of them. Using the layered approach to clause structure from Functional Discourse Grammar, I demonstrate that the wish optative has both a semantic and a pragmatic illocutionary value. Semantically, the wish optative, in Classical Greek, is non -subjective epistemic (instead of the previously proposed deontic) as witnessed by its contextual communicative value and its (infrequent) combinations with the subjective particles apa and i. Realizable wishes have their own specific illocutionary value and sincerity condition. They express the speaker's psychological commitment to a realizable state of affairs for several contextual reasons. I argue that ei0e and ci yap, which, contrary to common opinion, are highly infrequent with wish optatives, are contextually motivated illocutionary particles. The particles occur when the speaker's current psychological commitment has not been sufficiently established in the interlocutor(s)' Common Ground, which contains "the sum of [interlocutors] mutual, common, or joint knowledge, beliefs, and suppositions" (Clark 1996: 96). The particle vuv combined with the wish optative, a combination which was overlooked in analyses of vuv, marks the Discourse Act of the wish illocution as consequential from the previous acts in the Common Ground.