Journal article
The survival of the optative in New Testament Greek
- Abstract:
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This article offers new insights on the status of the optative in New Testament Greek, mapping it against the diachronic encoding of modality in Ancient Greek in light of typology and pragmatics. Virtually all available scholarship on the subject focusses on the ‘decline’ of the optative; in this article, we choose to focus on its survival in fixed expressions and specific types of speech acts. Through a comprehensive reanalysis of the New Testament data, we argue that the optative is ‘pushed out’ of the strict domain of modality and syntax and into that of illocution and pragmatics. Evidence from ancient grammatical thought, sociolinguistics, and language contact corroborates this view.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 391.5KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1163/15699846-tat00001
Authors
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/0166hxq48
- Publisher:
- Brill Academic Publishers
- Journal:
- Journal of Greek Linguistics More from this journal
- Volume:
- 23
- Issue:
- 1
- Pages:
- 36-78
- Publication date:
- 2022-11-29
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1569-9846
- ISSN:
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1566-5844
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1317163
- Local pid:
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pubs:1317163
- Deposit date:
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2024-11-29
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Bianconi and Magni
- Copyright date:
- 2022
- Rights statement:
- © Michele Bianconi and Elisabetta Magni, 2022. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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