The ‘potential’ optative in Homeric Greek
نویسنده
چکیده
When translating the ‘potential’ Homeric Greek optative into English, ‘could’ is often the best modal verb to use, to be preferred to the more usual ‘would’. I will argue that, in some cases, this reveals that the optative expresses what is termed in the literature ‘dynamic’ modality. Examining several examples in more detail I will claim that the optative expresses a wide range of meanings, the differences between which are subtle and not always clear-cut.
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