Appendix I. (22/30)
英語原文
In these neutral optatives, of which Il. iv. 18, 19 gives the most striking examples, we probably come nearest to the primitive use out of which the two most common uses of the independent optative (potential and wishing) were developed. Before the Homeric period these two uses were already established, the potential with its mark and its negative μή. It is hardly possible that the first potential use of the optative was marked by κέ or ἄν, for we find undoubted potential optatives in Homer without either of these particles (see §240), and even in Attic poetry such indefinite expression as οὐκ ἔσθ᾿ ὅστις, οὐκ ἐσθ᾿ ὅπως, etc. have the optative without ἄν (§241). Although the early Greek, even in Homer, did not always use κέ or ἄν with the potential optative, there is no evidence that it ever failed to distinguish the wishing optative in negative sentences by the use of μή, while the potential was always negatived by οὐ. The Sanskrit optative, which must have had a common origin with the Greek, appears in its earliest use in the state in which we have supposed the early Greek optative to have been, i.e. used both in a potential sense and in wishes without any particle like κέ or ἄν, and occasionally in a neutral or concessive sense. But while the negative ná (=οὐ) is always found in the potential use, we have both má´ (=μή) and ná in wishes and similar expressions in which the Greek has only μή.1 The same pculiarity has been noticed in the use of negatives with the subjunctive (p. 373).
1. See Delbrück. Conj. u. Opt. pp. 26, 194, 198, 199. Whitney, who agrees generally with Delbtück in deriving the other uses of the Sanskrit optative from the idea of wish or desire, says of the actual use of the mood (Sanskrit Grammar, §573) : "But the expression of desire, on the one hand, passes naturally over into that of request or entreaty, so that the optative becomes a softend imperative ; and on the other hand, it comes to signify what is generally desirable or proper, what should or ought to be, and so becomes the mode of prescription ; or yet again, it is weakend into signifying what may or can be, what is likely or usual, and so becomes atalast a softend statement of what is." Again, in §574 : "Subjunctive and optative run closely parallel with one another in the oldest language in their use in independent clauses, and are hardly distinguishable in dependent." In §575 : "The difference between imperative and subjunctive and optative, in their fundamental and most characteristic uses, is one of degree. … There is, in fact, nothing in the earliest employment of these modes to prove that they might no all be specialised uses of forms originally equivallent—having, for instance, a general future meaning." In §581 : "In all dependent constructions, it is still harder even in the oldest language to establish a distinction between subjunctive and optative : a method of use of either is scarcely to be found to which the other does not furnish a practical equivalent."
The original relation of the Sanskrit subjunctive and optative here stated closely resembles what I believe to have been the original relation of the Greek subjunctive and optative, the optative being essentially a sort of weaker subjunctive, both expressing essentially the same ideas. My own view would I think, agree substantially with that suggested by Delbrück (Syntaktische Forschungen, iv. p. 117) as an alternative to his earlier view presented in his Conjuctiv und Optativ (vol. i. of the same work) eight years before : "Eine andere Möglinchkeit wäre, in beiden, Modi den futurischen Sinn zu finden, und zwar im Conj. die Bezeichnung der nahen, im Opt. die der ferneren Zukunft. Unter dieser Voraussetzung müsste die von mir Synt. Forsh. i. gewählte Anordnung gänzlich umgestaltet warden." I was, of course, not aware of this important concession of Delbrück when I suggested in the same month (August, 1879), in my Greek Grammar, P. 258, the relation of the optative to the subjunctive which is advocated in the present work.
Since the above was written, Delbrück in his Alt-Indische Syntax has expressed an opinion (in contradiction to his earlier view, discussed above), that the potential and wishing functions of the optative are distinct in their origin.
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