Imprecative mood

Some languages distinguish between the optative mood and an imprecative mood (abbreviated IMPR). In these languages, the imprecative mood is used to wish misfortune upon others, whereas the optative mood is used for wishes in general. In such a language, "May he lose the race" is in imprecative mood, whereas "May I win the race" would be in optative mood. A commonly given example of a language with an imprecative mood is Turkish, which uses an otherwise obsolete future-tense suffix -esi solely in the third person for curses:[1]

Geber-esi!

"May he die!"

References

Loos, Eugene E.; Anderson, Susan; Day, Dwight H., Jr.; Jordan, Paul C.; Wingate, J. Douglas (eds.). "What is imprecative mood?" (HTML). Glossary of linguistic terms. SIL International. Retrieved 2007-11-19.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

[1] Loos, Eugene E.; Anderson, Susan; Day, Dwight H., Jr.; Jordan, Paul C.; Wingate, J. Douglas (eds.). "What is imprecative mood?" (HTML). Glossary of linguistic terms. SIL International. Retrieved 2007-11-19.