REVISITING THE OPTATIVE AS UTTERANCE MODALITY. A STUDY ON ROMANIAN AND FRENCH

The article examines in a contrastive perspective some aspects of the optative modality and provides new arguments for a reassessment of the optative status in French and Romanian grammar. The author begins by reviewing relationships of the optative with the injunctive and exclamative, two modalities to which it was alternately assimilated, and then introduce a new typology of optative structures related to illocutionary values they convey. The optative modality entails in French and Romanian seven types of structures, where modal form is associated with various pragmatic markers. These structures are essentially based, in French, on subjunctive mood, but, in Romanian, on conditional and subjunctive ones. The vitality and frequency of conditional structures in Romanian explain that this form has received the hybrid label conditional-optativ. Specificity of the optative modality also lies in the intersubjective relationship which is codified: a wish, generic act pertaining to an expressive act family. The majority of those acts have a ritual function, helping to strengthen social bonds within communities.