What kind of Independent Subjunctive?

Latin Learning Latin
1

What do y’all think about the type of subjunctive used in sentences such as:

sed maneam, opinor (Plautus)

A) I should stay, I think
Elmer (Studies in Latin Moods, 74) says it denotes obligation, yet he calls it a potential subjunctive (which he calls–rightly as far as I can tell–the subjunctive of conditional futurity).

Why not attach the sense of obligation to the iussive though (I am to say, I think)?

According to this https://classics.osu.edu/Undergraduate-Studies/Latin-Program/Grammar/mood/subjunctive/independent-subjunctive#:~:text=The%20Jussive%20Subjunctive%20may%20be,in%20any%20number%20or%20person.(faculty of classics, U. Ohio), the sense of obligation belongs to the iussive. Is this correct? Is the iussive fundamentally willed action or obliged action?

Woodcock seems to allow a jussive instead of hortatory 1st person, for he cites this text under the jussive subjunctive and translates it “But I must wait, I think” (A New Latin Syntax, 85).

However, I’ve never seen any other grammar that allows for a jussive use (we are to go to Rome) of the 1st person volitive rather than a hortatory one (let’s go to Rome).



B) I can stay, I think
This would be a concessive use of the volitive subjunctive.

Elmer gives an example of that in his Latin Grammar (172):

veniat
let him come (if he wishes)





C) I would stay
with implied condition (if we accept that interpretation of the potential subjunctive).


Perhaps there are other suggestions also.

2

Context?

3

There are a handful of these, where the first person subjunctive is given with opinor or similar (Elmer, 73).

Maybe it’s easier if I ask whether a first person volitive can be iussive (we are to go to Rome) rather than hortatory (let’s go to Rome), and whether the fundamental idea of the volitive is willed action (as in the common name volitive) or obligatory action.

4

I don’t have Elmer. But in Plautus’ Trinummus Lysiteles says to himself (troch.sept.)
quid ego cesso hos conloqui?
sed maneam etiam opinor, namque hoc commodum orditur loqui.
where maneam etiam opinor will mean “I reckon I should still stay”
and the subjunctive could be classified as 1st-pers. sing. jussive and/or hortatory. And I wouldn’t say it’s altogether independent of opinor.

5

Elmer is dated, but he claims that he transformed the concept of the potential subjunctive.

His grammar can be found: https://archive.org/details/LatinGrammarByHerbertCharlesElmerUmaGramaticaLatinaSimplificadaNew/page/n7/mode/1up. He has a longer book too (also available on internet archive and on google books) on the moods of the Latin tense.

I think you’re right about the kind of subjunctive. That was Woodcock’s view too. I was (perhaps still am) hesitant because the grammars seem to only recognize a hortatory definition of the first person volitive/deontic (let’s go …) rather than a jussive one (we are to go). Perhaps my distinction is incorrect and hortatory would cover both.

This would appear to have been Woodcock’s view, who translated it with “must wait” while listing it under the heading of hortatory subjunctive).

Thanks.

6

Hale and Buck (A Latin Grammar, p. 259):

“I’ll stay, I think.”

The argument is that the volitive subjunctive in the first person can denote resolve.