# Slavic: Optative vs Imperative



## mintster

This is sort of a two part question, but I decided to put them in one thread because they're related.

I read that Slavic languages, all of them (probably in the Common Slavic era), started using the optative as imperative.  

So the imperatives we know today: vidi, kaži, znaj, govori  (govorite, govorimo) - these are all optative endings.

Is this correct?

1.  Are these modern imperatives exactly what the optatives were or have there been changes?

Some (most?) imperatives are based on 3rd person imperative:
znaj - znajte - znajmo 
idi - idite - idemo

Was the optative so structured/predictable? 

2. How were the original imperatives?  How did those look like?  How were they conjugated?

3. Finally, how was the optative used?  I've been reading about it and it seems that different languages use it differently.

Albanian uses it for a wishing mood, but the examples I saw are wishes and curses:
"May he live 100 years"
"May the devil take you" 

But these are treated very differently in current Slavic languages, no?

"Da živi još sto godina", "Živio još 100 godina"
"Ubio te Bog" (God take you), "Grom te ubio" (May thunder smite you) and more colorful examples that start with j and involve God, the Church,  grandparents etc.

Then in Ancient Greek I read:
Εἴθε βάλλοις (_Eíthe bállois_) "If only you would throw."

Which is now: "kad bi samo bacila" (to use the subjunctive)

But it can be without the subjunctive:

If you were mine: "da si moja" 
If only you were here: "eh da si (mi) tu"

But subjunctive works still:
If only this were in Serbia: _"_Eh da bi to u Srbiji bilo"

Then this other example of optative in Ancient Greek:

Χαίροιμι ἂν, εἰ πορεύοισθε (_Chaíroimi àn, ei poreúoisthe_) "I would be glad, if you could travel."

"Bio bih radostan da možete putovati."

_____

So, obviously BCS uses a whole variety of ways to convey desires, wishes, curses and so on.  Some by subjunctive, some using other methods.

How was the optative used before its loss? 

For example, in here: Χαίροιμι ἂν, εἰ πορεύοισθε
It's the first part that is optative, the second indicative or more likely subjunctive (it is irrealis after all), isn't it?

(I don't know the imperative/optative ending for 1SG, so let's do 3rd person)
So would it have been:
On budi rad(ostan) da biste mogli putovati. (??)

----

I'm not very clear on how the optative is used.  Is any wish/desire optatitve?  "I hope it rains tomorrow" - "Nadam se da _dožd_ padaj?" ?

Does anyone know more about how optatitve was used in Common Slavic, in daughter languages, in Ancient Greek or Albanian?

Not speaking any language that has it makes it difficult for me to understand.   I know when indicative is used in cases where logically the subjunctive would be more appropriate, but I'm not very clear on the optative.  

"If you only you could throw" "If you could fly" - these are not actual wishes, they're irrealis.   "If I were rich, I'd buy this" - this is not a wish because "If I were that sick, I'd kill myself" - obviously not a wish.  

But maybe "Εἴθε βάλλοις (_Eíthe bállois_)" means "oh, (how I wish) if only you could throw), more of "How I wish you were here" than "If you were here."

I hope someone here can help me because this has been on my mind for a while.  Thanks.


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## ahvalj

I can only answer to the morphological parts of your question.



mintster said:


> This is sort of a two part question, but I decided to put them in one thread because they're related.
> 
> I read that Slavic languages, all of them (probably in the Common Slavic era), started using the optative as imperative.
> 
> So the imperatives we know today: vidi, kaži, znaj, govori  (govorite, govorimo) - these are all optative endings.
> 
> Is this correct?



Yes, the modern Slavic Imperative goes back to the proto-Indo-European (PIE) Optative.

No, these are not endings: _-i-_ is the former Optative suffix, _-j_ is the final consonant of the Present tense stem. The endings in the words you mention are zero in the Sg. 2 and _-mo_ and _-te_ in the Pl. _Znaj, znajmo_ and _znajte _have lost the old suffix.



mintster said:


> 1.  Are these modern imperatives exactly what the optatives were or have there been changes?
> 
> Some (most?) imperatives are based on 3rd person imperative:
> znaj - znajte - znajmo
> idi - idite - idemo
> 
> Was the optative so structured/predictable?



Most Slavic verbs come from the so called "thematic type": in PIE it formed the Optative by adding the suffix _*-oihₑ-_ to the stem, which then received personal endings, so e. g. the Sg. 2. form was _*bʰeroihₑs,_ the Sg. 3. was _*bʰeroihₑt,_ Pl. 1. was _*bʰeroihₑmV_ (_V_ means some vowel), Pl. 2. was _*bʰeroihₑte _etc. This is still quite recognizable e. g. in Ancient Greek: _φέροις, φέροι, φέροιμεν, φέροιτε_ and Prussian: Sg. 2. _wedais,_ Pl. 2. _wedaiti. _Prussian, like Slavic, uses these forms in the Imperative meaning.

The Slavic Imperative forms attested in Old Church Slavonic and southern Old East Slavic are more or less exact phonetic outcomes of these older Optative forms: Sg. 1. _bǫděmь_ (< earlier Common Slavic *_-aı̯mi_ = Greek _φέροιμι_), Sg. 2. _bǫdi_ (<_*-aı̯ṣ_), Sg. 3. _bǫdi_ (<_*-aı̯(t)_), Pl. 1. *_bǫděmъ_ (<_*-aı̯mV-_), Pl. 2. *_bǫděte_ (<_*-aı̯te_), Pl. 3. _bǫdǫ_ (the vowel is non-etymological), Du[al]. 1. _bǫděvě_ (<_*-aı̯u̯V-_), Du. 2. _bǫděta_ (<_*-aı̯tā_), Du. 3 _bǫděte_ (<*_-aı̯te_). _Ě_ in the place of the old diphthong _*aı̯_ is phonetically regular, but _-i_ in the Sg. 2 and Sg. 3 remains unexplained (the same _-i_ from _*aı̯_ is found in the Nominative Plural of the _o_-stem nouns, adjectives and pronouns, e. g. _stoli _"tables": the regular _ě<*aı̯_ is found e. g. in the Locative Singular _stolě_ "in/on table"). After _j_ and in the _i_-verbs, the Old Church Slavonic and southern Old East Slavic Imperative has _i_ instead of _ě,_ e. g. _znaji, znaji, znajimъ, znajite…, prosi, prosi, prosimъ, prosite… _(this is phonetically regular and found elsewhere as well, e. g. Dative Singular _silě_ "to the force" < _*seı̯laı̯_ but _voļi_ "to the will" < _*u̯alı̯aı̯, _cp. the Lithiuanian _sielai _and _valiai_). This type has been generalized in e. g. Serbo-Croatian and Russian so that e. g. the old _berěte_ has been replaced by _berite_.



mintster said:


> 2. How were the original imperatives?  How did those look like?  How were they conjugated?



The PIE Imperative had no special suffix and e. g. from the above root _*bʰer-_ it was formed in the following way: Sg. 2. _*bʰere,_ Sg. 3. _*bʰeretu,_ Pl. 1. _*bʰeromV,_ Pl. 2. _*bʰerete,_ Pl. 3. _*bʰerontu…_ (these forms are still recognizable in Sanskrit, Avestan and Hittite, cp. Sanskrit: _bhara, bharatu, bharāma, bharata, bharantu_). In Old Church Slavonic, these forms should have produced _**bere, **beretъ, **beromV, **berete, **berǫtъ._ The forms on _-tъ_ actually exist in Old Church Slavonic: they are used for the corresponding Present Indicative forms, i. e. _beretъ_ means not "may he carry" but "he carries", but it is unknown if they continue the old Imperative or have a different origin.

*P. S.* Corrected Imperative → Optative at the very beginning.


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## mintster

Thanks @ahvalj .  I had to read it twice to get it, but it's very clear.  "Bǫdi" is surprising, one would expect ě, although had these survived, maybe with time they would have been homogenized.

Why does sg 2 not take an ending (š)?

Are there any examples of surviving optatives fossilized in modern sayings, proverbs, expressions?


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## ahvalj

mintster said:


> Why does sg 2 not take an ending (š)?



PIE had several sets of verbal endings. The Optative used the simplest ones, the so called "secondary endings" (the term is casual), which in Sg. 2 and Sg. 3 ended on consonants, _*-s_ and _*-t,_ respectively. Slavic has lost all the final stops, so the Sanskrit Sg. 2 _bhares _and Sg. 3. _bharet_ correspond to the Slavic Sg. 2 and 3 _beri_. Compare the same fate of the final consonants in the Aorist: Serbo-Croatian Sg. 2_ trese_ (<_*-es_) and Sg. 3_ trese_ (<_*-et_).

Slavic has the _-ši~-si _ending only in the Present (Old Church Slavonic and Old East Slavic _bereši, dasi, jesi_), where it goes back to a different set of PIE verbal endings that had a vowel after this *_-s-_. The modern Slavic _-š_ is secondary: e. g. in the Old East Slavic texts it only begins to appear in the 13th century, replacing the older _-ši_. The exact origin of the final vowel in _-ši~-si_ is disputable, but these endings correspond to the Prussian _-sei_ (_jesi = essei _"you are",_ věsi = waisei _"you know",_ dasi = dāse _"you give",_ živeši ~ gīwassi _"you live"; the Prussian spelling was created by German missionaries and was very inconsistent).



mintster said:


> Are there any examples of surviving optatives fossilized in modern sayings, proverbs, expressions?


I can only speak of the Russian situation. This language uses the invariable Imperative Sg. 2. form in the conditional clauses in the sense of the English "if … had done": _pʲridʲí ja/ty/on/my/vy/onʲí vóvrʲemʲa_ "if I/you/he/we/you/they had come in time": this can't be derived from the Imperative meaning but may be explained if this form was originally a kind of Conjunctive.


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## ahvalj

I think it is worth mentioning that Baltic, too, went the same route in converting the Optative into the Imperative. I cited Prussian already: in this language the old Optative forms serve as Imperatives, e. g. _wedais_ (= Old Church Slavonic _vedi_) "carry! [Sg. 2]", _wedaiti_ (= OCS _veděte_) "carry! [Pl. 2]". Latvian has lost the separate Imperative marker in Sg. 2, but in Pl. 2 the personal ending is preceded by _-ie-,_ which in East Baltic (Latvian, Lithuanian and several extinct languages) comes from the older _*ei_ and _*ai_ (preserved in West Baltic, e. g. Prussian, until the end), so there is no doubt that this form, too, continues the Old Optative: _vediet = wedaiti = veděte_ (for the Sg. 2. the Present Indicative form is used, _ved_). Lithuanian has developed a new Imperative with the suffix _-k(i)-,_ e. g. Sg. 2. _vesk,_ Pl. 1._ veskime,_ Pl. 2. _veskite,_ but remnants of the old Optative are preserved in the residual form of the third person (Permissive), _tevedie _"may he/they carry", where _-ie_ is the same outcome of _*ai_ as in Latvian and _te-_ is a special prefix. Old Lithuanian and the dialects also have similar forms in the Sg. 2. (without _te-_ and without the expected _-s, _which may have been influenced by the _s_-less Sg. 2 form in the Indicative) (_Zinkevičius Z · 1981 · Lietuvių kalbos istorinė gramatika. II: _131–134). Interestingly, the novel Russian Pl. 1 Imperative _-mtʲe,_ where the Pl. 2 ending _-tʲe_ is added to the Pl. 1 ending _-m,_ has parallels in Lithuanian dialects (_Zinkevičius: _132), e. g. _nešʲmete_ (_несёмте_), _sėdymete_ (_сядемте_) etc.

Also it is worth mentioning that the ancient Optative form of _byti_ (OCS _bimь, bi, bi, bimъ, biste _[_s _is secondary],_ bǫ_) escaped the development into the Imperative (which is formed from _bǫd-_) and served as the auxiliary verb for the new Slavic Conjunctive (originally the Perfect Optative, cp. _would give_ vs. _would have given_): _dalъ bimь, dalъ bi_ etc. (still in use in south-western Serbo-Croatian dialects) and also preserved in OCS in some independent constructions as the pure Conjunctive/Optative, e. g. _da ne prědanъ bimь_ (_Вайан А · 1952 · Руководство по старославянскому языку:_ 282) "that I should not be delivered" (_John _18: 36). Lithuanian has a somewhat parallel form merged with the former supine (_*-tun_) in the new Conjunctive, e. g. the Old Lithuanian forms of _rašyti_ "to write": Sg. 2. _rašytumbei~rašytumbi, _Pl. 1 _rašytumbime, _Pl. 2 _rašytumbite, _Du. 1_ rašytumbiva, _Du. 2 _rašytumbita _(cp. a similar merger in the Polish _pisałbym_): these forms, however, have a short _i_ in contrast with the Slavic (etymologically correct) long one.

*P. S.* Corrected the translation of the OCS example with _bimь_.


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## bragpipes

This book is just about optative.  You can read (parts of) it on Google Books.  There are examples from Albanian, which has preserved the optative and makes a distinction between optative and subjunctive.


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## bragpipes

@ahvalj Did OCS make a distinction between "I would give" and "I would have given" or is it contextual like BCS?

If I had money, I would give it to you.
"Da imam para, *dao bih ti*"

If I had money (had I had money), I would have given it to you.
"Da sam imao para, *dao bih ti*"


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## ahvalj

bragpipes said:


> @ahvalj Did OCS make a distinction between "I would give" and "I would have given" or is it contextual like BCS?
> 
> If I had money, I would give it to you.
> "Da imam para, *dao bih ti*"
> 
> If I had money (had I had money), I would have given it to you.
> "Da sam imao para, *dao bih ti*"


Since the OCS Conjunctive itself comes from "would have given", there is no way to express this distinction. Some (not all) later Slavic languages developed the new Past Conjunctive (e. g. Polish _dałbym ci_ vs. _byłbym dał ci _or Czech _dal bych ti_ vs. _byl bych dal ti_), which, however, in the last centuries was tending to disappear.


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## ahvalj

One more interesting thing I had forgotten: OCS occasionally has Imperative Pl. 1 and 2 forms on _a~ě_ after palatal consonants: cp. especially _bьjěmъ, bьjate, pьjate, pokažate. _Since this vowel can't go back to _*aı̯_ (which after _j_ is always _*aı̯>*äı̯>*eı̯_>_i, _not _a_), the only explanation is that these forms should go back to the PIE Conjunctive, which in thematic stems was characterized by a long vowel, _*ō_ (in Sg. 1, Du. 1, Pl. 1 and Pl. 3) or _*ē_ (elsewhere), e. g. Greek _φέρωμεν _and _φέρητε_). This old _*ē_ in OCS is reflected as _a~ě_ (depending on dialect and writing system: Glagolitic uses the latter, Cyrillic uses _ꙗ~а _and _ѣ_) after palatals vs. _ě_ elsewhere, cp. the Infinitive _sěděti_ (Praes. Sg. 3. _sěditъ_) vs. _stojati_ (_stojitъ_), _ležati_ (_ležitъ_), _dyšati_ (_dyšitъ_) or Comparative Nom./Acc. Sg. neuter _nověje_ vs. _gorьčaje, svěžaje, sušaje_ or the noun _gybělь_ vs. _pečalь, _thus the OCS forms with _a<*ē_ after palatals are expected (and after plain consonants they are indistinguishable from _ě<*aı̯ _so that _berěte_ in principle can go back to both the Optative *_beraı̯te_<_*bʰeroihₑte_ and the Conjunctive *_berēte_<_*bʰerēte; _however the unambiguously Conjunctive Pl. 1 forms like _**beramъ, _cp. _φέρωμεν, _or Pl. 2 _**tečate _(<_*tekēte_) seem to be unattested).


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## bragpipes

That's really interesting, @ahvalj.  

Where does the stress lie on words like_ pokažate_?   I feel like it should be_ pokaž*a*te_, but that's just intuition.  Does is -a- change the stress of the word?  

 Do we know what kind of conjunctive PIE was or how it was used?   The daughter languages have a variety of uses:

1. German Konjunktiv I: reported speech: _Er sagte mir, er *sei* nicht bereit._  (Sei instead of ist)
2. German KII: irrealis: Wenn ich reich wäre (if I were rich, wäre/were instead of bin/am).  Was _gäbe ich_ darum sie wieder zu sehen (What I would give... gäbe instead of gebe.  gäbe = würde geben.) 
3. French: Il faut que je sois parfait (I must be perfect, je sois instead of je suis) similar to English "We recommend that he be punished."

These are just off the top of my head.  I'm sure there are more.  But I don't know if these are innovations or a continuation of PIE conjunctive.


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## Panceltic

bragpipes said:


> Where does the stress lie on words like_ pokažate_?   I feel like it should be_ pokaž*a*te_, but that's just intuition.  Does is -a- change the stress of the word?



What language / form would that be? I don't think it exists.


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## bragpipes

Panceltic said:


> What language / form would that be? I don't think it exists.



I did not know about this form until ahvalj mentioned it.  It's OCS.

"C-a+ verbs and root j-verbs have plural imperative forms with the market ě beside regular forms with i: pokaza-ti ‘show’ pokažite ~ pokažěte покажѣте, покажате" 7.21


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## ahvalj

Panceltic said:


> What language / form would that be? I don't think it exists.


Old Church Slavonic, Imperative Pl. 2. These are the attested forms (e. g. _покажате и нынѣ ѥдиногласиѥ ваше:_ Памятники старославянского языка. Супрасльская рукопись). _Покажѣте~покажате_ are mentioned e. g. in _Lunt HG · 2001 · Old Church Slavonic grammar: _98 (as he states "[t]he _a/ě_ is exclusive in Sav, frequent in As, Zo and Supr, less so in Mar, infrequent in Ps, and unknown in Euch and Sav."). Otherwise, examples of this Imperative are discussed in several treatises (e. g. _Meillet A · 1934 · Le slave commun:_ §359 and _Nahtigal R · 1952 · Slovanski jeziki:_ 108 [pagination of the Russian edition], though the latter author doubts [without mentioning any reason] about their affinity with the Conjunctive; Nahtigal also mentions _покажате_).



bragpipes said:


> Where does the stress lie on words like_ pokažate_?   I feel like it should be_ pokaž*a*te_, but that's just intuition.  Does is -a- change the stress of the word?



I don't know where the stress in such forms was, and overall the Old Church Slavonic texts most often don't mark it: that was the later practice. Hope I am wrong in this case. Meanwhile, let's guess. The original verb belonged to the accentual paradigm (AP) _b_ and in Late Common Slavic was stressed _kažǫ̋, kãžetь, kaza̋ti_ (_Дыбо ВА · 2000 · Морфологизированные парадигматические акцентные системы. Типология и генезис. Том I: _384, 394, see also p. 546 for the paradigms; ̋ means the acute intonation,  ̃ stands for the Slavic neo-acute [=Balto-Slavic circumflex] on the long syllable). The normal Imperative in this AP was stressed on the suffix (_Зализняк АА · 1985 · От праславянской акцентуации к русской: _355), so we get the Pl. 2 _pokaži̋te_. Since the AP _b_ developed in the words with the stressed non-acute vowels in the root (i. e. earlier Common Slavic _*kā̃zātēı̯_), the stress in _kažǫ̋, kaži̋te _and_ kaza̋ti _is explained (since the 19th century, and this is unchanged even after the revolution in the Balto-Slavic accentology in the last decades) as the result of a shift onto the acute of the next syllable. The question is now whether the Conjunctive formants _ē/ō_ were acute or non-acute. Some scholars believe that only those vowels and diphthongs were acute in Balto-Slavic that had been lengthened after the loss of the laryngeals or the glottal elements of the PIE _*b, *d, *g and *gʲ: _if they are right, the Conjunctive marker should have been non-acute and thus would be unstressed in this verb like the non-acute long vowel in the Participle _pokãzanъ, _so we would come to _*pokãžate._ Others argue that the old apophonic lengths, too, tended to become acute (e. g. the Loc. Sg. in the _i_- and _u_-stems, including in the Infinitive *_-tēı̯_), in which case chances increase that the stress would be *_pokaža̋te_.



bragpipes said:


> Do we know what kind of conjunctive PIE was or how it was used?   The daughter languages have a variety of uses:
> 
> 1. German Konjunktiv I: reported speech: _Er sagte mir, er *sei* nicht bereit._  (Sei instead of ist)
> 2. German KII: irrealis: Wenn ich reich wäre (if I were rich, wäre/were instead of bin/am).  Was _gäbe ich_ darum sie wieder zu sehen (What I would give... gäbe instead of gebe.  gäbe = würde geben.)
> 3. French: Il faut que je sois parfait (I must be perfect, je sois instead of je suis) similar to English "We recommend that he be punished."
> 
> These are just off the top of my head.  I'm sure there are more.  But I don't know if these are innovations or a continuation of PIE conjunctive.


The forms of the daughter languages you mention all go back to the Optative. In particular, _sei_ and _soit_ both continue the former Optative _*hₑsı̯ehₑt_ (Greek _εἴη, _Old Latin _siēd,_ Gothic _sijai_). The old Conjunctive is lost in Germanic and became the Future in Latin (Fut. Ind. Act. Sg. 2 _legēs_ = Praes. Conj. Act. Sg. 2 _λέγῃς_).

Hopefully somebody outlines the meaning of the PIE Conjunctive. I guess, it was close to that in Ancient Greek (as was the Optative).

*P. S.* Actually, the history of the Latin Subjunctive is more complicated than what can be deduced from my words: it goes back to the PIE thematic Conjunctive and/or the athematic Optative in the I conjugation (_-ē-<*-ehₐē- _[Conj.] or _*-ehₐı̯ehₑ-_ [Opt.]) since the outcomes of both forms should have merged (but the presence of _ē_ in all the persons rather suggests the Optative, cp. Subj. _stem_ and Opt. _ἱσταίην_ but Conj. _ἱστῶ_), to a dialectal (post-PIE ?) _ā-_Conjunctive in the II–IV conjugations and to the Optative in some isolated verbs (_sim, velim, edim, duim_).


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## bragpipes

@ahvalj 

I read this on the French wiktionary's page for the Czech "-si" suffix.



> Ancien optatif (subjonctif) de _být_ (« être ») → voir _jsem_ et _jseš_ qui est conservé dans le latin _sīs, sit_ et le français _sois, soit_. Avant univerbation, une expression comme _kdosi_ signifiait « qui [que ce] soit ».



This suffix is present words like asi, cosi, kdesi, kdosi, etc.

That reference is not cited, but does that mean that the optative of být(i) was something very similar to Latin sīs/sit?  

I can only guess that the "full" form of 3rd person singular optative is something like jesi, with the short form being just si (similar to sam/jesam).  Which would make kdo si a perfect parallel of "qui (que ce) soit" - who(ever) (that) {may} be.

A few questions:
Is the wiktionary etymology correct?
Is there, as I assume, an optative form of byti based on jes-, i.e. not bud- forms?

Would these forms be something like jesi or something like Latin/French with just si  (just for demonstrative purposes: on si rad ašte - he would be glad if..)

Do we know any more about this, such as non-fossilized forms (something other than asi, kdosi, something using si in a sentence) or are there fossilized forms/expressions that show the full form of si (if such a form really exists) or forms from other persons (1st, 1st pl, 2nd, 2nd pl, 3rd pl)?


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## ahvalj

_Этимологический словарь славянских языков. Праславянский лексический фонд. Выпуск 1 (A–*besědьlivъ) · 1974: _39 writes that (my translation) "_*a si_ lying in the base of the Czech and Slovak adverbs with the meaning of approximateness and probability obviously contains in its second element the continuation of the old Optative". In particular, the authors mention the Polish _ktoś=ktobądź _with both the old and the new Optative forms.

I have never seen any conjugated Optative forms on _s-_ mentioned for any Slavic language. Will write if I find something in the following days.

The PIE Optative from this stem was _*hₑs-ı̯ehₑ-_ (Sg.) and _*hₑs-ihₑ-_ (Du. and Pl.), which would have produced the Old Church Slavonic _**ša-~si-,_ or, if the Sg. forms had been leveled after the Du./Pl. ones, _si-_.


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