Hi Rett,
Sorry for the delay. I'm a little behind with the emails. Thanks for
relating your thoughts about 'should' in the James Bond movie. Very
cool! I thought it would be interesting to find out where the James
Bond's 'should' belongs in a modern English grammar that I pulled out
only yesterday for the first time in a long time. I think I've found a
good match for your interpretation.
Rett:
<<As a fun aside, in connection with optatives: last night, watching a
James Bond movie on TV, I was struck by something Roger Moore said:
"this should be the control room". He was diving in a wrecked ship
and had a floor plan of the ship with him for reference. From the
plan he concluded that a certain room was the control room and said
so. By using 'should be' (roughly a sort of English optative) he is
marking the evidentiality-status of the statement. In this case he
marks it as a surmise, something like:
"This is the control room, not that I know for sure, but I believe so
with a relatively high degree of certainty, based on the map (though
I might have read the map wrong)">>
Jim:
I looked up 'should' in the section on _Meanings of the modal verbs_
in R. Quirk's grammar, 219ff as I remember seeing a handy chart for
the modal verbs. To me, the meanings of these modals are like direct
translations of some of the classical meanings of the Pali and Skt.
optatives-- Group 1: permission & possibility/ability, II: obligation
& necessity, III: volition & prediction. Group II is where 'should' is
found:
Group II:
committed obligation or necessity--must, have (got) to, need
(nonassertive)
noncommitted obligation or necessity--should, ought to
The authors think that 'noncommitted necessity' is best characterized
as 'tentative inference'. They give these 2 examples: The mountain
should/ought to be visible from here. These plants should/ought to
reach maturity after five years. 'Necessity' belongs to 'extrinsic
modality' (involves human judgement of what is or is not likely to
happen) while 'obligation' is of intrinsic modality (primarily
involves human control over events). The two categories are not taken
as absolutes in order to allow for gradiency of shades of meanings
between the two.
Rett:
<<Since by the time he'd have managed to say all that he would have
been running out of oxygen-helium mixture, (not to mention that the
bad guy with the robotic claw would have arrived), Bond is lucky
English has the word 'should'.
Something like this is expressed in Pali with the future tenses:
eta.m ki.m bhavissati? What might this be?. And maybe even "tva.m
Livinstaanavejjo bhavissasi" Dr. Livingstone, I presume. (though this
type of presumption might more commonly be expressed with maññe)
I'm not sure, but I think I remember seeing this sort of expression
with optatives as well, which is why I had the odd experience of pali
grammar irrupting into a fluff movie. >>
Jim:
According to Quirk, 'may/might' belongs to Group I:
committed permission (intrinsic) or possibility, ability (extrinsic)
--can, could
noncommitted permission or possibility, ability--may, might
Group III has these modal verbs: will, would, shall
>I saw at Khp-a 125 the following gloss: "puujaneyyaananti
>puujaarahaana.m" which I think shows the araha sense of the 'eyya'
>suffix.
Rett:
<<I agree that this example shows the araha sense, but it doesn't seem
to go either way on the question of whether the derivation is puujana
+ eyya or puuja + aneyya. Thanks for including this reference to
what's still seems like an open questions. (one of many, many open
questions these texts give rise to)>>
Jim:
There does not seem to be an 'aneyya' kicca suffix in the Saddaniiti.
To underscore the araha meaning of the 'eyya' suffix the commentator
could have used 'puujanaarahaana.m' instead. But on the other hand it
could be that two things are being accomplished at once by giving both
a synonym 'puujaa' for 'puujanaa' as well as a meaning for 'eyya'.
Best wishes,
Jim