Linguistic Universals and Dialects: The Future as ‘Injunctive’ in the Inscriptions of Mytilene

This study poses the question of whether certain linguistic features are not subject to dialectal variation, a question that requires thorough examination in the corpus of Ancient Greek dialects. To this end, the semantics and the pragmatic function of the injunctive/existential future is examined in the dialectal inscriptions of Ancient Mytilene, in the framework of cognitive semantics, deontic modality, and STIT, a semantic model of agency and control. The first line of enquiry regards the distribution of the semantic functions of the form: is it the case that all semantic nuances of ‘FUTURE TENSE’ are attested in the entirety of Ancient Greek dialects? A second line of enquiry regards the semantics of the form, and more particularly the fact that it expressed extreme deontic force, as if it were a type of injunctive. The form was detached from a specific deontic source, i.e., it merely represented a moral principle in a rather abstract, general form. Its meaning approximated that of infinitive pro imperativo, in that both types indicated what was morally right as a general legal requirement. Particular attention is given to the semantic/pragmatic distinction of the form from the imperative mood. It is claimed that a scale of an agent’s involvement in the verbal action distinguishes imperatival infinitives, injunctive futures and imperatives and that a shift from an objective to a more subjective expression of deontic necessity affects injunctive futures in the history of Greek. The existential future had no performative, directive force, this pragmatic task was performed by imperatives and imperatival infinitives. The existential future denoted absolute certainty in the realization of a prospective fact and presented a projected reality as if it were real in the present of the utterance, hence the characterization as existential. As such it lends support to the view that temporality is tightly connected to modality. The existential meaning of the future seems to be an innovation within Greek and became more frequent in (post)classical times. It appears as a panhellenic feature, but further verification is needed.