Questions tagged [optative-mood]
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She expressed the wish that God [might] bless America
A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Quirk et al.) says:
14.34 The subjunctive and modal auxiliaries in indirect speech
There is no indirect speech construction for the optative subjunctive (cf 11.39), but when it is used to express a…
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Subject pronoun after verb
"Perish the two hands of Abu Lahab [an uncle of the Prophet], and perish he!"
Perish is verb and he is a subject pronoun, so why is "perish he!" used here?
