The injunctive mood is a grammatical mood in

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

that was characterized by secondary endings but no

augment Augment or augmentation may refer to: Language *Augment (Indo-European), a syllable added to the beginning of the word in certain Indo-European languages * Augment (Bantu languages), a morpheme that is prefixed to the noun class prefix of nouns ...

, and usually looked like an augmentless aorist or

imperfect The imperfect ( abbreviated ) is a verb form that combines past tense (reference to a past time) and imperfective aspect (reference to a continuing or repeated event or state). It can have meanings similar to the English "was walking" or "used to ...

. It typically stood in a main clause and had a subjunctive or imperative meaning; for example, it could indicate intention, e.g. ''índrasya nú vīryā̀ṇi prá vocam'' "Indra's heroic deeds will/shall I now declaim" (Beekes, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics, An Introduction. 1995, p.245). It was obligatory for use in prohibitions, where it follows ''mā́''. In later Classical Sanskrit, only the use after ''mā'' remained (there are no accents in Classical Sanskrit).

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

has words that are formally similar to the Sanskrit injunctive mood, consisting of aorist and

forms lacking the

. However, in this case there is no difference in meaning between these forms and the normal augmented forms. These are normally used in

Homer Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...

and other

epic poetry An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. ...

(see

Homeric Greek Homeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used by Homer in the ''Iliad'', ''Odyssey'', and Homeric Hymns. It is a literary dialect of Ancient Greek consisting mainly of Ionic, with some Aeolic forms, a few from Arcadocypriot, and ...

). It is generally assumed that the augment was originally a separate particle meaning something like "then", added to indicate the past time of a form that was once mostly aspectual, and neutral with respect to tense. Originally, its use appears to have been optional, added as necessary to clear up an otherwise ambiguous expression, similarly to time adverbs in

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

. Gradually, it fused onto the verb form and became mandatory, but in the early stages of Greek and Sanskrit this change was not yet complete, and hence augmentless forms existed side-by-side with augmented forms. The modal semantics of the augmentless forms may then be a later development within Indo-Iranian or Indo-Aryan. It's also possible that the modal semantics developed in the parent language and later developments in Pre-Greek removed them and put back the basic meaning of the aorist and imperative, by analogy.

References

Sanskrit grammar Indo-European linguistics {{Grammatical moods Grammatical moods