Cohortative mood

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The cohortative mood (also known as Intentional; "cohortative subjunctive" is also synonymous with "hortatory subjunctive") is a grammatical mood, used to express plea, insistence, imploring, self-encouragement, wish, desire, intent, command, purpose or consequence. It is similar to the jussive mood, with the notable exception that the cohortative appears only in first person, whereas the jussive appears in second or third. Cohortatives are found in Hebrew. In several other languages that lack a specifically cohortative mood, there are corresponding expressions with approximately cohortative meaning. For example, Ancient Greek uses first person subjunctives (anachoreusōmen Bakchion, "let us dance for Bacchus," Euripides, Bacchae 1153). In English an equivalent idea may be expressed by a verbal auxiliary such as "let" (a usage which must not be confused with the more usual sense "allow, permit").

The hortative mood and the exhortative mood are largely synonymous with this, although sometimes distinctions are made. When distinctions are made, together they are called "hortative moods". See Johan van der Auwera, Nina Dobrushina, Valentin Goussev, "A Semantic Map for Imperative-Hortatives", in Dominique Willems, Timothy Colleman & Bart Defrancq (eds.) Points of Comparison in Linguistics: from Morphology to Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. online copy for some discussion of when these distinctions are made.

[edit] Cohortative in Biblical Hebrew

While not found in modern Hebrew, the cohortative mood has an important role in Biblical Hebrew, where it was represented by a lengthened future form; namely adding the vowel 'ā' (adding of the letter ה) at the end of an already conjugated verb.

Cohortatives are often found in the Hebrew Bible. One example is found in Genesis 1:26:

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness..."

"ויאמר אלהים נעשה אדם בצלמנו כדמותינו..."

The verb "let us make" (נעשה) is problematic, as it is found in plural form, whereas Judaism believes in a single god. One explanation for this is the notion that God consulted the angels which he created earlier. Another explanation, however, is that this verb comes in fact in the cohortative mood, now extinct in Hebrew. (Polytheists and Trinitarian Christians often interpret this passage and others like it as indicating actual plurality in the nature of the God or gods depicted—for example, the Father God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit—the cohortative thus being a true first person plural.)