21st Century Classical Greek -- partitive genitive?

Let’s look at this phrase which does not use noun cases quite as you might expect.

Ἕλληνος δὲ καὶ τῶν παίδων αὐτοῦ ἐν τῇ Φθιώτιδι ἰσχυσάντων, καὶ ἐπαγομένων αὐτοὺς ἐπ᾽ ὠφελίᾳ ἐς τὰς ἄλλας πόλεις…

Why do we have ton paidon in the -on case? This is a compound subject and in most languages the whole thing would be in nominative case.

I don’t have a serious answer for you but I am guessing that this is something very familiar in French and Russian: the partitive. French has a very sketchy declension structure and does the partitive periphrastically; Russian has a special -u suffix for partitive.

Goodwin calls it the partitive genitive and the notion is that it’s a part taken out of a mass. So possibly not all of the sons of Hellen, but part of them, had their strength in Phthiotis.

You couldn’t prove it by Greek mythology. One of Hellenos’ sons was the ancestor of the “Dorians” about whom I’ll say something later. Another was Aeolus, who gets credit for another ethnic people that contributed to Greek stock. The third was the father of the “Achaeans” whom I discussed a couple of weeks ago, and the Ionians – which is actually another version of “Achaean” according to Linear B texts found in Krete. But the king of Phthiotis was the grandson of Zeus and his father was the king of Aegina. Keep that in mind for next week.

Now notice that iskhusanton is labeled an executive voice personal gerundive. When you look at the dictionary definition, it’s descriptive, which ought to be intransitive. Remember that personal gerundives describe an action happening. So this is almost doubly descriptive. Its antecedent is ton paidon, as you can tell from the identical adjectival endings.

Epagomenon also has ton paidon as its antecedent and now the problem is that there’s an object to this participles, autous. But autous doesn’t agree with epagomenon in case; it’s the -ous case. Why? I don’t know. None of the grammars discuss this. Nobody looked at it closely enough. If I had more examples of it, I would make a suggestion. If any Greek geeks are reading this blog, go back over any material you have read carefully (like to write a thesis) and see what you come up with.

21st Century Classical Greek -- impersonal gerundives

Thucydides Book I 3.2. has two phrases ending with impersonal gerundives, and this lets me give you a list of things to watch out for with impersonal gerundives.

δοκεῖ δέ μοι, οὐδὲ τοὔνομα τοῦτο ξύμπασά πω εἶχεν, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν πρὸ Ἕλληνος τοῦ Δευκαλίωνος καὶ πάνυ οὐδὲ εἶναι ἡ ἐπίκλησις αὕτη, κατὰ ἔθνη δὲ ἄλλα τε καὶ τὸ Πελασγικὸν ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτῶν τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν παρέχεσθαι,

Ἕλληνος δὲ καὶ τῶν παίδων αὐτοῦ ἐν τῇ Φθιώτιδι ἰσχυσάντων, καὶ ἐπαγομένων αὐτοὺς ἐπ᾽ ὠφελίᾳ ἐς τὰς ἄλλας πόλεις, καθ᾽ ἑκάστους μὲν ἤδη τῇ ὁμιλίᾳ μᾶλλον καλεῖσθαι Ἕλληνας,

οὐ μέντοι πολλοῦ γε χρόνου [ἐδύνατο] καὶ ἅπασιν ἐκνικῆσαι.

The old grammars give a number of uses for impersonal gerundives.

1.                  To substitute for conjugated verbs as the name of an action.

2.                  Complement of verbs in contexts that mean purpose, intent, and other uncompleted actions, especially the imperfective conceptual i.g.

3.                  Complement of:

a.                    Dunamai – able

b.                  Dei – possible

c.                   Khri – necessary

d.                  Dei or khri -- obligatory

4.                  Instead of an imperative when an action is due and owing based on specified considerations. Avoids issuing an ultimatum.

5.                  Quoted speech and question in the same aspect as in the original question, sometimes using the imperfective conceptual for a promise.

6.                  In a result clause starting with hos[te]. Goodwin claims it expresses a tendency and not an actual result.

7.                  In purpose clauses. The i.g. may be negated using mi to express “so that X [out of the possible and possibly alternative actions] does not happen”.

Do not confuse (7) with a purpose clause introduced by some particle such as ina, hos, hopos or ofra, which the old grammars confusingly call “final” or “object” clauses. We’ll look for (7) clauses soon.

Two more issues I have to take exception with, claims made about quoted speech:

            With an, the progressive conceptual i.g. represents a progressive eventive i.g.

            With an, the imperfective eventive i.g. is a quote of something said in imperfective eventive uncertainty epistemic OR an i.e. indicative.

You can make claims like this when your verb system has fuzzy grammatical definitions, as well as saying things that the data contradicts, like “imperfect tense is for something interrupted by another action”.

The other way this claim arises is if you analyze the text incorrectly. I will show in a later lesson that claims made about purpose clauses fail when you analyze the sentence properly.

In our more objective verbal definitions based on aspect, you can’t convert one form to the use belonging to another form. And aspectual usage only seems to overlap. Imperfective may seem to involve repeated action, but that’s only because the effects of an action wear off or are reversed. The repetition of progressive aspect creates a habit or situation.

You can keep your eyes open for reported speech that has an plus an i.g. to test what I say. But on the face of it we have more evidence that the sources our existing grammars relied on, are fundamentally incorrect.

21st Century Classical Greek -- epistemic

 I told you to learn eknikao last week. Now I’m going to deal with the Word Tool  issues.

δοκεῖ δέ μοι, οὐδὲ τοὔνομα τοῦτο ξύμπασά πω εἶχεν, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν πρὸ Ἕλληνος τοῦ Δευκαλίωνος καὶ πάνυ οὐδὲ εἶναι ἡ ἐπίκλησις αὕτη, κατὰ ἔθνη δὲ ἄλλα τε καὶ τὸ Πελασγικὸν ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτῶν τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν παρέχεσθαι,

Ἕλληνος δὲ καὶ τῶν παίδων αὐτοῦ ἐν τῇ Φθιώτιδι ἰσχυσάντων, καὶ ἐπαγομένων αὐτοὺς ἐπ᾽ ὠφελίᾳ ἐς τὰς ἄλλας πόλεις, καθ᾽ ἑκάστους μὲν ἤδη τῇ ὁμιλίᾳ μᾶλλον καλεῖσθαι Ἕλληνας, 

οὐ μέντοι πολλοῦ γε χρόνου [ἐδύνατο] καὶ ἅπασιν ἐκνικῆσαι.

The Word Tool says this could be an imperative, but the context shows it can’t be that.

Or it could be an i.g. As a habit of using the name Hellene, it ought to be a progressive i.g., but the Word Tool says it’s imperfective eventive if it’s an i.g. So I don’t think that works.

The conjugated progressive conceptual would be 2nd person and that doesn’t work here.

We’re left with a 3rd singular (appropriate person and number) imperfective eventive in “optative”.

This is our third modality. It lies on the certainty vector, and its real name is epistemic. Epistemics are about the speaker’s investment in the truth of what he is saying. If he is fully invested, he uses indicative; if he’s not, he uses the epistemic. In Biblical Hebrew there are forms different from the indicative for each of certainty and uncertainty. In Greek there’s just indicative and epistemic.

Thucydides uses the epistemic for things that are possible but not probable, so this is weaker in certainty than the oblique. In some upcoming material, he will use it as a spoiler for something that turns out not to happen. 

Knowing that “Hellenes” eventually did equal “Greeks”, what is the uncertainty about the name being used for all of them? Well, look at the rest of the subsection. All the verbs after alla are gerundives. Thucydides is indefinite about all the actions, but he can be definite about what happened with the name Hellenes. He can’t be certain about all the facts however. The epistemic here closes the subsection on the same note of uncertainty as the dokei de moi that starts it. Thucydides won’t always do this, but he does it here.

21st Century Classical Greek -- textual structure and cultural background

I 3.2. is long and involved so let’s parse it out.

δοκεῖ δέ μοι,

οὐδὲ τοὔνομα τοῦτο ξύμπασά πω εἶχεν,

ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν πρὸ Ἕλληνος τοῦ Δευκαλίωνος καὶ πάνυ οὐδὲ εἶναι ἡ ἐπίκλησις αὕτη,

κατὰ ἔθνη δὲ ἄλλα τε καὶ τὸ Πελασγικὸν ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτῶν τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν παρέχεσθαι,

Ἕλληνος δὲ καὶ τῶν παίδων αὐτοῦ ἐν τῇ Φθιώτιδι ἰσχυσάντων,

καὶ ἐπαγομένων αὐτοὺς ἐπ᾽ ὠφελίᾳ ἐς τὰς ἄλλας πόλεις,

καθ᾽ ἑκάστους μὲν ἤδη τῇ ὁμιλίᾳ μᾶλλον καλεῖσθαι Ἕλληνας,

οὐ μέντοι πολλοῦ γε χρόνου [ἐδύνατο] καὶ ἅπασιν ἐκνικῆσαι.

Tounoma is an example of how an article can stick to (agglutinate with) the noun it modifies. It refers back to Hellas which, according to Mr. T, was not the name of the entire region “yet”, po.

Learn ἀλλὰ as “but, on the other hand” and άλλος, “other”.

Tou + a name in -on case is “son of.” You’ll see it a lot later when Thucydides starts naming military officers.

Learn ἐκνικάω. You may know of the goddess of Victory, Nike. You’ll see this verb a lot later to show who won what battles. I’m going to talk about it next week because of all the options in Word Tool.

If you know Greek mythology, you know who Deukalion is. In fact he unites the pre-Hellenic ethnic groups because each of them claims he landed in their turf: Mount Parnassus, Mount Athos in Chalkidiki 40 miles NW of Parnassus, Mount Othrys in Thessaly barely 20 miles north of Parnassus, or Mount Etna in Sicily, over 60 miles from Parnassus.

Mount Parnassus was sacred to Dionysus, a fitting legend for the landing place of the ancestor of the man who started making wine in Greece and who came from the wine-producing Indo-European homeland in Anatolia. Parnassus overhangs Delphi, the oracle sacred to Apollo, patron of the Pelishtim/Ahiyyawa. (This is the landing spot in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a product of the Roman Empire that nevertheless seems to have drawn on oral narratives.)  Parnassus is supposed to be where Apollo met the son of one of the nine muses and taught Orpheus to sing and play.

The Pelasgians are pre-Hellenic settlers in Greece and that makes them cognate to the Pelishet, which was their Egyptian name; they are the Pelisthim of the Hebrew Bible. The Hittites called them Ahiyyawa, the equivalent of Achaean. They were a part of the Sea Peoples, living in Krete and using Linear B for their Indo-European language which has some strong resemblances to Latin such as eko for horse (equus). This later turned into Greek hippos through something called a q/p conversion that also distinguishes Welsh from Irish.

Another part of the Sea Peoples, the Sikila, gave their name to Sicily. They and the Sherden settled around Tyre and Sidon and merged with the K’naani inhabitants to become the Phoenicians, famous in ancient times for their travels to Spain and Wales.