21st Century Classical Greek -- the cognate accusative

Book I section 51. This is a good section for going over all the conjugated verbs; id the aspect, flavor, person, number and gender to test yourself.

ταύτας οὖν προϊδόντες οἱ Κορίνθιοι καὶ ὑποτοπήσαντες ἀπ᾽ Ἀθηνῶν εἶναι οὐχ ὅσας ἑώρων ἀλλὰ πλείους ὑπανεχώρουν.

[2] τοῖς δὲ Κερκυραίοις ἐπέπλεον γὰρ μᾶλλον ἐκ τοῦ ἀφανοῦς οὐχ ἑωρῶντο, καὶ ἐθαύμαζον τοὺς Κορινθίους πρύμναν κρουομένους, πρίν τινες ἰδόντες εἶπον ὅτι νῆες ἐκεῖναι ἐπιπλέουσιν. τότε δὲ καὶ αὐτοὶ ἀνεχώρουν: ξυνεσκόταζε γὰρ ἤδη, καὶ οἱ Κορίνθιοι ἀποτραπόμενοι τὴν διάλυσιν ἐποιήσαντο.

[3] οὕτω μὲν ἡ ἀπαλλαγὴ ἐγένετο ἀλλήλων, καὶ ἡ ναυμαχία ἐτελεύτα ἐς νύκτα.

[4] τοῖς δὲ Κερκυραίοις στρατοπεδευομένοις ἐπὶ τῇ Λευκίμμῃ αἱ εἴκοσι νῆες αἱ ἐκ τῶν Ἀθηνῶν αὗται, ὧν ἦρχε Γλαύκων τε ὁ Λεάγρου καὶ † Ἀνδοκίδης ὁ Λεωγόρου †, διὰ τῶν νεκρῶν καὶ ναυαγίων προσκομισθεῖσαι κατέπλεον ἐς τὸ στρατόπεδον οὐ πολλῷ ὕστερον ἢ ὤφθησαν.

[5] οἱ δὲ Κερκυραῖοι (ἦν γὰρ νύξ) ἐφοβήθησαν μὴ πολέμιαι ὦσιν, ἔπειτα δὲ ἔγνωσαν: καὶ ὡρμίσαντο.

In 51.1, Jowett ignores the negation oukh hosas, “not those that they saw, but more [as well], slowly retreated.”

In 51.2, tois….oukh eoronto is not explained in LSJ or Middle Liddel. The meaning clearly is that the Kerkyraeans did not see the Athinaian ships coming to help them, but there is no entry in LSJ that hinges on the -ois case.

Note that 51.5 sort of has reported speech. What modal does it use and why?

Now for another concept in the old grammars that I can explode.  If you have studied Greek before, you were probably taught about the cognate accusative. If you wound up confused or were never able to recognize it or use it in your exercises, that’s more damage from the old grammars. When you studied the dictionary entries on eoronto, you saw an item that referred to cog. acc. That’s what I’m going to destroy.

All the Greek grammars I looked at (White, Goodwin, Gildersleeve, Smyth) have different definitions of this subject. Gildersleeve copied his from his Latin grammar, and it differs from the definition in Allen & Greenough’s Latin grammar. When there’s no objective definition, there’s no there there.

There is something in Arabic and Hebrew that is called the cognate accusative. It is two words in close association from the same root. One is a conjugated verb; the other is a substantive derivative. The structure is an adverb of manner. Since there is no accusative morphology in Hebrew, it’s obvious that “cognate accusative” is another misleading label, and since the structure is used as an adverb it’s clear there should be no case assignment anyway.

What I’m going to call it is adverbial equative, which is an actual noun case in Hurrian. I don’t have examples of the Hurrian adverbial equative; Wegener doesn’t give any. If you know of some, ante up. The adverbial equative appears to be endemic in the Arabic Thousand and One Nights, if the Burton translation is to be trusted. I found a copy of Arabian Nights online but haven’t learned enough Arabic to study it.

It turns out that poets like Aeschylus, and Demosthenes in his rhetoric, have structures using two derivatives of the same word, although Thucydides hasn’t used it in any of the sections we looked at.

See Demosthenes’ Against Aristocrates 121, καλήν γ᾽ ὕβριν ἦμεν ἂν ὑβρισμένοι. “what a fine insult by them insulting us”

Aristophanes’ Plutus, 1044: τάλαιν᾽ ἐγὼ τῆς ὕβρεος ἧς ὑβρίζομαι. “wretched me the insult being insulted.”

Or, “could this possibly be more insulting”.

There is such a thing as the adverbial equative in another ancient Indic language. I found this structure in Book IV of the Mahabharata, chapter 66, verse 22. There is no reason to deny that Classical Greek has an adverbial equative since its close cousin Sanskrit has it. The issue is that scholars writing about Classical Greek have committed the fallacy of broad redefinition to pretend that the a.e. is as common in Greek as it seems to be in Arabic. Instead, it seems to be restricted to specific uses, and as the Mahabharata is a long verse composition from an oral tradition, there shouldn’t be any surprise at finding that the Sanskrit poets used the adverbial equative.

So there are a couple of projects for you:

a)                  study the Thousand and One Nights in Arabic to see if the a.e. is as common as Burton makes it appear;

b)                  study your favorite Greek author to see under what circumstances he uses the a.e.; and

c)                  look for more examples in the Mahabharata.

But stick to my definition.