21st Century Classical Greek -- Summary 8, syntax particles

I know this is way early but I was up fixing a piece of knitting and I decided to post this now and sleep in later.

I originally had these summaries in a different order but after doing conditionals I think it’s important to do the syntax particles.

The main syntax particles are men and de. They mark point and counterpoint, where you should think of counterpoint the way it works in music: a different idea which fills out the main idea. So, in Thucydides I 1.3:

[3] τὰ γὰρ πρὸ αὐτῶν καὶ τὰ ἔτι παλαίτερα σαφῶς μὲν εὑρεῖν διὰ χρόνου πλῆθος ἀδύνατα ἦν, ἐκ δὲ τεκμηρίων ὧν ἐπὶ μακρότατον σκοποῦντί μοι πιστεῦσαι ξυμβαίνει οὐ μεγάλα νομίζω γενέσθαι οὔτε κατὰ τοὺς πολέμους οὔτε ἐς τὰ ἄλλα.

Both are what is called enclitic, they are never the first word in the clause where they appear. When two options are on offer, they can be used with ei as in I 53.4:

εἰ μὲν οὖν ἄλλοσέ ποι βούλεσθε πλεῖν, οὐ κωλύομεν:

εἰ δὲ ἐπὶ Κέρκυραν πλευσεῖσθε ἢ ἐς τῶν ἐκείνων τι χωρίων, οὐ περιοψόμεθα κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν.’

In this case we actually have ei…ei, “either/whether…or”, not really “if”.

It will take work to see if this next statement holds up against Greek authors, but in this sample both verbs are indicative. Remember in conditionals, when an is not there and the verb is indicative, we are looking at a statement without any implication about the result. I have found ei men with the indicative in Plato’s Theaetetus and one of Demosthenes’ Phillipics, as well as elsewhere in Peloponnesian War, giving this same nuance. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to see if ei men…ei de… shows up with oblique or epistemic.

In Book I, 2.4 we have gar which sort of substitutes for men, in this case, in a topic order sentence:

διὰ γὰρ ἀρετὴν γῆς αἵ τε δυνάμεις τισὶ μείζους ἐγγιγνόμεναι στάσεις ἐνεποίουν ἐξ ὧν ἐφθείροντο, καὶ ἅμα ὑπὸ ἀλλοφύλων μᾶλλον ἐπεβουλεύοντο.

Gar will follow on from some other statement; the gar clause is stronger than de, introducing an explanation for something just said as opposed to a reinforcing idea. Gar can also argue against the truth of the preceding statement.

Kai is not just “and” any more than vav in Biblical Hebrew only means “and” (in fact vav more often is a grammatical marker than a conjunction).  Kai…kai of course is “both…and”. As an enclitic syntax particle, kai introduces an add-on, reinforcing idea.

Its weaker cousin te can appear both alone and with kai, and there is the still weaker ge which introduces a modifying but not necessarily supporting concept.

When you are trying to figure out what the Greek is saying, pay attention to the syntax particles and the verbs in the clauses or phrases that they set off. I haven’t yet studied how they relate to oblique or epistemic and, as I keep saying, your favorite author may use them differently than Thucydides.