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3rd person personal pronoun

Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 3:15 am
by Bert
There is no nominative form for the third person personal pronoun.
By the time that α?τός developed into a personal pronoun, it gets used at times in the nominative to emphasize the subject or to indicate the gender of the subject.
In Homeric Greek, does the subject get expressed to do this, or does α?τός as intensive pronoun get used for this.

Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 3:38 pm
by Skylax
According to Chantraine's Homeric Grammar, there is no difference here between Homeric and Classical Greek : α?τός can be "strong" or "weak". When "strong", α?τός is emphatic, underlining either an opposition ("he, not another") or the identity ("he, yes, the same person"). In a weakened meaning, α?τός "plays the part" of a 3rd person personal pronoun, even in the nominative, but of course it is not compulsory.