α?τός as a postpositive

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vir litterarum
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α?τός as a postpositive

Post by vir litterarum »

I am currently perusing Professor Helma Dik's Word Order in Ancient Greek: A Pragmatic Account of Word Order Variation in Herodotus, and she keeps referring to α?τός as a postpositive. Why is it considered a postpositive?

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IreneY
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Post by IreneY »

Are we talking about autos in general or about autos with the meaning of himself?

modus.irrealis
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Re: α?τός as a postpositive

Post by modus.irrealis »

I would guess that she means as a 3rd person pronoun, since I've read that in this use it is a postpositive and doesn't occur first in its clause.

vir litterarum
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Post by vir litterarum »

She is referring to its use as the 3rd person pronoun. I was not aware that it was postpositive when used in this capacity.

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Re: α?τός as a postpositive

Post by annis »


William S. Annis — http://www.aoidoi.org/http://www.scholiastae.org/
τίς πατέρ' αἰνήσει εἰ μὴ κακοδαίμονες υἱοί;

Bert
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Re: α?τός as a postpositive

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annis
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Re: α?τός as a postpositive

Post by annis »

Bert wrote:Concerning the word oblique, is oblique anything but nominative (and vocative I guess) or anything but nominative and accusative?
Anything but nominative. Vocatives are odd birds out on their own, but they're not oblique either.
I can't recall having seen the genitive of autos as first in the sentence but I think I remember seeing it ahead of the noun it modifies. Being postpositive is only in reference to its position in the sentence and not in relation to its noun?
I would say "position in the clause" rather than sentence, but yes.
William S. Annis — http://www.aoidoi.org/http://www.scholiastae.org/
τίς πατέρ' αἰνήσει εἰ μὴ κακοδαίμονες υἱοί;

Bombichka
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Post by Bombichka »

postpositive in respect to what? since it is the case when it is used as a personal pronoun, I guess it is after a verb by which it is governed, and not after a noun it modifies. is this what is meant by 'postpositive' here?

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Post by cb »

hi, have a look at apollonius dysc on pronouns and whatever commentary there is on this. i remember reading in there a ref to the acc sg of this pronoun as an enclitic, which would be relevant to its consideration as postpositive (remove spaces, pdf page 18 bottom, section number 26):

schmidhauser . us / docs / apollonius-sources / pronouns . pdf

a commentator on this section might cover the question you posed above, and in addition check out dover on word order if you haven't already... i can't remember if dover covers all non-nom uses of this pronoun at the end of a clause or only τοῦτο at the end of a clause before a ὅτι-type explanatory clause (or even if dover covers this use... my copy is back in aust)... does will or someone have a copy nearby to check this? thanks :)

vir litterarum
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Post by vir litterarum »

You're definitely right. In hindsight, I would have read Dover first then proceeded to read Dik backwords. But I'm doing Herodotus, so I couldn't resist.

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