αá½￾τός as a postpositive

[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 αá½￾τός as a postpositive. Why is it considered a postpositive?

[IreneY]

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

[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]

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

[annis]

and she keeps referring to αá½￾τός as a postpositive.

To be clear, it's the oblique cases being used as a pronoun that are postpositive.

I don't know who the first scholar to notice this was.

[Bert]

and she keeps referring to αá½￾τός as a postpositive.

To be clear, it's the oblique cases being used as a pronoun that are postpositive.

I don't know who the first scholar to notice this was.

Concerning the word oblique, is oblique anything but nominative (and vocative I guess) or anything but nominative and accusative?
I have heard the comparison that nominative is like vertical and accusative like horizontal and the others are oblique. Other discussions seem to imply that accusative is oblique as well.
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?
Thank you.

[annis]

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.

[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?

[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]

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.