Sentence from "From Alpha to Omega"

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Jordan St. Francis
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Sentence from "From Alpha to Omega"

Post by Jordan St. Francis »

Hello to all,

Because I have trouble being consistent with my Greek outside of my courses, I'm having trouble advancing. Anyways, I was stuck on this sentence recently from "Alpha to Omega", Ch. 19

(accents are not right, sorry)

ἒχεις αὐτὴ ἐνεγκεῖν τό σαυτης τεκνον το μικρον εἰς την οἰκιαν ἡμων;

- because αὐτὴ is nominative here, it must either mean "self" or "very". I do not, however, see anything in the sentence which this is predicates or is attributive towards...

-ἐχω + φερω= be able to bear, carry

"are you able to bear your own small child into our house?"

What is the function here of αὐτὴ?

Thanks!

annis
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Re: Sentence from "From Alpha to Omega"

Post by annis »

Jordan St. Francis wrote:because αὐτὴ is nominative here, it must either mean "self" or "very". I do not, however, see anything in the sentence which this is predicates or is attributive towards...
Aah, you do see it, and you've even translated it correctly, but most of us aren't used to thinking about agreement this way. αὐτή here is agreeing with the implicit subject, marked in the verb ἔχεις — "you." So, "you yourself" or the like.

Here's another, somewhat grandiose one — αὐτὸς ἥκω, "I myself have arrived."

This sort of agreement with a subject that isn't expressed except by verbal morphology is fairly common. If you have a nominative adjective with no obvious noun to go with it, look to the verb. This sort of construction also sometimes occurs in accusative + infinitive clauses, where it can be genuinely puzzling. Here's a little Anacreontic ditty — note especially the last line:

χαλεπὸν τὸ μὴ φιλῆσαι, it is hard to not love
χαλεπὸν δὲ καὶ φιλῆσαι, and it is also hard to love
χαλεπώτατον δὲ πάντων, but hardest of all
ἀποτυγχάνειν φιλοῦντα. is loving, [then] to lose

So, with χαλεπόν it is difficult (to) one uses an infinitive construction. In the last line, we have φιλοῦντα, a present participle in the masculine accusative, but not a noun in sight with which the word could agree. So, we need to take it as agreeing with the subject of the verb ἀποτυγχάνειν, which is never actually expressed, but implied by the infinitive construction.
William S. Annis — http://www.aoidoi.org/http://www.scholiastae.org/
τίς πατέρ' αἰνήσει εἰ μὴ κακοδαίμονες υἱοί;

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