jeidsath wrote:Maybe I'm a little to dense to get this.
Using the imagery of fluid mechanics, I would say that you are anything but thick (to use a synonymy and change from solid to liquid for your "dense"). The grey matter of somebody with a high vicosity of thought may not move very quickly or very far. Low viscosity liquids move quickly to fill all the available space in their containers. The "mis-understandings" in this thread have mainly been about the extent of containers. For example the issue of what the mention of ὀνομάζουσι(ν) signifies. Is it just that form, or is all (720??, I've forgotten the exact number and anyway it varies from verb to verb) forms that the Greek verb can have, or is it limited to one tense?
In fact it is one usage of the one form listed - a containment of thought smaller than the boundaries of the printed (ie. spoken) form of the language - the word in context.
jeidsath wrote:ὀνομάζουσι μέντοι αὐτόν, ὡς ἐγᾦμαι, Μέλητον
Isn't αὐτόν a personal pronoun here? ὀνομάζουσι seems to be used here as a quasi-passive?
Continuing this imagery of fluids, the container "personal pronoun" is a rather large one. Especially if the oersons are overweight ;-D
I doubt that introducing more complexity into an already misunderstood topic will benefit much, but anyway...
Despite it being classified as a personal pronoun together with the first and second person, I think that αὐτὸς may have been be misplaced, or that it could be better classified in a different way. The second and third person pronouns are tangible or sensory pronouns, but αὐτὸς is an imaginary, intellectual, non-sensory pronoun, syntactic pronoun - etymologically "to mention the same person again".
There are ample examples of ὀνομάζουσι(ν) with the third person "personal pronouns", but the person in "personal" pronouns is the person of "third person", rather than necessarily a tangible (sensorily perceived) person. The first and second are the person and a (usually known) person.
To possit a theory (guided guess) about why the third person personal pronoun is used, but not the first and second; I think that the third person "personal" pronoun can be used with the subject-less / quasi-passive because there is no actual person in the third person personal prounoun, so a subject-less active form can balance with it, but since the first and second person personal pronouns refer to persons (people) they need something stronger (more concrete / tangible) to balance with (or to support) them.
I would not be surprised if there were other precluded pronouns, perhaps τὸν δὲ etc. and τοῦτον etc.. (Those are accusatives and the etc. is an expansion into the other 5 accusatives of their declension).
The observable data in the searchable Perseus corpus are what they are, my ideas about why the data are resoned to what they are, my predicted preclusions are untested.