Question of negation adv οὔτε

Greek Learning Greek
1

Dear all,

I have just trasnlated this below sentence:

οὔτε γὰρ ὑποζύγιον ἔτʼ οὐδὲν ἐκεῖ ἦν οὔτε στρατόπεδον οὔτε καπνὸς οὐδαμοῦ πλησίον

There was neither any longer any beast-of-burden there nor camp nor smoke anywhere nearby

οὔτε = not
ἔτʼ οὐδὲν = not longer
οὐδαμοῦ = nowhere

Is my above vocabulary-understand is right?

If it is right, it seem thats the Greek sentences is like this: There was NOT BEAST-OF-BURDEN NO-LONGER there, NOR CAMP, NOR SMOKE NOWHERE nearby

While in English, we just say: There was NOT BEAST-OF-BURDEN any longer there,NOR CAMP, NOR SMOKE anywhere nearby

That means in Greek, when we use οὔτε by repeating way, we will negate EVERY ELEMENT OF THE SENTENCE ?

Sincerely yours,

2

That’s essentially right. It’s an important observation. Cf. colloquial English “I didn’t do nut’n [nothing], and I didn’t hit no-one.”
ουκ … ουδεις “not … anyone,” “no-one at all”, the second and longer negative reinforcing the first—but ουδεις … ου “no-one not,” i.e. “everyone,” each negative retaining its force. There was an earlier thread on this (by Paul Derouda?), which someone can probably refer you to.

ουτε doesn’t mean “not.” ουτε … ουτε (… ουτε) means “neither … nor (…nor).” That ουδεν and ουδαμου follow is in accordance with regular Greek idiom.

3

It’s this thread: http://discourse.textkit.com/t/griechische-grammatik-und-multiple-negatives/12918/1

It’s good to read from the beginning, but it was after reading mwh’s remark on Thu Apr 23, 2015 1:54 pm that it really dawned on me how the very difficult yet very instructive Demosthenes passage mentioned in the thread worked.

4

Dear MWH and Paul,

Thanks so much for your explaination

I am Vietnamese and in my country, there’s very little people studying Latin and Greek, even in Christian community, cause most of them used native language for long time ago until now. So, it is actually valuable to learn from all of you in the forum

@ For me, I am Buddhist, I learn just for passion of Old Languages

Sincerely yours,