I’m reading Smyth 2760 and trying to understand how two examples that he included illustrate the concept:
S2760. If in the same clause a simple negative (οὐ or μή) with a verb follows a negative, each of the two negatives keeps its own force if they belong to different words or expressions. If they belong to the same word or expression, they make an affirmative.
The two examples that I’m having trouble with:
οὐδ᾽ > εἴ τις ἄλλος σοφός (ἐστιν) > οὐ > φιλοσοφεῖ
nor if there is any other man who is wise, does he love wisdom P. S. 204a
οὐδέ > γε ὁ ἰδίᾳ πονηρὸς > οὐκ > ἂν γένοιτο δημοσίᾳ χρηστός
nor can the man who is base in private prove himself noble in a public capacity Aes. 3.78.
My problem: both examples have “a simple negative (οὐ or μή) with a verb [that] follows a negative,” and (I think) they “belong to the same word or expression” (φιλοσοφεῖ and γένοιτο respectively), but they don’t result in an affirmative; nor do they seem to be keeping their own force “if they belong to different words or expressions”.
Instead, the simple negative only seems to confirm or reinforce the compound negative like a redundant repetition, behaving almost like when “compound negatives follow a negative with the same verb” in S2761.
Could someone please point out what I’m missing or misunderstanding? Thank you for your time!
Yes, these last two examples in Smyth 2760 are ill-chosen. If the text is sound (in the Aeschines at least it’s probably not) the οὐ simply repeats the negative of the opening οὐδέ, reinforcing it rather than cancelling it out. But each of these two particular passages is rather anomalous and is best read in its larger context, where there’s no mistaking the sense. The earlier passages cited are unproblematic.
οὐδ᾽ εἰ γέγονεν οἶδα (elsewhere τοῦτον οὐδ᾽ εἰ γέγονεν εἰδώς)
I don’t know if it even happened. But literally: “not even if it happened do I know”
And Lysias :
οὐδ᾽ εἴ τις παῖδα ἐξαγαγὼν ληφθείη, οὐκ ἂν φάσκοις αὐτὸν ἀνδραποδιστὴν εἶναι…
Even if someone were caught leading off a boy, you wouldn’t call him a slave-taker…
Literally “not even if…”, but English can’t express that as limited to the hypothetical like Greek can.
The same is happening for P. Sym 204 and Aes. 3.78. Translate both starting with “even if” and “even” and you can see that it works like Lysias. It’s really impossible to say it literally in correct English, because we can’t do a limited “not even if”, but the οὐδὲ in these cases is limited to the initial part of the statement and is really a case of both keeping their own force. “Even if there is a man who is wise…”, “Even the privately base…” or “Even the merely privately base…”
No, this is muddled. You’re not comparing like with like. With οὐδ’ εἰ γέγονεν οἶδα, unlike with the Lysias and the Smyth passages, there is no second negative. The syntax is perfectly straightforward. And it’s not true that we can’t do a limited “not even if” in English.
I’m afraid you have missed the point if you can’t see why I used the example. Obviously there is no second negative. The whole point is that “οὐδ᾽” applies to εἰ γέγονεν, not to the οἶδα. That is the central thing to understand. But it’s hard to make that sort of distinction in English. Even reversing them doesn’t quite get you there: “I know not even if it happened”
It seems to me that in the Demosthenes quote ουδ’ has to go with οἶδα - he’s saying he doesn’t know, isn’t he?
Anyway, the Lysias 10 passage is interesting. The meaning (as I take it, from the context) is “Nor, if someone were caught carrying off a boy, would you say he is a slave-taker!”
Or, “And if someone were caught carrying off a boy, you’d deny he was a slave-taker!” (I’m going to use ‘deny’ instead of ‘wouldn’t say’ to avoid a pile-up of English negatives in the next paragraph).
So we are ignoring one of the negatives in the translation, on the basis, I think, that it’s just repeating the idea, not altering it, and we can’t do that in English. Fair enough; but why can’t the Lysias passage mean “Nor, if someone were caught carrying off a slave, would you deny that he was a slave-taker” - i.e. you would say he’s a slave-taker if that happened, with the negatives making an affirmative? That isn’t clear to me from what Smyth says, either here or in his example.
@Joel. I saw what you were getting at (though your manner of expression did not make it easy) but I think you’re blinded by English. The negation itself applies to οιδα, after all, which follows the conditional clause. [PS. Matt K. makes this point, as well as making the point that I made in my original post about the repeated negative in the other sentences.] The word order makes everything perfectly clear.
There was really no good reason to bring in the οὐδ’ εἰ γέγονεν οἶδα sentence, which has no bearing on the matter at issue and was simply a distraction, as is so often the case with your posts.
Not even if you repeat yourself a thousand times will you enhance your credibility. (That is merely to refute your assertion about English usage, you understand.)
While “know not” is good Elizabethan English, with Shakespeare and the King James Bible being chock full of it, it’s not modern English. If I heard “know not” from any modern native speaker, I would consider that person extremely precious or affected.
Anyway, take a look at Acts 19:2 to see the match up pretty clearly:
The οὐδέ provides emphasis to the ἔστιν, which stands in fairly stark contrast to ἐλάβετε. But English can’t seem to express that, and everybody has to slightly mistranslate the emphasis: “we have not even heard” when it should be “even (=not even) if holy spirit exists”. Unlike English, the Greek can handle this because “I have heard not that” and “I have not heard that” are distinct utterances with different emphasis patterns.
And this explains our Plato too: οὐδ᾽ εἴ τις ἄλλος σοφός (ἐστιν) οὐ φιλοσοφεῖ. Socrates, most characteristically, hesitates to call any man σοφός. The οὐδέ emphasizes his hesitation and goes with the εἰ phrase. “even (=not even) if someone other (than a God) is wise”. So in Greek it’s very easy to see the οὐδέ and the οὐ each keeping their separate negation. But like Acts 19:2, we can’t English it very well, or think about it in English very well.