word order of enclitics theophrastos' inquiry about plants)

Greek Learning Greek
21

hi, i agree with the above and just to add, to answer your question above, in addition to what mwh and qimmik said, “εἰσὶ δὲ μὲν αἱ…” would be “illegal” because, to use dover’s symbols from his greek word order, it would put a “p” (αἱ acting as a pronoun) AFTER two "q"s (connectives), which is the wrong way round – "p"s go in first position (as αἱ is doing here, in its word group beginning after the fixed phrase εἰσὶ δ’, which you often see at the start of a sentence before a division, eg aristotle poetics 1452a: εἰσὶ δὲ τῶν μύθων οἱ μὲν ἁπλοῖ οἱ δὲ πεπλεγμένοι, herodotus 2.20: εἰσὶ δὲ πολλοὶ μὲν ἐν τῇ Συρίῃ ποταμοὶ πολλοὶ δὲ ἐν τῇ Λιβύῃ.

so you have the fixed phrase εἰσὶ δ’, then a new word group beginning with a “p”, followed by a “q”, all nice and normal.

also note that, from the limited textual info i’ve been able to find online right now, there’s doubt over the verb in the final part of the sentence, see ftn 3 here: https://archive.org/stream/enquiryintoplan01theo#page/2/mode/2up

mwh, to answer your earlier query to me above, i was referring to the pattern of fronting wackernagel-slot words when used in parentheses: i don’t have dover on me here at work, but i have an online summary i made for myself and have this note (using his symbols once again): “[Dover notes that “fourth-century writers arrange the words in certain parentheses to yield M(q)(|)qM … in preference to M(q)(|) Mq” (p.16).]”. i’ll check it again when i can later.

cheers, chad

22

It does seem to me that the way you put it is not so different from what I wrote. However, no doubt as I meet more examples of μὲν . . . δὲ “in the wild” that will become clearer.

Crucially your stress on αἱ μὲν is for me the missing piece of the jigsaw and I now feel I understand it enough not simply to understand it when I encounter it but also use it on occasion when I write.

Thanks for the patience of you all and thank you jeidsath for the examples.

Edit:
And Chad, the extra bit from Dover is helpful. Thanks

23

jeidsath – Thanks for the passages, which are well worth comparing. The first Aristotle one runs πολιτείας δ’ ἐστὶν εἴδη τρία … εἰσὶ δ’ αἱ μὲν πολιτεῖαι βασιλεία τε καὶ ἀριστοκρατία, τρίτη δὲ ἀπὸ τιμημάτων, ἣν τιμοκρατικὴν λέγειν οἰκεῖον φαίνεται, πολιτείαν δ’ αὐτὴν. Here the initial εισι extends over the whole sentence, unlike in the Theophrastus. (“There are three kinds of political system. There are (1) monarchical and aristocratic systems, and (2) a third from property values.”) Same with the Plutarch. — And the same again with the Ar. and Hdt. passages just quoted by chad. So these support what I’ve said, and nicely show up the (otherwise scarcely discernible) anomaly of the Theophrastus sentence.
Your second Ar. passage (if I’ve identified it correctly) is slightly different, but again not the same as the Theophrastus.

daivid - I might quibble with one or two things in Qimmik’s post (e.g. no-one would be expecting εισι ετεραι δε … εχουσαι), but we’re in substantive agreement. I’m glad you’re now comfortable (or fairly comfortable) with all this. It was a somewhat awkward passage to fasten on!

chad – On the “parenthesis” Yes I understand, but doesn’t the phenomenon mean that a parenthesis is no longer functioning as such? If it starts with a postpositive it can’t be properly parenthetical can it?

24

εἰσὶ δέ τινες μὲν κατὰ τὴν γένεσιν καὶ τὰ πάθη καί τοὺς βίους εὐθεωρητότεραι καὶ ῥᾴους, ἕτεραι δὲ κατὰ μέρη πλείους ἔχουσαι ποικιλίας.

Let me recast this and see whether it meets mwh’s approval:

εἰσὶ δέ τινες μὲν κατὰ τὴν γένεσιν καὶ τὰ πάθη καί τοὺς βίους εὐθεωρητότεραι καὶ ῥᾴους, ἄλλαι δὲ κατὰ μέρη πλείους ἔχουσαι ποικιλίας.

25

Bill, either one is fine by me. What I was querying was your
“It leads to the expectation that there will be a similar existential statement about the other class, something like εἰσὶ ἕτεραι δὲ . . . ἔχουσαι”. Perhaps you didn’t mean quite that.
Incidentally, now that chad has provided the Loeb page, it appears that εχουσι is actually an emendation for transmitted εχουσαι! I was uncomfortable with εχουσαι in your original hypothetical sentence, since it didn’t read naturally despite yielding the normal parallelism. So I’d accept the emendation, and the mild anacoluthon that it entails (which maybe someone did copyedit?—probably not).

daivid, A trivial point, but you don’t want to speak of εισι being moved to the front. It is at the front. The various sentences adduced by jeidsath and cb serve to illustrate what you’d then expect to find following, e.g. αι μεν (noun or adj.), αι δε (noun or adj.), with εισι applying to them both (or to them all, if further αι δε phrases follow). εισι δε and whatever else precedes the αι μεν … αι δε … phrases is common to each of them. Theophrastus had that structure in mind when he kicked off the sentence, but then changed tack slightly (and probably unconsciously) and gave the αι δε … part a main verb of its own.

chad, let me rephrase that. Syntactically it’s a parenthesis, but not prosodically. So I don’t think it should be comma-ed off. Cf. interposed οιμαι etc etc. Similar things all over the place in Platonic dialogue. Any views? (Of course, I’d really prefer my Plato unpunctuated altogether.)

Michael

26

Of course, I’d really prefer my Plato unpunctuated altogether.

Well, that’s a papyrologist for you. You’d prefer Plato not just unpunctuated, but also there would be no divisions between words (an English anacolouthon like the Theophrastos sentence).

27

hi michael, to be honest i’m just following dover here, but let me try to explain like this (i’ll spell out dover’s symbols for others in the thread who haven’t seen it yet):

most words are mobile in the sentence (even if they have preferred slots), symbolised “M”. some words are prepositive, symbolised “p” - these include ἀλλά, μή, relatives, article as pronoun or article of the first substantive in the clause, etc (full list on dover pgs 13-14). other words are postpositive symbolised “q”, and these break into 2 groups, connectives and other (the other include ἄν, pronoun με, indefinite pronouns etc - full list on dover pgs12-13).

the typical pattern is pqqq…Mqqq…MMM… where the "q"s before the first M are connective "q"s and the "q"s after the first M are non-connective "q"s, ie all the qs are stacked around the first M rather than spread throughout the clause - you do get variation as time goes on but this is the basic pattern.

dover does explain there are some exceptions to this where you get certain fused forms, eg where ἄν is fused into certain fixed expressions such as ἐάν (and so is brought up before the first M whereas normally it would sit after the first M in what i call informally the wackernagel slot), and some other exceptions - see dover for more details.


so a stock-standard wording order is Ὁ γάρ τοι παῖς με ὁ Σάτυρος (plato, protagoras 310c), where you have Ὁ = “p”, γάρ τοι are connective "q"s, παῖς = “M”, με = non-connective “q” etc.


so now, to take the D quote i gave above: ‘τί οὖν ;’, ἄν τις εἴποι, ‘σὺ γράφεις ταῦτ’ εἶναι στρατιωτικά’ (D.1.19), i do see ἄν τις εἴποι as a parenthesis rather than as part of the greater quote, because τί = p, οὖν = connective q, ἄν τις are non-connective q and εἴποι is M. so if ἄν τις εἴποι was simply part of the greater word group rather than its own parenthesis, you would have expected ‘τί οὖν ;’, εἴποι τις ἂν … as the most natural word order (ie p, connective q, M, non-connective qs), which is the order you find outside of parenthesis, eg Ἀλλὰ νὴ Δί’, εἴποι τις ἂν ὡς πάντα ταῦτ’ εἰδώς, οὐ πλεονεξίας ἕνεκ’ οὐδ’ ὧν ἐγὼ κατηγορῶ τότε ταῦτ’ ἔπραξεν, ἀλλὰ τῷ δικαιότερα τοὺς Θηβαίους ἢ ὑμᾶς ἀξιοῦν. (Dem, 2nd phil, 13), where i take the word group beginning εἴποι to be a new non-parenthetical word group and so falling into the expected order M, non-connective qs (there aren’t any ps or connective qs).

dover explains this on pgs 12-13, saying that post-positives don’t occur at the beginning of a clause except in specified circumstances and you need to change your notion of a clause to a word-group, which he defines in terms of a breath pause, and he notes on pg 17 that it may be very short, giving as an e.g. something very similar to the original quote at the beginning of this thread: ὅμως δὲ ὁ μὲν λόγος μοι περὶ τούτων, ὁ δ’ ἀγὼν οὐ πρὸς τὰ τούτων ἔργα ἀλλὰ πρὸς τοὺς πρότερον ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς εἰρηκότας. (lysias, funeral oration 2), ie starting with a short 2-word group (like εἰσὶ δ’ in the original quote in this thread) and then kicking into a new word group beginning ὁ (“p”), μὲν (“connective q”), λόγος (“M”), μοι “non-connective q”, ie once again stock-standard word order, just like the original quote from theophrastus.

dover has a footnote on the bit relating to fronting of “q” in parentheses to wackernagel, gesetz, pgs 392 + 397. maybe more info in there on this. would be all greek to me though, i can’t read german unfortunately… my own thought is that, in the absence of punctuation, this inversion is a simple way of showing a parenthesis, just as you have inversion in parentheses in other languages “said he”, “dit-il” etc.

daivid, i don’t know any better summary of greek word order on these points than dover, and it’s pretty short, and the really good chapter is chapter 2 on lexical and semantic determinants (which covers the basic patterns i’ve mentioned above and gives tons more quotes), definitely worth grabbing.

cheers, chad

28

ὅμως δὲ ὁ μὲν λόγος μοι περὶ τούτων, ὁ δ’ ἀγὼν οὐ πρὸς τὰ τούτων ἔργα ἀλλὰ πρὸς τοὺς πρότερον ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς εἰρηκότας. (lysias, funeral oration 2), ie starting with a short 2-word group (like εἰσὶ δ’ in the original quote in this thread) and then kicking into a new word group beginning ὁ (“p”), μὲν (“connective q”), λόγος (“M”), μοι “non-connective q”, ie once again stock-standard word order, just like the original quote from theophrastus.

I’m a little confused. I have difficulty seeing ὅμως δὲ in Lys. as analogous to εἰσὶ δ’ in Th. Separating εἰσὶ δ’ from αἱ μὲν as a separate word group doesn’t seem right. In Th., εἰσὶ and αἱ are both M: εἰσὶ is not copulative, and αἱ here is not really an article (he writes that ὁ is p only when =‘the’, p.13, and there is no M to which αἱ could be prepositive). So we have MqMq. Dover (p. 14) writes that normally the Greek preference would be for MqqM, but if anything is certain in this clause, μὲν must follow αἱ (well, it’s also certain that δ’ must follow εἰσὶ). His analysis only works if you treat εἰσὶ δ’ as a separate word or breath group, separating verb from subject, but that just doesn’t feel right.

29

hi bill, ah that’s because i do see εἰσὶ δ’ as a separate word group like ὅμως δέ – εἰσὶ δέ is used to front lots of greek sentences and so i personally see it as kind of a fixed form expression (and so forms its own word group), just as dover suggests that ὅμως δέ forms its own word group in lysias.

you feel that separating εἰσὶ δ’ from αἱ μὲν as a separate word group doesn’t seem right, whereas i feel that separating connective "q"s in the same word group feels strange… i guess this is subjective as to word grouping. we both agree that there’s no problem with the word ordering and so i guess we’re both getting to the same outcome (putting aside word groups) from different directions. cheers, chad

30

Dover’s analysis makes sense to me in formal terms (and I see εισι δ(ε) αι μεν … as analogous to ομως δε ο μεν … as far as word-grouping goes), but defining a word group in terms of a breath pause seems dodgy. As I think I remarked earlier, I can’t imagine a speaker pausing for breath after εισι δ(ε) in this collocation. May be helpful to compare more recent work on determining cola in Latin prose.

As to (e.g.) ‘τί οὖν ;’, ἄν τις εἴποι, ‘σὺ γράφεις ταῦτ’ εἶναι στρατιωτικά’ vs. (e.g.) Ἀλλὰ νὴ Δί’, εἴποι τις ἂν ὡς πάντα ταῦτ’ εἰδώς, οὐ πλεονεξίας ἕνεκ’ οὐδ’ ὧν ἐγὼ κατηγορῶ τότε ταῦτ’ ἔπραξεν, ἀλλὰ τῷ δικαιότερα τοὺς Θηβαίους ἢ ὑμᾶς ἀξιοῦν, of course I agree that ειποι τις αν begins (or constitutes) a word group and that αν τις ειποι doesn’t, but I take this as meaning that the former is parenthetical in a sense that the latter is not, whereas you seem to infer the opposite. ειποι τις αν could start an independent sentence (and hence can be parenthesized when inserted within a larger sentence), αν τις ειποι could not. Rather it’s incorporated within the larger structure even as it is grammatically independent of it—an interesting phenomenon, it seems to me. As a postpositive (of whichever type) αν belongs with what precedes it. (That’s why I was offended by the comma.) So I see the word group as τι ουν αν τις ειποι (whereas τι ουν, ειποι τις αν would be two). Here we have pqqqM (the first q connective, the next two not). How can such a sequence be broken after the first q?

Oh, but thanks for taking such trouble providing all the Dover stuff, chad. I’ve recommended the book before on these boards.

31

hi michael, i’m not sure if we’re agreeing or disagreeing. i’m pretty jetlagged… what i was trying to mumble out was that εἴποι τις ἂν (Mqq), when used as a parenthesis in another sentence, can become in 4th-century authors ἄν τις εἴποι (qqM). this is the phenomenon that dover mentioned explicitly, i just quoted the very quote he gave. it’s a separate word group.

i don’t see ‘τί οὖν ;’, ἄν τις εἴποι, as one word group, but 2. the first group is ‘τί οὖν (pq where the q is connective) and the second group is the parenthetical word group ἄν τις εἴποι (qqM where the qs are non-connective).

you can see that ‘τί οὖν ;’, ἄν τις εἴποι is not one word group because it would give pqqqM with the non-connective qs before the M rather than after it in the usual wackernagel spot.

at least, that’s what i thought dover was trying to get at when he said “fourth-century writers arrange the words in certain parentheses to yield M(q)(|)qM … in preference to M(q)(|) Mq” (p.16).], with the | bar representing the word group break.

for the colometry of latin prose, the books i’ve read are habinek (you can read the whole thing online through google preview: http://books.google.fr/books/about/The_Colometry_of_Latin_Prose.html?id=48nDcNS2OycC&redir_esc=y, i’ve read it several times) and devine & stephens on word order, what’s the latest good book that i should be reading? i’m out of the classics world and so just latch onto whatever falls in front of me. thanks!

cheers, chad

32

Hi Chad,
I think it’s Dover I’m disagreeing with rather than you. A word group beginning with a postpositive?!

Habinek (which I read and critiqued in draft) and D&S (likewise for the first few articles, not the books) are mainly what I had in mind. If there’s a “latest good book” I don’t know of it (which is perfectly possible—I don’t try to keep up). There’s work on breath units in long Pindaric verses (before “Pause”) but that needn’t concern us.

Michael

33

hi michael, ok thanks. the habinek book is great, it changed the way i read latin… if anyone wants a quick snapshot here’s my summary (apologies, this is now drifting very far away from theophrastus):

Habinek on Latin colometry
link: http://books.google.fr/books?id=48nDcNS2OycC

  1. Cola for which enjambment is permitted in poetry (1932 Fraenkel work) (p.5)

• ablative absolutes
• participia conjuncta
• infinitives dependent on verbs of saying or thinking
• subjects and direct and indirect objects composed of more than one substantive or a substantive with qualifiers
• adverbial prepositional phrases
• adjectival clauses

  1. Further clauses functioning as cola (1933 and 1965 Fraenkel work) (p.7)

• dependent infinitives with accusatives
• infinitives serving as subjects of impersonal verbs
• lengthy ablatives of manner and cause
• appositives

  1. Further list of cola (p.127)

• any weighted or expanded substantive, regardless of case
• any weighted modifier, be it participial, adjectival or adverbial
• all prepositional phrases
• phrases such as infinitives that substitute for substantives
• verb phrases

  1. Limits on length of cola (pp.37-8 and 132)

• (p.37) No ancient evidence for 1-word cola. (p.132) only 1-word elements are enumerations, i.e. lists of substantives, but these can be avoided, see s8 below
• (pp.37-8) The maximum length of a colon was a hexameter, or 17 to 20 syllables, although a Greek rhetorician tolerated up to 32 syllables

  1. Treatment of single words (pp.106 and 128)

• (p.106) a single main verb joins with a preceding dependent clause
• (p.128) single words, whether substantive, verb etc., are joined to the preceding colon, regardless of what type of colon that is syntactically

  1. Style in cola (pp.106, 139, 140)

• In the exordium of Pro Cluentio:
o (p.106) Cicero uses different assonance patterns in different cola: animum adverti, omnem … orationem, invidia iam inveterata
o (p.139) the main clause is the first colon
o (p.139) IN DUAS is brought away from its substantive to form a separate colon, emphasising it
• In Phil 10.1:
o (p.140) MAXIMAS and its substantive GRATIAS frame the ends of the initial colon, separated by TIBI and the vocative PANSA
o (p.140) the superlatives are all placed at the beginnings of their respective cola, other than in one case NE coming before it
o (p.140) there is a chiasmus of colon endings 1st-person plural and 2nd-person singular

  1. How to break up some specific cola (pp.133-5)

• (p.133) when you have repetition of a grammatical construction but with one of the elements omitted from one of them (brachylogy), these are treated as separate cola, not one colon
• (p.134) in correlative constructions, each element forms a separate colon if it contains at least 3 words
• (p.134 footnote 11) in NON … SED constructions, each element forms a separate colon if it contains at least 3 words
• (p.135) in IS … QUI constructions, if they are joined or if there is only one word between them, they form one colon, otherwise they form separate cola
• (p.135) a 1-word vocative next to a 2nd-person verb or imperative are in the same colon

  1. How to lengthen some specific cola (pp.146, 151, 159, 161)

• (p.146) To avoid short elements in enumerations (see s4 above), Cicero sometimes adds repeated introductory words to each element, sometimes with a modified element at the end to make it longer, eg NVLLA FRAVS, / NVLLA AVARITIA, / NVLLA PERFIDIA, NVLLA CRVDELITAS, NVLLVM PETVLANS DICTVM (Pro Mur. 14)
• (p.151) If a word immediately following a colon completes its syntax (e.g. an adjective and noun), that word plus its whole colon joins with that previous colon. You can therefore lengthen a colon by putting words between e.g. a noun and its adjective, eg MISERANDVM SCELERATI VIDERINT CINEREM, which would have been 2 cola if it were MISERANDVM CINEREM / SCELERATI VIDERINT
• (p.159) You can separate the elements of a compound verb to lengthen a colon, eg QVAE PRECATVS A DIS IMMORTALIBVS SVM, IUDICES (Pro Mur.) rather than QVAE PRECATVS SVM / A DIS IMMORTALIBVS, IUDICES
• (p.161) A colon which would otherwise be too short can be inserted into another colon to make one long colon, eg ME ROGANTE inserted into QVIBVS HIC CONSVLATVS ME ROGANTE DATVS ESSET (Pro Mur.)

  1. Notes on Cicero’s style (pp.142-3 and 149 & ff.)

• (p.142) Cicero uses more vocatives in elevated (graviter) style, less in the middle (temperate) style, and even less in the simple (summisse) style
• (p.142) Vocatives tend to occur at major transitions, such as paragraph breaks
• When Cicero uses a vocative, he tends to:
o (p.142) either include in the same colon a pronoun or 2nd-person verb referring to the person referred to by the vocative, with the vocative at the end of the colon, eg. QVORVM VOBIS PRO VESTRA SAPIENTIA, QVIRITES (Imp. Pomp. 17), and (pp.149-150) very often the pronoun is put directly next to the vocative, eg DEINDE VOS, QVIRITES (Rab. perd. 5)
o (p.143) (less commonly) include the 2nd-person verb referring to the person referred to by the vocative at the very end of the next colon, eg FACILE INTELLEXI, QUIRITES / ET QUID DE ME IUDICARETIS (Imp. Pomp. 2)
o (p.143) (less commonly) include the 2nd-person verb referring to the person referred to by the vocative at the very end of the next colon in a final clause, along with a pronoun referring to the person referred to by the vocative, eg ATQVE ITA, QVIRITES / VT HOC VOS INTELLEGATIS (Imp. Pomp. 21)
o (p.143) (even more rarely, only 5%) no pronoun or 2nd-person verb referring to the person referred to by the vocative is used in the same colon or next colon: here the vocative is emphatic, eg QVID EST, PISO? / PLACET TIBI NOS PVGNARE VERBIS? (Caec. 81)
• (p.160 footnote 21) The expression POPVLI ROMANI typically falls after, not before, the noun on which it depends

  1. Differences between the 3 styles (pp.148, 155-9)

• (p.148 footnote 13) Mediocre doesn’t use asyndeta or vulgarisms, whereas adtenuatum does
• (p.148 footnote 13) Mediocre doesn’t use superlatives, hyperbata, exclamations or imagery, whereas grave does
• (p.155) the percentage of colon-initial correlative, subordinating and temporal conjunctions and demonstrative pronouns increases as you move from the grave (20%) to mediocre (35%) to adtenuatum (52%), and:
• (p.156) In the grave style, the cola are joined not through such conjunction or pronouns but rather through:
o repetition of colon-initial words (anaphora) or clause-end similarities (homoioteleuton). (p.159)
o colon-initial prepositions and roughtly equal colon length, even where the cola are different grammatically, eg AB ISDEM DIS IMMORTALIBVS / OB EIVSDEM HOMINIS CONSVLATVM / VNA CVM SALVTE OBTINENDVM (Pro Mur.)
• (p.158) the mediocre style sinks into an erroneous style (dissolutum) whereit doesn’t use such introductory words to clearly define the cola
• (p.156) Cola are short and not knitted together in the mediocre and adtenuatum styles. (p.157) In the grave style short and long cola are used in tension together.

Fuller summary:

Elevated style (graviter) eg Pro Rabirio
Highest use of vocatives – 1.50 per Oxford pg
Use of vocative at end of colon AFTER a 2nd-person personal pronoun “you” (compare mediocre)
Increasing length of rhythmic cola in a sentence
Knitting phrases into longer rhythmic cola, rather than being placed side by side (compare other styles), such as placing “me rogante” within another colon, rather than allowing it to stand alone
Low frequency of cola introduced by conjunctions or demonstrative pronouns (20%) – articulation of cola instead is achieved through parallels of words at beginning of cola (same word, or different prepositions, etc), or patterns at end of cola (eg verb form, or use of personal pronoun)
Object of verb kept with verb (comparae adtenuatum)
Single-word constituents are avoided
Use of alliteration and assonance within each colon
No unstressed word at start of cola (Auftakt) – compare mediocre
Constant tension between long and short cola, working cola into a crescendo
Regularity in colon length
Separation of two-element verbs in the first colon to set the colon length
Colon-initial superlatives
Chiasmus of colon-final verbs (we, you, you, we)
Re-working list items into separate cola beginning with the same word (nulla…nulla…non…non…) and alliteration of the list items with the same beginning colon-word, the last item having more syllables than the previous, the second-last item sometimes shorter than the rest

Corruption - sufflatum
Exaggerated metaphors
Neologisms
Odd orthography
Lengthy syntactic discontinuity (i.e. putting words in between words that go together)
Middle style (temperate, mediocre) eg De imperio Cn. Pompeii
Moderate use of vocatives - .87 per Oxford pg
Medium frequency of cola introduced by conjunctions or demonstrative pronouns (35%)
Use of vocative at end of colon FOLLOWED BY (in next colon) a 2nd-person form (compare grave)
Not knitting phrases into longer rhythmic cola, but placed side by side (like adtenuatum but compare grave)
Unstressed words at start of cola (Auftakt) – compare grave
Corruption - dissolutum
Abandonment of conjunctions or demonstrative pronouns (as in mediocre) or repeated words (as in grave) at start of cola, making the whole text formless
Simple style (summisse, adtenuatum) eg Pro Caecinia
Lowest use of vocatives - .60 per Oxford pg, mostly at major transitions (ie new paragraphs or sections of the speech)
Highest frequency of cola introduced by conjunctions or demonstrative pronouns (52%)
Many one-word rhythmic cola, interruptive words to the rhythm
Not knitting phrases into longer rhythmic cola, but placed side by side (like mediocre but compare grave)
Object of verb separated from verb (comprae grave)
Paratactic
Corruption - exile
Choppy short cola.
Unclear where to divide cola, if a word stands alone or goes with the following words

34

You might not have found Habinek so revelatory if you’d cut your eye teeth on Fraenkel, but still … I’m sure your precis of him and also of Dover will be found very helpful.

PS From your summary: “No unstressed word at start of cola.” Yet for you (& Dover?) τί οὖν ;’, ἄν τις εἴποι is not one word group (= colon??) but two. To repeat my incredulity: A word group beginning with a postpositive?! It’s an inherently preposterous notion.

35

I was uncomfortable with εχουσαι in your original hypothetical sentence, since it didn’t read naturally despite yielding the normal parallelism.

That’s why to get strict parallelism I felt it was necessary to recast the sentence with εἰσὶ δέ τινες μὲν … ἄλλαι δὲ … ἔχουσαι … (first making the foolish blunder of ἕτεραι δὲ …). That seemed more natural to me. Am I wrong about that?

And thanks for the lesson in Greek prose comp!

36

hi michael, smyth s1764 also recognises that ἄν can be brought to the start of a clause in this type of construction: “Position of ἄν.—ἄν does not begin a sentence or a clause, except after a weak mark of punctuation, as τί οὖν, ἄν τις εἴποι, ταῦτα λέγεις ἡμῖν νῦν; why then (some one might say) do you tell us this now? D. 1.14.”
http://perseus.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.9:6:112.NewPerseusMonographs

i agree with you that saying postpositives can start a clause is inherently preposterous. we can push the category though to resolve this and say that ἄν and certain other words are postpositive except in certain specified contexts such as parenthesis, and then we can say unconditionally that “q” don’t start word groups…

ultimately though i found that, with just a few pages, dover largely made sense of the actual word order i saw in texts, and the criteria for applying dover’s patterns are pretty clear and objective (apart from maybe some vagueness around when a word is postpositive and when it isn’t) and so even if what he says is preposterous i’m willing to follow him down the rabbit-hole, because in the end it generally works and parts the mist, and is far clearer in its application than the modern topic-focus stuff, to me at least…

cheers, chad

37

Hi Chad,

Thanks for the follow-up. I think I’d push in the opposite direction, and say that prosody doesn’t always always coincide with syntax—the evidence being precisely this positioning of postpositives. To make an exception to αν’s status as such “after a weak mark of punctuation” seems quite unprincipled, and does nothing to account for the alleged change of status. Better to remove the punctuation mark and acknowledge prosodic continuity. I’m reluctant to follow even Dover down a rabbit-hole.

Michael

38

Judging by what I have read of Helma Dik, topic-focus stuff and what Dover writes about are not opposed. Indeed Dik builds on Dover examining the order of the movable words that Dover does not attempt to cover. I really should have a go at reading Dover but he has a reputation for being a bit inaccessible.

Its a pity that modern textbook writers haven’t attempted to present Dover’s work in a more digestible form.