ὡς δὲ τῷ ἀνδρὶ ὃν ἂν ἕλησθε πείσομαι ᾗ δυνατὸν μάλιστα
Why is ᾗ a feminine relative pronoun when it refers to τῷ ἀνδρὶ which is masculine?
“By what means” or something. LSJ has a whole entry for ᾗ by its lonesome.
Ah, thanks Joel, I’ve been using CGL instead of LSJ and should have looked up ὅς in it as there’s a sub-entry there about ᾗ giving its use cases.
Strange, though. I wonder how use of the fem. rel. pron. like this evolved in the language…
Hello,
May I make a modest supposition?
In the Cambridge Greek Lexicon, one may find for ᾗ in the article ὅς (amongst other possible definitions):
7. in so far as; to the extend that, as far as;
Here, couldn’t ᾗ be translated by [as far as] in the sense of: to the greatest possible (measure), ᾗ δυνατὸν μάλιστα?
OK that makes sense but that just moves the goalpost back a bit i.e. how did “as far as” come into being as a meaning of the fem. rel. pronoun…
I’m wondering if it could be an implied ἡ ὁδός as understood since that’s feminine (?)
This is right, as long as we consider ᾗ to be, here as elsewhere, the morphological variation of ὅς conveying the feminine character, but is it not possible for ᾗ to be here not a morphological but a semantic variation conveying meanings of a peculiar, quasi-idiomatic, nature as is indeed the case for all 9 translations given by the Cambridge Greek Lexicon under the ᾗ subheading of ὅς?
It’s the same in Latin (qua). You can understand οδῷ/via if you want, but better simply to recognize it as a deep-rooted use of feminine dative(ablative) singular, without reference to any noun. Cf. e.g. ταύτῃ/hac.
Thanks, I see that for ταύτῃ LSJ has:
dat. fem. ταύτῃ,
on this spot, here, ταύτῃ μὲν . ., τῇδε δʼ αὖ . . Id. Ph. 1331; ἀλλʼ ἐὰν ταύτῃ γε νικᾷ, ταυτῃὶ πεπλήξεται Ar. Eq. 271, cf. Th. 1221.
in this point, herein, μηδὲν ταύτῃ γε κομήσῃς Id. Pl. 572, cf. X. Hier. 7.12, etc.
in this way, thus, A. Pr. 191, S. OC 1300, etc.; οὐ . . ταῦτʼ ἐστί πω ταύτῃ Ar. Eq. 843; ἀλλʼ οὔτι ταύτῃ ταῦτα E. Med. 365, cf. A. Pr. 511: antec. to ὥσπερ, Pl. R. 330c; to ὅπῃ, X. Cyr. 8.3.2; οὕτω τε καὶ ταύτῃ γίγνοιτο Pl. Lg. 681d; καὶ οὕτω καὶ ταύτῃ ἂν ἔχοι ib. 714d; ταύτῃ καλεῖσθαι, etc., like οὕτω κ., Sch. Pl. Smp. 215b.
I just wonder why the feminine was used for these kinds of constructions. But I guess the reason is probably lost in the origin of the language. Oh well…
If you look at the chart on Smyth 346, everything starts with the relative specific column: οὗ, ὅθεν, οἷ, ὅτε, ἡνίκα, ᾗ, ὡς
Here, you get the whole system built off ᾗ: πῄ, τῇδε/ταύτῃ, ᾗ, ὅπῃ
Some of these things in the demonstrative column are etymologically just the participle attached to the old demonstrative το, so τοτε τηνικα, etc.
Excellent, thanks Joel for pointing that out. There’s a similar table in chapter 8 of CGCG but I’m still dissecting chapter 7 on the morphology of pronouns while simultaneously grappling with chapter 29 Pronouns And Quantifiers that covers their syntax. So I’ll get to chapter 8 in due course, eventually…
Mitch, I don’t think Joel can have meant “participle” but relative adverb. And of course this has no bearing on the question of the feminine, which is what you’ve been wondering about. For that we’d have to delve into proto-Indo-European (which I why I adduced Latin), and possibly beyond. That’s too deep for me, and I have to admit I’m more interested in actualities than in prehistory myself.
He may have meant particle since ᾗ is just a single Greek letter, though not a particle of course in the grammatical sense. But I agree that delving into proto-IE might shed some light on my question, but I think I better stick to focusing on learning Greek first before I try digging deeper into the past lol…
Lol. Definitely not participles. I’m not always good at smelling my words when I’m cell-phoning a post.
Anyway τοτε, according to Beekes is το + a relative plus particle, and ηνικα is some sort of relative + κα, with νι sandwiched in between for some reason. And then θα, θεν, ου, and so on from the chart.
Whatever ᾗ is, it’s developed into that whole scheme that the others have. How feminine is it really?
In the CGCG (Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek) one may read:
50.37 Clauses of comparison are introduced by the relative adverbs ὡς, ὅπως, ὥσπερ and καθάπερ (just) as, (in such a way) as. They are sometimes preceded or followed by οὕτω(ς) (καί) thus, in this/that/such a way (also), so (too):
[…]
50.38 The relative ᾗ may also have this sense (→8.2), and may be anticipated by ταύτῃ:
θεοὺς … μάρτυρας ποιουμενοι πειρασόμεθα ἀμύνεσθαι πολέμου ἄρχοντας ταὐτῃ ᾗ ἂν ὑφηγῆσθε. (Thuc. 1.78.4)
Taking the gods as our witness, we will attempt to ward you off, if you begin hostilities, in whatever manner (in that way which) you choose.
So in these uses of ᾗ, the word is not the morphological feminine form of ὅς but a semantic form dedicated to particular uses derogatory to the common use of the word ὅς and not dedicated to convey the genre.
May it not be, then, of no avail that we would wonder about the reason of the presence of a feminine form here?
@Curius - Thanks for pointing that out.
@Joel - Thanks for mentioning Beekes, that looks like a useful (but daunting!) resource for deeper study of Greek linguisticcal evolution.
“derogatory to the common use of the word ὅς and not dedicated to convey the genre”
This gobbledygook is truly unpleasant. I hope they aren’t teaching undergrads to talk like that these days?
Anyway, I agree with you about the feminine in general – see my earlier post – but this particular example is not a good one. It’s easy to read sc. ὁδός, and there is no way to know for sure how Thucydides thought about it in his heart of hearts.
Hello Joel,
I don’t understand your comment (which is quite aggressive).
You well know from other posts that English is not my mother tongue.
I try hard not to make mistakes, but I still can’t see how my sentence is not correct English.
Would you please tell me in what way it is incorrect and how I should have expressed it?
I apologize. I thought it was affectation.
Derogatory no longer has the force of the Latin word in English. Nor does genre any longer have much to do with genus. You may mean gender? Here is my best guess for what I think you mean, more or less how I’d write it:
“So, in these uses of ᾗ [note accent], the word is not the declined feminine form of ὅς, but is an indeclinable form that means something else and does not communicate gender.”
It’s a mistaken conclusion, as the sentence from Thucydides is just as easily …[τῇ ὁδῷ] ταύτῃ ᾗ ἂν ὑφηγῆσθε, especially with the verb “ὑφηγῆσθε”, which doesn’t mean “choose”. He’s saying “if you start war, we’ll follow you down that path.”
It’s the absorption of ῃ into πῇ and so on that really make ᾗ not look like the feminine dative relative.
It is gender of course (as we are discussing the feminine nature of the word): genre is actually the french word for gender and I used it spontaneously as sometimes occurs when one juggles with two languages. It is a careless mistake on my part, I am sorry.
As for derogatory, the french word dérogatoire means: that which does not follow a rule (and so, is an exception) and I erroneously thought derogatory (actually a “faux ami”) to be equivalent. I should have counter-checked its precise meaning.
So it is clear that my English is not exact and precise enough and has not mastery enough of the levels of language for this kind of elaborate discussions.
P.S. I am afraid I am not an undergrad as you implied: I am 64 and an MD (a physician).