Talk:Homeric Greek

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Greece Portal
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Greece, an attempt to expand, improve and standardize the content and structure of articles related to Greece.
If you would like to participate, you can improve Homeric Greek, or sign up and contribute in a wider array of articles like those on our to do list. If you have any questions, please consult the FAQ.
Stub This article has been rated as Stub-Class on the quality scale. (comments)
??? This article has not yet been prioritized.
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Languages, an attempt at creating a standardized, informative, and easy-to-use resource about languages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
language Portal
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.

[edit] Definite articles?

The statement tha Homeric greek lacked an article isn't correct. The passage you cite here contains the word "ta" which I believe is the article.

in this line "ta" agrees with "prota". ta can only be a neuter plural of the article "ho".

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.182.43.147 (talk • contribs)

what "statement tha Homeric greek lacked an article"?? dab (ᛏ) 19:37, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
[1], [2]. AFAIR, the definite article was indeed not yet as strongly established, /ho, he, to/ were mostly still demonstratives ("that one") but were beginning to be used as articles. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:11, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

well for one thing, as I've heard in a number of classics classes, the article can mean a possessive in plato's greek. I guess it can also be a "demonstrative pronoun" in homeric greek. It is, of course, whatever you say it is, and thus is a matter of conjecture. Everyone having spoken ancient greek being now dead and returned to the earth, there is no one to correct us, even inform us. these interpretations or spins on something like translating a dead language are a bit like us translating the mishimishmabuiteiri language and projecting our conjectural theories about the language's evolution upon it. all of it is conjecture and unestablishable and also unconfirmable, but in classical studies, people listen to what they are told like sheep, when really someone should just get up and say "wait, can't that information ONLY be debatable?" you know, it gets on my nerves when people are saying things like "it WAS thus," as if they could ever ever know. It seems like there's quite a wide held belief you can live in the past. There's no way you can and no way you can know. all you can do is try to "pursuade" people by giving them edicts or forcing an interpretation. it's a bunch of hot air. who can say that the implication(!) of the article wasn't something in between both a pronoun and an article at any time period? In fact an article is not really different than a pronoun. (now your going to hate me) and those categories are a fiction of modern grammatical study and a distinction that i'm sure the ancient greeks weren't thinking about back in the day of homer because they were thinking about his story and the content of his work! the conventions of the language were of course natural and given to them. implied meaning or culturally specific interpretation can not(!) be established beyond a guess from other sources when that entire civilization is no longer in existance. we forget in our ignorance and our arrogant assumption that we can "know all" because we are the "advanced" stage of civilization that in fact ancient greek is the communication of an extinct civilization that we will never see. instead, we see the ruins, white, incomplete, and stripped by the ages of their painted decoration. we can not see what was, since we are beings of linear time. Yet, the only way to exist there is in the imagination. Once you say that you can tell what it was about, you've got to be kidding yourself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.177.131.120 (talk • contribs)

I'm sorry but the definite article isn't generally used in Homer. When it is used, it's mostly incontrovertibly pronominal (as in the first case in the sample), the term "definite article" being simply a convenient label for what would later develop fully into an article. The article developed from an earlier pronoun. --Lo2u (T • C) 11:57, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Statements in Wikipedia are not supposed to represent the truth, because, as 69.177.131.120 correctly pointed out above, the truth is very often not accessible. According to WP:NPOV,

All Wikipedia articles must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), representing fairly and without bias all significant views that have been published by a reliable source.

Let those who are familiar with the scientific literature about the grammar of Homeric greek show us sources where the functionality of "ὁ, ἡ, τό" is discussed.   Andreas   (T) 13:50, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

That fact is, I believe, commonly accepted and I'm sure I've read it several times but I'll certainly have a look in Chantraine in the next few days and try to source it. However it's pretty obvious from reading Homer that if you try to translate /ho/ as "the" you won't normally get very far. --Lo2u (T • C) 14:07, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

well, for ta prota you could say "these first things" but "the first things" is hardly different, also considering especially that in Attic Greek, which somehow it is implied ho becomes a definite article you could easily say "his" for forms of it many times. The pronoun is going to relate it to what comes after, you could say ta prota does that, yet, like an article you have a substantive adjective right after it. Or you could say it's a personal pronoun since ho can mean simply "he"=the masculine one, or ta=the things. ekeina or tauta aren't necessarily used. Let it be remarked that the function of the article often has a substantive purpose anyway, due to the mechanics of the ancient Greek language being inflected and expressing meaning in a certain manner. It would be a mistake to say ho doesn't mean the because when it means he or these as in ta it's really meaning the masculine thing or the things, which are not how these meanings are rendered in English. Ancient Greek would be hard to translate if the different uses of ho he to weren't acknowledged a flexible in a certain way as part of the Greek vocabulary as to how they function in the meaning structure. I've got a hard time thinking that anyone calls something "scientific" literature about Homeric grammar. As far as I'm concerned grammar isn't a realm of science, except when someone is going to tell you there's an undisputable interpretation for some linguistic attribute taken out of context from a technical literary source. The problem with translating the ancient Greek definite article isn't that it ISN'T a definite article, or an article, it's that ho,he,to isn't the same as "the" which is what we in English say is the definite article. It can be used in a substantive and even have a possesive implication. That's what I have to say about this. If no one cares, well, I don't care either. I've tried to explain the problem of calling the forms of ho not an article, as the article in Greek is translated differently depending its usage. It is used in several ways when there is no definite meaning as rendered in English, or there would be another English word, and must be translated based on context and form. d.b. reese 2006

Well I don't think I'd define an article as being "something substantive".--Lo2u (T • C) 15:07, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Here's a reference from Goodwin but I'll have a look for something a little more specialised. I've used the phrase "true article" because there's arguably a very early development of an article evident and because the word "article" is the only word we have for /ho, he, to/. The idea that we don't know anything, expressed above, does seem a little extreme however. The following is bordering on original research but I would like to make clear why I think removing the sentence is a bad idea. I'll restrict this to the first hundred lines of the Iliad, where there seem to be (if I haven't missed any) 24 articles. Of these, 16 are true pronominals, i.e. they're used in place of a noun. 6 are borderline cases of adjectives with articles. As Goodwin says, one of the main uses of the article in Homer is to accompany an adjective that does not have a noun agreeing with it. Given that the article is clearly being used in place of a noun in these instances, it's probably best to see these cases as adjectives agreeing with pronouns rather than as adjectives acting as nouns with articles agreeing with them - Homeric Greek appears, just like English, to dislike adjectives that stand alone. Two cases (lines 33 and 79) may be in apposition to a noun - the first /ho geron/ probably not - it's almost certainly another case of an adjective with an article because, like most adjectives and unlike most nouns it's generally accompanied by an article or a noun and so should probably be translated as "aged" rather than as "old man". The article on line 79 is the only case that looks like a real definite article although its separation from its noun makes it look suspiciously pronominal. --Lo2u (T • C) 15:07, 28 October 2006 (UTC

then how is "ta prota" functioning thus? what would be the english equivalent if this is a "pronomial usage?" Because Greek has a gender attribute saying "the aged male" and "the old man" makes no difference in meaning. You would have to say it's ambiguous since adjectives are often used as substantives and also pronouns and the "article" in question are also used as substantives. Because something is used as a substantive, that means it isn't an article or "true" article? If you've translated Greek at any point, how can this make sense? HOw does the example "ta prota" use ta as a pronoun? Do you think ho geron is "this old man." Because if it's "the old man or the aged one" ho is an article. The article is not restricted to only use with nouns. Example, in English we say "the elderly" when elderly is an adjective. Do you think ho geron means just "an old man," and if so why is it ho geron. what function is the ho? Or what function is ta in ta prota? If you're going to say well it's not a true article because prota is a substantive or geron is a substantive use of an adjective, I don't understand how you think ta and ho are functioning grammatically as pronouns.

Well to translate "ta prota" into literal English is a challenge whatever your understanding of the meaning of the article but I think it's enough to say that given that an adjective (or participle) can't normally exist on its own in place of a noun but must be accompanied by either a noun or an article, these articles ought properly to be referred to as pronouns given that they're clearly being used in place of nouns and so might sensibly be assumed to carry the substantive meaning of the noun phrase (there may be some exceptions where adjectives exist on their own but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find one). I'm sorry but I can't explain the origins of English phrases like "the elderly". Such usage seems generally to be restricted to a small number of phrases (we don't for example refer to black people as "the black" or to white people as "the white") so I'm guessing the adjective has developed into a special kind of collective noun or there's a rule in English that allows certain adjectives to be treated as nouns in certain circumstances. Anyway English isn't really relevant here - the semantic properties of Greek words are quite different and the function of the article is radically different and the fact is that occurences of the article in apposition to a true noun are so rare that it's very difficult to see its function as anything other than pronominal. If an additional function is to make an adjective nominal that still doesn't make it a definite article - that's not what a definite article is. The article in Greek may stand alone or it may have an adjective agreeing with it. What it rarely appears to do is to behave like an article in English, French or later Greek, preceding a noun as if its function were adjectival. --Lo2u (T • C) 16:07, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

An adjective or participle often in Greek exists on its own without a noun. A modern language like English needs a noun, but in Greek an adjective can be used as a noun: houtos, en d' ego, koinon einai panton. Symposion Platonos 205 A 7 "so, I said, a common thing to be of all." ex hou de ta prota diasteten erisante Ilias tou Homerou, Iliados A 6 "from right when the first things (two) striving stood apart" or "right from the first things two stood apart contending." ta prota definitely is the first things as in "the first things in the story." I could go on and on with such examples.

Please do. We're talking about Homeric Greek not Plato and ta prota is a set phrase that means "the beginning" but literally "the things that came first". All I'm saying is that the adjective has to agree with something - it can't be a substantive on its own. And that's the function of the article here. Also I think you've misunderstood the translation of your example from Homer. Read on to the next line to get:
ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε
Ἀτρείδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.
Not "two things" but Agamemnon and Atreus agreeing with the participle whose use is clearly adjectival rather than pronominal, "...from the very first moment when there stood apart in strife Atreus's son the lord of men and goodly Achilles."
To argue that Homeric Greek had an article I think you would need to show that Homer uses the construction:
article(+optional enclitic or modifiers)+noun
which he clearly doesn't, except maybe in exceptional circmstances. --Lo2u (T • C) 18:36, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Definite Article

B. "ho, he, to" THE DEFINITE ARTICLE, "the" to specify individuals: rare in this signif. in the earliest Greek, becoming commoner later. In Hom. the demonstr. force can generally be traced, v. supr. A. 1, but the definite Art. must be recognized in places like Il. 1. 167, 7.412, 9.309,12.289, Od.19.372: also when joined to an Adj. to make it a Sustant., aien apokteinon ton opistaton, the hindmost man, Il. 11.178; ton ariston 17.80; ton dustenon 22.59; ton proukhonta 23.325; to proto.., to deutero.., etc., ib.265sq; also in ton allon 2.674, al.: with Advs., to prin ib. 733; ta prota 1.6, al.; to men allo for the rest, 23.454; andron ton tote 9.559.-

A Greek-English Lexicon compiled by Henry George Liddel D.D....and Robert Scott D.D. A New Edition Revised and Augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones D.Litt. Oxford At the Clarendon Press First Edition published 1843 Reprinted 1961 (p. 1194)

On this ground ta prota is a use of the definite article, accompanying a prota called here an adverb. However, logic could suffice to say that the meaning of the line with merely ta would have been compromised, hence ta modifies prota, not the other way around. (In a similar way the nominatives of the next line are unlikely to be necessary to convey the meaning stated by the dual aorist verb and the participle.)

I intend to change the article based on the authority of the above citation which supports the view that ta prota even in the example of Iliadic Homer given is an example of a definite article.

in response: it's actually an ADV.: prota. (L&S Lexicon, p. 1535) 3. "freq. as Adv. in neuter singular and plural."......first in the first place at the beginning,....also ta p., Il 1.6." Of course the neuter singular or plural of the adjective protos-e-on has an adverbial meaning because it carries the sense of "first thing" or in this case "first things."

en d ego hippolytos

"On this ground ta prota is a use of the definite article, accompanying a substantive adjective." - no (as your dictionary definition says) it's accompanying an adjective TO MAKE IT SUBSTANTIVE. I've not claimed that there aren't a few traces of the definite article in Homer but they are very rare and "ta prota" isn't one of them. If you want to say that there is a very small number of cases of definite article use, do so by all means but don't use an incorrect example that you found yourself, use L&S's own examples.--Lo2u (T • C) 19:38, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Of course this would be a function of a definite article as the dictionary supports. The example I found wasn't an incorrect example. Why would you make it seem like a substantive adjective needs an article to make it one, or moreover why do you think that even though its listed under examples of the definite article that it isn't an example because it accompanies a substantive, in this case one with an adverbial usage? Oh, you think it says that just because it accompanies a substantive it isn't a definite article. Where does it say that in the lexicon? Why would it not be a definite article if it was listed under the article that says "the definite article"? The lexicon is listing uses of the DEFINITE ARTICLE ho he to "the," and one of those uses is the example I offered, and nowhere does it say that it isn't a definite article because it DOES modify a substantive adjective that is adverbial (obviously for temporal reasons. It would be a pronoun IF of course the adjective or adverb was dependent on the ho he to. Yeah, how DO YOU then get the sense from the above cited entry that ta prota ISN'T the DEFINITE ARTICLE, when it is listed as such????

The lexicon says that the example of ta prota is an example of the definite article ho he to "the" and where does it say that if it accompanies an adjective or adverb that it is a "pronoun" or "pronominal usage," as you stated or even just NOT an example of the definite article? I think you'll find it hard to find this statement.


Sorry I misread the dictionary definitions. Firstly I said from the outset that this was basically my original research, that the sentence should not have been taken out saying that the definite article was not normally available. I modified it though to speak of a "true definite article". And ok, L&S regards the adjective use as a definite article but I would say that the article there, (although being in origin a demostrative pronoun it must have some definite force), is transfering a substantive function to its adjective. Moreover I have seen it written that Greek did not have a definite article - although won't be able to get to a library for a few days. Anyway the adjective is quite a special case and, even if you regard that as an article, Homer still did not generally have the article available to him and when he did it was compulsory and had some function other than making the thing referred to definite. An adjective cannot normally exist on its own, it must have something attached to it - this may be a noun or it may be hos, hode, ti or indeed ho, all of which were pronouns. --Lo2u (T • C) 20:28, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, perhaps this distinction between a "true" usage and the usage in an example with an adverb or adjective is one which you wish to make, but I think it's kindof standing on shaky ground, because the "true article" is listed as not being developed until Attic Greek, but some definitive usages survive. I disagree in the sense that an adverb could've stood on its own as prota, but Homer says ta prota. I think even if it were a demonstrative in ta as in "these things (to come)" it wouldn't have prota. But of course it modifies or depends on prota. I think the article should say "Homeric Greek lacked a true article," since a definite article's function isn't actually different if it's attached to a substantive or a noun since a substantive is an adjective used as a noun.

Hmm, I think that's definitely correct, the true article didn't develop until much later on and the only thing that distinguishes ho from the other pronouns is that it would eventually become the true article. At this stage it's more like the Latin "ille", which I agree carries definite force but can't really be called the article, although it too became the article later on. I think we can find a compromise wording. --Lo2u (T • C) 21:00, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Samples

I'd like to add Robert Fitzgerald's translation of these lines. Not only that, but to put it first, as it seems much the best. And I'm surprised at no Lattimore - maybe he should supersede one of the others.

New to this nicely-edited page, this note is to test the water before doing anything.

This is the Fitzgerald sample:

Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men--carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.

John Wheater (talk) 10:55, 4 June 2008 (UTC)