Re: Adjectives, Particles, and This ( etc ), and Conjunctions...

On Wed, Jan 17, 2001 at 04:55:35PM -0800, jesse stephen bangs wrote:
> H. S. Teoh sikayal:
[snip]
> > And then, you have the strange post-positive beasts like "men" and "de"
> > (correlatives, usually translated as "on the one hand" and "on the other
> > hand"), and "gar" (therefore). They are post-positive because they don't
> > like to appear as the first word in a sentence (although they can), and
> > they like to appear after the word(s) they modify. E.g., to say something
> > like "therefore the old woman escaped":
> > 1)      he  gar       grau^s    e'phugen.
> >         the therefore old_woman escaped.
> > OR,
> > 2)      he  grau^s    gar       e'phugen.
> >         the old_woman therefore escaped.
> >
> > Although (2) seems more intuitive, (1) appears to be more common, in spite
> > of the fact that the post-positive particle "gar" has intruded itself
> > between the article "he" and the noun "grau^s" :-)
>
> Actually, if I look at it from a Greek perspective, (1) seems more
> intuitive.  Greek doesn't have any qualms about separating its article
> froom the noun, and I'd want to have "gar" as close to the front as
> possible.
Yes of course. The Greeks didn't mind stuffing all kinds of stuff between
the article and the noun. You could even have several subclauses, all
beginning with an article, and end up with a sequence of articles, such
as:
        ho  tou^ te:s  en te:i oikia:i gra:os    teknou^ adelpho's
        the the  the in the  house   old_woman's son's   brother
        "the brother of the son of the old woman in the house"

Even better, throw in a lookalike demonstrative:
        ho  tou^tou tou^ te:s en te:i oikia:i gra:os    teknou^ adelpho's
        the that    the  the  in the  house   old_woman son's   brother
        "the brother of that son of the old woman in the house"

:-)

[Disclaimer: the above are completely contrived. I don't know if the
Ancient Greeks actually said such things :-P ]


T

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