Use of osos

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Oct 21 00:02:23 EDT 1998


At 6:32 PM -0500 10/20/98, Ren Preston wrote:
>I'm having a problem pinning down OSOS. Is it a correlative pronoun or a
>relative adjective? I can't seem to
>find a grammar that explains it very well. Also, I need to know the
>paradigm for it, too.
>Ren

hOSOS/H/ON is indeed a relative adjective of quantity, correlative with the
demonstrative TOSOS/H/ON and the interrogative POSOS/H/ON. However, it is
being used frequently in Koine already as it has come to be used regularly
in Modern Greek--as a regular relative pronoun with all quantitative force
having become negligible; it's more common in the plural, I think than in
the singular this way. e.g. hOI hELLHNES hOSOI MEQ' hHMWN HLQON, ... "The
Greeks who had come along with us ..." In Classical Greece this would
normally mean "As many Greeks as had come with us ..." but that correlative
force is more often than not lost already in the Koine, and, as I've
already stated, hOSOS has become a regular relative pronoun in Modern Greek.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad at yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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