[B-Greek] deictic centre
bertdehaan at sympatico.ca
bertdehaan at sympatico.ca
Tue Nov 30 15:46:27 EST 2004
This question relates to discussions held earlier regarding deictic centres.
The example I have is not from Koine Greek, but I assume this will be okay.
These discussions were usually a bit beyond my comprehension, but as I was reading "a Greek Boy at Home" I came across a sentence that may explain what it was all about.
Here it is: "hEIS TIS DH RAYWiDOS hESPERAS PARESTI".
I translate this something like so: "A certain bard then, is here yesterday".
Obviously 'is' and 'yesterday' don't go together in English.
Is this a case of the deictic centre being yesterday and the time of the verb is in relation to it?
Is this the normal way in Greek?
Would it be improper Greek if, instead of PARESTI it said PARHN?
This is not a ground breaking discovery for most of you, but if this explains an aspect of deictic centre, then it is ground breaking for me.
Bert de Haan.
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list