[B-Greek] deictic centre

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Nov 30 16:20:38 EST 2004


At 3:46 PM -0500 11/30/04, <bertdehaan at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>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, the problem here is that hESPERAS doesn't mean "yesterday" but
"during the evening." I think that removes any problem concerning the
deictic center in this sentence.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



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