[B-Greek] Use of TE

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Sun Nov 2 07:50:24 EST 2008


On Nov 2, 2008, at 1:33 AM, Scott Kennedy wrote:

> Hmm, thank you for your response. That is a very clever explanation  
> of what it means. Going off what you have written, I think it is  
> interesting to analyze the usage based off of how it was compounded  
> in words. It appears in quite a few of our demonstrative pronouns  
> such as TOSOS (TE+OSOS), TOIOS (TE+OIOS), TOIOUTOS (TE+OIOS+OUTOS),  
> and even the adverb TOTE (TE+hOTE, note not QOTE on the analogy of  
> POTE and hOPOTE).

What is the evidence for this hypothesis that these demonstratives are  
compounded of TE + forms of hOSOS, hOIOS, etc? So far as I'm aware,  
the "T" in these demonstrative pronouns/adjectives is essential to the  
original demonstrative hO/hH/TO (with T in all but the nominative  
forms -- TOU/THS/TOU, TWi/THi/TWi, TON/THN/TO, KTL) which became the  
Greek article. TE derives from an oder form KwE (it's identical with  
the Latin enclitic -QUE.

> I think tentativley that it served to give a definiteness and a less  
> strengthened form of addition than KAI.Ex. hO hIATROS EISHLQE hOTE  
> EXHLQE ho IHSOUS.     hO hIATROS EISHLQE TOTE.   As a stretch for  
> comparison, I might suggest that English as a Germanic language once  
> had a TE conjunction on the analogy of where/there and when/then,  
> which did the same thing.Ex. You came when he left.     You came  
> then.  However, this is not necessarily true if you look at MHTE (MH 
> +TE) and OUTE (OU+TE). An interesting case for comparison in respect  
> to TE and DE might be MHTE to M
> HDE and OUTE to OUDE. Anyone have any ideas? All I can think is that  
> MHTE and OUTE where originally inclusive, whereas MHDE and OUDE  
> where exclusive if that makes any sense. Ideas? Scott Kennedy

Seems to me there's a lot of guesswork here.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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