The semantics and pragmatics of interrogative πότερον and πότερα in Classical Greek. A modest proposal

• Alessandro Vatri ^[1]
  1. [1] Durham University

     Durham University

     Reino Unido

     
• Localización: Glotta: zeitschrift für griechische und lateinische sprache..., ISSN 0017-1298, Nº. 100, 2024, págs. 119-133
• Idioma: inglés
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  • The Ancient Greek interrogative pronoun πότερον ‘which of the two’ may be used either in the singular or in the plural to introduce alternative questions (‘whether … (or …)’). Number forms have so far been regarded as equivalent and interchangeable in the absence of prosodic constraints. This study argues that the distribution of such forms is in fact not random: the singular form πότερον introduces questions whose possible answers are propositions that may differ by their predicates, while the plural form πότερα introduces questions whose possible answers are propositions that may differ only by specific properties of their predicates. The semantics of πότερον as an interrogative particle could thus be expressed as ‘which of the (two) propositions is true?’, whereas πότερα could be interpreted as a grammaticalized accusative of respect/limitation meaning ‘under which of the presented (two) circumstances is the proposition true?’. As a corollary, πότερα-questions may be expressed as πότερον-questions but the reverse is impossible. When πότερον was used where πότερα would be expected, it came to function as a pragmaticalized emphasizer, with πότερα developing into its unemphatic counterpart. This process led to the bleaching of the initial semantic distinction through the classical period.