Language/Ancient-greek-to-1453/Grammar/Negation

Indefinites and negation in Ancient Greek

The history of Greek negation is interesting for theoretical understanding of negation systems Homeric Greek already shows signs of a diachronic development:

there are two series of negative indefinites, an older plain one and a newer emphatic one. The system exhibited by Classical Greek is very relevant for our understanding

of the syntactic factors that shape Negative Concord. Classical Greek is a non-strict Negative Concord language.

Ancient Greek has two complementary negators: οὐ (with variants οὐχί and οὐχ), and μή, the former of which is mainly used in assertive statements and the latter in orders and wishes.

The distributional difference between οὐ and μή also holds true for their compounds, negative pronouns, adverbs and conjunctions, such as οὐδείς/μηδείς (nobody, none)

οὐδέν/μηδέν  (nothing) οὐδαμοῦ/μηδαμοῦ  (nowhere ) οὔτε/μήτε (and not) οὐδέ/μήδε (and not, not even ) etc.

The two Ancient Greek negators (οὐ and μή), which function as markers of sentence negation, are usually positioned before the verb, as separate words,

e.g. οὐ στέργει, (doesn’t love), μὴ στέργε (don’t love :imperative). Unlike in some other languages, in Ancient Greek a single sentence may contain two or more negative morphemes.

This comprises the cases of:

α) co-occurrence of negators of different kinds, i.e. association of οὐ + μή and μή + οὐ

β) co-occurrence of identical-kind negators, either objective (οὐ ~ οὐδείς : no one,  οὐ ~ οὐδέν : nothing, οὐ ~ οὐδαμῶς : in no way, οὐ ~ οὐδαμοῦ : nowhere etc.),

    or subjective  : μή ~ μηδείς, μηδέν, μηδαμοῦ, μηδαμῶς, etc.

The present article will focus on the co-occurrence of a negator and a negative pronoun or adverb (or some other compound negative) of the same kind, with the morpheme οὐ:

1) Xen. Anab. 4.4.8. "οὐ γὰρ ἑώρων πολέμιον οὐδένα... :  for there was no enemy within sight.

    A sentence like “I didn’t say it to nobody” can only have a positive reading, that is, it is a sentence with double negation, meaning “I said it to somebody.”

   The corresponding negative sentence would then be “I didn’t say it to anybody”.

   if the last negation in a clause is a compound negation, such as οὐδέν, μηδέν : nothing, the negations reinforce each other,

i.e. the meaning of the sentence as a whole is negative, as in the following cases:

2) Soph. Ant. 96–97 πείσομαι γὰρ οὐ τοσοῦτον οὐδὲν :  for I will not suffer anything so terrible

3) Dem. 5.15 μὴ θορυβήσῃ μηδείς :  Let nobody vociferate!

    if the last negation in a clause is simple negation, i.e. οὐ, μή, the negations are cancelled. Τhis results in an affirmative reading of the whole sentence :

4) Xen. Symp. 1.9.4. οὐδεὶς οὐκ ἔπασχέ τι :  there was not one of the onlookers who did not feel ... → each onlooker did feel something...

   The rules concerning accumulation of negatives of the same kind can be resumed in two following formulas:

   negator + n-word → negative concord (negative meaning)

   n-word + negator → double negation (affirmative meaning)

  The presence of a negator is not obligatory in Ancient Greek when the n-word occurs after the verb :

5) Eur. Cycl. 120 ἀκούει δ᾽οὐδὲν οὐδεὶς οὐδενός :  No one obeys anyone in any respect.

Double negation reading

The existence of double negation is asserted with assurance in all Ancient Greek grammars. Ηowever, this phenomenon is exemplified by only a handful of examples

and the same examples are repeated in all grammars. While notes about the sparse occurrence of the sequence of n-word + negator did occasionally already appear

in works by some scholars in the past,who made it clear (basing herself on her own excerption of material) that there exist only ten documentable instances of this sequence.

Only four of them can potentially be interpreted as double negation

6) (Soph. fr. 935)28

μή μοι κρυφαῖον μηδὲν ἐξείπῃς ἔπος· κλῇθρον γὰρ οὐδὲν ὧδ᾽ ἂν εὐπαγὲς λάβοις γλώσσης, κρυφαῖον οὐδὲν οὗ διέρχεται

do not tell me any secret; you cannot have any tongue bar strong enough through which will pass no secret. (litt.)

The sequence οὐδέ ... οὐ

7) Hdt. 1.84.10 Τῇ οὐδὲ Μήλης ... μούνῃ οὐ περιήνεικε τὸν λέοντα :  this was the only place where Meles ... had not carried the lion.

8) Hdt. 4.28.17  Ἵπποι δὲ ἀνεχόμενοι φέρουσι τὸν χειμῶνα τοῦτον, ἡμίονοι δὲ οὐδὲ ὄνοι οὐκ ἀνέχονται ἀρχήν

    Horses have the endurance to bear the Scythian winter; mules and asses cannot bear it at all.

Conclusion

the negation operator which usually functions as sentential negation is the negator οὐ;

•  in absence of the negator its role is assumed by an n-word (that precedes or follows the verb).

                In other words, sentence negation is achieved either by the negator, or – in its absence – by an n-word.

•  a sentence may contain more than one n-word, in both preverbal and postverbal

               positions  i.e. Greek features the phenomenon known as

               negative spread, which entails negative concord between n-words;

• however, a sentence can contains not only several n-words, but also the negator.

               In such cases, Ancient Greek allows (albeit rather rarely) the co-occurrence of

               negative concord and negative spread.

• relative ordering of neg + n-word must be taken into consideration

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