The definite article with proper names in classical Greek: a study on Herodotus and Thucydides

• Grant number: 21/15096-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): May 01, 2022
• Effective date (End): April 30, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Classical Languages
• Principal Investigator: José Marcos Mariani de Macedo
• Grantee: Luís Alberto Goulart Firmino
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project has the purpose of studying the usage of the definite article with proper names in Classical Greek. To do so, we will examine two authors of that period: Herodotus and Thucydides. Furthermore, we present a work from the 20th century and three of the 21st to present a broad view of the studies on that subject. The grammars, the syntax manuals and the monography of the 20th century do not present it inside a theoretical framework, so the contexts of usage of the definite article with proper names end up uncomprehended. In this research, we adopt the theoretical parameters of the definiteness studies as a basis to understand the causes of the occurrences of the definite article with proper names. We discuss, as well, some of the important concepts for this field, such as direct and indirect anaphora and the difference between semantic and pragmatic definiteness. We also briefly show some possibilities of analysis based on that theoretical perspective. At last, we comment on our research method, that involves quantitative and qualitative research, and we explain the corpus with the ten names that we selected. (AU)