The article with proper names in Ancient Greek: the postposed article and methodological problems

• Grant number: 23/01014-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: July 01, 2023
• End date: December 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Classical Languages
• Principal Investigator: José Marcos Mariani de Macedo
• Grantee: Luís Alberto Goulart Firmino
• Supervisor: Philomen Probert
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Oxford, England
• Associated to the scholarship: 21/15096-0 - The definite article with proper names in classical Greek: a study on Herodotus and Thucydides, BP.MS

Abstract

In analysing the data gathered by now on the main project in Brazil, we faced some unforeseen problems. First, we found a sizable number of cases in which the proper name seems to be followed by an article, and not preceded by it, such as "Alkibiads ho Kleiniou" "Alcibiades, the (son) of Clinias" (Thuc. V.43), which we are calling provisionally "postposed article". That is not surprising, given that this use in constructions with patronymics is common and expected. The problem arises when we try to assess their definiteness. Should they be considered among the cases in which the name is arthrous or anarthrous? In fact, one could argue that it should not be put in any of these categories: that there should be instead a third category only for those cases, since they mostly appear when names are followed by a patronymic, and they seem to be used mostly for presentational purposes, unlike the contexts in which we find arthrous or anarthrous proper names, that happen in many different textual situations. Second, the definitions of definiteness provided by the authors that have studied this phenomenon in Ancient Greek (AG) do not fit very well with the data on the use of the article with proper names. Proper names have a definiteness status distinct from other nouns, and so require a specific approach to their study. Therefore, our objective with this research internship abroad is to deal with these two problematic aspects in the following manner: (1) analyse the specificities of the "postposed article"; (2) deepen and refine the theoretical and methodological aspects of the research on the article with proper names as a whole. (AU)