ARTICLE (arthron)@ IN@
ARISTOTLE@ AND@ IN @THE@ STOA@
AND@ ITS@ SIGNIFICANCE@
FOR@ THE@ SYSTEMATIZATION @OF @
THE@ GREEK@ EIGHT@ PARTS@ OF@
SPEECH@@@
@@@
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@@@@@@@@@@
Department of Philosophy (Ethics)
@@@@@@@@@@
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART I. PLATO AS PREDECESSOR - The Greek parts
of speech in
1. The Platonic system of the Greek parts of
speech as the foundation of their systematization@@
2. The Platonic dialectic as the philosophical
basis for a system of the parts of speech
3. The dialectic logic of one = many enabling
our speech
4. Categorical application of the Platonic
dialectic
5. Our precept of investigation according to the
Platonic dialectic
6. General condition of our speech (logos)
according to
7. Words (onomata) as a kind of elements in
8. Alphabet (stoicheion)
and syllables (syllabai)
9. A virtual list of all the Greek words@@@@
10. Noun (onoma) and Verb (rhema)
11. Sentence (logos) and three kinds of words
12. From
13. A diagram illustrating
PART II.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
14. The tripartite system of parts of speech
15. Hebraic and Arabic tripatite system of parts
of speech
16. A grammatically heterogenous system of parts
of speech in
17. A great deal of intellectual efforts by a
series of classical students to solve the Aristotelian riddle: arthron
18. ARTHRON (ARTICLE) in its first definition in
19. Comparison of Aristotelian system of parts
of speech with that of Dionysius of Thrax
20. The second definition of ARTHRON (ARTICLE)
as regards Adverbs in
21.
Part III. Theodectes, Theophrastus
and the Stoics
@@ @22. Semi-predecessor
and Collaborator of Aristotle: Theodectes
@@ @23. Immediate
successor to Aristotle: Theophrastus and his school
showing the existence of arthron
bequeathed to them by Aristotle
@@ @24. Mediate
successor to Aristotle: the Stoa and the problem of@ Adverbs left
@@ @25. The
Stoic stage I consisting in 4 parts of speech
@@ @26. arthron
in the Stoa
@@ @27. The
second and the third stage in the Stoa and the Stoic conception of Adverb: mesotes
or pandectes
@@ @28. Development
of the Greek word class system according to R. H. Robins (1966): Diagram A
@@ @29. Development
of the Greek word class system according to our new researches and@ Robins' diagram corrected: Diagram B
Appendix: Aristotle's
phonology reexamined
PART
I. PLATO AS PREDECESSOR - The Greek parts of speech in Plato
1.
The Platonic system of the Greek parts of speech as the foundation of their
systematization
The Greek parts of speech
in the sense of the Greek word classes imply in principle a classification of
all the Greek@@ words. And it is evident
that this classification presupposes the identification of the words of Greek
as materials to be classified and at the same time some discrimination of their
linguistic qualities introducing necessary classes. Now, this kind of
intellectual effort about Greek we find in
2.
The Platonic dialectic as the philosophical basis for a system of the parts of
speech
A system of the parts
of speech is evidently a logical system of classification, and the Platonic
ialectic as a philosophical methodology gives us the ultimate principle of
classification, I believe; so every system of the parts of speech is inevitably
an application of this principle.
3.
The dialectic logic of one = many enabling our speech@
Any effort of
classifying the parts of our speech can be made only when the speech is in our
power, and it is in our power only when it is possible gfor the many to be one
and for the one to be many (ta polla hen kai to hen polla einai)g [Sophist 251b](*2) within the range of our speech, because g we
come to be constantly predicating many names of one and the same thing h.
[id.251a]
g Theaetetus.
Give an example.
Stranger. I mean that we speak of man,
for example, under many names -- that we attribute to him colours and forms and
magnitudes and virtues and vices, in all of which instances and in ten thousand
others we not only speak of him as a man,@@@@
but also as good, and having numberless other attributes; and in the
same way anything else which we originally @supposed to be one is described by us as many,
and under many names.
Theaet. That is true.
Str. And thus we provide a rich
feast for tyros, whether young or old; for there is nothing easier than to
argue that the @one cannot be many, nor
the many one; and great is their delight in forbidding us to say that a man is
good; for man, they insist, is man and good is good. I dare say that you have
met with persons who take an interest in such matters -- they are often elderly
men, whose meagre sense is thrown into amazement by these discoveries of
theirs, which they believe to be the height of wisdom.
Theaet. Certainly, I have.
Str. Then, not to exclude anyone
who has ever speculated at all upon the nature of being, let us put our
questions to them as well as to our former friends.
Theaet. What questions ?
Str. Shall we refuse to attribute
being to motion and rest, or anything to anything, and assume that since they
do not mingle, and are incapable of participating in one another, we must
represent them accordingly in our discourse ? Or shall we gather all into one
class of things communicable with one another ?@
Or are some things communicable and others not ? -- Which of these
alternatives, Theaetetus, will they prefer ?
Theaet. I have nothing to answer on
their behalf.
Str. Suppose that you take all
these hypotheses in turn, and see what are the consequences which follow from
each of them ?@
Theaet. Very good.
Str. First let us assume them to
say that nothing is capable of participating in anything else in any respect;
in that case rest and motion cannot participate in being at all.
Theaet. They cannot.
Str. But would either of them be
if not participating in being @?
Theaet. No.
Str. Then by this admission
everything is instantly overturned, as well the doctrine of universal motion as
of universal @rest, and also the doctrine
of those who distribute being into immutable and everlasting kinds; for all
these add on a notion of being, some affirming that things gareh truly in
motion, and others that they gareh truly at rest.
Theaet. Just so.
Str. Again, those who would at one
time compound, and at another resolve all things, whether making them into one
and out of one creating infinity, or dividing them into finite elements, and
forming compounds out of these; whether they suppose the processes of@ creation to be successive or continuous,
would be talking nonsense in all this if there were no @admixture.
Theaet. True.
Str. Most ridiculous of all will
the men themselves be who want to carry out the argument and yet forbid us to
call anything, because participating in some affection from another, by the
name of that other.
Theaet. Why so ?
Str. Why, because they are
compelled to use the words gto beh, gaparth, gfrom othersh, gin itselfh, and
ten thousand more, which they cannot give up, but must make the connecting
links of discourse; and therefore they do not require to be refuted by others,
but their enemy, as the saying is, inhabits the same house with them; they are
always carring about with them an adversary, like the wonderful ventriloquist,
Eurycles, who out of their own bellies audibly contradicts them.
Theaet. Precisely so; a very true and
exact illustration.
Str. And now, if we suppose that
all things have the power of communion with one another -- what will follow ?
Theaet. Even I can solve that riddle.
Str. How ?
Theaet. Why, because motion itself
would be at rest, and rest again in motion, if they could be attributed to one
another.
Str. But this is utterly
impossible.
Theaet. Of course.
Str. Then only the third
hypothesis remains.
Theaet. True.
Str. For, surely, either all
things have communion with all; or nothing with any other thing; or things
communicate with some things and others not.
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And two out of these three
suppositions have been found to be impossible.
Theaet. Yes.
Str. Everyone then, who desires to
answer truly, will adopt the third and remaining hypothesis of the communion, of
some with some.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. This communion of some with
some may by illustrated by the case of letters; for some letters do not fit
each other, while others do.
Theaet. Of course.
Str. And the vowels, especially,
are a sort of bond which pervades all the letters, so that without a vowel one
consonant cannot be joined to another.
Theaet. True.
Str. But does everyone know what
letters will unite with what ? Or is art required to make a man a reliable
judge of this ?
Theaet.
Str. What art ?
Theaet. The art of grammar.
Str. And is not this also true of
sounds high and low ? -- Is not he who has the art to know what sounds mingle,
a musician, and he who is ignorant, not a musician ?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And we shall find this to be
generally true of art or the absence of art.
Theaet. Of course.
Str. And as classes are admitted
by us in like manner to be some of them capable and others incapable of
intermixture, must not he who would rightly show which kinds will unite, and
which of them repel each other, proceed by science in the path of argument ? By
science, too, he must know whether there are some allpervading connecting
terms, which enable the other kinds to blend; and, conversely, in divisions,
whether there are not others which cause whole classes to become separate ?
Theaet. To be sure he will require
science, and if I am not mistaken, the very greatest of all sciences.
Str. How are we to call it ? By
Theaet. What do you mean ?
Str. Should we not say that the
division according to classes, which neither makes the same other, nor makes
other the same, is the business of the dialectical science ?
Theaet. That is what we should say.
Str. Then, surely, he who can
divide rightly is able to see clearly one form pervading a scatterd multitude,
and many different forms contained under one higher form; and again, one form
knit together into a single whole and pervading many such wholes; and many
forms existing only in separation and isolation. This is the knowledge of
classes which @determines where they can
have communion with one another and where not.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. And the art of dialectic
would be attributed by you only to the Philosopher pure and true ?
Theaet. Who but he can be worthy ?
Str. In this region, then, we
shall discover the Philosopher, either now, or at any later time, if we look
for him; like the Sophist, he is not easily discoverd, but for a different
reason.
Theaet. It seems to be so.
Str. And the Philosopher, always
holding converse through reason with the idea of being, is also dark from
excess of light; for the souls of the many have no eye which can endure the
vision of the divine.
Theaet. Yes; that seems to be quite
as true as the other.
Str. Well, the Philosopher may
hereafter be more fully considered by us, if we are disposed; but the Sophist
must clearly not be allowed to escape until we have had a good look at him.
Theaet. Very good.
Str. Since, then, we are agreed
that some classes have a communion with one another, and others not, and some
have communion with a few and others with many, and that there is no reason why
some should not have universal communion with all, let us now pursue the
inquiry, as the argument suggests, not in relation to all Ideas, lest the @multitude of them should confuse us, but let
us select a few of those which are reckoned to be the principal ones, and consider
their several natures and their capacity of communion with one another --"
[id.251a-254c tr.by B.Jowett](*3)@
4.
Categorical application of the Platonic dialectic
This logic of dialectic
is first applied to the five most universal Categories, i.e. Being, Motion,
Rest, the Same, and the Other. And that naive refutation that it is impossible
for the many to be one and for the one to be many is completely rejected by
answering to it that it is possible for the many to be one in a sense and the
one to be many in another, because this way of thinking and speaking is just
the utmost ground for the possibility of our thought and speech. For instance, hwe
must admit that motion is the same and is not the same, and we must not be
disturbed thereby; for when we say it is the same and not the same, we do not
use the words alike. When we call it the same, we do so because it partakes of
the same in relation to itself, and when we call it not the same, we do so on
account of the participation in the other, by which it is separated from the
same and becomes not that but other, so that it is correctly spoken in turn as
not the sameh.@ [Sophist
256a-b tr. by H.N.Fowler](*4)
Thus, in general, "the
classes mingle with one another, and being and the other permeate all things,
including each other, and the other, since it participates in being, is, by
reason of this participation, yet is not that in which it participates, but other,
and since it is other than being, must inevitably be not-being. But being, in
turn, participates in the other and is therefore other than the rest of@ the classes, and since it is other than all
of them, it is not each one of them or all the rest, but only itself; there is
therefore no doubt that there are thousands and thousands of things which being
is not, and just so all other things, both individually and collectively, in
many relations are, and in many are not.h [id.259a-b](*5)
5.
Our precept of investigation according to the Platonic dialectic
Now we have our own
process of investigation where is g something both difficult and beautifulh [Sophist 259c]. For, any system in the world is not a system of
universal mixture nor a system of no mixture, but a system of particular
mixtures, so, hwhen a man says that the same is in a manner other, or that
other is the same, we should be able to follow his arguments, criticizing one
by one of them from his own point of view and in the same respect in which he
modifies either of@ these proposition.
But it is no real refutation to show that somehow or other the same is other or
the other same, or the great small, or the like unlike; and to delight in
always bringing forward such objections in our arguments, but it is clearly the
new-born babe of someone who is only beginning to approach the beingsg.@ [Sophist 259d-e]
6. General
condition of our speech (logos) according to
First of all, a system
of no mixture is not an appropriate framework of investigation within which our
speech is treated,@ for gthe complete
separation of each thing from all is the utterly final obliteration of all
discourse, because our power of @discourse
is derived from the interweaving of the classes or ideas with one anotherh.
Hence, gthe attempt to separate everything from everything else is not only out
of tune but also belongs to such a person as is entirely uncultivated and unphilosophicalh,
[id.259d-e] because our intellectual cultivation depends mostly upon our verbal
exercises. And now we will take this problem into closer consideration in this
same direction.
7.
Words (onomata) as a kind of elements in
How do we have the idea
of a word as unit (tango in Japanese) ? It seems to be easy, but very and very
difficult indeed to answer the question. And
g
Hermogenes. Yes, I think so.
Soc. Now at what point will he be
right in giving up and stopping ? Will it not be when he reaches the names
which are the@ elements (stoicheia) of
the other names and words ? For these, if they are the elements, can no longer
rightly appear to be composed of other names.h [Cratylus
421d-422a tr. by H.N. Fowler](*6)
And as to a word,
And in addition to this
process of decomposition with sufficient mutual comparison of words qualifying
the so-called morphological characters of a word, we are given by Plato another
definition of a word in the process of@
propositional utterance, i.e. a syntactical one; he says that if names
are the smallest parts of a speech and if a speech is able to be uttered truly
or falsely and if then its parts, smaller or larger, are to be uttered also
truly or falsely, so the names are also able to be utterd truly or falsely [cf.
Crat.385b2-d1]. (And as to being true or
false Plato says that the speech which says @things as they are is true, and that which
says them as they are not is false. [id.385b7-8 tr. by H.N.Fowler](*7))
And this subtle
argument given by
gSoc.
And can you say something of the same kind@
about a name ? The name being an instrument, what do we do with it when
we name ?
Her. I cannot tell.
Soc. Do we not teach one another
something, and separate things according to their natures ?
Her. Certainly.
Soc. A name is, then, an instrument
of teaching and of separating reality, as a shuttle is an instrument of
separating the web ?
Her. Yes.
Soc. But the shuttle is an
instrument of weaving ?
Her. Of course.
Soc. The weaver, then, will use
the shuttle well, and well means like a weaver; and a teacher will use a name
well, and well means like a teacher.
Her. Yes.h [Crat.
388b6-c8 tr. by H.N.Fowler](*8)
Now, this third
definition of a word is in fact the first and most principal one, because it
depends upon and at the same time originates from the two most universal
Categories: Being and Other. (cf. Sophist 259a-b)
And this definition is to be said to be semantic, in itself sufficient and
therefore supporting with its own self-sufficiency of meaning the other two @definitions, morphological and syntactical,
these being said to be developping the meaningful inwardness of the first to the
outer and vaster context. And this semantic definition is to be related to
Platofs onto-epistemological doctrine that: hevery existing object has three
things which are the necessary means by which knowledge (episteme) of that
object is acquired; and the knowledge itself is a fourth thing; and as a fifth
one must postulate the object itself which is cognizable and true. First of
these comes the name (onoma); secondly the definition (logos); thirdly the
image (eidolon); fourthly the knowledge.h [Epistle VII
342a7-b3 tr. by Bury, R.G.] (*9)
Thus we obtain
elementary words and complex words composed of elementary words. And these are
the words in general. And as to a word,
8. Alphabet (stoicheion) and syllables (syllabai)
But, those elements out
of which even an elementary word could@
be composed are no more words but alphabetical elements or alphabet
(stoicheion) and alphabetical groups or syllables (syllabai) [cf. Crat.424e-425a].
9.
A virtual list of all the Greek words
Thus, if we use these
Platonic definitions, semantical, syntactical and morphological, of a word and
a technique of alphabetical permutation besides to identify the Greek words
among the conglomeration of the Greek language, we will be able to obtain a
complete list of the Greek words which will be a virtual lexicon of Greek in an
alphabetical order. For, at first we are not able to indentify every word and
such verbal continuation as "He walks." or "He lies." may
be a word on our first hypothesis, and under our investigation using the
Platonic definitions of a word and trying to analyse the complex into the
elements, the words "he", "walks" and "lies" have
a chance to be identified for the first time as such words.
10.
Noun (onoma) and verb (rhema)
And, then, our task is
raised to a higher level based on the ground of words, i.e. the level of
syntax. And for the first time on this level we encounter a problem of
assorting the words. And Plato's arguement of assorting the words is
essentially founded on that of the shortest and most fundamental sentence
composed of a noun and a verb, this composition being approached "as
before we were speaking of forms and letters; for that is the direction in
which the answer may be expected.
Theaet. And what is the question at
issue about names ?
Str. The question at issue is
whether all names may be connected with one another, or none, or only some of
them.
Theaet. Clearly the last is true.
Str. I understand you to say that
words which have a meaning when in sequence may be connected, but that words
which@ have no meaning when in sequence
cannot be connected ?
Theaet. What are you saying ?
Str. What I thought that you
intended when you gave your assent; for there are two sorts of intimation of
being which are given by the voice.
Theaet. What are they?
Str. One of them is called nouns,
and the other verbs.
Theaet. Describe them.
Str. That which denotes action we
call a verb.
Theaet. True.
Str. And the other, which is an
articulate mark set on those who do the actions, we call a noun.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. Now a succession of nouns
only can never form a sentence; neither can a succession of verbs without
nouns.
Theaet. I do not understand you.
Str. I see that when you gave your
assent you had something else in your mind. But what I intended to say was,
that a mere succession of nouns or of verbs is not discourse.
Theaet. What do you mean ?
Str. I mean that words like
"walks", "runs", "sleeps" or any other words
which denote action, however many of them @you string together, do not make discourse.
Theaet. How can they ?
Str. Or, again, when you say
"lion", "stag", "horse", or any other words which
denote agents... neither in this way of stringing words together do you attain
to discourse; for the sounds convey no expression of action or inaction, or of
the being of anything which is or is not, until verbs are mingled with nouns;
then the words fit, and the smallest combination of them forms a sentence, and
is the simplest and least form of discourse.
Theaet. Again I ask, What do you mean
?
Str. When anyone says "A man
learns", would you not call this the simplest and least of sentences ?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. Yes, for he now arrives at
the point of giving an intimation about something which is, or is becoming, or
has become, or will be. And he not only names, but he achieves something, by
connecting verbs with nouns; and therefore we say that he discourses, and to
this connexion of words we give the name of discourse [or sentence].
Theaet. True.
Str. In conclusion, then, just as
there appeared to be some things which fit one another, and things which do not
fit, so there are some vocal signs which do, and others which do not, combine and
form discourse.
Theaet. Quite true." [Sophist 261d-262 tr. by Jowett, B.]
11.
Sentence (logos) and three kinds of words
Now, since
12.
From
Thus, we will be
allowed to conclude that with
13.
A diagram illustrating Plato's system of the Greek three parts of speech
tending to Aristotle's
|
Plato |
|
Aristotle |
|
|
words |
Sentences |
words |
|
|
Noun (onoma) |
a noun + a verb = a simplest sentence |
Noun (onoma) |
|
|
Verb (rhema) |
Verb (rhema) |
||
|
the third kind of words
[Conj., Prep., Adv., etc.] |
compound sentences |
Conjunction (syndesmos) |
|
|
Preposition |
(arthron) |
||
|
Adverb |
|||
@
PART II. ARISTOTLE AS THEORETICAL DEVELOPER
14.
The tripartite system of parts of speech
Plato's system of Greek
parts of speech is a tripartite one, as we have seen it in PART I, composed of
nouns (onomata), verbs (rhemata) and words of the third kind other than these
two. And from the viewpoint of Greek system of eight parts of speech described
in Art of Grammar by Dionysius of Thrax
(*10), such a tripartite system seems to be too defective to analyze Greek. And
in fact, a great deal of intellectual efforts had to be made by Greek
philosophers and grammarians after Plato, beginning with his system, in order
to reach a practically appropriate level of developed systematization such as
in Art of Grammar by D.T. And we too intend
to follow, in outline but with rigour, the historical course of that development.
But, nevertheless, such a tripartite system is in itself sufficient to describe
such a language as has Subject and Predicate to construct its basic form of
expressions, other components of it being@
qualifiers and modifiers in addition to either of them. Therefore, even
after the Greek system of eight parts of speech was realized by Aristarchus and
standardized by his pupil Dionysius of Thrax, such a learned man as Augustine
could assert that of the eight parts of speech set forth by grammarians
Aristotle himself had taught us to admit only of noun and verb as genuine parts
of speech capable of indicating and signifying somethig vocally, others being
to be correctly called auxiliary compages of speech (compagines orationis)(*11).
15.
Hebraic and Arabic tripatite system of parts of speech@
And we have other
examples of the tripartite system of parts of speech, namely in the intrinsic
analyses by Hebraic and Arabic grammarians of their own mother tongue into a
word system having three word classes: noun (inflectional), verb (inflectional),
and particles (not inflectional). Then, according to Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522),
one of great German classicists and Humanists, the Hebraic three word classes
correspond to the@ Latin eight parts of
speech as follows;
|
Hebraic word class |
Latin part of speech |
|
noun |
noun@ pronoun participle |
|
verb |
Verb |
|
particles |
adverb conjunction preposition interjection |
@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@(De rudimentis Hebraicis,1506)
And the oldest academic
Arabic grammar (Kitab <The Book>)
by Sibawaihi (8c.A.D., Persian) admits of as many as three parts of speech: noun
(inflectional), verb (inflectional), and particles (not inflectional), independently
of the influences from the Greek or the Latin grammar. (*12)@@@@
16.
A grammatically heterogeneous system of parts of speech in @Aristotle and its significance
Now, Aristotelian
system of parts of speech seems to be heterogeneous and inconsistent from the
viewpoint of a usual parallelism of all the parts of speech. But, Aristotle
himself intends to develop willingly such a heterogenous system according to
his own principal distinction between what signifies (semainei) something by
itself and what is non-significant (asemos) among@ the diction in general.(*13) And by way of
further differentiation of each of the two genre, we get the Aristotelian eight
parts of speech that is able in principle to cover all the diction of any kind
in Greek (tes lexeos hapases ta mere) (Poetics, chap.20,1456b20-1457a30);
|
Signifing |
Non-significant |
|
Sentence (logos)@@ Noun (onoma)@@@@@@@@ Verb (rhema)@
|
Case (ptosis) Conjunction (syndesmos)@@@@@ Preposition (arthron) Adverb (arthron)@@@@@@@@@@ Syllables (syllabe)@@@@@@@@@@@@ Alphabet (stoicheion) |
To begin with, Alphabets
and Syllables are sometimes used as representative signs and symbols.(*14) Therefore,
they are not @only analytic elements of a
word as might be expected from our modern standpoint, but also a word or words
in themselves, and in this sense they are of onomata as well as Pronouns, however,
their usual representative capacity does not reach the standard level of
independent meaning which is attained, as Aristotle believes, by Names (onomata)
in general. According to Aristotle, indeed, a Noun and a Verb are such a qualified
Name. And a Sentence is what contains one or more Names and itself signifies
something as a unified whole. Then, a Case (ptosis): an oblique case of a Noun belongs
to the genre : Non-significant, because when "is", "was" or
"will be" is added, it does not then form a proposition, which either
is true or is false, as the noun itself always does then (De Inter.16b).
And both a Conjunction and a Preposition belong to the same genre as a Case on
the same ground. So, if we attach only to Names defined by Aristotle and at the
same time if we take Names to be words, all the words shoud be either a Noun or
a Verb, otherwise there @would be the
third kind of words other than Nouns and Verbs, which is the option made by
Aristotle and is what is called @"Non-significant (asemos)" by him.
Therefore, for instance, the Aristarchan and Dionysian system of eight parts of
speech will be able to correspond to the Aristotelian system of eight parts of
speech in a somehow sophisticated way, because
@ 1) each is proposed to cover all the Greek
words, and
@ 2) both are not identical with each other as
to their inner configuration.
Now, before we make a
comparison between them, we must confirm our interpretation of arthron in its first definition in Aristotle as Preposition. For this
grammatical term to interpret decisively has been indeed a great perplexity in
the@ history of @Aristotle scholarship for more than two
thousand years.
17.@ A great deal of intellectual efforts by a
series of classical students to solve the Aristotelian riddle:arthron
In fact, arthron (article)
in Aristotle has been a riddle to the classical students these two thousand and
three hundred years. Soon after it was introduced in Poetics
by Aristotle, the Stoic philosophers began to use it to signify the definite article
& relative pronoun, besides pronouns in general afterwards.(*15) But the
definition of arthron given by Aristotle himself does not seem to apply to any
of those parts of speech; "Arthron deloi logou archen e telos e
diorismon." (1457a6-7) (An article shows a beginning or an end or a
division of sentence.)(*16)
Moreover, the examples
of arthron given here by Aristotle are prepositions such as around (amphi), about
(peri), etc. (kai ta alla), which@ seem
to be in no harmony with the definition. And in addition to this, there is
given the second definition of arthron, and besides there are given two
definitions of syndesmos (Conjunction), the first of which seems also to be problematic,
whereas the second is regular and identified in other treatises of Aristotle. But
these three or four definitions seem to be confused with one another because of
their mutual resemblance to shut off from our clear understanding;
"Conjunction (syndesmos)
is, now, in one case, a non-significant sound which neither obstructs nor
produces the unity of a significant sound out of several sounds and which is
proper to be together-put in the middle of each of the sounds and which it is
not fitting to put at the beginning of a sentence by itself. Such are men, etoi
and de. Such is -men-de-,or -etoi-e-, or -e-etoi-, or -e-e-, or the like".
(by the author) (DEFINITION-1)
"And in another
case, it is a non-significant sound which is apt to produce one significant
sound out of several sounds, more than one of which being significant by
itself." (DEFINITION-2)
"And, then, Article
(arthron) is a non-significant sound which shows a beginning or an end or a
division of sentence; e.g. amphi, peri and so on." (DEFINITION-3a)
"Or it is a
non-significant sound which neither obstructs nor produces the unity of a
significant sound out of several sounds and which is proper to be put on both
sides and in the middle of the sounds." (DEFINITION-4) (1456b38-1457a10)(*17)
Thence, the history of
the intellectual efforts to solve the problem is filled with the grand
astonishment of the human reason in the presence of a grammatical mystery, the
disbelief in the extant texts, shrewd devices of correcting the texts to get to
a reasonable reading, and the like. For instance, Steinthal says;(*18)
"The@ paragraph@
which contains the definitions of@
syndesmos and arthron is so grievously
corrupted that I can admit of no plausible conjecture as to its reading, which
is not necessarily an extraordinary thing, because the corruption is indeed so grievous.
And I cannot realy understand how it is possible to put so hastily off the
authority of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who maintains twice (de comp. verbb. c.2 in. and de Demosth. praest.
p.1101. ed. Reiske) that Aristotle proposed only three parts of speech: onomata
(Nouns), rhemata (Verbs) and syndesmoi (Conjunctions). It is not only astonishing,
but also unbelievable that such a man as Dionysius did not know or did neglect that
place of Poetics (Classen, de primord. gr.
gr. p.60). And It seems quite questionable to me that Quintilian
copied off Dionysius when he referred to three parts of speech of Aristotle (I,c.4).
And when the later Roman grammarians (Lersch, Sprachphilos.
der Alten II, p.11) say that Aristotle set forth only two parts of
speech, they explain further that these are the two essential parts of speech
and that the other parts of@ speech are
appendixes (appendices), or (as it is said in Augustine's catt. decem
1.) compages (compagines); then, here too, just three parts of speech are
ascribed to Aristotle. Therefore, arthron is suspicious. Moreover, arthron is
between rhema and ptosis when it is enumerated among mere lexeos (parts of
diction) in the beginning of the chapter 20, but it is between syndesmos and onoma
when defined. And further, arthron appears only in pseudo-Aristotelian Rhetoric to Alexander, c.26, in the meantime it never does
in his great Rhetoric, nor in his Organ, although the use of the definite article is relevant
there in his Prior Analytics, I,c.40. And how
can we take an appropriate one for arthron of the given definitions ? And if we
admit that the definition here given of arthron is not to be explained (just as
Lersch in p.270 finds himself to do so), we have no right to ascribe arthron to
Aristotle against Dionysius on the ground of Poetics.
And furthermore, we can see in his Rhetoric III,5,
how Pronoun, Conjunction and Article get together for Aristotle, when he gives
as mutually corresponding and demanding syndesmoi: ho men-ho de (the one - the
other) and ego men-ho de (me on the one hand, he on the other), whereby it is
not the case that only men (one) and de (other) are meant, but just as sy-sy (you-you)
is referred to in the same relation (Rhetoric to Alexander,
c.26).
@And further, to get aware of the cumulative
wonder of the definitions, let us see what definition is yet possible ,if all
of the words that are not Noun, nor Verb, nor Adjective nor Adverb thence
derived, nor Numerals shoud be syndesmoi ! Then, therefore, Pronouns, all kinds
of abstract Adverbs, Prepositions and Conjunctions ought to be one thing! But, to
assume with Ritter that this chapter is not at all Aristotelian and that it was
interpolated by a later grammarian is impossible because even the worst
grammarian could have done his work better than this. Just because of their @wonder those definitions have not been
undersood at all by grammarians, I think, and so they have been inclined to be altered.
He who was surprised not to find arthron in Aristotle might have interpolated
it by assigning one of the definitions of syndesmos to it. Perhaps it was
originally called syndesmos e arthron (Conjunction or Article), and then these
were seperated.
@The second definition is yet the best and in
harmony with the name: syndesmos and with the expression: ho gar syndesmos hen poiei
ta polla (For a Conjunction makes many things one. Rhet.,
III,12). The other definition: "a non-significant sound which neither
obstructs nor produces the unity of a significant sound out of several
sounds" may be related to the so-called expletive particles such as ge (at
any rate), and de (now); cf. Probl. XIX, p.919a22B."
And Vahlen (*19), after
he eliminated from the text the second definition of arthron, being an
incorrect repetition in vain of the preceding phrases, and only one of them
being transferred to the first definition of syndesmos so as to be read: "Syndesmos
is a non-significant sound which neither obstructs nor produces the unity of a
significant sound properly composed of several sounds and which is proper to be
put on both sides and in the middle of the sounds and which it is not fitting
to put at the beginning of a sentence by itself; e.g. men, etoi and de.", proposes
that this definition together with the second signifies such conjunctions as
neither obstructs nor produces the unity of a sentence which is able to have its
unity without a conjunction; e.g. de, nu, proteron. And that these are the
so-called expletive conjunctions (parapleromatikoi syndesmoi), but as Demetrius
showed in his On Style, c.55-58, they can be
used efficaciously and should not be used in vain and pointlessly.
And Vahlen admits the
second definition to be a sharper expression of the nature of syndesmos as
conjunction by joining together more than one significant words, namely onomata
or rhemata, into one sentence, though the concept of a sentence is not
completely congruent with ours. Then, the bisection of conjunctions in
Aristotle is, according to Vahlen, nearly the same as that in Problems 919a22-26; "If certain conjunctions, such as
te and kai, are omitted, the language ceases to be Greek, but the omission of
others gives no such offence, because there are some conjunctions which one must
use often, if there is to be sense, but with others it is not so."
@
And Vahlen says about arthron that only its first
definition is to be taken into account, the second being eliminated as seen above,
but that in the definition no one will manage to find out any meaning which
shall contain at least a reasonable, not to say a right indication of the
arthron in the sense of@ the definite
article.
In the meantime, he
says that it will be well understood, if we take such conjunctions as serve to
bind parts of a @periodic sentence to the
greater members of it, and therewith to show, as the definition runs, a
beginning, an end or a division of sentences in its largest sense: e.g. ei (if),
epei (since), gar (for); hoste (that), ara (then), oun (now); hina (in order that),
hos (so as to), hoti (that), ara-e (whether-or); this assumption is very near G.
Hermann's.
Furthermore Vahlen
writes (*19);
« The term arthron in the
sense of the definite article which came into common use afterwards appears
already in Rhetoric to Alexander, which is not by
Aristotle perhaps, but originated in his times: chap.26(1435a34-36), «Pay attention also to the so-called
definite articles in order that they are used in the necessary place», which is then (1435b11-15) explained
more in detail as follows; «It
is of importance to pay attention to the definite articles so as to be used in
the necessary place; this is to be seen in these ways: The man here (houtos ho
anthropos) does an injustice to the man there (touton ton anthropon). Now, the
addition of the definite articles make the sentence evident, on the contrary
their removal will make it obscure. And sometimes it will take place the
reverse.»@@@@@
« But it would be
doubtful to win the arthron in the sense of the definite article for Aristotle
on the grounds of these phrases. For, Aristotle uses the word arthron in its proper and original sense of joint or articulation (Hist.anim.
536a4@ and b11); but it is never known to
me [Vahlen] that Aristotle had used the word anywhere else also in the
grammatical sense. However the definite article as such and its functions could
be never hidden from him, since he shows without using a @grammatical term to indicate the definite
article the difference of the meaning according to the addition or the omission
of it by citing examples; cf. e.g. Soph.Elench.166a3
and Analyt. Prior. 49 b10.
« And where, one will
ask, did he classify it ? @I [Vahlen] think
that he did not dissociate it from the onoma (word), whose constant attendants
the arthra are, (like the handle bound to a cup or the crest to a helmet as
Plutarch says in Quaest. Platon. X 3, 1010d.e), and
with which they could been accounted to be one, like the negation to a verb or
to a noun, or the adverb to a verb. There is a deficiency of abstraction to be
perceived therein, but it is only too natural and too reasonable in these
opening times of the investigation of the philosophy of language. It is certain
through trustworthy evidences that in Aristotle
the onoma contains also the pronouns and above all the demonstrative ones
within, and that he never
did think otherwise the pronominal use of the definite article, when
he, e.g. in@ Rhetoric,
III,5,1407b9, cited «She
(he), having come and having conversed with me, went away.» as an example of the agreement
of the gender, and «They
(hoi), having come, began to beat me.» as an example of the agreement of the number. Therefore
it is little probable that Aristotle
had dissociated the definite article from the pronouns and nouns and set it up
as a specific part of speech, and it is less probable that he had had the
definite article, which is so tightly bound to a noun in gender and number, etc.
and sometimes takes the place even of it in the pronominal use, called
non-significant sound, this terminology being proper, according
to Aristotle's mode of vision, only to that class of words@ we [Vahlen]@
group under@ the@ name@
of@ particles, in opposition to
onoma and rhema. (Cf. Diagram B)
« Thence we [Vahlen] get
a further evidence that the definition of arthron in Poetics
cannot imply the definite article, although it seems to do because of the term:
arthron itself, yet it cannot on account
of the terminology: " non-significant sound
", and if the definite article was, as we sought to make it probable, not yet
dissociated from onoma as a specific part of speech in Aristotle's conception, then
this will be an indirect basis of our assumption
that the definitions of arthron concern the syndesmoi (Conjunctions) and
protheseis (Prepositions). (Cf. Diagram B)
« Now, Ammonius in his
commentary on De Interpretatione p.99a12 Brand.
referred explicitly to the parts of diction (mere lexeos) mentioned in the
chapter 20 of Poetics, and in a41 just there he
takes the arthron for the definite article and then defines it as that which is
tightly woven into the nouns and a relative to them (kai ten anaphoran pros
ekeina echon).
« But this is scarcely a
well-founded objection against our [Vahlen's] interpretation of arthron, because
what he says there about the parts of speech is less Aristotelian than
congruent with the later views.
« And, finally, it is to
be observed that in the Peripatetic school the arthra
were known as a specific part of speech besides syndesmoi,
as seen in Simplicius' note about Theophrastus on Aristot.Categ.
f.3b. Bas.: «As far as the dictions
are concerned, there are other problems, which Theophrastus has stirred up in
his Matters about the parts of speech and
his@ followers have studied, e.g. whether
only the Noun and the Verb are the parts of speech (tou logou stoicheia) or
also the arthra and the syndesmoi are, and how about the others, these being
indeed the parts of diction (mere lexeos), which are not the parts of speech
that the Noun and the Verb are, and so on.»
@
« Although it is not
known to us [Vahlen] in what sense Theophrastus understood the arthron, and any certain conclusion is not to be made from
the fact that he ranked it as level with syndesmos and
opposed both against onoma and rhema, the fact itself that Theophrastus knew arthra and syndesmoi as
distinct parts of speech will be of a little use to the confirmation, not to
say the accounting for, of the definition of arthron
in Poetics. » (*19)
And LUCAS, D.W. (Aristotle POETICS, 1968, OUP, Oxford, com. on 1456b38-57a1) says,
"Editions are agreed in despairing of this passage. The text with its repetitions
and alternative definitions is suspect, the illustrations are inadequate, and
the meaning of the terms, especially of arthron, is not the same as in later
writers. Arthron: lit. joint, is the term used by
later writers for the article, first perhaps in Rhet.ad.Alex.1435b13.
This is not the meaning here, and the prepositions which are offered as an
example do not conform to the definition. It is impossible to say what kinds of
non-significant word Aristotle here intends. Rostagni following Susemihl and
some earlier editions rejects the definition of arthron here and removes the word
at 56b21 because, according to Dion.Hal.Comp.48,
Aristotle and Theodectes recognized only three parts of speech onoma, rhema, syndesmos, and the distinction between syndesmos and arthron
in the sense of article was due to the Stoics. In any case Dionysius seems to
be inaccurate in that this sense of arthron is found in the Rhet.ad.Alex.1435b13 and perhaps in Theophrastus (Simplicius
on Aristotle's Categories,p.10,24@ Kalbfleisch) which are earlier than Stoic
grammar. If the passage were a later interpolation one would expect the account
of arthron to be that current in the interpolator's own time." (pp.201-202)
18.
ARTHRON (ARTICLE) in its first definition in Aristotle is an INDICATOR of a
Sentence-branch: PREPOSITION
Now, Aristotelian
definition of arthron: "Arthron deloi logou archen e telos e
diorismon." (1457a6-7) should not be translated into: "An article
shows a beginning or an end or a division of sentence." (DEFINITION-3a), but, as we have shown it in another
of our studies concerning the problems, into: "An article indicates a
branch or a fraction or a portion of sentence." (DEFINITION-3b) And a branch or a fraction or a
portion of sentence is what we call now "prepositional
phrase", so article (arthron) is its first component, namely a preposition, not the definite article.(*20)
But why? Because arche (beginning) may mean "beginning or origin of a
river, that is, branch of a river" (cf. LXX Gen.2,10),
and telos (end) may mean "troop (of
children) or column (of chariots) or territorial division (e.g. to Lokrikon
telos, the Locrian territory)"(*21), and diorismos
(division) means "division" of any kind according to its cotext; and
the conjunction e (or) may be used not only
alternatively but also as a connective implying "that is to say", or
"in other words"; then, we get: "a branch or a portion or a fraction of sentence:
that is, in a word, a sentence-branch
(a germ of sentence)."
And "a
sentence-branch" is not the same as "a branch of@ a sentence", because the
latter presupposes an already constructed sentence, but the former is only a
syntactical fraction or a portion in regard to the construction of sentences (this@ is meant just by "of sentence", not
"of a sentence"). And "a sentence-branch"
is not but "a prepositional phrase" in our sense. For, a
prepositional phrase is not yet "a sentence" in Aristotle, but
"a sentence-branch," "a germ of sentence".
@@@@
Indeed, the Aristotelian
definition of logos (sentence): "A sentence
is, now, a significant compound sound, some parts of which signify something by
themselves." (Poet.1457a23-24)
excludes the prepositional phrases from the category of logos,
because a prepositional phrase does not contain names (nouns substantive or
adjective in the nominative, or verbs in the non-finite form) nor verbs (in the
finite form) that are said by Aristotle to be able to signify something by
themselves in the sentences (cf. Poet.1457a10-14;
On Inter.16a20,16b26-28,17a17-19).
For, a prepositional
phrase, i.e. a sentence-branch (logou arche) is
made of a preposition (arthron) and a
case (ptosis, i.e. an oblique case of nouns) sometimes
with a definite article in the same case with itself as its predecessor, e.g. en archei (in the beginning), epi ton
akron (at the extremities), none of these being, by definition, able
to signify something by itself.
Therefore a prepositional
phrase is not yet sufficient to be "a sentence", but only to be
called "a branch or a portion or a fraction of sentence (logou arche e telos e diorismos)".
Then, the first
component of a prepositional phrase is a
preposition, which is allowed to be said "the
Introducer or the Indicator of a sentence-branch"; so, Aristotle defined it as "deloi logou archen e telos e diorismon (It shows a branch or
a portion or a fraction of sentence).
And this
"Indicator of a sentence-branch" was given the name "ARTHRON (ARTICLE)" by Aristotle.
And the
post-Aristotelian generations including the Stoic philosophers soon after
Aristotle could not see but some inflectional particles in the term "arthron"
with a nuance of joint or articulation, but this was far off its genuine sense.
Yet, in Aristotle indeed, "arthron"
can signify some non-inflectional particles such as prepositions,
because, for him, "arthron" or "kampe" (joint) implies two
things: rest and motion. For instance, Aristotle writes; "Now that the
origin of all the other movements is that which moves itself, and that the origin
of this is the immovable, and that the prime mover must necessarily be
immovable, has already been determined when we were investigating whether or
not eternal movement exists. And this we must apprehend not merely in theory as
a general principle but also in its individual manifestations and in the
objects of sense-perception, on the basis of which we search for general
theories and with which we hold that these theories ought to agree. For it is
clear also in the objects of sense-perception that movement is impossible if
there is nothing in a state of rest, and above all in the animals themselves. For
if any one of their parts moves, another part must necessarily be at rest; and it is on this account that animals have joints. For they use
their joints as a centre, and the whole part in which the joint is situated is
both one and two, both straight and bent, changing potentially and actually
because of the joint. And when the part is being bent and moved, one
of the points in the joint moves and one remains at rest." (*22)
19.
Comparison of Aristotelian system of parts of speech with that of Dionysius of
Thrax
Now that the meaning of
arthron in Aristotle is determined, we try to make Aristotelian system of parts
of speech correspondith that of Dionysius of Thrax in order to make it clearer
as to the points not yet defined.
|
Dionysius of Thrax |
Aristotle |
|
onoma (Noun) antonymia (Pronoun) metoche (Participle) arthron (Definite Article & Relative
Pronoun) |
onoma (Noun) |
|
rhema (Verb) |
rhema (Verb) |
|
prothesis (Preposition) |
arthron (Preposition) |
|
syndesmos (Conjunction) |
syndesmos (Conjunction) |
|
epirrhema (Adverb) |
??? |
|
stoicheion (Alphabet) |
stoicheion (Alphabet) |
|
syllabai (Syllables) |
syllabai (Syllables) |
|
logos (Sentence) |
logos (Sentence) |
Now, if, as supposed
before, two systems correspond with each other as a whole, what (???) is then
that which does in the Aristotelian with the epirrhema (Adverb) of Dionysius of
Thrax ? And where are Adverbs in Aristotle ?
In fact, the
grammatical position of Adverbs in Aristotle is not yet clear. Although some
people include it within onomata (names),
saying according to their own arbitrary criterion that an adverb signifies
something by itself, but an adverb does not reach the Aristotelian criterion of
onoma (a Name) that when "is",
"was" or "will be" is added, it does then form a
proposition, which either is true or is false, as a Noun itself always does
then (De Inter.16b), with the exception that
it is called "a name or word (onoma)" in an application of one of the
rhetorical rules of paromoiosis (the repetition of the same word at the end of
the clauses of a periodic sentence) (cf. Rhet.III,9,
1410a24-37).
Because, e.g. when
"is", "was" or "will be" is added to an adverb
"koinos (in common)", it does not then form a proposition, which
either is true or is false. Is
an adverb, then, a Case (ptosis) ? Yes, it is, in@ general (cf. Top.I.15,106b29-39).
But, "ptosis is used of any modification of a word, such as cases and
genders of nouns and adjectives, adjectives derived from nouns, adverbs formed
from adjectives (as in the examples which Aristotle gives here), and the tenses
of verbs" (Forster's note on Top.106b29,tr.p.314(*23))
So, if we are to find a further and proper definition of the Adverb in Aristotle,
it will be elsewhere possible.
20.
The second definition of ARTHRON (ARTICLE) as regards Adverbs in Aristotle@
Now, although we
eliminated the second definition of arthron (DEFINITION-4) of the text as a confusion
before, it will be worth while seeking to consider its possibility of implying the
adverbs in Aristotle, because the definition: "Or it is a non-significant
sound which neither obstructs nor produces the unity of a significant sound out
of several sounds and which is proper to be put on both sides and in the middle
of the sounds." may suggest that this peculiarity of the arthron shall conform
to, as it were, the third horizen of the syntactical relations of words, i.e. the
adverbial relations in syntax, the 1st horizen being the predicative ones, and
the 2nd being the attributive ones, these two together with the conjunctive ones
consisting in principle in compound sentences by conjunctions (ho logos ek pleionon heis syndesmoi: a compound sentence
unified into one by conjunction as the Iliad. Poet.1457a28-30)
In fact, the logos (sentence)
in Aristotle implies only the 1st and the 2nd of these, because they have a
subjective substantive and a predicative verb (e.g. Socrates sleeps.) or a noun
adjective and a noun substantive (e.g. beautiful horse) or at least one Name capable of utterance (phasis) necessary to be significant by itself (e.g. his eyes) (Cat.
chap.2).
But, if we hold to the
definition of logos (sentence) by Aristotle, an adverbial relation too is to be
regarded as one of sentences, because it has at least one Name capable of
utterance (phasis) necessary for it to be significant by itself (e.g. to work hard, or very beautiful) in the same way as the example:
his eyes.
Therefore, the second
definition of arthron: "Or it is a
non-significant sound which neither obstructs nor produces the unity of a
significant sound out of several sounds and which is proper to be put on both
sides and in the middle of the sounds." may imform us of the adverbial relation set up by the addition of an adverbial
modifier to an already standing sentence, e.g. "well" added to
"Socrates sleeps." or "very" to "beautiful
horse". And in such cases, in general, modifiers may be posted on both
sides and in the middle of the sounds according to the context (in this case, the
subject is singular, i.e one adverb, then, it is put (tithesthai:
Poet.1457a9), not together-put (syn-tithesthai:
Poet.1457a2) like the conjunctions used
in couple or in ensemble; therefore, «on both sides and in the middle (kai epi ton akron kai epi tou mesou: Poet.1457a9-10)» signify disjunctively
one of three positions implied there, on the contrary the same phrase «on both sides and in the middle
(kai epi ton akron kai epi tou mesou: Poet.1457a2-3) signify conjunctively
as regards the conjunctions used in couple or in ensemble.) and they neither
obstructs nor produces the unity of a significant sound out of several sounds, because
the unified structure of the sentece is there presupposed and they function as
its modifiers.
Although, in principle and
by definition in Aristotle, an adverbial relation for itself is capable of
forming an original sentence, this possibility is not yet fully perceived by
him, because his analysis and theory of sentence (logos) is centered on his epistemological
and ontological ground of the subject that cannot be itself predicate of
anything. And to this ultimate subject,
a predicate or an attribute is, as it were, the first and the nearest modifier,
an adverbial being the next because of its mediate relation to the ultimate
subject via a predicate or an attribute of which it is a modifier. In a word, a
predicate or an attribute is the immediate and direct modifier of the ultimate
subject and an adverbial is the mediate and indirect modifier of it.
Besides, in Greek, "adverbs, like prepositions and conjunctions, were
originally case forms, made from the stems of nouns and pronouns.
Some of these nominal and pronominal stems have gone out of common use, so that
only petrified forms are left in the adverbs. Some of these words were still felt
to be live cases; in others no consciousness of their origin survived. Many adverbs
show old suffixes joined to the stem or to a case form. It is sometimes
uncertain whether we should speak of@
adverbs or of nouns with local endings." (Smyth, H.W., Greek Grammar, Harvard U.P., Cambridge, 1920, p.99)
Thus, we are allowed to
see Adverbs in the second
definition of arthron (DEFINITION-4),
and to understand why Aristotle classified them under arthron. For, Prepositions
and Adverbs are non-inflectional particles, then they are both called arthron, and
nevertheless their syntactical functions are different from each other, then
each is defined in a different manner. In conclusion, Aristotelian system has
the arthron in its second sense that corresponds to the epirrhema in the system
of the Greek eight parts of speech of @Dionysius of Thrax; that is, ADVERB.
@@@@@@@@@@@
21.
Aristotle as theoretical developer in Syntax of sentence@
The standpoint from
which Aristotle analyzes Greek grammatical phenomena is that of Syntax of
sentence, his theory of parts of speech defined thereby, as we see in the
following TABLE;
|
Sentence (logos) |
Parts of speech (lexeos mere) |
|
|
Simple Sentence (hen semainei) |
(1) Predicative Relation |
onoma (Noun Substantive) + rhema (Verb)@
|
|
(2) Attributive Relation |
onoma (Noun Adjective) + onoma (Noun Substantive) @ |
|
|
(3) Adverbial Relation (*24) |
(1) or (2) + arthron (Adverb)@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@ (DEFINITION-4)@ |
|
|
@@@ (2',
3') Sentence-branch @@@@@ @@@@@(logou arche) |
@arthron (Preposition) @@@@@@ (DEFINITION-3b)@ |
|
|
Compound or Complex Sentence@ (syndesmoi heis)@ |
(4) Conjunctive Relation |
syndesmos (Conjunction) |
|
(4a) conjunctive relation |
syndesmos (DEFINITION-2) |
|
|
(4b) disjunctive relation |
syndesmos (DEFINITION-1) |
|
Now that Greek parts of
speech in Aristotle is clear to the last detail, the definitions and their
corollaries of logos (sentence) in Aristotle are also clearer and vice versa.
In fact, the definition (Y): "A sentence is, now, a significant sound
organized into one, some parts of which signify something by themselves." (Poet.1457a23-24) is essentially equivalent with the
definition (Z): "A sentence is, now, a significant sound, some of whose
parts are significant for themselves as an utterance, but not as a positive or
a negative statement." (On Inter.16b26-28)
and an utterance can be made by a name (onoma; i.e. a Noun or a Verb. Cf. On Inter.17a17-19), therefore, that which has names as its
parts can be called a sentence, as contrasted with a name, no part of which is
significant by itself (cf. Poet.1457a11-12;
On Inter.16a20.).
On the other hand, a
sentence is one in two ways, that is, by signifying one thing, or by being
unified with conjunctions (cf. Poet.1457a28-30.)
So, the latter type of sentence is capable of having a positive or a negative
statement as its parts despite the definition (Z), and of being called a
complex or a compound sentence, as contrasted with that whose parts never
surpass an utterance, this type of sentence allowed to be called simple.
Thus, we have four
types of sentence according to Aristotle;
@(1) a name (Noun) + a name (Verb)@
@(2) a name (Noun Adjective) + @a name (Noun Substantive)
@(3) a name (Noun or Verb) + non-significant (ptosis
or arthron)
@(4) a sentence + a conjunction + a@ sentence
@(2') a name (noun) + a sentence-branch (attributive)
@(3') a name (verb) + a sentence-branch (adverbial)
For instance;
@(1) anthropos manthanei. (Man learns.)
@(2) kalos hippos (a beautiful horse)
@(3) basilei philoi (friendly to the king)
@@@@ hen semainein (to signify one thing) (*25)
@@@@ dichos legesthai (to be said in two ways)
@@@@ mala polla (very many)
@(4) hippos trechei kai anthropos manthanei.
@@@@@@@@@@@@ (A horse runs and man learns.)
@(2') phone aneu chronou (a sound without
tense)
@(3') en archei tithenai (to put in the
beginning)
And we have, in the
concrete, any mixed sentence of;@
@(1) and (2): kalos hippos trechei. (A
beautiful horse runs.)
@(1) and (3): hippos trechei tacheos. (A horse
runs quickly.)
@(2) and (3): zoion epistemes dektikon
@@@@@@@@@@@@@ (an animal receptive of
knowledge)@@@@@@@@@@
@(1), (2), (2') and (3'): onoma esti phone
synthete semantike aneu chronou hes meros ouden esti kath' hauto semantikon.
@@@@@@@ (A noun is a compound significant sound
without tense, no part of which is significant by itself.)
and so on.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Part
III. Theodectes, Theophrastus and the Stoics
22.
Semi-predecessor and Collaborator of Aristotle: Theodectes
Dionysius of
Halicarnassus tells us very important facts about the early history of the
development of the Greek parts of speech in his On Literary
Composition, 2; "Composition is, as the name itself indicates, a
certain process of arranging the parts of speech, or the elements of diction, as
some call them. These were restricted to three only in number by Theodectes and
Aristotle and the philosophers of their day, who made nouns, verbs and conjunctions
the primary parts of speech. Their successors, and in particular the leaders of
the Stoic school, raised the number to four, separating the articles from the
conjunctions. Subsequent grammarians distinguished appellatives from the other
substantives, and represented the primary parts as five. Others detached the
pronouns from the nouns, and thus introduced a sixth element. Yet others
divided the adverbs from the verbs, the prepositions from the conjunctions and
the paticiples from the appellatives."(*26)
And in his On the style of Demosthenes, 47-48, too, he writes;
"The primary parts
of speech, which some call the elements, whether they be three, as Theodectes
and Aristotle believe -- nouns, verbs and conjunctions -- or four, as Zeno and
the Stoic school say, or more, are always accompanied by two phenomena of equal
importance, tone and time."(*27)
Now, his attribution of
three parts of speech (onomata, rhemata and syndesmoi) to Aristotle is to be in
doubt, because Dionysius of Halicarnassus is the first person ever in history
that has been identified as reader of the Corpus Aristotelicum
through Andronicus' edition(*28), which contains our Poetics,
therefore he must have read the 20 chapter of it and been acquainted with the arthron there introduced by
Aristotle in addition to onoma, rhema and syndesmos. And an indirect, but most
uniquely useful evidence for it is just his remark: "Their successors, and
in particular the leaders of the Stoic school, raised the number to four, separating the articles from the conjunctions." For, how
else could he know that the Stoic arthra had been @separated from the Peripatetic syndesmoi ? (He
might have meant also Theophrastus and his followers by "their
successors" in accordance with his premises.)
As a matter of fact, he
never seems to have get to the Aristotelian sense of arthron, which he identifies
with the definite article and perhaps also with the relative pronoun, the
pronoun in general being, according to his remarks, "detached from the
nouns". Thus he shows implicitly
the terminological origin of the Stoic arthrton in Aristotle and at the same
time he neglects the Peripatetic problem about the Aristotelian definition of
the term in Poetics and among the Peripatetics such
as Theophrastus and his followers.
On@ the@
other@ hand, although it is hardly
credible besides astonishing, if Dionysius of Halicarnassus "did not know
or did neglect the relevant text of Poetics" (Classen,
de primord. gr. gr. p.60)(*29), his
remarks in On literary Composition would be
literally taken. Then, he must have thought that Aristotle had counted what the
Stoics meant by their original term "arthron" as belonging to
conjunctions, possibly on the ground that Rhetoric, perhaps
one of his main sources, might indicate it (e.g. III,5,1407a22-23), though this
indication is false, because the case is that the pronominal use of the
definite article here (ho) is not treated as conjunction by Aristotle, but that
it is one of the proper applications of the coupled conjunctions (men----de) to
any coupled words or phrases; i.e., here, to the coupled personal pronouns: I (ego)
and he (ho).
Or rather, we estimate
that his phrase "separating the@
articles from the conjunctions" is his rhetorical way of implicit referring
to the arthron which he found in Aristotle's Poetics,
but whose real definition could not be conciliated to him with the Stoic and
current use of it: the definite article and the relative pronoun.
Moreover, an ordinary
reader of Aristotle would find that the definite article as well as the pronoun
including the relative pronoun in Aristotle had been treated as onoma, i.e. its
substitute, not as syndesmos (cf. Rhet.III,5,1407b8-11;III,6,1407b35-37;
Anal.Pr. I,40,49b10-13; Poet.1457a18-23; Sophist.Ref. 32,182a8-182b6).
Thus, we are allowed to
say that Dionysius of Halicarnassus has conserved and protected the
Aristotelian origin of the Stoic arthron by means of his highly rhetorical
expressions of the matter.
As to Theodectes, however, his remarks indicate the
fact itself, or his is the only information about Theodectes' view of the parts
of speech. And we are here to ask why Theodectes precedes Aristotle in both of
his explanations; "These were restricted to three only in number by
Theodectes and Aristotle and the philosophers of their day", and
"they be three, as Theodectes and Aristotle believe -- nouns, verbs and
conjunctions".
Now, according to Capps(*30),
Theodectes must have been the friend rather
than the disciple of Aristotle, who was several years junior, and not some ten years
his senior, as one has supposed hitherto.
This almost
revolutionary view of Capps depends on his severe analyses of the catalogues of
victorious tragic and comic poets found in the Greek inscriptions. Though the results
of his studies are not yet fully taken into consideration concerning the
problems like ours, we ought to reconsider their academic and objective value
for a new prospect of the matter, getting rid of our confirmed and subjective
romanticism like Ernst Diehls's in his contributions to Pauly=Wissowa's Realencyclopedie (s.v.Theodektes).
Capps writes;
"The order in
which the names occur in these catalogues was determined by the date of the
first victory of each@ poet. If, then, we
can fix the date of any given name in the lists, we shall know within very
narrow limits the dates of the first victories of the poets immediately
succeeding and following, and if we can fix the date of any two names in a
given list, the limits are known within which the intervening names must fall. With
the information thus gained we may hope in some cases to be able to correct or
correctly interpret the often vague or corrupt chronological notices found in Suidas, the hypotheses prefixed to the extant dramas, Eusebius and the other chronographers, Anonymous peri komoidias II (Kaibel), the Parian Chronicle,
and the statements scattered throughout Greek literature. This has not yet been
attempted except in a desultory way and where the conclusions are most obvious.
I propose to apply the new information thus derived mainly to some of the
better known of the minor poets. The results which we shall reach may not
always seem conclusive; it is hoped that they may at least be of value in
suggesting a new line of inquiry or in giving a new point of view.
Theodectas/es
- Suidas furnishes almost all of the data which we possess concerning this
poet: "Theodectes, son of Aristandros from Phaselis of Lycia. Rhetor, becoming
a tragic poet. Disciple of Plato and Isocrates and Aristotle. He spoke in the
funeral competition for the sake of the late Mausolus in the 107th (MSS103rd;corr.Clinton)
Olympiad. Wrote 50 dramas. Departed in Athens at the age of 41, his father
being still alive."
Welcker (Die griech.Trag. p.1070) finds a terminus ante quem for his
death in the story of Alexander's homage to the poet's statue at Phaselis (Plut.,Alex.17). This was in 334/3. Since Theodectas was 41
years old at the time of his death, he must have been born as early at least as
375, probably a few years earlier. This result has been universally accepted, being
consistent with the statement of Suidas that Theodectas was a pupil of Aristotle,
who came to Athens in 368, and accounting for the marked respect shown by
Alexander, who became the pupil of Aristotle in 343. The young prince may even
have known the poet personally.@@
But the victors'
catalogue upsets this most reasonable combination. In frag.b we find [Carci]nus
XI, [Ast]ydamas V[II]I, [Th-eo]dectas VII, [Apha]reus II. According to Vit.X Orat.839d, Aphareus began to exhibit in the archonship
of Lysistratus, 368/7, and appeared last in the archonship of Sosigenes, 342/1,
winning two victories at the City Dionysia in this period. The acme of Carcinus
is placed by Suidas in Ol.100 (380-77). We learn from Diod.Sic.5,5
that he was often in Syracuse during the reign of the younger Dionysius (368 to
356). He must have attained a high position as a tragic poet before he was
invited to Syracuse, and probably had won the larger number of his eleven
victories before the accession of Dionysius II. The date of the first victory
of Astydamas is fixed by the Parian Chronicle
in the year 372, as we shall see later. The order of the names Carcinus, Astydamas,
and@ Aphareus is therefore entirely in harmony
with the chronological data. If we should assume an interval of three years
between each of these four names- and certainly this is a liberal estimate - we
should have as approximate dates of the first victories: Carcinus, ca.376; Astydamas,
372; Theodectas, ca.368; Aphareus, ca.362. Since the acme of Carcinus is given
as 380-77, it is more probable that his first victory was won before 376 than
that Theodectas won later than 368. However, in order to keep as near to Suidas as possible, let us set the first victory of
Theodectas forward to 365, though so long an interval is intrinsically
improbable.
Theodectas produced 50
tragedies - that is, took part in more than 16 contests. That he devoted
himself more especially to the City Dionysia is a fair inference from the fact
that seven of his eight victories (Epigram apud Steph.Byz.,
s.v. Phaselis) were won at this festival. By all accounts he had gained an
enviable reputation as a rhetor before he turned his attention to tragedy. His
talents must have been recognized at an early age. And yet he could hardly have
entered upon his career as a poet before the age of 25. To assume a later date
would make it necessary to crowd more than three tragedies into each year. Accepting
this age for his first appearance at the Dionysia, and assuming that he was
victorious in his first competition, his death would fall ca.350. If he was not
successful at once, his death must be placed still earlier - a supposition that
is excluded by the fact of his participation in the Mausolus competition in
351. On the other hand, even if nine years elapsed between the first victory of
Astydamas and that of Theodectas, and even if the latter took up tragic poetry
before the age of 25, his death could not be placed more than a few years after
350. At the closest possible estimate he died from 10 to 15 years earlier than
was assumed in Welcker's combination. The year of Theodectas' birth was accordingly
not far from 390. He may well have been a pupil of Plato and Isocrates, but he
must have been the friend rather than the disciple of Aristotle, who was
several years his junior, and not some ten years his senior, as one has
supposed hitherto. In this connection it is significant that the Vit.X Orat.(837c) and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Isaeus,sub fin.) both report that the poet was a pupil of
Isocrates, but say nothing of Aristotle. It is evident that Suidas or his source was tempted to bring together the great
trio. Theodectas was not a youth of 24
when invited to do honor to the memory of Mausolus in 351, but a mature and accomplished
man of 40, whose reputation was firmly established. Alexander
could not have known him personally, but learned to esteem the man and his
works through the poet's friend and collaborator,
Aristotle. This is the meaning of association
(homiliai) in Plutarch's reference to Alexander's act of homage: thus in pleasantry returning no ungraceful honour for his association
with the man that took place through Aristotle and the philosophy
(ouk acharin en paidiai timen apodidous tei genomenei di' Aristotelen kai
philosophian homiliai pros ton andra).
Astydamas,
father and son.
- Since the date which we have been able to reach for the first victory of
Theodectas depends somewhat upon our interpretation of the notice in the Parian Marble for the year 372, it may be well to state
here the reasons which oblige us to assume that this chronicle records only
first victories. It contains six notices of dramatic victories in a form
sufficiently complete to be of service. In three of these the phrase is: won the first prize (proton enikesen) - Aeschylus in 484, Euripides
in 441, and Menander in 315 (new.frag., Athen.Mitth.1897,p.187).
The victory of Sophocles in 468 we know from Plutarch,
Cimon 8, to have been his first victory, won at the City Dionysia. Philemon is
set down as victorious in 327; he could scarcely have won before this date, and
we know that his first Lenaean victory was not gained for some years afterward.
The omission of the first prize (proton) in the
case of Astydamas consequently signifies nothing. When, now, in the catalogue of
victors at the City Dionysia we find that a poet Astydamas won his first
victory between 376 and 362 - and both of these dates, though approximate, are derived
from evidence independent of the inscription - the conclusion is irresistible
that the victory of Astydamas in 372 was his first victory - indeed, his first
City victory - determining the position of his name in the victors' list. Thus
what was only a shrewd conjecture of Clinton must now be recognized as a demonstrated
fact. (And in the succeeding@ arguments
Capps checks the ancient informations about the elder and the younger
Astydamas, pointing out the contradictions among them, and concludes that) The
facts that refer to the son have been transferred, by a simple error of
transmission, such as abound in Suidas, to the
father."
Now, the studies by
Capps on the order of t he names of the tragic victors may influence by the
formalism itself upon our study of the order of the names: Theodectes and
Aristotle in the descriptions of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, apart from the contents
gained from them. That is, Theodectes as the primer may have had the principal
merits of proposing the three parts of speech, adding the Conjunction (syndesmos)(*31) to the traditional
Noun (onoma) and Verb (rhema) set up by Plato.
This fact must have been
recognized by Dionysius of Halicarnassus or any other who could have read
Theodectes' rhetoric or its compendium or the compendia of all the preceding
rhetorics by Aristotle (*32). If so, then Theodectes is the founder of the
explicit theory of the three parts of speech, whom Dionysius of Halicarnassus
puts in the first place in giving supporters of the theory, Aristotle being for
him a suspect of having the theory of four parts of speech including arthron in Poetics, which
he will never acknowledge explicitly. Therefore, Aristotle seems to be a
follower of Theodectes as to the Conjunction
(syndesmos), and the original founder as to the arthron.
Concerning the former, Lersch
seems to be right in saying (*33); "Perhaps Aristotle, who himself had
already observed many times the phenomena of syndesmos, had mentioned willingly
or at least with no reluctance that Theodectes gave it a very high rank, and
that Theodectes counted it as indispensable part of speech as well as onoma and
rhema" in his rhetorical works.
In short, Theodectes found the facts of conjunctions in
Greek, and Aristotle, having accepted the data from him, gave the name syndesmos to the particles and
defined it grammatically, we think. And in this context, too, Theodectes'
advent to Academy@ may have@ been one of the chief motives for the
positive change of the attitude toward rhetoric in Aristotle and in Academy.(*34)
23.
Immediate successor to Aristotle: Theophrastus and his school showing the existence
of arthron bequeathed to them by Aristotle
Now, the Aristotelian
system of parts of speech consisting in four word classes; first onoma (Noun & Pronoun & Participle & The
Definite Article & The Relative Pronoun), secondly rhema
(Verb), thirdly syndesmos (Conjunction), and
fourthly arthron (Preposition & Adverb) was
bequeathed to the Peripatetic school beginning@
with Theophrastus, the public and at the same time private (he is said
to be bequeathed his master's whole library including his own original
manuscripts)(*35) successor to Aristotle, the real founder of the school. And
Theophrastus' Matters about the parts of speech
shows his loyal heritage of the theory of the four word
classes of Aristotle: Onoma, Rhema, Syndesmos and Arthron. In fact,
as Vahlen pointed it out (cf. 17.);@
« It is to be observed
that in the Peripatetic school the arthra
were known as a specific part of speech besides syndesmoi, as seen
in Simplicius' note about Theophrastus on Aristot.Categ.:
«As far as the dictions
are concerned, there are other problems, which Theophrastus has stirred up in his Matters about the parts of speech and his@ followers have studied, e.g. whether only the
Noun and the Verb are the parts of speech (tou
logou stoicheia) or also the arthra
and the syndesmoi are, and
how about the others, these being indeed the parts of diction (mere lexeos), which
are not the parts of speech that the Noun and the Verb are, and so on. »
This Peripatetic argument about the problem of the parts of speech (tou
logou stoicheia) and the parts of diction (mere lexeos) is not entirely of
Aristotle, nevertheless it concerns with no doubt the four word classes (Noun,
Verb, Syndesmos and Arthron), because « the others» than these four he
mentioned are such as «
Syllables (syllabe), Alphabet (stoicheion), Case (ptosis) » (cf. 16.).@
24.
Mediate successor to Aristotle: the Stoa and the problem of Adverbs left
And there was another
successor who made his own way to the flourishing development of the Greek
parts of speech; that is, the Stoic school founded by Zeno of Citium, from
Cyprus. Concerning the Stoic system of the parts of speech, we are informed
that;
a): "The Stoic
philosophers leaning upon their own particular arguments separate from the Name
(Proper Noun, onoma) the Common Noun (prosegoria), which, they say, is an independent part of
speech. And they catalogue the parts of speech as follows: first the Name, secondly
the Common Noun, thirdly the Verb (rhema) and Participle
(metoche) under the same rubric, saying
that the Verb is Predicate and the Participle is an inflexion of a Verb, i.e. a
derivation of a Verb, fourthly the Article (Joint, arthron)
and Pronoun (antonymia) under the same rubric,
asserting that the former is the Indeterminate Joint (aoriston
arthron) and the latter is the Determinate Joint (horismenon arthron), and fifthly the Preposition (prothesis) and Conjunction (syndesmos)
under the same rubric, calling the former Prepositive Conjunction (protheticos syndesmos) and the latter Subordinate
Conjunction (hypotacticos syndesmos). But, then,
they did not think the Adverbs (epirremata)
worthy of belongings to the sentence or to the number, leaving them aside as if
they were offshoots or small grapes for gleaners." (Scholia in
Dionys.Thr.) (*36)
b): "There are, as
stated by Diogenes the Babylonian in his treatise On Language
and by Chrysippus, five parts of speech: Proper Name, Common Noun, Verb, Conjunction,
Article. To these Antipater in his work On Words and their Meaning
adds another part, the Middle (mesotes, i.e. Adverb).
A Common Noun is
defined by Diogenes as part of a sentence signifying a common quality, e.g. man,
horse; whereas a Name is a part of speech showing a peculiar quality, e.g. Diogenes,
Socrates. A Verb is, according to Diogenes, a part of speech signifying an individual
predicate, or, as others define it, an indeclinable element of a sentence, signifying
something attachable to one or more subjects, e.g. write, speak. A Conjunction
is an indeclinable part of speech, binding varios parts of speech; and an
Article is a declinable element of a sentence, delimiting the genders and
numbers of Nouns, e.g. ho, he, to, hoi, hai, ta (= the; masc., fem. and neut., singular
and plural)." (Diocles ap.D.L.) [Hülser,
Nr.536]
@
Therefore, from the
terminological point of view, with the witness of Dionysius of Halicarnassus
counted, the Stoic system of the parts of speech has developed as follows;
Stage I (4): Noun, Verb,
Conjunction, Article.
Stage II (5): Name, Common
Noun, Verb, Conjunction, Article.
Stage III (6): Name, Common
Noun, Verb, Conjunction, Article, Adverb.
And, before the Adverb (mesotes) was introduced by Antipater at the stage III, it
was lacking in the space for adverbs. Indeed, the Stoics, then, did not think
them worthy of belongings to the sentence or to the number, leaving them aside
as if they were offshoots or small grapes for gleaners. (Scholia in
Dion.Thr.) @But Why ? We are
to answer now the question.
25.
the Stoic stage I consisting in 4 parts of speech
About the Stoic arthron, we are informed that;
c): "the Stoics
call the Pronouns also Joints (Articles), their Joints (Articles) being
different from our definite articles in that the Pronouns are the Determinate
Joints and the definite articles are the Indeterminate Joints, as, they say, follows;
by a joint we mean two things: one is a join of two limbs in the same sense as
when we say about joints' dislocation, and the other is the joined limbs
themselves in the same sense as when we say that one is with large limbs. This
is just the way in which a Joint functions in the sentence. And Apollodorus of
Athens and Dionysius of Thrace call the Pronouns also Demonstrative
Joints." (Apol.Dysc., De Pronom.) [Hülser,
Nr.550]@
d): "The Stoics
take the definite article and the pronoun as one, calling the pronoun
Determinate Joint and the definite article Indeterminate Joint. The reason why
they take them as one is that the definite articles are used in place of the
pronouns. For, that which is used in place of something is the same with it. And
further they say about their naming that all the pronouns are entirely
determinate either through demonstration (deixis) or
through reference (anaphora) because
a pronoun may have a use of deixis, as in
the case of "I", "you" and "this", or a use of anaphora, as in the case of "he". And every deixis is the original acknowledgement of the present person
here. Because of this, they call the pronoun Determinate Joint. On the contrary,
Indeterminate Joints are so called, because we find them indeterminate in their
context; e.g., in a sentence: "I listened to the speaker not to see him in
listening.", the is used in place of "a"." (Scholia in Dionys.Thr.) [Hülser, Nr.551]@
e): "The reason
will plead for them (the Stoics) insofar as the pronouns are used anaphorically
and the joints have a relation of anaphora. In fact, the joints are substituted
for pronouns as "before-placed joints" (arthra
protactica; i.e. the definite articles) (e.g.Il.I,12;
Od.XIV,36), or as "after-placed
joints" (arthra hypotactica; i.e. the
relative pronouns) (e.g. Il.XXI,198;XXIII,9;
Od.II,207). (Apol.Dysc., De Pronom.) [Hülser, Nr.550]@
f): "The Stoics
took the joint and the pronoun as the identical part of speech, calling what
the grammarians call the definite article "Indeterminate Joint" (infinitus articulus), and adding there also the indefinite
nouns as well as the relative nouns, which Didymus does, too, in his treatise On the syntactical correctness of Latin (De Latinitate). (On the other hand, the@ Stoics called "the Determinate
Joint" what we now call determinate@
pronoun@ but is to be called pronoun
simply with sound reason.) (Priscianus, Inst.gramm. XI,1)
[Hülser, Nr.558]@
g): "the Stoics
used to count indefinite nouns in general (generaliter infinita nomina), that
is, relative nouns (relativa-nomina) and interrogative nouns (interrogativa
nomina) as Joints because of their anaphoric character." (Prisc. ib.XVII,52)
[Hülser, Nr.559]
And as to the Stoic syndsmos, we are informed
that;@
h): "As is generally
accepted and I, too, have demonstrated in@
the preceding work, the before-placed parts of speech owe the name (prothesis, Preposition) to their peculiar structure of
syntax; i.e. to being before-placed. Because of this also the Stoics called the
prepositions "Prepositional Conjunctions (protheticoi
syndesmoi)"." (Apollon.Dysc., De synt.
IV, 5) [Hülser, Nr.590]@
i): "The Stoics
take the preposition and conjunction as one, calling preposi tions
"Prepositional Conjunctions (protheticoi syndesmoi" and conjunctions simply
"Conjunction (syndesmoi)", for, because prepositions and conjunctions
are indeclinable, they take them as one." (Scholia in
D.T.) [Hülser, Nr.592]
Thus, the first stage
of the Stoic system consisting in four word classes; onoma
(Noun), rhema (Verb & Participle), syndesmos (Conjunction & Preposition) and arthron (The Definite Article & The Relative Pronoun
& The Pronoun) is lacking in the
category: Adverb, because, when they accepted Aristotle's system
or at least Aristotle's grammatical terminology via, probably, Theophrastus, they
transformed some of the categories of Aristotle, syndesmos being transformed
into Conjunction & Preposition and arthron into The Definite Article &
The Relative Pronoun & Pronoun, so that the Adverb had to be excluded@ unconsciously out of the arthron so as to be
left untouched outside the Stoic system.(*37)
And this is an indirect
evidence that the Stoic work of@ the systematization
of the parts of speech was, in the beginning, a succession in their own manner to
that of Aristotle, not yet their own entirely original one, because if the
latter had been the case, their systematization would have included any
grammatical identification of the adverbs, which they ought to have left
untouched outside their system as Aristotle, they thought as a result of their transformation
of his system, did.
26.
arthron in the Stoa
And the chief motive
for this transformation was that they could not find the Aristotelian senses of arthron (Preposition & Adverb),
so that they read its definition as implying The Definite Article & The
Relative Pronoun joined with The Pronoun in general afterwards. For the
definition: "arthron deloi logou archen e telos e diorismon." was
read by them that "An article shows a beginning or an end or a division of
a sentence."(DEFINITION-3a)
because of their having been off its real sense defined by Aristotle, and they
thought that these functions were explicit in the following uses of the Greek
definite article and the relative pronoun;
@1) to kalon rhodon
@@@ (the beautiful rose)
@2) to rhodon to kalon
@@@ (the rose the beautiful, i.e. the beautiful
rose)
@3) theaomai to rhodon, ho moi pepompen ho philos.
@@@ (I look at the rose, which the friend has
sent to me.)
Namely, the to in 1) is a
definite article showing the biginning of the sentence as well as the first to in 2). And the second
to
in 2) is in a sense that which shows the division or the end (as to the
modified word rhodon) in the sentence. And the
relative pronoun ho
in 3) shows the beginning (of the subordinate clause) or the end (as to the
principal clause) or the division (between the two) in the sentence. Thus we
get an amalgam of the Greek definite article & the relative pronoun as a
grammatical approximation of arthron in the sense of DEFINITION-3a.
And according to the
notices c) to g) above, the Stoic arthron as Indeterminate Joint includes as
one the so-called definite articles (arthra protactica)
and the so-called relative pronouns (arthra hypotactica),
which is no other thing than what we call the Stoic amalgam of the Greek
definite article & the relative pronoun as a grammatical approximation of
arthron in the sense of DEFINITION-3a,
and which will include also the pronouns in general through the syntactical
character of anaphora, as they say. And this
unfortunate misunderstanding of the Aristotelian arthron by the Stoics has, in
fact very fortunately, made its own way to the full development of the Greek
eight parts of speech, otherwise the possibility of distinct identification of
the Definite Article together with the Relative Pronoun would have been veiled
in the commonplace of nouns or adjectives.
27.
The second and the third stage in the Stoa and the Stoic conception of Adverb: mesotes
or pandectes
We pass over, here, the
Stoic second stage (having prosegoria: common
noun apart from onoma: proper name) in order to insist upon the third stage where
the Stoic conception of adverb; mesotes or pandectes(*38) was introduced.
Mesotes
or pandectes was probably
the Stoic answer to the question: why a certain kind of words (i.e. adverbs)
were to be left outside the four word class system ? At first, mesotes, namely the Middle or the Mean, was adopted, we think, to
suffice the adverbial character of modifying both nouns and verbs. For, in
Greek, adjectives as well as substantives are nouns, therefore, the combination
of a so-called adverb and a so-called adjective (e.g. very happy, highly
admirable, etc.) is, in@ Greek in fact, a
combination of an adverb with a noun, the combination of an adverb with a verb
being extremely familiar. In this sense the Greek adverb is in its syntactical
character a Mean between the verb and the noun, which is extraordinarily analogous
to the naming of metoche (Participle) because of its partaking of both the noun
and the verb. By further analysis by the Stoics, however, the adverb is
discovered to modify not only nouns and verbs but also any sentence, as is the
case with arthron in the second sense in Aristotle: i.e. adverb as
sentence-modifier, and via a sentence also any kind of words, so that the
adverb is able to be characterised as pandectes:
that is, All- Receiver, or
All-Receiving Particle. And
the more traditional term epirrhema for
adverb signifies, probably in its original use, not only the modifier of verb (rhema),
but also of any kind of words, for the Greek epirrhema signifies originally
"additional saying in general"(*39),
just as the term rhema does "what is said in general". Therefore, the
definition of epirrhema as modifier of verb in Dionysius of Thrace (19) is an
expression of the minimum condition of adverbs, because this condition alone
can discriminate the adverbs from all the other parts of speech, being
insufficient for referring to the other adverbial uses. Anyhow, the term
epirrhema in its whole sense and also in its popular use could cover and take
the place of all the extension of the Stoic pandectes, rich in its
philosophical contents but a mere academic coinage. This is merely our theoretical
hypothesis, which is ready to account for the mysterious history of the Stoic
treatment of the Greek adverbs and for their terminological vicissitudes through
the Stoa and afterwards.
28.
Development of the Greek word class system according to R. H. Robins (1966)
The development of the
word class system of the European grammatical@tradition by R. H. Robins (Foundations of Language 2, 1966, pp.3-19) was, thus far, very
insructive and comprehensive in@this
field of study, but it is now to be fundamentally corrected@because of its negligence(*40)
of arthron in Aristotle. (The results of his studies are synopsized by his
diagram A.)
Diagram A
|
|
Plato |
Aristotle |
Stoics 1 |
Stoics 2 |
Stoics 3 |
Dionysius (Aristarchus) |
Priscian |
modern tradition |
|
logos |
onoma |
onoma |
Onoma |
onoma |
onoma |
onoma |
nomen |
Adjective |
|
prosegoria |
prosegoria |
Noun |
||||||
|
mesotes (pandektes) |
epirrhema |
interiectio |
Interjection |
|||||
|
adverbium |
Adverb |
|||||||
|
rhema |
rhema |
Rhema |
rhema |
rhema |
rhema |
verbum |
Verb |
|
|
metoche |
participium |
|||||||
|
|
syndesmos |
Syndesmos |
syndesmos |
syndesmos |
prothesis |
prepositio |
Preposition |
|
|
syndesmos |
coniunctio |
Conjunction |
||||||
|
Arthron |
arthron |
arthron |
antonymia |
pronomen |
Pronoun |
|||
|
arthron |
|
Article |
29.
Development of the Greek word class system according to our new researches and
Robins' diagram corrected:
Our diagram B, correcting
Robins', shows the development of the Greek word class system according to our
new researches.
Diagram B
|
|
Plato |
Theodectes |
Aristotle & Theophrastus |
Stoics 1 |
Stoics 2 |
Stoics 3 |
Dionysius (Aristarchus) |
Priscian |
modern tradition |
|
|
logos |
onoma |
onoma |
Significant |
onoma |
onoma |
onoma |
onoma |
onoma |
nomen |
Noun |
|
prosegoria |
prosegoria |
Adjective |
||||||||
|
arthron |
arthron |
arthron |
antonymia |
pronomen |
Pronoun |
|||||
|
arthron |
|
Article |
||||||||
|
rhema |
rhema |
rhema |
rhema |
rhema |
rhema |
rhema |
verbum |
Verb |
||
|
metoche |
participium |
|||||||||
|
the third kind of words |
syndesmos |
Non-significant |
syndesmos |
syndesmos |
syndesmos |
syndesmos |
syndesmos |
coniunctio |
Conjunction |
|
|
|
arthron |
prothesis |
prepositio |
Preposition |
||||||
|
|
|
|
mesotes (pandektes) |
epirrhema |
adverbium |
Adverb |
||||
|
|
interiectio |
Interjection |
||||||||
Appendix: Aristotle's
phonology reexamined:
As one of our
conclusions, we'll give a most reasonable analysis of Aristotle's phonology in Poetics, chap.20, which has been one of the causes for us to
disbelieve in@ the@Aristotelian origin@of@the chapter including his
theory of the@ parts@of speech.
@
In fact, the tripartite
system of the Greek alphabet; the vowel (phoneen), the
consonant (aphonon) and the semivowel (hemiphonon) has@inherited
that of the precedig times (e.g. Plato; Theaet.203A-B, Cratyl.424B-C, Phileb.18B-C), and
refined it (*41), in particular by defining the semivowels and with them the syllables
containing them. For example, GR is said to be a syllable as@well as GRA, because the R is a
semivowel and voiced, though not perfectly, like vowels. And@ S too is a semivowel. Now, the@reason why@ R and S, etc. are said to be voiced is that
the liquids (R,L), the@sibilant
(S) and the nasals (M, N) are such phones as are able@to@be@pronounced continuously and
without intermission just like the vowels, all the other consonants being not. Whence
the liquids (R, L), the sibilant (S) and the nasals (M, N) are able to@be called semivowels (*42), which
can give the voiceless consonants a partner with a certain degree of voice by
their competence@for
continuous utterance to make a syllable together. Therefore they are called also
sonant or syllabic liquids, etc.(*43).@
@@ NOTES:@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@@Part I.@ @@
*1) Apart from a
systematization of words there can be no problem of word classes, because where
is no systematization there is no classification, and vice versa. And we find
many struggles for catching the essence of the human language or capacity of
naming and with it the essence of names in early Greek philosophers before
Plato, e.g. in Phytagoras, his deciple Archytas, Democritus, Antisthenes, and
Stilpo and other Megarians, but there is no attempt of classifying words. And@ at the same time in them we can recognize the
beginning of the process of classifying words before Plato, because they are in
their questioning about the essence of words identifying above all and at most
"names as names" or "words as words", which is to ready for
someone to become aware of the different functions of names including the difference
of the parts of speech. For instance, Democritus is probably the first
philosopher that takes all kinds of words on equal terms with each other, just
like "atoms" in his physics, numberless indivisible particles, each
of them unequal with other both in form and size like broken pieces of glass, in
one of his works, entitled "On@ words" (peri rhematon)
[D.L. IX 48], decentrarizing the priority
of names, because his use of rhema in this case is not that of verb, but that of
saying or word in general, on the other hand his another work titled "On terms"@ (onomastikon) [id.] is a vocabulary arranged according to the
subjects. Cf. Lersch, L., Die Sprachphilosophie der Alten, dargestelt an der
historischen Entwickelung der Sprachkategorieen, zweiter Theil Geschichte der
Entwickelung der Sprachkategorieen, I. Die Redetheile A. Die Griechen, die altesten
Schriftsteller. Das Hauptwort, F.Baaden, Bonn, 1840, S.3-7.
*2) Burnet,J., Platonis Opera T.I - V, Oxford Univ. Press, 1901-1907,
Oxford.
*3) Jowett, B, The Dialogues of Plato translated into English with analyses and
introductions, 4th ed., vol III, Oxford Univ. Press, 1953, London,
pp.404-408.
*4) Fowler, H.N., Plato with an Englih translation Theaetetus Sophist, William
Heinemann LTD, 1961, London, p.411.@@@@@
*5) id. p.423.
*6) Fowler, H.N., Plato with an Englih translation Cratylus Parmenides Greater Hippias
Lesser Hippias, W.H.LTD, 1963, London, pp,129-131.
*7) id. p.11.
*8) id. p.23.
*9) Burry, R.G., Plato with an Englih translation VII Timaeus Critias Cleitophon
Menexenus Epstles, W.H.LTD, 1961, London, p.533. @
@@Part II
*10) @DIONYSII THRACIS ARS
GRAMMATICA, edited by UHLIG,G., Teubner Verlag, 1883, Leibzig.
*11) @AUGUSTINUS, CATEGORIAE DECEM EX
ARISTOTELE DECERPTAE, c.1. PL, p.1419.
*12) SUGIURA, S., History and Principle of Word Classification (in Japanese), Kobian
Shobo Publ.,Tokyo,1976, pp.37-38.
*13) Cf. VAHLEN, (below),
p.287.
*14) Cf. ARISTOTLE, On the Movement of Animals, tr. by FORSTER,E.S., Loeb C.L., Harvard
U.P., Cambridge, 1961, 698a23-24.
*15) Cf. HÜLSER,
K. Die Fragmente zur Dialektik der Stoiker,
fromman-holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1987, Nr. 542, 536, 550, 551, 558,559;
BEKKER, I., Anecdota Graeca, bei G.Reimer, Berlin, 1816,
p.873.
*16) Cf. BYWATER, I., Aristotle On the Art of Poetry, OUP, 1920, p.69.
*17) Text by KASSEL, R.,
Aristotelis de Arte Poetica Liber,
OUP,Oxford, 1965.
*18) STEINTHAL, H., Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft bei den Griechen und Romern mit
besonderer Rucksicht auf die Logik, Ferd. Dummlers Verlag, Bonn,1961,
(Unveranderter Nachdruck der Zweiten Auflage von 1890-1891, Berlin).
*19) VAHLEN, J., Beitrage zu Aristoteles' POETIK, B.G.Teubner Verl., Stuttgart,1914,
pp.109-117, 284-290.
*20) Vahlen too denied
the definite article to arthron.
*21) Cf. LIDDELL &
SCOTT, A Greek-English Lexicon, OUP,1968.
*22) On the Movement of Animals, pp.441-443.
*23) Loeb C.L., Harvard
U.P., Cambridge,1960.@@@@@
*24) Cf. KELLNER, L., Historical Outlines of English Syntax, ed. with notes by
MIYABE, K., Kenkyusha LTD., Tokyo,1892, pp.21-28.
*25) "The relation
of the accusative to its governing verb is analogous to that of the genitive to
its governing substantive." KELLNER, id., p.118.@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ Part III;
*26) Dionysius of Halicarnassus The Critical Essays II, Engl. tr.
by Usher, S., Loeb C.L. 466, Harvard U.P., Cambridge,1985.@@@@@
*27) Dionysius@ of Halicarnassus The
Critical Essays I, Engl. tr. by Usher, S., Loeb C.L. 465, Harvard
U.P., Cambridge,1974. N.B. Usher's tr. "Zeno and the Stoic School"; lit:
the followers of@ Zeno the Stoic (hoi peri Zenona ton Stoicoi).@@
*28) "The earliest
quotation I have foun d,which is undoubtedly taken from Andronichus' edition, is
Dionysius de compos. c.25,198 and ep.ad.Amm. 8 en tei trite bybloi ton
technon." Düring, Notes on the history of
the transmission of Aristotle's writings, in Kurfess, H. and Düring,
I., Aristotle And His Influence: Two Studies,
Garland P.I., New York,1987 (reprint.) p.69.
*29) Steinthal, id., Erster Teil, S.263-4.
*30) Capps, E., Chronological Studies in the Greek Tragic and Comic Poets, Amer.
Journ. of Philology, XXI,1900, pp.38-61. This is preceded by the same author, The Catalogues of Victors at the Dionysia and Lenaea, CIA. II 977,
Amer. Journ. of Philology, XX, 1899, pp.388-405.
@ And as a matter of wonder, the literary
sources of these inscriptional buildings of the Hellenistic age were probably nicai tragicai kai komicai (The Tragic and Comic Victories)
[Capps,1899,p.398] or didaskaliai (The
Catalogues of the Dramas) [D.L.V,26], compiled
by Aristotle and his assistants.
*31) Theodectes, having
been a pupil of Isocrates, might have taken his master's rhetorical teachings
about the Greek conjunctive functions into account to identify the
conjunctions. Cf. "In the lessons of rhetoric, one paid attention
especially to the linking particles (syndesmoi, Conjunctions),
because upon their correct setting did the clearness (sapheneia) and survey of
our discourse depend." Pohlenz, M., Die Stoa, Geschichte Einer
Geistigen Bewegung, Bd.I,
Vand. & Rup., Göttingen,1949,
6.Aufl.1984, S.43; as to Isocrates,cf. Bd.II, Erläuterungen, Vand. &
Rup., Göttingen,1955,5.Aufl.1980, S.25. About the extraordinary
importance of the conjunctive structure, a Greek grammarian in Japan says; Greek
has a large number of means to coordinate sentences, and it is nearly one
of@ the grammatical rules to use them to
express the relation of reference to a preceeding sentence. Then, it is an
exceptional case not to use them in juxtaposing sentences, only for the sake of
expressing one's strong emotions. (Kozu,H., Elementary Greek Grammar,
Hokuseido publ., Tokyo,1951, p.163). And only against this universal explicit
connectivity of Greek the peculiar form of asyndeton in
Greek could shape up; @@"ASYNDETON: Two
or more sentences (or words) independent in form and thought, but juxtaposed, i.e.
coördinated without any connective, are asyndetic (from
asyndeton: not bound together), and such absence of connectives is called
asyndeton. The absence of connectives in a language so rich in means of@ coördination as is Greek
is more striking than in other languages." (Smyth, id.,p.484.)
*32) Theodectes' rhetoricai technai (Steph.Byz.s.Phaselis); Aristotle's technes tes Theodectou synagoge (D.L.V,24);
"Aristotle collected the early books on rhetoric, even going back as far
as Tisias, well known as the originator and inventor of@ the art; he made a careful examination of the
rules of each author and wrote them out in plain language, giving the author's
name, and finally gave a painstaking explanation of the difficult parts. And he
so surpassed the original authorities in charm and brevity that no one becomes
acquainted with their ideas from their own books, but everyone who wishes to
know what their doctrines are, turns to Aristotle, believing him to give a much
more convenient exposition. He, then, published his own works and those of his
predecessors, and as a result we became acquainted with him and the others as
well through his work." (Cicero, De Invent. II,ii,6-7)
*33) Lersch, L., Die Sprachphilosophie der Alten, dargestelt an der historischen
Entwickelung der Sprachkategorieen, F.Baaden, Bonn,II, Geschichte
der Entwickelung der Sprachkategorien, I. Die Redetheile A. Die Griechen, Theodektes,1840,
S.24.
*34) Cf. Cicero, De Or. III,35,141.
*35) Strabo, XIII,1,54.
Cf. Düring,id..
*36) Hülser,
id., Nr.542.
*37) If we ask who, among
the Stoics, succeeded Aristotle's grammatical system by transforming it, Zeno
of Citium, just the founder of the school, is to be recalled, having made his
approach to Aristotle through Theophrastus' popular handboook of rhetoric On The Diction (peri lexeos), which
"was during the whole Hellenistic age a well-known and widely used
handbook." Düring, id.,p.39.
Cf. also Pohlenz,M., id. Bd.I,S.43-44;
and Vogel, C.J.D., Greek Philosophy,
III, E.J.Brill, Leiden,1964, p.104; and Pfeiffer, R., History of
Classical Scholarship from the beginnings to the end of the Hellenistic age,
OUP,1968, p.244.
*38) "The Stoics call
the adverb pandectes, because it takes all upon
itself like the Saturnian swallowing of everything." Charis. Inst. Gramm. II,13. Cf. Schmidt, R., Die
Grammatik der Stoiker, Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig,1979,
S.134. Hülser, Nr.581.
*39) Cf. LIDDELL &
SCOTT, id.,.s.v.
*40) Cf.p.10. And cf. also
Robins, R.H., Dionysius Thrax and the Western Grammatical
Tradition, Transactions of the Philological Society 1957 (pp.67-106),
p.104.
*41) Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, too, exposes in his On Literary Composition,14,
the phonological tripartition, his terminology being absolutely identical with
that of Aristotle. And he refers only to Aristoxenus, a pupil of Aristotle
majoring in music. Perhaps, this is one, and a second (the first in the chapter
2 about the matter of arthron) of his highly rhetorical ways of implicit
reference to Aristotle, the theoretical adversary from his point of view, to his
most favorite practical rhetor Demosthenes.
*42) As to hemiphonon (semivowels) Dionysius of Halicarnassus (id.) as well as Dionysius of Thrace enumerates, besides s, r,
l, m and n, the so-called double consonants (zd, ks, ps), which being not the
Aristotelian semivowels, because zd, ks and ps have a so-called stop (d, k, p) that
inhibits them from the continuous nonstop repetition of their whole utterance.
And Dionysius of Thrace calls the semivowels: l, m, n and r also hygra (fluids, liquids), which will signify their characteristic
competence for nonstop pronounciation. And@
it@ is this quality that makes
them possible to adapt to the inflexional circumstances of phonology without
losing their own property, whence they are called ametabola
(unchangeable alphabet). Cf. DIONYSII THRACIS ARS
GRAMMATICA, 6; BEKKER, Anecdota Graeca,
p.632.
*43) SMYTH, id.,p.11.
##) We are greatly
indebted to prof. Rudolf Kassel for the text: Aristotelis
De Arte Poetica Liber, OUP, Oxford, 1965, which gave us the
foundation for the real approach to Aristotle's grammatical thoughts.
###) Rhet. to Alex. is not by Aristotle, on the grounds of our
arguments. For, its notice "the so-called articles" [1435a35, et
passim] indicates clearly the definite article. Now, the origin of it is
whether here in Rhet.to Alex. or in the Stoa. As
a whole, the transformation of Aristotle's arthron (Preposition and Adverb) into
the Stoic arthron (The Definite Article and The Relative Pronoun including
Pronouns) can be visible in the correlative transformational bearings between
the grammatical systems of the parties. Besides, the thoughts of logos (reason or wording) explicit in Rhet.to Alex.
[esp. in its prologue] make us recall that of Zeno the Stoic [cf. "Die Logos philosophie" in Die Stoa by Pohlenz, M.,
S.32sq.], whose lectures open to the public in the public corridor ornamented
with beautiful paintings (stoa poichile) might
have been delivered to one of the Peripatetics, so abundant in number as to
cause Zeno to mention; "The choir of Theophrastus is large, but mine is in
better harmony." [SVF,I,280] Then
he wrote down his own rhetoric to publish it in anonymity under the name of Aristotle,
full of Stoic and Peripatetic ideas, his principal sources of@ the theory.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
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