το άνευ κλίσι Ελληνικό: Pronouns

Just like the nouns and adjectives, all the ΤΑΚΕ pronouns are, of course, invariable; they have no inflexions and, therefore, have no grammatical gender, and do not change to show either case or number.

This page contains some of the more controversial of Joseph Peanou's choices, especially his use of σφε for the 3rd person pronoun; some of the correlatives were also controversial. However, these are the choices he made.

[Demonstratives] [Αυτό] [Personal Pronouns] [Reflexive & Reciprocal Pronouns] [Correlatives]

Demonstratives

The reason for beginning with demonstratives will become clear as you read the sections below. In ancient Greek the demonstratives were essentially declined like 1st & 2nd declension adjectives except that the neuter singular nominative and accusative ended in -ο, not -ον. There were three such demonstratives:

οὗτος, αὗτη, τοῦτο = 'this' (plural 'these'): It's apparently strange declension is due to its being derived from: the definite article + /wt/ + 1st & 2nd declension endings, with the modified neuter given above.
ὅδε, ἥδε, τόδε = 'this' (plural 'these'): It is composed of the definite article with the suffix -δε.
ἐκεῖνος, ἐκείνη, ἐκεῖνο = 'that' (plural 'those'): It was declined regularly according to the 'rule' given in the first paragraph of this section.

The distinction between οὗτος and ὅδε was extremely fuzzy. In the historians οὗτος frequently refers to a speech just made while ὅδε refers to what is follow. But this is only a tendency. In the Koine ὅδε is little used and οὗτος is the normal word for 'this'.

At first Joseph Peanou was inclined to retain all three, being partly influenced in that the Hellenic languages of WHATL in the Iberian peninsular had three demonstratives; but they were not directly derived from the same three ancient words, nor were they used in the same way. In the ancient language there was only a real distinction between what was near in place, time or thought and what was more remote. The other modern Hellenic languages of WHATL used just two demonstratives, one meaning 'this' and the other meaning 'that' (except in Gaul where the ancient forms had become considerably modified and used one set of demonstratives as adjectives and another set as pronouns).

In the end, therefore, Joseph decided to drop ὅδε and retain only οὗτος and ἐκεῖνος, deriving the invariable ΤΑΚΕ forms according to the usual rules for deriving nouns and adjective. Thus we have:

τούτο = this/ these
εκείνο = that/ those

These words may be used as pronouns, e.g.
το Δαβίδ ακούε τούτο = David heard this
εκείνο ες μάλα καλό = that is very good.

They may also be used as demonstrative adjectives, but they do not follow the same word order as numerals and descriptive adjectives. The latter have the attributive order, e.g "the ugly duckling" = το αισχρό νησσαρίο or το νησσαρίο το αισχρό. Demonstrative must be used with the definite article and take the determinative position, thus:
τούτο το γυναικό or το γυναικό τούτο = this woman
εκείνο το ανδρό or το ανδρό εκείνο = that man.

Therefore "this ugly duckling" can take any one of four forms, thus:

τούτο το αισχρό νησσαρίο
τούτο το νησσαρίο το αισχρό
το αισχρό νησσαρίο τούτο
το νησσαρίο τούτο το αισχρό.

Αυτό

In classical Greek αὐτός had three uses:

Used in the determinative position it was an emphasizing adjective correspond to english forms ending in -self; e.g.
αὐτὴ ἡ γυνή or ἡ γυνὴ αὐτή = the woman herself
αὐτὸς ὁ ἀνήρ or ὁ ἀνὴρ αὐτός = the man himself.
Used with the definite article in the attributive position it meant "the same", e.g.
ἡ αὐτὴ γυνή or ἡ γυνὴ ἡ αὐτή = the [self-]same woman, the very woman
ὁ αὐτὸς ἀνήρ or ὁ ἀνὴρ ὁ αὐτός = the [self-]same man, the very man
(in this use the article was often united to αὐτός to give contracted forms such as αὑτός, αὑτή, ταὑτό [sic] etc.; but this does not concern us here.)
In the oblique cases only it was used as the 3rd person pronoun: him, her, it, them.
Note:
- Pronouns were not normally used in the nominative case, the verb endings being sufficient to indicate the subject, except for emphasis or clarity; if a subject pronoun were needed for the 3rd person then one of the demonstrative pronouns were used.
- If αὐτός appeared by itself in the nominative case, it was understood to be used as (i) above, emphasizing the subject 'contained in the verb', i.e. it meant: himself, herself, itself, themselves.

Joseph Peanou decided that use (iii) could not be adopted in ΤΑΚΕ since ΤΑΚΕ has no cases and all subjects must be expressed separately. It did not make sense in the context of ΤΑΚΕ to have a word which could be used to mean 'him, her, it, them' but not 'he, she, it, they.' He could, of course, have modified (iii) so that αυτό was used as the 3rd person pronoun in all contexts. However, he decided that αυτό should retain the meanings of 'self', '[self] same'. In short, he decided against use (iii), but to retain αυτό with the uses of (i) and (ii) above, thus:

In the determinative position it was an emphasizing adjective; e.g.
αυτό το γυναικό or το γυναικό αυτό = the woman herself
αυτό το ανδρό or το ανδρό αυτό = the man himself.
Used with the definite article in the attributive position it meant "the same", e.g.
τ' αυτό γυναικό or το γυναικό τ' αυτό = the same woman, the very woman
τ' αυτό ανδρό or το ανδρό τ' αυτό = the same man, the very man

Personal Pronouns

The singular forms of the 1st and 2nd person singular pronouns are unbound words in all four cases, but also have bound enclitic forms the oblique cases. Is there any form of these words that could be said to be the 'compositional base' in ancient Greek? In fact there is. Both singular pronouns have forms to which the formative suffix -θεν (denoting origin, "from") is attached. With nouns this is always added to the compositional base, not to any actual case form, e.g. οἶκος "house, home" → οἴκοθεν "from home". With these two singular pronouns it always added to the accusative (non-enclitic) form, thus εμέθεν "from me, mine" and σέθεν "from you,yours". Therefore, concluded Joseph Peanou, one could safely derive the ΤΑΚΕ words εμέ and σε.

But the 3rd person posed a problem. A first Joseph was going to just use demonstrative pronouns, but this proved a bit unwieldy. After considering various ancient dialect forms, such as Ionic μίν and Doric νίν, he eventually adopted the form σφέ used by the tragedians as both a singular and plural form. But then having ΤΑΚΕ σε and σφε, Joseph thought again about the disyllabic 1st person εμέ. He noted that a form μεθεν (from me) was also attested and decided to adopt the monosyllabic με for ΤΑΚΕ.

The plural forms show a bewildering variety of forms in the different ancient dialects. Analogy was clearly at work; this has continued to the modern language where the ancient and Koine forms have been completely remodeled. Moreover it is not clear what the compositional base of these pronouns would be; arguably in Attic and Koine the 1st and 2nd person plural would be ημέ "we, us" and υμέ "you (pl.)". But these were too similar to (ε)με for Joseph' liking, and he decided, therefore, to ignore the ancient plurals, and their protean forms, and use the word λαό "people" (rather like the modern Chinese use of -men) to form compounds thus:

	Singular	Plural
1st person	με	μέλαο
2nd person	σε	σέλαο
3rd person	σφε	σφέλαο (persons) σφε (things)

Note: -λαό may also be used to form plurals of nouns referring to people, if desired; but with nouns -λαό is always hyphenated and both λαό and the noun retain their original accents, e.g. άνθρωπο-λαό (persons), γυναικό-λαό (women). But this does not mean that a noun without the suffix is necessarily singular; and it should never be added to a noun if the plural meaning is already clear. So, for clarity one one might have μαθητό-λαό "students", but "we are students" must be μέλαο ες μαθητό.

Possessives

Posessives are shown in the same way as for nouns, i.e. by using the preposition εκ (of); e.g.
το εκ με πατρό or το πατρό το εκ με^* = my father
το εκ σέλαο πατρίδο or το πατρίδο το εκ σέλαο = your country, your native land.

The English possessive pronouns, 'mine, yours' etc. are expressed in the same way, e.g.
εκείνο το κυνό ες το εκ με (That dog is mine)
τούτο το οικίο ες το εκ σφέλαο (This house is theirs).

^*εκ με is pronounced [ɛg'mɛ].

Emphatic pronouns

A personal pronoun may be combined αυτό to give an emphatic form, e.g.μ' αυτό (I myself), cf. Latin (ego) ipse, French moi-même. The word order is always the pronoun followed by αυτό. The singular pronouns regularly elide their final -ε before αυτό. In the plural, although the final -αο are theoretically two syllables, in practice in an unstressed position the two vowels would tend to run together and sound like the diphthong αυ. Both vowels, therefore, are elided before αυτό. Thus the emphatic pronouns are:

μ' αυτό (I myself), σ' αυτό (you yourself), σφ' αυτό (he himself/ she herself).
μέλ' αυτό (we ourselves), σέλ' αυτό (you yourselves), σφέλ' αυτό (they themselves).

Examples:
μέλ' αυτό ποίει τούτο (we did this ourselves)
σ' αυτό λέγε εκείνο (you yourself said that).
μ' αυτό όρα σφε (I myself saw it/ I saw it myself).
Note that English speakers should not confuse emphatic pronouns with reflexive pronouns (see below).

Reflexive & Reciprocal Pronouns

Reflexive Pronouns

In the ancient language reflexives were originally expressed by using oblique cases of the personal pronoun with αὐτός agreeing with the pronoun, the 3rd person using the pronouns ἕ [acc. sg.], οὗ [gen. sg.], οἷ [dat. sg.]and σφέας [acc. pl.], σφέων [gen. pl], σφίσι [dat. pl.] with appropriate forms of αὐτός. In Homer the two elements were always declined separately.

Later in the ancient language, while the plurals remained as two words, the singulars became combined to give ἐμαυτόν [myself - acc. masc.], σεαυτόν [yourself - acc. masc.] and ἑαυτόν [himself - acc.], with only the second part declining. In Attic and later Greek σεαυτόν and ἑαυτόν become contracted to σεαυτόν and αὑτόν respectively; also and the plurals forms ἑαυτούς/ αὑτούς etc. came to be used rather than σφᾶς αὐτούς etc.

In the tragedians, the Attic dialect and in later use αὑτόν and its plural αὑτούς came to used as the reflexive pronoun for all three persons. ΤΑΚΕ adopts this latter use and has a single reflexive pronoun αυτό for all persons, both singular and plural.

This looks, indeed, like a return to an early use found in Homer and still retained later in some ancient dialects by which just αὐτόv etc. could be used as a reflexive pronoun for all three persons. Joseph Peanou in his notes insists that the ΤΑΚΕ reflexive αυτό is a derivative of the Attic αὑτόν; but he was surely influenced by the early use and that the reflexive itself denotes 'the self-same person' as the subject of the verb. Thus his choice of αυτό neatly combines both early and late ancient usage.

Examples of the reflexive are:

με αγάπα αυτό (I love myself)
σε αγάπα αυτό (you love yourself)
σφε αγάπα αυτό (he loves himself/ she loves herself)
μέλαο αγάπα αυτό (we love ourselves)
σέλαο αγάπα αυτό (you love yourselves)
σφέλαο αγάπα αυτό (they love themselves).

My own, your own etc.

Where English uses simple possessives to refer back to the subject of the clause, ΤΑΚΕ simply uses the definite article, e.g.

σφε αγάπα το ματρό (he loves his mother)
μέλαο αγάπα το πατρίδο (we love our country)

A possessive would be expressed only if it did not refer to the subject, e.g.

μέλαο αγάπα το εκ σέλαo πατρίδο (we love your country).

If, however, we wish to emphasize that something belongs to or pertains to the subject, ΤΑΚΕ uses the τ' αυτό πατρίδο (the very country) construction with an infixed possessive, thus:

με αγάπα το εκ μ' αυτό πατρίδο or με αγάπα το πατρίδο το εκ μ' αυτό (I love my own country);
σε αγάπα το εκ σ' αυτό πατρίδο or σε αγάπα το πατρίδο το εκ σ' αυτό (you love your own country);
σφε αγάπα το εκ σφ' αυτό πατρίδο or σφε αγάπα το πατρίδο το εκ σφ' αυτό (he loves his own country);
μέλαο αγάπα το εκ μέλ' αυτό πατρίδο or μέλαο αγάπα το πατρίδο το εκ μέλ' αυτό (we love our own country);
σέλαο αγάπα το εκ σέλ' αυτό πατρίδο or σέλαο αγάπα το πατρίδο το εκ σέλ' αυτό (you love your own country);
σφέλαο αγάπα το εκ σφέλ' αυτό πατρίδο or σφέλαο αγάπα το πατρίδο το εκ σφέλ' αυτό (they love their own country).

It will be noted that we have exactly the same elisions as we had with the emphatic pronouns above. Indeed, although Joseph explained these forms as "the τ' αυτό πατρίδο (the very same country) construction with an infixed possessive", they could equally well be interpreted as article and noun with the possessive form of the emphatic pronouns. This also makes sense as such expressions are used only when emphasis is required.

Reciprocal Pronoun

The reciprocal pronoun in ancient Greek had the stem ἀλλήλο- and was declined with the plural endings of the oblique cases of 1st & 2nd declension adjectives. The ΤΑΚΕ reciprocal pronoun is, therefore, αλλήλο, e.g.

μέλαο αγάπα αλλήλο (we love one another);
σέλαο αγάπα αλλήλο (you love one another);
σφέλαο αγάπα αλλήλο (they love one another).

Possession is expressed in the normal way, e.g.

σφέλαο αγάπα το εκ αλλήλο πατρίδο or σφέλαο αγάπα το πατρίδο το εκ αλλήλο (they love each other's country)

Correlatives

Joseph Peanou liked the table of correlatives displayed in grammars of ancient Greek. But such tables also showed up the irregularities in the language. He wanted to make the correlatives more regular but without creating new, artificial forms. In order to do this, however, he use some forms found mainly in Homer and the poets and, in one instance, he adopted a form from the Euboian dialect.

In view of the demonstrative pronouns and of παντό which do duty both as pronouns and adjectives, one might have expected Joseph to have adopted the single form τίνο to act both as a pronoun, meaning 'Who?' or 'What?', and as an adjective meaning 'Which?'. However, it seems he wished to distinguish 'Who?' from 'What?' and used the accusative forms of the ancient interrogative τίς for this purpose. The result is that we the three words - τίνα, τι and τίνο - as shown below. This also meant that the indefinites and negatives followed the same pattern.

In the ancient language the interrogative and indefinite pronouns had the same forms, except that the interrogatives came first in their clause and were always accented on the first syllable, whereas the indefinites were enclitics and had to follow some other word. If possible the enclitics 'threw their accent back' onto the preceding word; if an enclitic did retain a secondary accent, it was always on the final syllable (a monosyllabic enclitic was never accented). Joseph likewise retained the same words for both interrogatives and indefinites; the interrogatives, as in the ancient language, must come first in their clause (or second if preceded by a preposition) and are accented on the first syllable, whereas the indefinites must never come first in a clause and, if disyllabic, are accented on the second syllable.

As for the demonstratives, the pronouns have been discussed above. For the rest Joseph used older Homeric forms, which were also used by later poets, in preference to later forms, e.g. he uses τοῖος rather than the later τοιόσδε and τοιοῦτος to derive the ΤΑΚΕ τοίο - similarly with τόσο and τως (τότε was used in all periods and developed no alternative forms).

The local adverbs - where, here, there etc. - were more problematic. He discarded the ancient forms ποῦ (interrog.), που (indefinite) and οὗ (relative); the latter would have given ου in ΤΑΚΕ and thus be homophonous with the word for "not". Instead he adopted forms used by the poets ending in -θι. This has the advantage of giving a more distinct word for the relative and making for a clear difference in accent between the interrogatives and indefinites. It also allowed him to adopt the poetic form πάντοθι rather than the usual prose from πανταχοῦ which, even if the terminal -ου had been adopted for other forms, would still leave the infixed -αχ- as an irregularity.

With the local demonstratives, however, there was no easy solution. Although there was a poetic form ἐκεῖθι, he saw little point in adopting this as it is not regularly formed from ἐκεῖνος and he retained the common ancient and Koine form ἐκεῖ with the ΤΑΚΕ accentuation. In the ancient language the original word for 'here' was ἔνθα; but this became modified on the analogy of the pronouns ὅδε and οὗτος (see section on Demonstratives above); thus we find ἐνθάδε with the final -δε of ὅδε, ἥδε, τόδε, and, in the Attic dialect and later Koine, ἐνταῦθα with an apparent infixed -ταυ- found in some forms of οὗτος, αὗτη, τοῦτο. However, these were too anomalous for Joseph. Somewhat controversially he adopted the Doric τουτεῖ used by Theokritos and found in ancient inscription since it resembled τούτο (this) and ended the same way as εκεί (there).

He abandoned the ancient forms for 'whence', 'thence', 'whither', 'thither' etc. in favor of analytical forms composed of prepositions and the local adverbs discussed in the two paragraphs above.

The ancient relative pronoun was ὅς, ἥ, ὅ which would have given ΤΑΚΕ ο. But even in the ancient language the relative and definite article were sometimes confused and also relative clauses were often expressed by the definite article with a participle rather than with the relative pronoun and a finite verb. Joseph, therefore, decided to drop the relative pronoun altogether and adopt the method given in parentheses below (this will be explained when we deal with syntax). The other relative forms are derived from the ancient forms in accordance with the principles explained above and elsewhere.

The forms of παντό and its derivatives are also all derived from the ancient language in accordance with the principles explained above and elsewhere.

The negatives posed a problem. Joseph decided, especially as the verb is invariable and has no inflexions for mood, to keep the dual system of μή and οὐ negatives (this will be explained as we look at the verb and, in more detail, when we look at syntax). But in the ancient language the normal negative pronouns and pronominal adverbs are formed partly on a stems oὐδαμ-/μηδαμ- and partly on the stems oὐδε-/ μηδε-. However, in Homer and the poets we find forms in which μή or οὐ are prefixed to indefinite forms; Joseph decided to adopt such forms in ΤΑΚΕ.

The full table may be seen below:

Interrogative	Indefinite	Demonstrative	Relative	Collective	Negative
τίνα ; Who?	τινά someone, anyone	τούτο = this εκείνο = that (See demonstrative pronouns above)	(No relative pronouns - ΤΑΚΕ uses adjective clauses beginning with το. See section on syntax.)	παντό all, every	ούτινα, μήτινα no one
τι ; What?	τι something, anything				ούτι, μήτι nothing
τίνο ... ; Which [adj]... ?	τινό some [adj.], any [adj.]				ούτινο, μήτινο no [adj.]
ποίο .. ; What sort of .. ?	ποιό of some sort	τοίο such [adj.]	οίο [such] as	παντοίο of all kinds	-
πόσο ; How much? How many?	ποσό of some quantity	τόσο so much/ so many	όσο [as much/many] as	-	-
πόθι ; Where?	ποθί somewhere	τουτεί = here εκεί = there	όθι where	πάντοθι everywhere	ούποθι, μήποθι nowhere
πότε ; When?	ποτέ sometime	τότε then	ότε when	πάντοτε everywhen	ούποτε, μήποτε nowhen
πως ; How? In what way?	πως somehow, in some way	τως thus, so	ως as	πάντως in every way	ούπως, μήπως in no way