Page 500 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Key Figures
with a whole bunch of adjectives ('uninflected,' 'mean- ingless,' 'interrogative,' 'enclitic,' 'indefinite,' 'under- lying,' etc.) and only meros logon is used with 'one,' 'two,' 'the same' and 'different' ('one m.l.' is a [com- pound] word, while 'two m.l.' is a phrase). Nouns and verbs are only rarely called morion, most of the examples being pronouns, small adverbs, inter- rogatives, indefinites, conjunctions, and prepositions. The Latin equivalent particula is used once by Priscian (Inst. XVII, IV, 29) for the Greek relative pronoun (here infinita particula 'indefinite particle'), though Portus in his translation of Apollonius uses it several times, with similar adjectives ('enclitic,' 'interro- gative'), referring to various pronouns, conjunctions, interrogatives, articles, enclitics, and the comparative word 'more.' Aulus Gellius almost restricts his use to
prepositions and verbal prefixes, but applies the word also to saltern ('at least') which is used like such Greek enclitic monosyllables as ge, a use which is almost the only one for modern grammarians. By Stoic defi- nitions most of these 'particles' would be either adverbs or conjunctions.
Description of the major Stoic contributions to grammar, must start with the lekta ('sayables'), as expounded by Diodes Magnes (in Diogenes Laertius 7.66) and in Sextus Empiricus Math. 8.70. These are of two kinds, complete or sufficient (autotelS) and deficient or incomplete (ellipe). All lekta are said to be abstract (thoughts, in some sense, or meanings), though much that is said about them sounds to us like talk about the expression of thoughts. A complete lekton is a logos ('sentence') and these may be of sev- eral kinds (illocutions, sentence-types), as follows:
(j) hypothesis or assumption (ekthetikon and hupothetikon, treated as different by our source), e.g., 'Let X be the center of a circle' or 'Assume that the earth goes around the sun,' with verbs in the third person singular impera- tive.
Those of these ten which do not require specific mor- phology often allow special conjunctions or adverbs. These are all real types, all syntactically distinguished in Greek (as well as English), but not all possible types or all that are distinguished in Greek. The omissions are potential/unreal 'statements' and questions, as well as questions expecting an imperative reply ('Shall I go?'). But no modern grammarian has done any better. In the case of axiOmata (falsifiable sentences, i.e., those which are capable of being judged true or false), Chrysippus also allowed (in building a kind of logical calculus) for compound/complex sentences of five basic types, with three or more subtypes. Though the expressions themselves are more logical than grammatical, the conjunctions involved are assigned related names, which appear again in Dionysius Thrax and other grammarians. The types are:
(a.l) real, indicative condition (sunSmmenon axio- ma,conjunction'if —ei—, sunaptikos);
(a.2) subtype inferential, 'since'-clause (par- asunlmme-non, conjunction 'since' —epei—, parasunaptikos);
compound sentence (sumpeplSgmenon, con-
junction 'both-and'—kai-kai—, sumplekti-
kos);
(c.l) disjunctive sentence (diezeugmenon, con-
junction exclusive 'either-or' —ftoi-f—, dia-
zeuktikos);
(c.2) subtype nonexclusive disjunction (par-
adiezeugmenon, conjunction nonexclusive
'or'—f—, paradiazeuktikos);
(d) causal sentence (aitiddes, conjunction 'be-
cause' —dihoti—, aitiddls, aitiologikos);
(e) comparative sentence (diasaphoun to mal- lonjhStton, conjunction '(more/less...)
than' —f, Sper—, diasaphStikos).
All of these conjunctions appear on Dionysius Thrax's list and Apollonius Dyscolus' list; most appear in Lat- inized form in Priscian, who also uses some of the Greek names.
Before considering Stoic contributions to verb- classification and inflectional categories, first the mod- ern view of the standard analysis of the Greek verb must be laid out. Greek verb forms are all assigned to one or another of four tense/aspect systems and three voices; this makes only 10, instead of 12 aspect-voice categories, because in two aspects (imperfective and stative/perfect) the forms for passive and middle are the same. The other two tense/aspects are the per- fective (aorist) and the future, which is not really an aspect, and lacks two moods that all the others
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(a)
(b) (c) (d) (e) (f)
(g)
(h)
(i)
statement or assertion (axidma, apophantikon lekton), which alone can be true or false (this follows Aristotle), e.g., 'Dion is walking'; yes/no question (erotSmd), e.g., 'Is Dion walk- ing?';
w/i-question (pusmd), e.g., 'where does Dion live?';
command (prostaktikon), e.g., 'Come here,' requiring the imperative mood;
address or vocative (prosagoreutikon, kletikori), e.g., 'O King Agamemnon';
superassertion or exclamation (pleion e axidma, or homoion axidmati or thaumastikori), e.g., 'How that boy resembles the princes!'—(psek- tikon apparently is a variant of this with deroga- tory content);
rhetorical question (i.e., a question not requir- ing an answer—epaporStikori), e.g., 'I wonder if life and sadness are interrelated'; wish/prayer/curse (euktikon, or, if bad, arati- kori), e.g., 'Zeus give victory to Ajax' or 'May his brain spill like wine,' requiring the optative mood (unreal wishes are ignored);
oath (omotikon), e.g., 'I swear by Zeus to do that!'; and,finally,
(b)