Language and Linguistics: Lexical, Syntactical, and Philosophical Aspects

The word δίγλωσσος underwent a powerful semantic shift over the course of the ancient Greek language. While early authors use the term in the most familiar sense, to mean “speaking two languages,” later readers needed glosses of this meaning and later authors use the mostly to mean “duplicitous” or “deceitful.” This paper traces the term’s history and argues that this shift is the result not of a calque, but rather of a long-standing cultural distrust of bilingual individuals, amplified by Hellenistic Jewish Greek texts.

The class of Impersonal Passive verbs in Latin has been diversely treated in the grammatical literature, and the variety of methodologies used to identify Impersonal Passives has obscured our understanding of these constructions in authors such as Plautus. Paradigmatic examples of impersonal passive (hereafter IP) verbs are pugnatum est and itur, which are 0-argument passives that have been generated from intransitive (1-argument) base verbs, and which show neuter singular agreement.

In Topics 1.2., Aristotle lists the uses for dialectical deduction, which is a method for reasoning from reputable opinions (ἐξ ἐνδόξων) instead of from true and primary premises (ἐξ ἀληθῶν καὶ πρώτων), as Aristotle’s scientific method the “demonstrative deduction” requires. Aristotle lists the uses for dialectical deduction as: 1. for training; 2. for ordinary encounters-i.e., casual conversation; 3. for raising difficulties in points on both sides of an argument in the philosophical sciences to find more easily which points are true or false.

Because it is so common, the particle δή often escapes notice. Careful attention to its distribution, however, reveals that it is not just randomly sprinkled into texts to add a vaguely defined ‘emphasis’, but rather plays a key role in articulating transitions between units of narrative. Consider, for instance, Herodotus’ Thermopylae narrative, which opens thus: οὗτοι μὲν δὴ οὕτω διενένωντο ποιήσειν· οἱ δὲ ἐν Θερμοπύλῃσι Ἕλληνες… (7.207.1).