Language/Ancient-greek-to-1453/Grammar/Particles

Particles

One part of speech that is pervasive in much of Greek is the particle. Particles are words that have a grammatical function, but have little meaning on their own. In other words, while nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs all have specific lexical – or dictionary – meanings, particles express grammatical relationships. Many of Greek particles act essentially as sentence adverbs, serving either as sign posts that mark the underlying grammatical sentence structure, or providing an emotional emphasis to a word, clause, or sentence that expresses the mood or attitude of the writer.

• αὖ on the other hand…
• γε intensifies and sharpens the word(s) before it
• δή literally now!, but more generally emphatic
• ἦ emphasizes the particle that follows
• καίτοι marks a transition, restatement, or conclusion
• μέντοι (postpositive) of course (emphatic in replies); however (in a transition)
• μήν follows a particle that it emphasizes
• νῦν, νυνί now, as it is now…
• οὐκοῦν sets up an expectation to agree
• περ (enclitic) an emphatic suffix following relatives and conjunctions

Questions and answers

Questions

•        ἆρα this word has no independent meaning: it simply turns a statement into a yes/no question.
•       πότε when?
•     ποῦ where?
•       πῶς how?
•     πότερον whether

Answers

• ναί  yes
• μάλιστα definitely yes, certainly
• οὔ no

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