Los adverbios conjuntivos en griego antiguo. Análisis de άμα en Homero, Platón y Jenofonte

Abstract

In modern Indoeuropean languages some adverbs are used as conjunctives, i.e., as a connector in which the semantic and pragmatic links between two or more elements, often coordinated, are explicited. Although this has hardly been addressed in ancient Greek so far, close analysis of some adverbs shows signs of a conjunctive usage in a very similar way as in modern Indoeuropean languages. In this paper we study the adverb άμα in Homer, Plato and Xenophon in order to determine its potential conjunctive usage and compare it with its usage as an adverb of simultaneity. Analysis of the selected authors leads to the conclusion that άμα is used as a conjunctive adverb in all of them. This usage, in which άμα has an additive value, is restricted in Homer to the syntagma, but extends in Plato and Xenophon to larger syntactic units.