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Part of
Pragmatic Approaches to Latin and Ancient Greek
Edited by Camille Denizot and Olga Spevak
[Studies in Language Companion Series 190] 2017
► pp. 213–234

Chapter 10
On the distribution of some interactive/conclusive discourse markers in Plato’s Theaetetus

 | University for Foreigners of Siena
This paper focuses on the Greek particles ára, oukoûn, oûn and toínun in Plato’s Theaetetus and investigates them at the syntactic-pragmatic interface. Traditionally, these particles are regarded as semantically equivalent, because they express consequence or indicate a conclusion. However, they do not appear to be interchangeable within the speech turns of dialogues. I will show that (a) the distribution of the particles in turn-takings is due to different speech acts, which are reflected in different sentence types (questions, statements, etc.) and correlate with different verbal moods (imperative, subjunctive, etc.) and deictic categories (tense and person); (b) with respect to discourse cohesion, the four particles split into three classes: ára and oûn are relevant for the representational level, oukoûn for the presentational one and toínun for the interactional one.
Keywords: Ancient Greek, pragmatics-syntax interface, discourse markers, sentence modality
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The main findings of previous studies and the results expected from the current study
    • 2.1A survey of previous studies on particles in Plato’s dialogues
    • 2.2Methodology and aims
  • 3.Data analysis
    • 3.1 Ára and oûn
    • 3.2 Oukoûn and toínun
  • 3.3To sum up
  • 4.Concluding remarks and some perspectives for further research
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.190.10tro
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