From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Fri Dec 19 1997 - 07:14:51 EST
At 3:58 PM -0600 12/18/97, Edgar M. Krentz wrote:
>>At 11:45 AM -0600 12/17/97, Rick Strelan wrote:
>>>Edgar Krentz wrote:
>>>
>>>>A brief comment on your paragraph below. I recall Saul Levin commenting
>>>>that hOUTOS often, in dialogue, had a negative connotation: "This here
>>>>[fellow]" and in drama may even have been equivalent to a stage direction:
>>>>gesture toward the person indicated. The term does not have to be
>>>>derogatory, but can in context. So you might well translate "This here
>>>>authority of yours"--said with a particular inflection.
>>
>>It occurs to me to raise the question--which might not be very easy to
>>answer--whether this negative connotation of hOUTOS may either be a
>>Latinism or derive support from the Latin use of ISTE.
>
>I wonder, Carl. If this occurs already in the 5th century dramatists (both
>tragedy and comedy), then I think it might be too early for Latin influence.
I quite agree that 5th century dramatists would be too early for Latin
influence, but I'm not sure that a distinctive derogatory connotation is
built into the "vocative" usage of hOUTOS in Attic drama. Perhaps it would
be useful to do a word-search study of hOUTOS in Aeschylus, Sophocles,
Euripides, and Aristophanes. My own impression is that it is more common
(the "vocative demonstrative") in Aristophanes or in comedy than it is in
tragedy, but its fundamental sense when so used is "Hey you over
there!"--and this is capable of a whole range of intonations and
imputational connotations; I don't think it is quite the same as the modern
European second-person singular which tends to be either endearing or
demeaning in the manner of the Latin ISTE, which is more often demeaning, I
think--really "distancing." This is why I was thinking the derogatory usage
of hOUTOS might be a Latinism. But I'm not sure that I know either Greek or
Latin well enough to make such an observation.
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