Ancient Greek Adversative Particles in Contrast

Ancient Greek is a language which abounds in discourse particles showing a wide range of functions. This paper aims at analyzing the semantic differences between the most frequent adversative particles in Greek: allá, kaítoi, méntoi and mé:n. Drawing on a number of functionally and cognitively-oriented theoretical approaches to pragmatics, I will argue that these particles can best be analyzed as polysemous networks of semantic extensions resulting from the semanticization of contextually evoked pragmatic inferences. I will also argue that the semantic distinction between the various adversative particles can be insightfully described in terms of discourse-pragmatic notions such as common ground, topos, discourse act and move.