Determiners - Medieval Greek

In this entry we discuss the distribution of ‘definite’ articles, demonstratives, and ‘indefinite’ articles. ὁ, ἡ, τό o, i, to occur with definite nominal structures, unique nouns, kind names, proper names, and is generally required on nominal arguments. Optionality is mostly found with proper names, although a progressive decrease in the frequency of articleless proper names is observed, anticipating their loss in Modern Greek. Only residual instances of pronominal usages are found, suggesting that the item has already lost its pronominal nature. The distribution of demonstratives is consistent with Ancient and Modern Greek: demonstratives co-occur with articles, in the same word orders as in other diachronic stages. Various stages in the process that led to the development of the current bipartite system, and the switch in the lexical items participating in it, are documented in Mediaeval texts. By contrast, the process that led to the establishment of the numeral εἷς/ἔνας is/enas as a marker of singular count reading was not yet accomplished in the texts: articleless singular count nouns are observed in all types of documents, although vernacular texts feature some increase in the use of εἷς is with meanings different from the purely numerical one.