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210 What is a Connector?

An account of incomplete sayings along those lines would be easy to

develop; and it ought to have been welcomed by any grammarian. After that,

you might audaciously add the notion of a more than complete saying—that

is to say, of a sequence or set of complete sayings: a paragraph, or a discourse,

or whatever. More than complete sayings are, it is true, a modern fancy which

no ancient text comes near to ﬁngering. But incomplete sayings could well

have been antique.

Nonetheless, no surviving text of Apollonius mentions incomplete sayings;

and indeed no surviving text discusses—save quite incidentally—linguistic

units which fall between words and sentences. It is doubtless the lack of any

contrast in the texts between complete sayings and incomplete sayings which

encourages the thesis that Apollonius’ phrase ‘complete saying’ is pleonastic.

And after all, a pleonastic use of the phrase is intelligible enough: the adjective

need not be construed as contrasting one type of saying with another—its

function may rather be to indicate the pertinent sense of the ambiguous word

‘λόγος’.

So at this stage in the inquiry it seems reasonable to conclude that in

Apollonius sayings are complete sayings and complete sayings are virtually

identical with sentences. In that case, Apollonian connectors—inasmuch as

they call for sayings—are, at bottom, sentential connectives.

WHAT DID APOLLONIUS REALLY THINK?

But there are further texts waiting to be called upon, and they will muddy

the stream.

I have already said that Apollonius construes the word ‘ἕνεκα [on account

of ]’ as a causative connector rather than as a preposition. In one of his discus-

sions of the item he mentions the variant form ‘ἕνεκεν’, and comments thus:

It is written, in a more poetic form, with an iota, like …. The connector is always

applied to the genitive of an item which takes cases: On account of me, On account

of him, On account of Apollonius.

(conj 238.22–24)⁷²

If a modern reader is surprised to ﬁnd ‘on account of ’ classiﬁed as a connector,

Apollonius evidently found nothing to marvel at. Nor does he blench at saying

that a connector takes a case: on the contrary, in the Syntax he claims that

⁷² ποιητικώτερον μετὰ τοῦ ι λέγεται, καθότι καὶ τὸ

***

ὁ σύνδεσμος πάντοτε ἐπὶ γενικὴν

πτωτικοῦ φέρεται· ἕνεκα ἐμοῦ, ἕνεκα αὐτοῦ, ἕνεκα ᾿Απολλωνίου.

What did Apollonius Really Think? 211

we shall show that connectors do not take more than one case—On account of

Apollonius, On account of Dionysius.

(synt i 85 [73.10–12])⁷³

Sayings are not cased items. So Apollonius cannot consistently hold that

connectors are essentially sentential and also that some connectors take cases;

andhequiteexplicitlyassertsthatsomeconnectorstakecases.

As for Apollonius’ illustrative examples, it is true that Connectors generally

makes a point by citing a sentence, and an assertoric sentence at that. But

it is not always so. First—as I have already remarked—there are several

illustrative sentences which are not assertoric: there are imperatival examples,

say (e.g. conj 218.6). Secondly, there are very many examples in which—at

least on the surface—it is either individual words, or else subsentential

complexes, which a connector connects. Here is a banal case:

The remark

Either Apollonius will be present or Trypho

announces a temporary disjunction.

(conj 217.4–5)⁷⁴

There the disjunctive connector apparently connects a name to a name, or

perhaps a name to a sentence. Or again:

There is a third use of the connector ‘ἤ’ which is called declaratory—for it declares

the holding of the ﬁrst item and the rejection of the next: I want to be rich rather

than [ἤ] to be poor, I want to work rather than [ἤ]torelax.

(conj 221.16–19)⁷⁵

The connector ‘rather than’ (which in Greek has the same form as the

disjunctive connector) connects an inﬁnitive to an inﬁnitive. It does not

connect two sentences. There are a dozen or more examples of that sort in

Connectors.

But are not the examples phantoms? A modern grammarian will insist

that in

Either Apollonius will be present or Trypho

⁷³ δείξομέν τε ὡς καὶ σύνδεσμοι οὐκ ἐπὶ πτώσεις φέρονται διαφόρους· ἕνεκεν ᾿Απολλωνίου,

ἕνεκεν ∆ιονυσίου.

⁷⁴ τὸ δὲ λεγόμενον ἢ ᾿Απολλώνιος παρέσται ἢ Τρύφων ὡς πρὸς καιρὸν τὴν διάζευξιν

ἐπαγγέλλεται.

⁷⁵ ἐστι καὶ τρίτη διαφορὰ τοῦ ἤ συνδέσμου, ἥτις καλεῖται διασαφητική. τοῦ μὲν γὰρ

προτέρου ὕπαρξιν διασαφεῖ, τοῦ δὲ ἐπιφερομένου ἀναίρεσιν· βούλομαι πλουτεῖν ἢ πένεσθαι,

βούλομαι φιλολογεῖν ἢ σχολάζειν.

212 What is a Connector?

the connector ‘Either … or …’ in fact connects two sentences. The second

sentence is

Trypho will be present;

the underlying form of the disjunction is

Either Apollonius will be present or Trypho will be present;

and

Either Apollonius will be present or Trypho

—or rather, its Greek translation—is the conventional abbreviation of the

underlying item.

Does not Apollonius take virtually the same line on such examples? This

is what he says in the Syntax about a parallel case:

The so-called collective connectors take a name or a verb in common from the

sayings concerned. Hence they are not punctuated, the next saying being continuous

with the one before us. Let us set out examples. From ordinary speech,

Both Dio walks and Apollonius

takes ‘walks’ in common.

(synt ii 60 [170.19–171.4])⁷⁶

In other words, the verb ‘walks’ is to be taken twice, once with each conjunct;

and in that case ‘and’ in effect conjoins sentences. Apollonius himself refers

to the second item as a saying.

Here Greek and English differ, inasmuch as

Both Dio walks and Apollonius

is not a decent English sentence. English will rather say

Both Dio and Apollonius walk.

The difference is not triﬂing. For in the English version the verb is plural,

and for that reason it cannot be taken twice. Rather, the subject of the verb is

the nominal conjunction ‘Both Dio and Apollonius’. Nonetheless, that only

means that you have to work a triﬂe harder to ﬁnd a sentential ‘and’ underlying

the English sentence than to ﬁnd one beneath its Greek counterpart.

Yet it is not evident that Apollonius sniffed out an underlying sentential

connective in his sentence. He treats the same matter again in Pronouns.Here

is the pertinent passage:

⁷⁶ οἱ δὴ καλούμενοι ἀθροϊστικοὶ σύνδεσμοι ἐκ τῶν προκειμένων λόγων ἀπὸ κοινοῦ λαμ-

βάνουσιν ἢ ὄνομα ἢ ῥῆμα. ἐντεῦθεν καὶ στιγμῆς ἀπροσδεεῖς εἰσιν, ὡς ἂν ἔτι ἐχομένου τοῦ

προσιόντος λόγου ὡς πρὸς τὸν ὑποκείμενον. ἐκκείσθω δὲ ὑποδείγματα, ἐκ μὲν τοῦ συνήθους

λόγου καὶ ∆ιονύσιος περιπατεῖ καὶ ᾿Απολλώνιος, κοινοῦ παραλαμβανομένου τοῦ περιπατεῖ.

What did Apollonius Really Think? 213

Conjoined or disjoined items necessarily require in their continuation the same

part of sayings as, or a part equipollent with, the item conjoined or disjoined, the

part constructed with it being often taken in the sequel in common with the item

conjoined or disjoined. For example

Both Apollonius talked

requires ‘and Dionysius’ or some such name—or else a pronominal item which is

equipollent with a name—and it often uses ‘talked’ in common. Again, if it is a verb,

the conjunction or the disjunction requires a verb—

Dionysius both wrote

Dionysius either wrote

You must continue with a verb—for example

and talked

or something similar, ‘Dionysius’ often being taken in common.

(pron 41.9–19)⁷⁷

The items which are conjoined or disjoined—the items which are connected

by connectors—are unambiguously identiﬁed as parts of speech; and Apol-

lonius’ argument makes no sense if the connectors are construed as sentential

connectives.

The English version of his thesis looks like this: In a sentence of the form

Both X and Dionysius talked,

the ‘X’ must be replaced by the same part of speech as the other conjunct (or

by an equipollent part of speech). Since the other conjunct is a name, ‘X’ here

must be replaced by a name (or by a pronoun). And in the Greek version of

Both Apollonius and Dionysius talked

you may take the (singular) verb ‘talked’ twice, once with ‘Apollonius’ and

once with ‘Dionysius’. The fact that you take the verb twice does not suggest

to Apollonius that the ‘and’ really connects two sentences. Rather, he implies

that in

Both Apollonius talked and Dionysius talked

the ‘and’ connects two names, just as in

Both Apollonius talked and Apollonius wrote

⁷⁷ τὰ δὴ συμπεπλεγμένα ἢ διεζευγμένα κατὰ τὴν ἐπιφορὰν πάντως τὸ αὐτὸ μέρος λόγου

ἀπαιτεῖ ἢ ἰσοδυναμοῦν τῷ συμπεπλεγμένῳ ἢ διεζευγμένῳ, τοῦ συντεταγμένου μέρους λόγου

κατὰ τὸ ἑξῆς πολλάκις κοινοῦ καθεστῶτος τῷ συμπεπλεγμένῳ ἢ διεζευγμένῳ, οἷον τὸ καὶ

᾿Απολλώνιος διελέξατο ἀπαιτεῖ τὸ καὶ ∆ιονύσιος ἤ τι τοιοῦτον ὄνομα ἢ ἀντωνυμικόν, ὅπερ ἦν

ἰσοδυναμοῦν ὀνόματι, κοινῷ τε τῷ διελέξατο πολλάκις προσχρῆται. εἰ δὲ ῥῆμα ἦν, πάλιν ἡ

ἐπιπλοκὴ ἢ ἡ διάζευξις ἀπαιτεῖ ῥῆμα, καὶ ἔγραψε ∆ιονύσιος, ἤτοι ἔγραψε ∆ιονύσιος· δεῖ γὰρ

ῥῆμα ἐπενεγκεῖν πάλιν, ἢ διελέξατο ἤ τι τοιοῦτον, κοινῶς πολλάκις νοουμένου τοῦ ∆ιονύσιος.

214 What is a Connector?

the ‘and’ connects two verbs.

Here is a pertinent passage from Connectors:

Trypho says that the connector ‘because’ is construed both with cased items and with

caseless items:

Because the sun is above the earth, it is day.

Because I walk, I move.

But in truth, matters stand thus: the connector ‘because’ is applied exclusively to the

indicative of the verb, so that the cased items, or anything else, which are construed

with it are taken in hyperbaton:

Because well I read.

The coherent form is:

Because I read well.

(conj 235.11–18)⁷⁸

Trypho’s view is this. On the one hand, in the sentence

Because the sun is above the earth, it is day

—or rather, in the Greek sentence

ὅτι ὁ ἥλιος ὑπὲρ γῆν ἐστίν, ἡμέρα ἐστίν

—the connector ‘because’ (or ‘ὅτι’) is construed with the cased word ‘the

sun’ (or ‘ὁἥλιος’). On the other hand, in the sentence

Because I walk, I move

—or rather, in

ὅτι περιπατῶ, κινοῦμαι

—the same connector is construed with the caseless verb ‘I move’ (or

‘κινοῦμαι’).

That is a bizarre piece of syntax, and Apollonius was right to reject it.

But Apollonius does not reject it by denying that the connector is construed

with either the verb or the name and by afﬁrming that it is construed

with the whole of the sentence which follows it. Rather, he states that ‘ὅτι’

is construed—and invariably construed—with a following indicative verb.

Thus although you will say, for example,

ὅτι καλῶς ἀναγιγνώσκω

[Because well I read]

⁷⁸ φησὶ Τρύφων τὸν ὅτι σύνδεσμον καὶ πτωτικοῖς καὶ ἀπτώτοις συντάσσεσθαι· ὅτι ὁ

ἥλιος ὑπὲρ γῆν ἐστίν, ἡμέρα ἐστίν· ὅτι περιπατῶ, κινοῦμαι. τὸ δὲ ἀληθές τῇδε ἔχει· ὁ ὅτι

σύνδεσμος μόνως φέρεται ἐπὶ τὰ ὁριστικὰ τῶν ῥημάτων, ὥστε τὰ συντασσόμενα πτωτικὰ ἢ

ἄλλα τινὰ ἐν ὑπερβατῷ λαμβάνεσθαι. ὅτι καλῶς ἀναγινώσκω· τὸ γὰρ ἀκολουθοῦν ἐστιν ὅτι

ἀναγινώσκω καλῶς.

What did Apollonius Really Think? 215

the word-order is inappropriate inasmuch as it masks the syntax: the ‘coherent’

or perspicuous formulation is

ὅτι ἀναγιγνώσκω καλῶς,

[Because I read well]

where it is plain that the connector attaches to the verb.

That argument shows that, in Apollonius’ considered view, the connector

‘because’ takes not a sentence but a verb. A passage in the Syntax has suggested

that he took this to be an idiosyncrasy of the connector ‘because’ (see synt ii

66 [174.6–13]). But the passage does not imply that notion, which seems

vastly implausible; and another passage from the Syntax clinches the issue:

Two verbs cannot make a single construction without a conjunction. This is clear

from the example we have already given:

The philosopher Dio is talking

together with a second example

Being a philosopher, Dio is talking

and a third

Dio is a philosopher and is talking

Without the connector ‘and’ it will not be well formed:

Dio is a philosopher is talking.

(synt i 107 [90.5–10])⁷⁹

Apollonius does not say that two sentences will not cohere unless there is a

connector: he says that two verbs will not so cohere.

The later grammarians all suppose that connectors link parts of sayings.

And although Apollonius frequently speaks of connectors as connecting

sayings, and although the sayings are often sentences, nonetheless, he also

speaks of connectors as connecting parts of sayings, and once at least he says

that they construe with verbs. On the face of it, his remarks about the syntax

of connectors, taken collectively, are confused or incoherent.

Is there some coherent theory behind or beneath the apparent confusion?

PerhapswhatApolloniusmeansisthis:Connectorsconstruewithpartsof

sayings, and in particular with verbs; but they connect sentences. In

Dio is walking and is talking

the connector ‘and’ construes with the following verb, ‘is talking’; but it

connects the saying ‘Dio is talking’ to the saying ‘Dio is walking’. Perhaps

⁷⁹ δύο ῥήματα οὐ δύναται μίαν σύνταξιν ἐπιδέξασθαι δίχα συμπλοκῆς. καὶ σαφές ἐκ τοῦ

ὑποδείγματος, τοῦ μὲν προειρημένου ὁ φιλόσοφος ∆ίων διαλέγεται, τοῦ δὲ δευτέρου φιλόσοφος

ὢν ∆ίων διαλέγεται, τοῦ δὲ τρίτου φιλόσοφός ἐστι ∆ίων καὶ διαλέγεται· οὐ γὰρ συστήσεται

δίχα τοῦ καί συνδέσμου, φιλόσοφός ἐστι ∆ίων διαλέγεται.

216 What is a Connector?

‘and’ connects the second saying to the ﬁrst precisely inasmuch as it construes

with the second verb. The two sayings won’t form a unit unless something

connects them. They won’t do so because a couple of ﬁnite verbs won’t

appear together in a single unit unless some connector ties them together. If

Dio is walking Dio is talking

must be construed as two sayings rather than as one, then that is because

Dio is walking is talking

is not syntactically well formed.

If you stuff an ‘and’ between the pair of sayings, you get a single saying:

Dio is walking and Dio is talking.

Similarly, if you intrude an ‘and’ into the ill-formed sequence, you get

something well formed, namely:

Dio is walking and is talking.

In each case, the ‘and’ construes with the verb ‘is talking’, it connects ‘is

talking’ to ‘is walking’, and it thereby permits the appearance of the two

verbs in a single saying. In each case, ‘and’ connects the second saying ‘Dio

is talking’ to the ﬁrst saying ‘Dio is walking’.

Philosophers have sometimes wondered if we really see tomatoes, or if we

only see the surfaces of tomatoes. We see both; and we see the tomatoes

precisely insofar as we see their surfaces. Readers of Apollonius have wondered

if, on his view, connectors really connect sayings, or if they only connect parts

of sayings. They connect both; and they connect sayings precisely insofar as

they connect parts of sayings.

That is a crude sketch of the only sort of explanation I can ﬁnd which

might bring coherence to Apollonius’ account of the grammar of connectors.

But it is far from clear how such a sketch might be elaborated into a picture;

and it is far from clear that any such elaboration would in the end reconcile

all, or even most, of the different things which Apollonius says. And of course,

there is not the slightest hint in the ancient texts that Apollonius had ever

dreamedofsuchanidea.

MULTIPLE CONNECTIONS

Aristotle’s connectors connect a plurality of signiﬁcant expressions from

which they make one signiﬁcant expression. The grammarians’ connectors

also link a plurality of items:

Multiple Connections 217

They are called connectors, not nectors, since a nector may be applied to a single

item whereas a connector requires two or more.

(scholiast to Dionysius Thrax, 283.5–6;⁸⁰ cf. 20–24; 436.8–10)

‘It is not the case that’ and ‘Necessarily’ are not connectors according to

the ancient account of the matter: if the modern logician counts them as

one-placed connectives, the ancient grammarian thinks (not unreasonably)

that the phrase ‘one-placed connector’ is a contradictio in adjecto.

The ancients and the moderns differ in another respect. Modern logic

has one-placed connectives and two-placed connectives. If it does not also

have three-placed connectives and four-placed connectives and …, that is

not for ideological reasons: any such items (provided that they are the sort of

connective with which modern logic concerns itself ) can readily be deﬁned

in terms of the two-placed items. In any event, every connective in modern

logic has a ﬁxed and determinate number of places: none can connect

here a pair of items and there a trio. Ancient connectors are not like that:

they are not limited each to its ﬁxed number of places. According to the

Dionysian Art,

conjunctive connectors are those which connect an expression which is going on

endlessly.

(19 [88.3–89.1])⁸¹

That is opaque; but a commentator explains that

someone who says ‘and I walk’ posits the object; and I can say, where the order is

indifferent, ‘I walk and I move and I read’—and whatever else you like.

(scholiast to Dionysius Thrax, 103.3–6)⁸²

The connector ‘and’ (which determines a force but not an order) connects as

many items as you please.

Similarly Apollonius, in a passage I have already cited, observes that ‘the

connectors which accompany the sayings sometimes unite two or even more

sayings’ (synt i 10 [11.3–5]); and his Connectors applies that general remark

to several particular cases. For example,

⁸⁰ σύνδεσμος δὲ εἴρηται καὶ οὐ δεσμός, ἐπεὶ δεσμὸς καὶ ἐφ᾿ ἑνός, σύνδεσμος δὲ ἐπὶ δύο καὶ

πλειόνων.

⁸¹ συμπλεκτικοὶ μὲν οὖν εἰσιν ὅσοι τὴν ἑρμηνείαν ἐπ᾿ ἄπειρον ἐκφερομένην συνδέουσιν.

⁸² ὁ γὰρ λέγων καὶ περιπατῶ τίθησι τὸ πρᾶγμα· ἀδιαφόρως δὲ περὶ τὴν τάξιν δύναμαι

εἰπεῖν καὶ περιπατῶ καὶ κινοῦμαι καὶ ἀναγινώσκω καὶ εἴ τι βούλει ἕτερον.

218 What is a Connector?

the announcement of the disjunctive connectors announces the holding of one and

the removal of the other or of the others.

(conj 216.14–16)⁸³

A disjunctive connector may connect two items or three or …

How exactly does a connector manage to connect three or more items?

Earlier I offered as an example of such a phenomenon the sentence:

Let him go, let him tarry, let him sink, or let him swim.

That sentence is a disjunction. It has four disjuncts. It has a single disjunctive

connector. Surely that is a paradigm case of a connector connecting more

items than two?

No doubt it is; but it cannot be the sort of thing which the ancient

grammarians had in mind—if only because Greek and Latin do not permit

such constructions. If you want to translate the four-part disjunction into

Greek you must add a couple of connectors where English can make do with

a couple of commas.

So consider the example offered by the commentator on the Dionysian

Art:

IwalkandImoveandIread.

That is, I take it, meant to be a case in which the connector ‘and’ connects

three items. But how can that be so? Surely the sentence contains two

connectors, each of which connects two items? (The ﬁrst ‘and’ connects ‘I

move’ to ‘I walk’, the second ‘and’ connects ‘I read’ to ‘I move’, or perhaps

to ‘I walk and I move’.) If the connector ‘and’ really connects three items,

then surely there ought to be only one occurrence of the word ‘and’, or of the

conjunctive connector, in the sentence? So perhaps we should say that, despite

appearances, the word ‘and’ does indeed occur only once—but it is, as it were,

split into two parts. The underlying form of the sentence might be shown thus:

and (I walk, I move, I read)

which in ordinary parlance comes out as

IwalkandImoveandIread

—orrather(inEnglish)as

I walk, I move, and I read.

How otherwise could it be supposed that ‘and’ may connect three items?

That way of looking at things might be enforced by considering such turns

as‘Both…and…’,‘Neither…nor…’,‘Either…or…’.Take

⁸³ ἡ ἐπαγγελία τῶν διαζευκτικῶν ἑνὸς ὕπαρξιν ἐπαγγέλλεται, τοῦ δ᾿ ὑπολειπομένου ἢ τῶν

ὑπολειπομένων ἀναίρεσιν.

Multiple Connections 219

Both the President and the Vice-president were crooks of the ﬁrst water.

That is a conjunction, and the conjunctive connector conjoins two items.

Whatistheconnector?Surelyitis‘Both…and…’:surelythatisasingle

occurrence of a conjunctive connector, and it is, as it were, accidentally split

into two parts.

The Stoic logicians habitually wrote their conjunctions with a ‘Both … and

…’ or ‘καί … καί…’; and in the same way they habitually wrote their

disjunctionswithan‘Either…or…’oran‘ἤτοι … ἤ …’. Those Stoic habits

are not pedantic affectations: they are pieces of normal Greek. Apollonius, of

course, recognizes them. So, for example, he acknowledges a ‘prepositive’ use

of the disjunctive connector—indeed, he takes it to be the normal use of the

connector ‘ἤτοι’.

Nonetheless, Apollonius has nothing interesting to say about the prepos-

itive ‘Either’; and neither he nor any other ancient author ever hints at

the notion of a split connector. I suppose that no one ever asked an old

grammarian how many occurrences of a conjunctive connector there are in

the sentence

You can’t be both in Paris and unhappy.

But had one been asked, he would surely have said: ‘Two—one of them

prepositive’. And had he been asked the same question of the sentence

IwalkandImoveandIread,

he would certainly have answered ‘Two’, and he would have done so without

embarrassment.

But ought he not to have been embarrassed? After all, if the answer is

‘Two’, then how can he also maintain that in some cases a single connector

connects more items than two? So far as I can see, the only plausible answer

to that question runs along the following lines. In the sentence

IwalkandImoveandIread,

the ﬁrst ‘and’ connects ‘I move’ to ‘I walk’, and so links a pair of items;

and the second ‘and’ connects ‘I read’ to ‘I walk and I move’. The second

‘and’ therefore connects three items—inasmuch as it connects one item to a

pair of items. When you couple a tenth carriage to a nine-carriage train, the

coupling joins ten carriages together: it makes a train of ten carriages, not a

train of one complex carriage and one simple carriage.

Perhaps that sounds plausible for ‘and’; and perhaps something similar

would sound similarly plausible for ‘or’. But surely some connectors—‘if ’,

for example—are essentially two-placed? Well, the ancient grammarians do

not distinguish between two-placed connectors and multi-placed connectors;