ordinal interrogative pronouns

[Helma Dik]

Somebody already mentioned Latin. Ancient Greek has

postos,-e, on
"the how-manieth"
attested as early as Homer's Odyssey with "how-manieth year is it since" -->
How long has it been since ..

looks like a pretty regular formation of interrogative+ordinal except
that the form is simplified from posos-tos.

this po/stos (with accent on the first syllable) is distinct from
also existing posto/s "umpteenth". Not kidding!  These pronouns in
Greek have a regular opposition between interrogative - indefinite
expressed by the accent.

po/stos is, by the way, also the correct word for wievieltel, if used
with the neuter article: to pososton (meros) - the how-manieth part
--> what fraction.


In addition especially for counting days:
an adjective postai-os/a/on - "the how-manieth day" as you have
trit-aios third, usteraios, the day after, etc.
attested with "on the how-manieth day would I arrive there"  and similar.

I add links to an on-line dictionary:
to postos:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/lexindex?lookup=po/stos&lang=gree
k
to postaios:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/lexindex?lookup=postai%3Dos&displ
ay=&lang=greek


Helma Dik




Helma Dik
Department of Classics
University of Chicago
helmadik at midway.uchicago.edu
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/classics/
2000-2001: Institute for Advanced Study