On δέ’s basic value: between discontinuity and continuity

I will not attempt to disprove the notion that δέ can be used in contrastive contexts (see e.g. Denniston 1954²), or that it often occurs where a change of participants, time or perspective takes place (see e.g. Bakker 1993 and Black 2002). My corpus is full of instances which can be taken as such:

(17) Ἀλλ’ οἱ τῶν ἄστρων τὰ διαστήματα καταμετροῦντες, καὶ τοὺς ἀειφανεῖς αὐτῶν καὶ ἀρκτῴους ἀπογραφόμενοι, καὶ ὅσοι περὶ τὸν νότιον πόλον κείμενοι τοῖς μέν εἰσι φανεροὶ, ἡμῖν δὲ ἄγνωστοι, […]. (Bas. Hex. I.4.4-7)

[Basil is criticizing pagan scientists:] “But these men who measure the distances of the stars and who describe both those of the North, always shining brilliantly in our view, and those of the southern pole visible to the inhabitants of the South [men], but unknown to us [de], […].”

(18) Τοῦτο μὲν οὖν, ὅπη τῷ Θεῷ φίλον, οὕτως ἐχέτω. […] Ἐμοὶ δὲ πάλιν πρὸς τὸν αὐτὸν ἐπινίκιον ἀναδραμεῖται ὁ λόγος· Ἔπεσε Βὴλ, συνετρίβη Δαγὼν, ἕλη ἐγένετο ὁ Σαρὼν, κατῃσχύνθη ὁ Λίβανος. (Greg. Iul. II.700.40-701.5)

“These things [men], let them then take their course in what way soever is well- pleasing to God! […] But my [de] speech will again run back to the same song of triumph: ‘Bel hath fallen, Dagon is broken to pieces, Sharon hath become a marsh, Lebanon is ashamed’.”

(19) ἄυπνος τὰ πρῶτα διῆγον ἐπὶ τῆς εὐνῆς ἄνω καὶ κάτω τὴν περὶ τῶν νέων φροντίδα στρέφων καὶ τοῦ χρησμοῦ τὰ τελευταῖα τί ἄρα βούλοιτο ἀνιχνεύων. Ἤδη δὲ μεσούσης τῆς νυκτὸς ὁρῶ τὸν Ἀπόλλω καὶ τὴν Ἄρτεμιν […]. (Hel. Aeth. 3.11.4.5-3.11.5.2)

[At Delphi, Calasiris has just left the festival in honor of Neoptolemus. During the festivities, he noticed that Theagenes and Chariclea fell in love the moment they saw each other for the first time. He had also heard an oracle from the Pythian priestess which he did not understand.] “I lay awake for a while on my bed first, turning over and over in my mind the concern that I felt for the young pair, and trying to trace out what the last part of the oracle meant. When [de] midnight came I saw Apollo and Artemis, […].”

(20) Εἰσί τινες πόλεις παντοδαποῖς θεάμασι θαυματοποιῶν ἀπὸ βαθέος ὄρθρου μέχρις ἑσπέρας αὐτῆς ἑστιῶσαι τὰς ὄψεις. Καὶ μέντοι καὶ μελῶν τινων κεκλασμένων καὶ διεφθαρμένων καὶ παντάπασι πολλὴν ἀκολασίαν ταῖς ψυχαῖς ἐντικτόντων ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἀκούοντες οὐκ ἐμπίμπλανται. […] Ἤδη δέ τινες τῶν ἱππομανούντων, καὶ ὄναρ ὑπὲρ τῶν ἵππων μάχονται, ἅρματα μεταζευγνύντες καὶ ἡνιόχους μετατιθέντες, καὶ ὅλως τῆς μεθημερινῆς ἀφροσύνης οὐδὲ ἐν ταῖς καθ’ ὕπνον φαντασίαις ἀφίστανται. Ἡμεῖς δὲ ἄρα, οὓς ὁ Κύριος, ὁ μέγας θαυματοποιὸς καὶ τεχνίτης, ἐπὶ τὴν ἐπίδειξιν συνεκάλεσε τῶν οἰκείων ἔργων, ἀποκαμούμεθα πρὸς τὴν θέαν, ἢ ἀποκνήσομεν πρὸς τὴν ἀκρόασιν τῶν λογίων τοῦ Πνεύματος; (Bas. Hex. IV.1.1-22)

“There are some towns where the inhabitants, from dawn to eve, feast their eyes on the innumerable tricks of conjurors. They are never fulfilled with hearing dissolute and corrupted songs which cause much impurity to spring up in their souls. […] [De] some others, who are wild after horses, think they are backing their horses in their dreams; they harness their chariots, change their drivers, and even in sleep are altogether not free from the folly of the day. And shall we [de], whom the Lord, the great worker of marvels, calls to the contemplation of His own works, tire of looking at them, or be slow to hear the words of the Holy Spirit?”

(21) Ἡ μὲν ταῦτα ἐπετραγῴδει, οἱ δὲ οὐδὲν συνιέναι τῶν λεγομένων ἔχοντες τοὺς μὲν αὐτοῦ καταλείπουσιν, ἰσχυρὰν αὐτοῖς φυλακὴν τὴν ἀσθένειαν αὐτῶν ἐπιστήσαντες, ἐπὶ δὲ τὴν ναῦν ὁρμήσαντες τὸν φόρτον ἐξήντλουν, τῶν μὲν1 _{ἄλλων ὑπερορῶντες (πολλὰ}

δὲ2 _{ἦν καὶ ποικίλα), χρυσοῦ δὲ}1 _{καὶ ἀργύρου καὶ λίθων πολυτίμων καὶ σηρικῆς ἐσθῆτος,}

ὅση δύναμις ἑκάστοις, ἐκφοροῦντες. (Hel. Aeth. 1.3.2.1-1.3.2.8)

[A group of Egyptian brigands has spotted a merchant ship on the shore. Everyone on board has been slain in battle, except for a beautiful young couple, of whom the man is seemingly dying in his lover’s arms. The young woman asks the brigands to kill them and release them from their sufferings:] “She said these things to them, in high tragic vein; but the brigands, unable to understand one word of what she said, left the young couple there, deeming their weakness a strong enough guard to be set over them. They then hastened to the ship, which they proceeded to ransack for her cargo. Despising the rest [men1_{] of her contents (which were many [de}2_{] and various), of gold [de}1_{] and silver}

and precious stones and silken attire they carried off as much as each man could.” All of these examples can be analyzed along the lines drawn in §3.1. In example (17), we get an instance of an antithetical μέν-δέ pair – the people of the southern hemisphere in μέν are contrasted with ‘us’, i.e., the people in the northern hemisphere, in δέ. In example (18), we get a μέν-δέ construction which marks a thematic transition – the previous subject is concluded by leaving it to God in the μέν segment, and a new (or, in fact, a return to a previous) episode is introduced via the δέ-segment. (19) contains an instance of a thematic break which is very similar to (7) supra – a new ‘event sequence’

is introduced, where Calasiris is confronted by an apparition of Apollo and Artemis. In (20), there are two interesting δέ’s: the first one introduces a thematic break (or, perhaps, a new participant) – the people who ‘feast their eyes’ on the tricks of the conjurors and love to hear impure songs are left behind, and a different type of people (those who are obsessed with chariot horses) now becomes the focus of attention. The second δέ involves a change of perspective to ἡμεῖς, who are contrasted with the previous two types of people. These first two types are gripped by impious activities, which leads Basil to ask the rhetorical question whether ‘we’ (i.e., Christians) will tire of hearing about God’s works – in other words, ἡμεῖς should be obsessed with contemplating God’s works, just as the previous people were obsessed with less righteous issues. (21), finally, contains a μέν-δέ pair (marked by 1 _{to avoid the}

impression that the other δέ, marked by 2_{, is part of this μέν-δέ pair) which is}

antithetical: the ἄλλα, i.e., the other goods on board the ship, are disregarded in favor of the gold, silver, gemstones and silk, which are, of course, more valuable, and are hence carried off by the brigands. Δέ2_{, by contrast, marks πολλὰ ἦν καὶ ποικίλα as being}

‘background’ material, or parenthetical information (see the discussion in Larsen (2001) and example (4) supra) – it is not part of the main line of the narrative, but indicates that there was a truly massive amount of goods which the brigands could have taken away, but neglected because of the precious nature of the goods they did carry off. Put differently, the information marked by δέ2 _{is not crucial to the development of the}

narrative, but it provides a background to the crucial information in the μέν-δέ construction. The main line of the narrative is suspended syntactically in order to provide the information that these other goods were many and varied – the clause marked by δέ2 _{is not syntactically part of the narrative proper, but a syntactically}

separate, parenthetical clause which breaks up the antithetical μέν-δέ construction. Examples (17)-(21) show that the contexts in which δέ can occur in my corpus of fourth-century texts at least partly overlap with those discussed by Bakker, Black and their predecessors. In fact, I will not attempt to disprove that an important part of δέ’s function lies in indicating discontinuity – Bakker (1993) and Black (2002) have amply demonstrated that this is indeed the case. My aim will be to fine-tune Bakker’s and Black’s proposals, and to demonstrate how a relevance-theoretic framework can help us pinpoint δέ’s exact meaning. As we will see, δέ indicates ‘continuity-within- discontinuity’ in terms of the contextual assumptions necessary to interpret the utterance it marks; as such, it can be distinguished from καί (which indicates ‘integration’, or continuity) on the one hand, and from ἀλλά (which indicates sharp discontinuity) on the other (see §3.2.3.5 infra). I borrow the notion of continuity-within- discontinuity from Schourup (2011), who argues that now, on its DM use, encodes discontinuity-within-discontinuity – by flipping the concept around, I want to emphasize that δέ retains an important link with the preceding context (see footnote 22 infra).

I will start, however, with the basics. Δέ is, at its core, discontinuous, as pointed out by Bakker and Black. It is not difficult to find examples in my corpus which bear this out almost explicitly:

(22) Οὗτος ἐπὶ Κωνσταντίου τοῦ πάνυ, κατὰ τὴν τότε δεδομένην ἐξουσίαν Χριστιανοῖς, δαιμόνωντι καθελὼν οἰκητήριον, καὶ πολλοὺς Χριστιανῶν ἀπὸ τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς πλάνης μεταστήσας εἰς σωτηρίαν οὐχ ἧττον διὰ τὴν τοῦ βίου λαμπρότητα ἢ τὴν τοῦ λόγου δύναμιν, ἦν μὲν ἐκ πλείονος ἐν ὀργῇ τοῖς Ἀρεθουσίοις, μᾶλλον δὲ Ἀρεθουσίων τοῖς φιλοδαίμοσιν. (Greg. Iul. I.617.3-617.9)

[Gregory is telling the story of Marcus, the bishop of Arethusa, who was brutally tortured by a crazed mob of ‘heathens’ in Arethusa:] “This man, in the time of the excellent Constantius, having, under the authority then granted to the Christians, pulled down a certain habitation of demons, and turned many Christians from the error of heathenism unto salvation, no less by the sanctity of his life than through the power of his preaching, had long been an object of hatred to the Arethusians, or rather [de] to the devil-worshippers among the Arethusians.”

(23) Διαταραχθεὶς δὲ πρὸς ταῦτα ὁ Ὑδάσπης «Ἀλλ’ οὐ συνίημι μὲν» ἔφη «τὴν πρὸς ἐναντία σου τῆς γνώμης μεταβολήν, ἀρτίως μὲν ὑπερασπίζειν τοῦ ξένου πειρωμένης νυνὶ δὲ ὡς πολεμίου τινὸς αὐτόχειρα γενέσθαι παρακαλούσης. (Hel. Aeth. 10.21.1.1- 10.21.1.5)

[Chariclea has just asked her father Hydaspes if she could sacrifice Theagenes by her own hand, after having tried to convince him earlier to spare her lover:] “Deeply disturbed by her words, Hydaspes said: ‘I do not understand this reversal of your purpose. A moment ago [men] you were trying to shield this stranger; and now [de] you request that you may slay him with your own hand as an enemy.”

(24) Πόσα μοι πράγματα παρεῖχες ἐν τοῖς κατόπιν λόγοις, ἀπαιτῶν τὴν αἰτίαν πῶς ἀόρατος ἡ γῆ […]. Καὶ τάχα σοι οὐκ ἐδόκει αὐτάρκως ἔχειν τὰ εἰρημένα, ὅτι πρὸς ἡμᾶς τὸ ἀόρατον, οὐ πρὸς τὴν φύσιν εἴρητο, διὰ τὴν τοῦ ὕδατος ἐπιπρόσθησιν, ὃ τότε τὴν γῆν πᾶσαν περιεκάλυπτεν. Ἰδοὺ νῦν ἄκουε αὐτῆς ἑαυτὴν τῆς Γραφῆς φανερούσης. Συναχθήτω τὰ ὕδατα, καὶ ὀφθήτω ἡ ξηρά. Συνέλκεται τὰ παραπετάσματα, ἵνα ἐμφανὴς γένηται ἡ τέως μὴ ὁρωμένη. Ἴσως δ’ ἄν τις κἀκεῖνο πρὸς τούτοις ἐπιζητήσειε. […] (Bas. Hex. IV.2.6-16)

[Basil is speaking to his audience – Genesis implies that the earth was, at first, invisible, and he aimed to explain this in his previous discourse.] “How many troubles you gave me in my previous discourses, asking me why the earth was invisible […]. And, perhaps, the things I said did not appear sufficient to you – that the earth, without being naturally invisible, was so named to us, because of the mass of water that entirely covered it. Look now, hear how Scripture explains itself. ‘Let the waters be gathered

together, and let the dry land appear.’ The veil is lifted so that the earth, hitherto invisible, can be seen. Perhaps [de] someone will ask also the following, along with these questions. […]”

In (22), μᾶλλον δέ marks the upcoming utterance as being a correction of the previous one. Not all Arethusians hated Marcus, but only the φιλοδαίμονες. As such, οἱ Ἀρεθούσιοι are replaced by the ‘devil-worshipers’ as Marcus’ haters, and there is hence a clear discontinuous value to the δέ-segment. (23) contains a μέν-δέ pair which contrasts Chariclea’s past behavior with the behavior she is displaying now – there is a discrepancy between the two, as Hydaspes points out, and, in that sense, an obvious discontinuity. In (24), finally, δέ signals a transition to ‘new questions’ and, as a consequence, the closing off of the previous πράγματα, which Basil dealt with in the previous paragraph and which he summarizes in the utterances leading up to the δέ- segment. So, even though these three examples are all discontinuous in quite distinct ways, they can all be considered to be discontinuous in some respect (see the quote from Black (2002: 144) above).

However, it is also obvious that there is a ‘continuous’ aspect to δέ. In examples like (22)-(24), this may be less clear15_{, but, in instances like the following, there is an overt}

sense of continuity attached to the δέ segment:

(25) Καὶ ἐπιστήσας ὀλίγον καὶ ψήφους τινὰς οὐδὲν καταριθμούσας ἐπὶ δακτύλων συντιθεὶς τήν τε κόμην διασείσας καὶ τοὺς κατόχους μιμούμενος «ἐρᾷς» εἶπον «ὦ τέκνον.» Ἀνήλατο πρὸς τὴν μαντείαν, ὡς δὲ ὅτι «καὶ Χαρικλείας» προσέθηκα, τοῦτ’ ἐκεῖνο θεοκλυτεῖν με νομίσας μικροῦ μὲν καὶ προσεκύνει πεσών. (Hel. Aeth. 3.17.2.4- 3.17.2.9)

[Calasiris knows that Theagenes is secretly in love with Theagenes. He is acting as if he is divining this:] “And after I had paused for a little while and had arranged on my fingers some counters that bore no numbers, and after I had tossed out my hair and imitated people possessed, I said ‘You are in love, my child’. He started up at my divination; when [de] I had added ‘With Chariclea’, he, thinking that these words were the very promptings of a god, prostrated himself before me having fallen to the ground.”

15 _{Although the continuity may not be obvious in (22)-(24), it is still there. For more on the continuity of}

μᾶλλον δέ as it occurs in (22), see §3.2.3.3 below; in (23), there is a contrast between two situations (one earlier, one now), but those situations both center around Chariclea’s attitude towards Theagenes. In (24), the new questions which Basil refers to arise from the information presented in the previous utterances. Anaphoric τούτοις and the focalizing καί (‘also’; merged with ἐκεῖνο via crasis) also point to continuity with the previous context (cf. infra).

(26) Τί γὰρ ἂν κωλύσειε καὶ ἡμᾶς τῷ βασιλεῖ κατὰ τὸ ἴσον ἀντιπαίζοντας Ῥωμαίων (ὡς δὲ ᾤετο, καὶ τῆς οἰκουμένης, ἠπατημένος τοῖς δαίμοσι) τὸν Εἰδωλιανὸν καλεῖν […]. (Greg. Iul. I.604.11-14)

[Gregory is criticizing Julian’s change in name for Christians which he enshrined in law – they were to be called ‘Galileans’. He provides some ideas of his own for ridiculing Julian’s name:] “For what should have hindered us too from joking in return with the emperor of the Romans (and as [de] he fancied himself, of all the world – deluded by the demons), and styling him ‘Idolianus’, […].”

(27) Εἴ ποτε ἀπὸ ἀκρωρείας μεγάλης πεδίον εἶδες πολύ τε καὶ ὕπτιον, ἡλίκα μέν σοι τῶν βοῶν κατεφάνη τὰ ζεύγη; πηλίκοι δὲ οἱ ἀροτῆρες αὐτοί; Εἰ μὴ μυρμήκων τινά σοι παρέσχον φαντασίαν; Εἰ δὲ καὶ ἀπὸ σκοπιᾶς ἐπὶ μέγα πέλαγος τετραμμένης τῇ θαλάσσῃ τὰς ὄψεις ἐπέβαλες, ἡλίκαι μέν σοι ἔδοξαν εἶναι τῶν νήσων αἱ μέγισται; πηλίκη δέ σοι κατεφάνη μία τῶν μυριοφόρων ὁλκάδων λευκοῖς ἱστίοις ὑπὲρ κυανῆς κομιζομένη θαλάσσης; Εἰ μὴ πάσης περιστερᾶς μικροτέραν σοι παρέσχετο τὴν φαντασίαν; (Bas. Hex. VI.9.43-52)

[Basil is discussing the relativity of sight – what is close by, appears bigger, and what is far off, appears smaller.] “If you have ever from the top of a high mountain looked at a large and level plain, how big did the yokes of oxen appear to you? And the ploughmen themselves? Did they not look like ants? If [de] also from the top of a commanding rock, looking over the wide sea, you cast your eyes over the vast extent, how big did the greatest islands appear to you? How large did one of those barks of great tonnage, which unfurl their white sails to the blue sea, appear to you? Did it not look smaller than any dove?” (28) Ὁ γὰρ στρατὸς ἅπας, εἰ καὶ τοῦ παρόντος ἥττητο κράτους, ἀλλ’ οὖν πλεῖον τῷ κατοιχομένῳ νέμων αἰδοῦς (ἐπειδὴ καὶ πεφύκαμεν εὐνούστεροί πως εἶναι τοῖς ἔτι προσφάτοις πάθεσι, τῷ φίλτρῳ προσπάσχοντες, καὶ τὸν ἔλεον τούτῳ προσάπτοντες), καὶ διὰ τοῦτο οὐκ ἀνεχόμενοι τὸ μὴ οὐχ ὡς βασιλέα τιμηθῆναι τοῦτον, καὶ προσδεχθῆναι πείθουσι τὸν ἀποστάτην, καὶ συναναγκάζουσιν ὑπαντῆσαι τῷ νεκρῷ μετὰ τοῦ προσήκοντος σχήματος· τὸ δὲ ἦν, ἀποκοσμήσαντα τὴν κεφαλὴν τοῦ διαδήματος, καὶ ὑποκύψαντα τῷ βασιλεῖ τὰ εἰκότα, οὕτως ἐπὶ τὸν τάφον συμπαραπέμψαι τοῖς ἄγουσι, καὶ τὸν ἀοίδιμον τῶν Ἀποστόλων σηκὸν, […]. (Greg. Iul. II.687.26-39)

[Constantius II, Julian’s predecessor, has died.] “[…] for the whole army, even though they submitted to the existing authority [i.e., to Julian, SZ], nevertheless paid more respect to the deceased, for the reason that, somehow or other, we are naturally inclined to sympathize more with fresh misfortune, mingling regret with our love, and adding compassion to the two. For this reason they could not endure that the departed one should not be honoured; and they persuade the apostate to receive him like an emperor, and compel him to go to meet the corpse in befitting form; that is [de],

stripping his brow of the diadem, and with head bent before his sovereign, as was right, thus to escort the corpse, in company with the bearers, to the tomb and to the famous Church of the Apostles, […].”

(29) Παννύχιος γοῦν ἔκειτο, πυκνὰ μὲν πρὸς ἑκατέραν πλευρὰν τὸ σῶμα διαστρέφουσα πυκνὰ δὲ καὶ βύθιον ἐπιστένουσα. (Hel. Aeth. 7.9.3.1-3)

[Arsace is madly in love with Theagenes – it has all become a bit much and she is lying on her bed, inflamed by her passion:] “There she lay all night long, continually [men] turning over on this side and on that, and continually [de] sending forth heavy and deep groans.”

For example (25), the continuity is mostly syntactic – in the δέ segment, Calasiris adds an object (Χαρικλείας) to the verb ἐρᾷς (‘you are in love’) from the previous utterance. At least part of the utterance marked by δέ needs to be integrated into the syntactic frame established in the utterance preceding δέ; consequently, there is at least some continuity here. (26) is very similar – Gregory states that Julian is emperor of the Romans (Ῥωμαίων), and then follows this up with a biting addition in the δέ segment – Julian thought that he was also (καί, which can be used in a focalizing sense as ‘also’) emperor of the world (τῆς οἰκουμένης). Both Ῥωμαίων and τῆς οἰκουμένης are genitives which are syntactically dependent on τῷ βασιλεῖ. This means that there is obvious syntactic continuity between the utterance preceding δέ and the utterance marked by δέ. Of course, there is also clear discontinuity here – the addition of ὡς ᾤετο sets off Julian’s role as ‘emperor of the world’ as an assumption which Gregory does not share (but which, according to him, Julian held); his role as ‘emperor of the Romans’, on the other hand, is an objective fact. However, this fits in with my (for the time being, very vague) hypothesis that δέ indicates that the upcoming utterance is both discontinuous and continuous in some sense.

Example (27) is continuous in a more content-oriented sense, although there are both syntactic and lexical cues which point to continuity as well. The first question cited in (27) starts with εἰ, followed by an NP which points out the vantage point from which the scene is surveyed (ἀπὸ ἀκρωρείας μεγάλης) and the VP which provides information about the scene surveyed. The segment marked by δέ follows the same pattern: conditional εἰ, followed by an NP which specifies the vantage point (ἀπὸ σκοπιᾶς ἐπὶ μέγα πέλαγος τετραμμένης) and the VP which states what is being surveyed. In the δέ segment, δέ is followed by a focalizing καί (‘also’), which also points to some sort of inclusiveness between the two situations sketched in the two clauses. The point which Basil wants to make in the two clauses, is also identical – from a vantage point which is very high up, everything looks small. In the following utterance (not cited in (27)), Basil concludes that our sight is weakened if there is a large amount of air between our eyes and the object observed (ἐνδαπανηθεῖσα τῷ ἀέρι ἡ ὄψις). The two sentences cited here,

then, serve as input for an inferential process which leads to a single conclusion – namely, the greater the distance between our eyes and the object we are watching, the greater the amount of air between our eyes and that object, and the more our sight is weakened. In that sense, the utterance marked by δέ and the utterance preceding this utterance are quite similar.

In (28), δέ seems to mark a reformulation: the προσήκοντος σχήματος (‘proper form’) which Julian showed in greeting Constantius’ corpse is filled in with the addition of the δέ segment. The τό which is located in first position in the δέ segment refers back to σχῆμα, and describes how this proper form is to be understood exactly – stripped of his diadem, and with bowed head. A reformulation which fills in a constituent of the previous utterance is, of course, continuous in at least the sense that it outlines how previous information should be taken. Example (29), finally, is continuous in perhaps the least straightforward way of the five instances discussed here, but it demonstrates both aspects of δέ (continuity and discontinuity) perfectly. The two assumptions marked by μέν and δέ, respectively, communicate two separate things – one indicates that Arsace was turning over a lot, the other that she was groaning a lot. Yet these two assumptions have to be integrated into a larger, overarching context – namely, that of Arsace suffering under her desire to be with Theagenes. As such, there is continuity here as well – both assumptions have to be seen against the background of Arsace lying awake on her bed all night, thinking about Theagenes (note also that the same word, πυκνά (‘continually’), is located in first position in both the μέν and the δέ segments). I will discuss other similar examples later on (§3.2.3.4).

I will argue that δέ’s function when it is not paired with a preceding μέν does not diverge from its function when it does occur with μέν, pace Bakker (1993). The only difference is that its function with μέν is more pronounced in that it dovetails with μέν’s anticipatory function perfectly. However, even when it occurs on its own, δέ marks its utterance as being distinct, yet not wholly disconnected from the previous context. In (25), for instance, δέ marks an addition to the previous utterance; in (27), δέ marks an utterance which is distinct from, yet runs along the same lines as those established in the previous one.

Before proceeding to my analysis of δέ’s semantics, I will first apply tests to check whether it is conceptual or procedural. Recall that, following De Saussure (2011), I will assume that an item is conceptual unless there is decisive evidence to the contrary.