The ancient Greek particle GE, traditionally branded as the most elusive Greek particle, is usually analysed as a scope particle, indicating that the applicability of an utterance is limited to the constituent modified by GE. Traditional renderings are "at least", "at any rate" etc. An example:

(1) Theramenes answered that to him GE it seemed absurd to ... (Xenophon, Hellenica 2.3.9)

The traditional analysis is that GE here limits the statement "it seemed absurd" to "to him": other people may think the proposed course of action less absurd. If this analysis is correct, we have to do with a particle which clearly is a scope particle, but not a focus particle: GE accompanies constituents that have, at the most, secondary focality; it rarely modifies the most salient constituent of the sentence, and when it does, its value is normally not as "limitative" as in example (1) given above.

There are, however, other uses of GE, which at first sight seem totally unrelated to this; in recent scholarship these instances, numerous though they are (especially in drama and in the philosophical dialogue), have been neglected. GE is nearly always used when a speaker reacts to a question or statement by means of a constituent which is tacked on to the sentence uttered by his partner:

(2) Do you want to destroy your ancestral house? :: So that GE you won’t get it (Euripides, Orestes 1595-6)

Parallel to this are instances in which GE marks an addition to a clause which is already syntactically and pragmatically complete:

(3) If you win, what will you take from them, who GE possess nothing? (Herodotus 1.71.3)

The following basic value of GE is proposed: GE draws attention to the fact that a constituent has a different pragmatic role than might have been expected on the basis of Greek word order, which is pragmatically determined. As ancient Greek was a tone language, it does part of the work which in non-tone languages is doen by sentence intonation.

Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit