The Secret Locative Case
July 3, 2020 2:52 AM   Subscribe

Did classical or archaic Greek have a locative case or is this an in-joke in The Secret History?

Is the following passage from The Secret History an error, an in-joke, or actually correct?

"I don't know about that," Camilla was saying. "If the Greeks are sailing to Carthage, it should be accusative. Remember? Place whither? That's the rule."
"Can't be." This was Bunny [...] "It's not place whither, it's place to. I put my money on the ablative case."
[...]
"Wait," said Charles [...] "Look at this. They're not just sailing to Carthage, they're sailing to attack it."
[...]
"Look at the next sentence. We need a dative."
[...]
"Absolutely. Epi to karchidona
[Snipped some stuff where Bunny gets Latin and Greek mixed up]
Richard: "I'm sorry, but would the locative case do?"
"Locative?" said Charles.
"Just add zde to karchido," I said. "I think it's zde. If you use that you won't need a preposition, except the epi if they're going to war. It implies 'Carthage-ward,' so you won't have to worry about a case either."
Charles looked at his paper, then at me. "Locative?" he said. "That's pretty obscure."
"Are you sure it exists for Carthage?" said Camilla.
I hadn't thought of this. "Maybe not," I said. "I know it does for Athens"

[Henry then later says of this] "Hmm. archaic locative. Very Homeric"

I'm confused by this but that's possibly because my I never studied enough Homer. PIE has a locative case which got folded into the classical Greek dative case but the characters have dismissed using the dative case so it's clearly not the "locative" use of the dative.

What are they actually doing here? Is this a particle used to create a verbal neologism to mean, "Carthage-wards"? (Implied by not having to decline it) Or is this actually an application of an archaic locative case from Homer?

Is this actually an error and meant to be a joke about how they don't quite know as much as they think they do?
posted by atrazine to Writing & Language

This post was deleted for the following reason: poster's request (posted twice) -- goodnewsfortheinsane

 
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