Zusammenfassung
In Homer, νῦν generally functions as an adverb referring to the present or the immediate future of the speaker. Apart from this use as a temporal adverb, νῦν has also developed a use as a discourse marker: it functions as a marker of discourse topic shift and as an adversative particle; besides these two values, νῦν also functions, as we will try to demonstrate, as an illustrative particle. The line between the use of νῦν as a temporal adverb or a discourse marker is blurred, as could be expected, but contexts in which the verb expresses past states of affairs totally exclude an interpretation of νῦν as a temporal adverb. This paper aims at determining the factors that have triggered the development of νῦν as a discourse marker. It will also describe the conditions that allow the use of νῦν in the description of states of affairs that took place in a distant past.
© 2018 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
