Pronoun – οὐδείς, μηδείς

ObjectivesLearning objectives

• The syntax of the negative concord items οὐδείς and μηδείς

VocabularyVocabulary

SyntaxSyntax: Pronoun – οὐδείς, μηδείς

The words οὐδείς/μηδείς ‘no one’ are called Negative Concord Items or NCIs. When this negative word is used as a subject, it does not need the negator οὐ to make the clause negative:

The negation embedded in the subject οὐδείς makes us interpret the entire clause as a negative statement. No one person engages in the event of taking Jesus’ life from him. In contrast to this, the accusative form οὐδένα is normally found with the negative element οὐ, but the two negative elements do not cancel out. Rather, they are in concord, hence the name of οὐδείς as a Negative Concord Item:

This does not mean ‘I do not judge no one’ where the logical meaning with the double negation would end up being ‘I judge everyone.’ Rather, it means that there is not a single individual that Jesus judges. In these kinds of contexts, the two negative elements οὐ and οὐδένα do not cancel one another out, but they agree with one another and form a single negative statement.

The generalization that an NCI as a subject does not need the negator οὐ but it does when used as an object is not quite accurate. The following minimal pair reflects a more complex picture:

There does not appear to be a difference in meaning between these two clauses, only a difference in syntax. When the NCI as an object moves before the verb, the negation disappears. This tells us that it is not οὐδείς/μηδείς used as an object that is responsible for the double negation, but it is the NCI found before the verb. This is even more significant because these NCIs are normally found before the verb even when used as objects. Despite the neutral word orders in Greek being SVO or VSO (where the object follows the verb in both cases; see Syntax A), the more common orders for NCIs are SOV or OVS where the object precedes the verb (see Gianollo 2024 for a more detailed discussion).