Talk:Apo koinou construction

I'm personally not sure whether the interpretation of the given examples as instances of apo koinou is a happy one, although it is a very widespread interpretation, I must admit. All three examples may just as well be interpreted as instances of zero relative marking, which is possible in many varieties of English, albeit non-standard in subject position. Well, I guess, food for thought, nothing more... Symkyn (talk) 14:58, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
 * +1. All of the examples are just like "Who is it sits upon my grave" from The Unquiet Grave and suchlike from other folk songs. Without knowing the intention of the author, it's simply a case of "that"-dropping. 37.190.156.25 (talk) 15:48, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

While I'm at it, I think apo koinou ought to be spelt in two parts: either hyphenated as apo-koinou or non-hyphenated as apo koinou. OED agrees with me on this one. Since it goes back to Greek ἀπὸ κοινοῦ, a spelling with -ou at the end of the second part would be preferable, too. So, I would suggest that this article ought to be named apo koinou construction or apo-koinou construction. Symkyn (talk) 15:03, 12 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I have moved this article: there's no such thing as "apokoinu" and the article rightly talks about "apo koinou". (It sounds more like Japanese than Greek to me...)


 * By the by, I also find the examples unconvincing: none of them are impeccably grammatical in ordinary English, for one thing, although I realise Hemingway is being poetical. Surely the main point of an apo koinou construction is that the word that is apo koinou should be genuinely ambiguous; the case that brought me to look it up on Wikipedia is Goldhill, Oresteia p.11, commenting on Aeschylus, Agamemnon line 22. Dionysodorus (talk) 16:30, 2 March 2016 (UTC)