Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics

Abstract Recipient is the semantic role of the indirect object or three-place predicates of verbs of ‘giving’. In Greek recipients are typically animate and are prototypically expressed with the dative case. Recipients are syntactically indirect objects. Recipient is the role taken by the third argument of some three-place predicates, typically verbs of giving such as dídōmi ‘give’, pémpō ‘send’, prosphérō ‘offer’, according to Luraghi (2003). Recipients are typically human and as the Greek dative has the distinctive property of being animate, recipients su…

Abstract Reduplication is a common formative mechanism encompassing the whole system of language, nominal, verbal, and otherwise. For Indo-European languages in particular verbal reduplication is a characteristic feature utilized in the stem formation of the present system, the aorist system and the perfect system. In the present system there are several formative types that employ reduplication, namely thematic and athematic, verbs with initial vowel, verbs in -(i)sḱe/o-, verbs with ‘internal’ reduplication, etc. Greek attests all these types of reduplicative…

Abstract Reduplication is the repetition of all or part of a word form, creating either a two-word complex or, most commonly, a new form of the word. For Ancient Greek, reduplication belongs to the sphere of derivational and inflectional morphology: new words or new grammatical forms of the same word are created. In the latter case, reduplication has been fully grammaticalized, and this is what we will be concerned with in this article. 1. Definition Reduplication is the repetition of all or part of a word form, creating either a two-word complex or, most commonly, a new form of the word. In Ind…

Abstract Ancient Greek had a pronominal reflexive strategy, which underwent some significant changes over time. These diachronic changes are here described by using the analytical tools elaborated within the functional frameworks and accounting for the most recent contributions elaborated within them. The description integrates diachronic and synchronic observations and is complemented by an overview of the overlapping areas between the reflexive and the middle domain. 1. Theoretical Assumptions An adequate description of the reflexive system in Ancient Greek en…

Abstract Relative chronology refers to the order in which changes happen in a language’s history. It can be established on the basis of contemporary documentary evidence or, if such is lacking, through experiment to determine which sequence of posited changes produces the correct outcomes. Though establishing relative chronology is procedurally simple in principle, uncertainties and complex issues can arise depending on the nature of the available evidence. Both the methods and complications are …

Abstract Relative clauses are characterized in Greek by the following features: a) they contain a finite verbal form; b) they have a relative marker (pronoun, adjective or adverbial) that links its clause to another one (the main clause). The most common relative pronoun in Greek is hós, hḗ, hó, but the originally anaphoric pronoun hó, hḗ, tó has also been grammaticalized as a relative in certain dialects. Greek has also other relative pronouns with a more specific meaning, as well as a number of relative adjectives and adverbials. There are no spe…

Abstract Ancient Greek developed, at least, four different strategies to express Relative Tense:  word order, lexical expressions, secondary uses of aspectual stems, and modal forms (indicative and optative). Relative Tense reached in Greek a certain degree of grammaticalization in the context of subordination using oblique optative: the future optative seems to have been created specifically to express posteriority in relation to a past reference point. Relative Tense can be defined as any linguistic device that provides information about the temporal locat…

Abstract This article discusses the development of Renaissance translation in the light of Renaissance humanism, and shows examples of the influences of Greek language, through translation, on neo-Latin and the early modern vernaculars. 1. Introduction It may be argued that the Calabrese Leonzio Pilato’s Latin versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey mark the beginning of Renaissance translation from Greek into Latin, both because of what they are and because of the reactions they caused. Commissioned by Francesco Petrarca and Giovanni Boccaccio shortly after the middle of the …

Abstract   See Consonants Bibliography  

Abstract Responsion is the agreement between the corresponding parts of repeated structures, including verbal, syntactic, thematic, prosodic, but above all, metrical repetition. When periods or strophes, or their constituent metra and cola, are systematically repeated, their agreement, or correspondence, is called ‘responsion’, and the units in question are said to ‘respond’ with one another. As the fundamental structural principle of Greek poetry, the study of responsion is vital for the identif…