Ancient Greek

A new approach to the diversification of ancient Greek

The diversification of the ancient Greek dialects remains one of the most recalcitrant problems in Greek linguistics. Debates persist over a number of fundamental issues, including the methodology of historical inference, the divergence times of the …

Toward a non-teleological account of demonstrative reinforcement

It has long been debated whether morphosyntactic change is teleological. Jespersen (1917:4), for instance, maintained that emphatic negative constructions are created in response to the weakening of older negative adverbs. Others have argued that …

A multifactorial account of differential agent marking in Herodotus

Passive agents in ancient Greek exhibit a well-known alternation between dative case and prepositional phrase. It has long been recognized that grammatical aspect plays a crucial role in this alternation: dative agents preponderate among aspectually …

Homeric -phi(n) is an oblique case marker

The synchronic distribution and diachronic trajectory of Homeric -phi(n) have been the source of long-standing debate, with the result that scholarly opinion has yet to settle on a consensus regarding the morphosyntax of forms realized by this …

A realizational account of Homeric -φι(ν)

Although the morphology of Homeric Greek has been richly described and rigorously analyzed, from both a synchronic and diachronic perspective, most of this work is tacitabout the relationship between morphosyntactic properties and their formal …

Discourse particles in the LSJ: A fresh look at γε

This chapter contrasts the Liddell and Scott (LSJ) account of the particle γε with an approach that takes advantage of some of the conceptual tools of twenty-first century semantics and pragmatics. It begins by discussing the question of why …

The synchrony and diachrony of the Greek dative of agent

Second-position clitics and the syntax-phonology interface: The case of ancient Greek

In this paper we discuss second position clitics in ancient Greek, which show a remarkable ability to break up syntactic constituents. We argue against attempts to capture such data in terms of a mismatch between c-structure yield and surface string …

Variation versus change: Clausal clitics between Homer and Herodotus

Enclitic distribution in Greek (and archaic Indo-European generally) is governed by a set of generalizations known as Wackernagel’s Law, according to which enclitics occur in “second position.” As has long been known, surface …

Classical Greek syntax

I offer the first theoretically informed study of second-position clitics in Ancient Greek and challenges the long-standing belief that Greek word order is ‟free” or beyond the reach of systematic analysis. On the basis of Herodotus’ Histories, he …