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From the Editors
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Introduction
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Clause Intertwining and Word Order in Ancient Greek
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In Ancient Greek complex sentences consisting of a main and complement clause, constituents which semantically and syntactically belong to the complement clause can be placed in a position preceding or interrupting the main clause. This phenomenon is referred to as clause or sentence intertwining. This paper examines the pragmatic factors involved in the preposing of contituents in sentences containing an in initival complement clause. It will be argued that the specific pragmatic function of the preposed constituents is Theme (left dislocation), new/contrastive topic or narrow focus. Preposing can be analyzed as a device to pragmatically highlight the involved constituents. The paper also addresses the position of new, contrastive and given topics and of adverbs and clauses with Setting function.
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Tense in Ancient Greek Reports
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- This paper shows that tenses in Ancient Greek reports have both an anaphoric and a shifted-indexical component. It develops a new account of Ancient Greek tenses that deals with this combination of features. Following Klein's (1994) semantics of tense, I claim that tense indicates the relation between an anaphoric topic time and the moment of utterance, the now. As for Ancient Greek indirect discourse, I argue that the anaphoric component works exactly the same as in non-embedded discourse (contra von Stechow 1995). The indexical component, however, is di ferent in that the now is not provided by the actual context of utterance, but by the reported context. The DRT account developed models this combination of features, taking also into account the role of aspect.
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A Semantics for the Particle αν in and outside Conditionals in Classical Greek
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In this paper, we provide a uni ied semantics for the Classical Greek particle αν in its uses both in and outside of conditional sentences. Speci ically, working within the framework provided by formal semantic treatments of conditionals in Stalnaker (1968); Lewis (1973); Kratzer (1981) and subsequent work, we propose that αν is a universal quanti ier over situations—parts of possible worlds. We also detail the interactions between αν and the tense and mood features in a clause, arguing, for example, that the semantics of αν in combination with a 'fake' past tense morphology (Iatridou 2000), which reflects the presence of an exclusion feature in C, gives rise to a counterfactual implicature. Additionally, we address the issue of the surface distribution of αν in the antecedents of some types of conditionals and the consequents of others and argue that, despite its surface distribution, αν is always merged into the consequent of a conditional but sometimes undergoes displacement such that it appears to be located within the antecedent. Our proposal not only illuminates a complex phenomenon in Classical Greek, but also contributes to the understanding of the morpho-semantics of mood, conditionals, and counterfactuality in natural language.
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Greek Anaphora in Cross-Linguistic Perspective
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The Homeric and Classical Greek systems of referentially dependent pronouns support an approach to binding and anaphoric reference which characterizes pronouns by two cross-classifying features, which specify the maximal domain in which their antecedent must be located, and whether they can overlap in reference with a coargument (Kiparsky 2002). By treating reflexivity as a special case of referential dependency, this approach predicts a class of referentially dependent non-reflexive anaphors, or discourse anaphors, whose characteristic is that they need not have a structural antecedent but can serve as reflexives in contexts where a dedicated reflexive is unavailable. This class is instantiated in the Greek clitic anaphors ε&ogr;, ε, &ogr;ι, μιν. It also predicts a class of reflexive pronouns which must be disjoint in reference from a coargument, attested in Homeric Greek as the bare reflexive ε-. Greek also gives some support to the Blocking principle, which dictates the use of the most restricted pronoun available in a given context. The proposal is compared to the well-known theory of Reinhart & Reuland (1993) on the basis of Greek as well as Germanic (Swedish, German, Dutch, Frisian, Old English), and is shown to provide a better answer to the challenge raised by Evans & Levinson (2009).
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Switches between Direct and Indirect Speech in Ancient Greek
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I propose a uni ied semantic analysis of two phenomena characteristic of ancient Greek speech reporting, (i) the unmarked switching between direct and indirect discourse, and (ii) the use of οτι ('that') as a quotation introduction. I accommodate these phenomena in a formal semantic framework, where both can be modeled uniformly as instances of mixed quotation.
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Does Ancient Greek Have a Word for ‘No’? The Evidence from ουκουν...ου Questions
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Among the uses of ουκουν (oukoun) Denniston (1954: 235) mentions 'ουκουν ου, ουκουν ... ου, expecting a negative answer.' This paper argues that Denniston's view, which is shared by most (all?) other grammars and dictionaries of Ancient Greek (e.g.Kühner-Gerth 2, 164: 'Wenn nach ουκουν eine verneinende Antwort erwartet wird, so wird demselben die Negation ου nachgesetzt', Smyth § 2651 a: 'ουκουν ου expects the answer no', Liddell-Scott-Jones s.v. ουκουν) should be rejected. Actually, the answer is never no. As always, ουκουν expects an a irmative answer, in this case to a negated question: 'Is it not true, then, that not X?' = 'Surely, then, not X?' To be sure, ου does occur as an answer, but this can be shown to be a proposition (or sentence) negative (= not), rather than an answering particle like no. The situation in Greek is compared with negatives in several other languages, notably Latin and Old French. Finally, Modern Greek is briefly discussed, which, unlike Ancient Greek, does have a negative answering particle, viz. οχι, alongside a proposition negative, viz. δε(ν).
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A Source of Variation: A Corpus-Based Study of the Choice between απο and εκ in the NT Greek Gospels
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Using a quantitative methodology based on extensively annotated corpus data from the PROIEL corpus, we examine the distribution of απο and εκ in the NT Greek Gospels. The original semantic opposition between these two prepositions in terms of an ablative-elative distinction started fading during the historical development of Greek and has been argued to be already much weaker at the time of the New Testament. To explore this we generate a semantic map without semantic pre-analysis on the basis of four parallel language samples. We then use statistical techniques to interpret this map. We ind that there is still a fairly clean separation between εκ and απο largely based on semantic role. However, απο is quite frequently used in elative contexts. A lexical analysis clarifies that the use of απο in this environment amounts to the preposition specialising with certain lexical items, some of them with variable interpretations, as seen in the case of toponyms.
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Response to the Review by Silvia Luraghi of Greek Prepositions: From Antiquity to the Present
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Reply to Pietro Bortone
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