The Prosody of Postpositive Clitics
I found a thesis on a neighboring language to Greek examining the prosody & information structure of 2nd position clitics in Zagreb Croatia from 2008. I don’t know, some of you might be interested:
The prosody of second position clitics and focus in Zagreb Croatian
The Grammarian’s Linguist
Matthew Dryer is a fantastic scholar & linguist and his methodology and theoretical framework tends to be the most accessible for the non-linguist to understand without buying a big dictionary for definition technical gibberish.
Read about it: HERE.
The paragraph that made me laugh:
Basic linguistic theory has also been influenced to a certain extent by generative grammar, though the influence has primarily been from early generative grammar (before 1970) and is often indirect. The influence largely reflects the fact that early generative grammar examined many aspects of the syntax of English in great detail, and the insights of that research have influenced how basic linguistic theory looks at the syntax of other languages, especially in terms of how one can argue for particular analyses. The influence of generative grammar can be seen in the way that certain constructions in other languages are identified and characterized in ways reminiscent of constructions in English, from cleft constructions to “topicalizations” to reflexive constructions. More recent work in generative grammar, especially Government-Binding Theory, has had essentially no impact on basic linguistic theory (my emphasis).
In other news, I just discovered (via Matthew Dryer’s homepage) that the World Atlas of Language Structures is available for free online: http://wals.info/
I’ve held this book in my hands. It’s amazing. And having a $600 (retail) book available for free online is awesome.
Greek Aspect/Aktionsart MA Thesis
No, it’s not mine mind, but that’s coming at some point.
Thanks to Brian LePort over at Near Emmaus, I was able to find a very recently completely MA thesis on Aktionsart differences between ἔρχομαι and εἰσέρχομαι.
“The Preverb Eis- and Koine Greek Aktionsart” by Rachel M. Shain. (Download Link)
Abstract:
This study analyzes one Koine Greek verb erchomai ‘go/come’ and one preverb eis- and how the preverb affects the verb’s lexical aspect. To determine the lexical aspect of erchomai and eis-erchomai, I annotate all instances of both verbs in the Greek New Testament and develop methodology for researching aktionsart in texts. Several tests for lexical aspect which might be applied to texts are proposed. Applying some of these tests to erchomai and eiserchomai, I determine that erchomai is an activity and eiserchomai is telic. A discussion of the Koine tense/aspect forms and their temporal and aspectual reference is included. I adopt Dowty’s 1979 aspect calculus to explain how eis- affects the lexical aspect of erchomai, using his CAUSE and BECOME operators to account for the meaning of eis-, which denotes an endpoint to motion such that the subject must be at a given location at the end of an interval over which eiserchomai is true.
Since this is a linguistics thesis, expect interlinearized examples — Sorry, Carl, that’s just how they do it. It appears that the author did a 5 year BA/MA program at Ohio State that gave her a double major BA in Classical Greek & Linguistics and an MA in Linguistics. I’m kind of jealous!
It looks like I have something to peruse for a bit.
Anyway…
http://www.openthesis.org/
Through which I found:
http://www.openthesis.org/documents/Preverb-Eis-Koine-Greek-Aktionsart-550337.html
The page for the thesis didn’t have a PDF download, so I googled the title and ended here:
http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?acc_num=osu1238085936 (Permanent Link)
PS – Happy LXX Day! I have a post on the LXX half done. Hopefully, I’ll get it up tonight!
Imagining Greek Grammar Books of the Future
Many of my long time readers will probably remember that I am a major fan of the three volume set of linguistics books entitled:
Language Typology and Syntactic Description: Volume 1, Clause Structure
Language Typology and Syntactic Description: Volume 2, Complex Constructions
Language Typology and Syntactic Description: Volume 3, Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon
This 3 volume set is edited by Timothy Shopen and as of 2007 is in its second edition (first edition 1985).
I have often imagined that an analysis and survey of Hellenistic Greek following the themes & topics discussed in these books would make for a fantastic read. That is, if you really enjoy reading grammar – which I do.
The table of contents of this set reads almost like a Whose Who of linguistics for the past couple decades (with a few notables missing, like Dik, Van Valin, Bresnan, Chomsky, Hale, Culicover, Jackendoff, & Pike).
Volume 1, Clause Structure:
Chapter #1: Parts-of-speech systems by Paul Schachter & Timothy Shopen
Chapter #2: Word Order by Matthew S. Dryer
Chapter #3: The major functions of the noun phrase by Avery D. Andrews
Chapter #4: Clause types by Matthew S. Dryer
Chapter #5: Speech-act distinctions in grammar by Ekkehard Konig and Peter Siemund
Chapter #6: Passive in the world’s languages by Edward L. Keenan and Matthew S. Dryer
Chapter #7: A typology of information packaging in the clause by William A. Foley
Volume 2, Complex Constructions:
Chapter #1: Coordination by Martin Haspelmath
Chapter #2: Complementation by Michael Noonan
Chapter #3: Noun phrase structure by Matthew S. Dryer
Chapter #4: Relative clauses by Avery D. Andrews
Chapter #5: Adverbial clauses by Sandra A. Thompson, Robert E. Longacre and Shin Ja J. Hwang
Chapter #6: Discourse structure by Elise Karkkainen, Marja-Leena Sorjonen, and Marja-Liisa Helasvuo
Chapter #7: Sentences as combinations of clauses by Robert E. Longacre
Volume 3, Grammatical Categories and the Lexicon:
Chapter #1: Typological distinctions in word-formation by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Chapter #2: :Lexical typologies by Leonard Talmy
Chapter #3: Inflectional morphology by Balthasar Bickel and Johanna Nichols
Chapter #4: Gender and noun classes by Greville G. Corbett
Chapter #5: Aspect, tense, mood by Alan Timberlake
Chapter #6: Lexical nominalization by Bernard Comrie and Sandra A. Thompson
The average length of each chapter is roughly 70 pages — almost the size of an MA thesis and the whole set is 1436 pages total. And to be honest, if anyone was looking for a thesis or dissertation topic on Greek grammar (or the grammar of any language), they really just need to open up one of these volumes, pick a chapter and write on on that topic.
But this is the main question of this post:
If you were editing a three volume set of essays on Hellenistic Greek grammar subjects, what topics would you add? What topics would you remove? Who would write them?
PS
By the way, very much because of two generous and kind men (one who basically purchased my plane ticket and the other who is giving me a ride to the airport in Seattle), I will be presenting my paper at BibleTech:2010. I hope to see you there.
A Little Greek Dream of Mine
I wrote this up some time ago and recent conversations have draw me back to it. On my hard drive, a couple very, very small sections are already filled in. Perhaps over the next couple decades, it will turn into something more real.
Hopefully.
With that out of the way, here it is: my proposed table of contents for a Modern Descriptive Grammar of Hellenistic Greek.
There are some sections that lack detail — suggestions are very welcome if you see anything missing that you think should be included.
There’s a PDF HERE — though spacing is odd in it.
Table of Contents
1. Morphology & Parts-of-Speech
1.1 Verbal Inflectional Categories
1.1.1 Aspect
1.1.1.1 Situation Aspect
1.1.1.2 Viewpoint Aspect
1.1.1.3 Interaction
1.1.2 Tense
1.1.2.1 Past
1.1.2.2 Non-past
1.1.2.3 Future
1.1.3 Mood/Modality
1.1.3.1 Indicative
1.1.3.2 Subjunctive
1.1.3.3 Imperative
1.1.3.4 Optative
1.1.4 Subject Agreement
1.1.4.1 Person
1.1.4.2 Number
1.2 Inflectional Morphology of the Verb
1.2.1 Imperfective Root
1.2.2 Perfective Root
1.2.3 –μι Verbs
1.3 Auxiliary Verbs
1.3.1 Types of Auxiliaries
1.3.2 Periphrasis
1.4 Nominal Inflectional Categories
1.4.1 Gender
1.4.1.1 Gender as Noun Class
1.4.1.2 Masculine
1.4.1.3 Feminine
1.4.1.4 Neuter
1.4.1.5 Gender in Nouns
1.4.1.6 Gender in Substantival Modifiers
1.4.2 Number
1.4.2.1 Singular
1.4.2.2 Plural
1.4.2.3 Dual*
1.5 Inflectional Morphology of the Noun
1.6 Inflectional Morphology of the Adjective
1.7 Inflectional Morphology of Determiners
1.7.1 Article
1.7.2 Demonstratives
1.8 Inflectional Morphology of Quantifiers
1.9 Derivational Morphology
1.9.1 Infinitive
1.9.2 Participle
1.9.3 Middle Verbs
1.9.4 Nominalization
1.9.5 Modifier Derivation
1.10 Other word classes
1.10.1 Pronouns
1.10.1.1 Personal Pronouns
1.10.1.2 Possessive Pronouns
1.10.1.3 Reflexive Pronouns
1.10.2 Prepositions
1.10.3 Other
1.10.3.1 Adverbs
1.10.3.2 Negators
1.10.3.3 Modal Particles
1.10.3.4 Connectives
2. Basic clause structure
2.1 Verbal Predicates
2.1.1 Intransitives
2.1.2 Transitives
2.1.3 Ditransitives
2.2 Non-verbal Predicates
2.2.1 Equative, Attributive, and Locative Clauses
2.2.2 Existential and Possessive Clauses
2.2.3 Negated Non-verbal Predicates
2.2.3.1 Negated Possessive
2.2.3.2 Negated Existential
2.3 Constituent Order & Clause Structure
2.3.1 Discourse Relations
2.3.2 Semantic Relations
2.3.3 Grammatical Relations
2.4 Noun Phrase Structure
2.4.1 Major Functions of the Noun Phrase
2.4.2 Continuous Noun Phrases
2.4.3 Discontinuous Noun Phrases
2.4.4 Determiner Phrase
2.4.4.1 Structure
2.4.4.1.1 The Demonstrative
2.4.4.1.2 The Article
2.4.4.2 Relation to the Noun Phrase
2.4.4.3 Identifiability
2.4.5 Constituent Order & Noun Phrase Structure
2.4.6 Lexical Nominalization
2.4.6.1 Processes for Forming Nouns from Lexical Verbs
2.4.6.2 Syntactic Collocation
2.4.6.2.1 Assimilation of Arguments to NP Syntax
2.4.6.2.2 Unexpressed Arguments
2.5 Other Types of Phrases & Their Structure
2.5.1 Prepositional Phrases
2.5.2 Quantifier Phrases
3. Sentence Patterns & Pragmatics
3.1 Questions
3.1.1 Interrogative Sentences
3.1.1.1 Content Questions
3.1.1.2 Yes-No Questions
3.2 Commands
3.2.1 Positive Commands
3.2.2 Negative Commands
3.3 Negation
3.3.1 Clausal
3.3.2 Noun Phrase Negation
3.4 Coordinate Constructions
3.4.1 Postpositivess
3.5 Subordinate Constructions
3.5.1 Complement Clauses
3.5.2 Adjunct/adverbial clauses
3.5.2.1 Subordinate Clauses denoting Cause
3.5.2.2 Subordinate Clauses denoting Temporal Relations
3.5.2.3 Subordinate Clauses denoting Concession
3.5.2.4 Subordinate Clauses denoting Purpose/Result
3.5.2.5 Subordinate Clauses denoting Condition
3.5.3 Relative Clauses
3.5.3.1 Headed Relative Clauses
3.5.3.2 Non-headed Relative Clauses
3.6 Discourse Structure
3.6.1 Sentences
3.6.2 Paragraphs
3.6.3 Self-repair & Correction in Discourse
4. Residue
5. Conclusion
6. Appendices
6.1 Appendix #1 – The Problem of Greek Voice
6.2 Appendix #2 – The Tense / Aspect Debate
6.3 Appendix #2 – The Greek Referential System
6.4 Appendix #3 – The Lexicon
TLG Update
Nick Nicholas over at Ἡλληνιστεύκοντος has made some very handy and excellent notes about recent updates: TLG updates.
Grammar of the Papyri
For all you German speakers out there who also just so happen to know Greek, I found an edition of Mayser’s Grammar of the Papyri on Archive.org: HERE.
Texts for Hellenistic Greek Grammar
Micheal Palmer is looking for feedback on his blog post on the Scope of a Hellenistic Greek Grammar.
