The case for the partitive case: the contribution of Ancient Greek

Napoli, Maria

doi:10.1111/j.1467-968x.2009.01219.x

Cited by 4 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 59 publications

(59 reference statements)

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“…In fact, it has been suggested that the ip(g) can induce an unbounded interpretation, especially with ingestion verbs in Ancient Greek and Vedic Sanskrit (Dahl, 2009: 37-41;Napoli, 2010). This is, however, not corroborated by the data presented.…”

Section: Russian Latgalian Estonian Lithuanian Finnishcontrasting

confidence: 81%

“…There might originally have been certain semantic considerations that created preferences for the ip(g) with a particular group of verbs in Ancient Greek or Vedic Sanskrit, as argued in Dahl (2009) andNapoli (2010). However, Napoli (2010) presents herself a number of co-occurrences of the ip(g) and aorist as well as the ip(g) and imperfect, both aorist and imperfect are grammatically marked in Ancient Greek for boundedness and unboundedness, respectively. The independence of the ip(g) from aspect/boundedness has been emphasized in Bauer (2007: 134) and Seržant (2012a: 133).…”

Section: Russian Latgalian Estonian Lithuanian Finnishmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…in the ancient IndoEuropean languages (Bauer, 2007: 134;Seržant, 2012a;differently Dahl, 2009: 37-41 andNapoli, 2010, see, however, Fn. 13 above), Baltic and, to a much greater extent, Russian/North Russian introduce restrictions on the occurrence of the ip(g) sensitive to the boundedness value of the predicate.…”

Section: 10mentioning

confidence: 95%

“…The evidence for this is provided by non-Finnic languages of the Uralic branch such as Sami and Mordvin (cf., inter alia, Itkonen, 1972: 185;Laanest, 1982;Campbell, 1990: 66ff;Kiparsky, 1998;Harris and Campbell, 1995: 362-3). Analogically, the Baltic and Slavic partitive genitive is the etymological and functional continuation of the Proto-Indo-European partitive genitive widely attested across the ancient ie languages (cf., inter alia, Bauer, 2007;Dahl, 2009;Luraghi, 2003: 60ff;Nachmanson, 1942;Napoli, 2010;Schwyzer and journal of language contact 8 (2015) 341-418 5 It has been suggested that the Baltic and Slavic partitive genitive may arise from an ablative.…”

Section: Accounting For Language Contact: Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…which are conducive of decreased referentiality. This functional property of the ip(g) is well attested already in the ancient ie languages (cf., inter alia, Luraghi, 2003: 60ff;Napoli, 2010;Seržant, 2012a) and, hence, must have already been present in the ancestor language, namely, Proto-Indo-European (henceforth: pie). This property is thus inherited in Baltic and Slavic.…”

Section: 1mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Independent Partitive as an Eastern Circum-Baltic isogloss

Seržant

2015

J Lang Contact

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The paper claims that the independent partitive case in Finnic languages and the independent partitive genitive case in Baltic and East Slavic (henceforth: ip(g)) show considerable correlations that cannot be accounted for but by language contact. Given that both the ip(g) in Baltic and East Slavic as well as the ip(g) in Finnic are inherited from the respective proto-languages, the paper also offers a methodological discussion of how inherited categories may also be shown to be subject to language contact. A typologically not infrequent category must be individualized on the basis of a list of properties. Thus, 13 semantic and 5 morphosyntactic properties have been discussed. While the study reveals that in general the ip(g) is or was subject to intensive language contact, there is no common hotbed for all properties analysed and different properties have different hotbeds and are distinct with respect to their geographical distribution and entrenchment. North Russian and Finnic show the greatest degree of correspondence as, e.g., the aspectuality related functions of the ip(g) or the morphological distinction between the possession (sensu lato) and the partitive-related functions are concerned. Here, Finnic is the donor language. However, other properties such as the semantic and syntactic merger of the acc and ip(g) marking must have spread from Russian to Finnic and, to some extent, Baltic. Similarly, the genitive/partitive-under-negation probably developed first in Baltic and Slavic and spread then into Finnic, since preconditions for this rule are already found in the ancient Indo-European languages. Finnic, however, preserves this rule best.

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Section: Russian Latgalian Estonian Lithuanian Finnishcontrasting

confidence: 81%

Section: Russian Latgalian Estonian Lithuanian Finnishmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: 10mentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Accounting For Language Contact: Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: 1mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Independent Partitive as an Eastern Circum-Baltic isogloss

Seržant

2015

J Lang Contact

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Beyond affectedness – partitive objects and degrees of agenthood in Ancient Greek

Luraghi

2022

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In several ancient and modern Indo-European languages, the partitive-genitive may be used in place of the accusative to encode the second argument of two-place verbs. In Ancient Greek the two types of object encoding can alternate with change-of-state verbs, alternation being viewed as connected with degrees of patient affectedness: the partitive-genitive encodes partially affected objects. Alternation also extends to experiential verbs, which are typically characterized by a low degree of transitivity and do not imply any change of state of the object-stimulus. Rather than concentrating on the implications of case alternation on the construal of the object, I consider the effects of variation on the whole construction, and argue that genitive vs. accusative marking of the object (NomGen vs. NomAcc constructions) reflects the construal of the subject-experiencer. While the different construal of the experiencer in terms of degrees of control cross-linguistically often results in non-nominative encoding of the experiencer, in Ancient Greek it is object encoding that affects the construal of the experiencer and reflects a scale based on possible control. The distribution of constructions with experiential verbs shows that NomAcc is typical of verbs of sight, thought, intellectual knowledge and emotions connected to sight and awareness, such as wonder and fear. NomGen is connected with touch, smell, taste, memory, forgetfulness, care and desire. In the in-between area, verbs of hearing, learning and verbs of affection may feature both accusative and genitive encoding, thus constituting a fuzzy transition area. The connection between sight and other experiential verbs that feature accusative encoding reflects an embodied conceptualization of experiential situations.

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Morphosyntactic properties of the partitive genitive in the subject position in Ancient Greek

Seržant

2012

Indogermanische Forschungen

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A surprising property of the Ancient Greek bare partitive genitive NP in the subject position is that it behaves morphosyntactically in many ways as a nominative-marked NP: (i) while being in the logical subject position, it triggers semantically driven verbal agreement and, (ii), it may be coordinated with nominatives. This is striking, since obliques typically do not have access to agreement in ancient Indo-European languages including Ancient Greek. To account for this discrepancy, I assume a covert head of the partitive genitive that is filled by pro with an arbitrary reference (pro arb ) by default; else, this position can be filled by any quantifier or determiner. It is this pro arb that gets Case and triggers verbal agreement. The presence of the pro arb in Ancient Greek explains also why the "independent" partitive genitive is not restricted to structural positions only (as are partitives, e. g., in Finnic languages) but can occur at any position including non-argumental adverbials.

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The case for the partitive case: the contribution of Ancient Greek

Cited by 4 publications

References 59 publications

The Independent Partitive as an Eastern Circum-Baltic isogloss

The Independent Partitive as an Eastern Circum-Baltic isogloss

Beyond affectedness – partitive objects and degrees of agenthood in Ancient Greek

Morphosyntactic properties of the partitive genitive in the subject position in Ancient Greek

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