Tmesis in the epic tradition

Haug, Dag; Andersen, Øivind

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511921728.007

Cited by 5 publications

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“…in turn that the static encoding of goals was most likely preserved in the poetic language as a relic from the period when there were no specialized directional prepositions. This archaism, however, was apparently not systematically or selfconsciously sought after by later poets, in contrast to tmesis (Haug 2012) and possibly goal accusatives (Létoublon 1985: 20-23;De Boel 1988: 157). 35 In the encoding of endpoints of motion, the epic diction seems to reflect the changing linguistic practice, marking the distance that separates the Odyssey from the Iliad.…”

Section: Typological Parallelsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Redefining Constructio Praegnans: On the Variation between Allative and Locative Expressions in Ancient Greek

Маслов

2013

J Greek Linguist

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In traditional Ancient Greek grammar, the term constructio praegnans refers to an apparent syntactic anomaly whereby the idea of motion is missing from either the verb or the prepositional phrase: a verb that does not express motion is combined with a directional prepositional phrase (e.g., ‘slaughter into a container’) or a motion verb combines with a static prepositional phrase describing a goal of motion (e.g., ‘throw in the fire’). This study explores such usages in the period from Archaic to Classical Greek and argues against treating constructio praegnans as a unitary phenomenon. The seemingly aberrant combinations of the verb’s meaning and the type of prepositional phrase are shown to be motivated by four independent factors: 1) lexical (some individual non-motion verbs select for a directional argument); 2) aspectual (static encoding of endpoints is allowed with perfect participles); 3) the encoding of results with change of state verbs; and 4) the archaic use of static prepositional phrases in directional contexts (the goal argument of a motion verb is described by a static prepositional phrase). The four types of “pregnant” use are paralleled by different phenomena in other languages. Based on statistical analysis, they are also argued to undergo different kinds of diachronic development. Some of these developments, nevertheless, fall into a more general pattern: Ancient Greek gradually moves toward a more consistent use of specialized directional expressions to mark goals of motion, conforming increasingly to the “satellite-framed” type of motion encoding.

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Section: Typological Parallelsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Redefining Constructio Praegnans: On the Variation between Allative and Locative Expressions in Ancient Greek

Маслов

2013

J Greek Linguist

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“…The phenomenon of tmesis seems to draw quite some attention in recent years (cf. for instance Duhoux, 1998, Giannakis 2001, Watkins 2002, Boley 2004, Hajnal 2004, Priestley 2009, Haug 2011and 2014, to limit ourselves to the last 15 years or so). This is the topic of N. Bertrand's paper, who discusses the issue of tmesis in relation to word order (with particular emphasis on the hyperbaton) and noun incorporation in the language of Homer.…”

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confidence: 99%

Book Review: The Greek Verb. Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics. Proceedings of the 8th International Meeting on Greek Linguistics. Agrigento, October 1–3, 2009, edited by Annamaria Bartolotta

Giannakis

2015

J Greek Linguist

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A frame-based approach to the source-goal asymmetry

Georgakopoulos

2018

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This paper investigates the asymmetrical behavior of Sources and Goals of motion in Homeric and Classical Greek within the frame semantics paradigm. In particular, based on a corpus of 26 works covering four text types, it is shown that (a) regardless of their semantic class, motion verbs display preference for Goalpathscompared to Source ones; (b) the frame that a verb belongs to affects the type ofpathchosen only to a certain degree that does not change the Source-Goal imbalance; (c) semantically incongruent motion verb –pathcombinations are naturally less frequent than congruent combinations, but within the category of incongruent combinations the tokens are distributed in a way that reflects the prevalence of Goals; (d) the number of markers for the encoding of Goal is higher than that of Source; and (e) Source and Goal markers interact with Place ones in an asymmetrical way: Goal markers come to encode Place and, similarly, Place markers come to express Goal. Conversely, the interaction of markers exhibiting Source-Place polysemy is unidirectional, in the sense that none of these markers was originally used to encode Place alone. Theoretical implications of the study are discussed and directions for future research are suggested.

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Tmesis in the epic tradition

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Redefining Constructio Praegnans: On the Variation between Allative and Locative Expressions in Ancient Greek

Redefining Constructio Praegnans: On the Variation between Allative and Locative Expressions in Ancient Greek

Book Review: The Greek Verb. Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics. Proceedings of the 8th International Meeting on Greek Linguistics. Agrigento, October 1–3, 2009, edited by Annamaria Bartolotta

A frame-based approach to the source-goal asymmetry

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