From Gabii And Gordion To Eretria And Methone: The Rise Of The Greek Alphabet

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111984/1/bics12000.pd

Prog imperfective drift in ancient Greek? Reconsidering eimi 'be' with present participle

In this paper, I reconsider the diachrony of the Ancient Greek periphrastic construction of eimi 'be' with present participle by means of Bertinetto’s recently proposed model for the development of progressive grams (a process called ‘PROG imperfective drift’). While Bertinetto’s proposal sheds new light on the diachronic development of the construction, at the same time the evidence from Ancient Greek brings to light the need for modification and further refinement of the model (most importantly with regard to the role of what I call the ‘stative’ function, next to the diachronic source(s) of the construction). I furthermore show that eimi with present participle never fully developed a (focalized) progressive function, which can be explained in terms of ‘constructional competition’

The periphrastic perfect in Ancient Greek: a diachronic mental space analysis

In the present article, I apply Fauconniers mental spaces theory to the diachronic analysis of the Ancient Greek periphrastic perfect. I argue that the periphrastic construction started out as a resultative perfect, with FOCUS and EVENT located in the same mental space. I show that, contrary to what is sometimes believed, the construction was not limited to a purely stative meaning, but underwent the cross-linguistically attested semantic shift from resultative to anterior, whereby an additional non-FOCUS EVENT-space was constructed. In fourth-century Classical Greek, we witness the further extension of the periphrastic construction with regard to semantics, morphology and discourse context. I close the article with some remarks on the possible aoristicisation of the periphrastic perfect