In:Historical Linguistics 2017: Selected papers from the 23rd International Conference on Historical Linguistics, San Antonio, Texas, 31 July – 4 August 2017
Edited by Bridget Drinka
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 350] 2020
► pp. 9–28
Strategies for aligning syntactic roles and case marking with semantic properties
The case of the accusative of respect in ancient Greek
Published online: 9 July 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.350.01rom
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.350.01rom
Abstract
In the present paper, we show that: (1) the accusative of respect, a case marker for inalienable possession in
ancient Greek, represents a strategy for aligning syntactic roles and case marking with animacy; (2) this hypothesis can consistently
account for a series of issues that remained unsettled; (3) the semantic properties of the predicate involved in the accusative of
respect are fundamental to defining its function and specifically govern its distribution. Our analysis comprises Greek literary
texts, from Homer to the fifth century B.C.
Article outline
- 1.The unsettled question of the accusative of respect in ancient Greek
- 2.A case marker for inalienable possession
- 2.1Accusative of respect and inalienable possession: Key questions
- 3.The function and distribution of the accusative of respect: Research questions
- 4.A strategy for aligning syntactic roles and case marking with animacy
- 4.1Accusative of respect and double accusative
- 4.2The noteworthy exception of kin terms
- 4.3The strange case of an accusative depending on a passive and the lack of double nominative in Homer
- 5.A case marker for undergoer arguments
- 5.1A restriction on telic predicates
- 6.Conclusions
Notes References Texts and translations
References (88)
Aikhenvald, A. Y., Dixon, R. M. W. & Onishi, M. (Eds.). (2001). Non-canonical marking of subjects and objects. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Aikhenvald, A. & Dixon, R. (Eds.). (2013). Possession and ownership. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bertinetto, P. M. (1986). Tempo, aspetto e azione nel verbo italiano. Firenze: Accademia della Crusca.
Bertinetto, P. M. & Squartini, M. (1995). An attempt at defining the class of gradual completion verbs. In P. M. Bertinetto, V. Bianchi, J. Higginbotham, & M. Squartini (Eds.), Temporal Reference, Aspect and Actionality, vol. I: Semantic and Syntactic Perspectives. (pp. 11–26). Torino: Rosenberg and Sellier.
Bossaglia, G. (2005). L’‘accusativo greco’ in Omero e nella letteratura successiva. BA Thesis, University of Pisa.
Bossong, G. (1998). La marquage différentiel de l’objet dans les langues d’Europe. In J. Feuillet (Ed.). Actance et Valence dans les langues de l’Europe (pp. 193–258). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Brugmann, K. (1910). Der sogenannte Akkusativ der Beziehung im Arischen, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Germanischen, Indogermanische Forschungen. 27: 121–151.
Carruba, O. (1992). Le notazioni dell’agente animato nelle lingue anatoliche (e l’ergativo). In O. Carruba. Per una Grammatica Ittita / Towards a Hittite Grammar. (pp. 61–98). Pavia: Iuculano.
Chappel, H. & McGregor, W. (Eds.). (1996). The grammar of inalienability. A typological perspective of body part terms and the part–whole relation. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
Comrie, B. (1978). Ergativity. In W. P. Lehmann (Ed.). Syntactic Typology: Studies in the Phenomenology of Language. pp. 329–394. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Crespo, E. (1988). The semantic and syntactic functions of the accusative. In A. Rijksbaron et al. (Eds.). In the Footsteps of Raphael Kühner (pp. 99–121). Amsterdam: Gieben.
Dahl, Ö. & Fraurud, K. (1996). Animacy in grammar and discourse. In T. Fretheim and J. K. Gundel (Eds.). Reference and referent accessibility (pp. 47–65). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
de Swart, P., Lamers, M. & Lestrade, S. (2008). Animacy, argument structure and argument encoding. Lingua 118, 131–140.
Delbrück, B. (1893). Vergleichende Syntax der Indogermanischen Sprachen. Vol. 1. Strassburg: Trübner.
Fillmore, (1968). The case for case. In E. Bach & R. T. Harms (Eds.). Universals in Linguistic Theory. (pp. 1–25). London: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Foley, W. A. & Van Valin, R. D. Jr. (1984). Functional syntax and universal grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Frei, H. (1939). Sylvie est jolie des yeux. In A. Sechehaye et al. (Eds.). Mélanges de linguistique offerts à Charles Bally (pp. 185–192). Geneve: Georg.
Hahn, A. (1954). Partitive Apposition in Homer and the Greek Accusative. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 85, 197–289.
Haspelmath, M. (1993). More on the typology of inchoative/causative alternation. In B. Comrie & M. Polinsky (Eds.). Causatives and Transitivity (Studies in Language Companion Series, 23) (pp. 87–120). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
(1999). External possession in a European areal perspective. In I. Barshi & D. Payne (Eds.). External possession (pp. 109–35). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Haspelmath, M., Dryer, M. S., Gil, D. & Comrie, B. (2005). The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jackendoff, R. (1976). Toward an Explanatory Semantic Representation. Linguistic Inquiry 7, 1, 89–150.
Jacquinod, B. (1989). Le double accusatif en grec d’Homère à la fin du V siècle avant J.C., Louvain: Peeters.
(2006). Le domaine de l’accusatif de relation. In E. Crespo et al. (Eds.). Word classes and related topics in Ancient Greek (pp. 59–68). Louvain: Peeters.
(2016). Entre tradition et modernité. Syntaktika 50, Numéro spécial: Hommage à Bernard Jacquinod, pp. 1–43.
Kemmerer, D. (2003). Why can you hit someone on the arm but not break someone on the arm? A neuropsychological investigation of the
English body-part possessor ascension. Journal of Neurolinguistics 16, 16–36.
König, E. & Haspelmath, M. (1997). Les constructions à possesseur externe dans les langues d’Europe, in J. Feuillet (Ed.). Actance et valence dans les langues de l’Europe. (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology/EUROTYP, 20- 2.) (pp. 525–606). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Kulikov, L. I. (1998). Passive, anticausative and classification of verbs: the case of Vedic. In L. Kulikov & H. Vater (Eds.). Typology of verbal categories: Papers presented to Vladimir Nedjalkov on the occasion of his 70th birthday (pp. 139–153). Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Lazzeroni, R. (2002a). Ruoli tematici e genere grammaticale. Un aspetto della morfosintassi Indoeuropea. Archivio Glottologico Italiano 87, 1, 3–19.
(2002b). Il nome greco del sogno e il neutro indoeuropeo. Archivio Glottologico Italiano 87, 2, 145–162.
Levin, B. (1993). English verb classes and alternations: A preliminary investigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Levin, B. & Rappaport Hovav, M. (1995). Unaccusativity. At the syntax/lexical semantics interface. Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press.
Lévy-Bruhl, L. (1916). L’expression de la possession dans les langues mélanesiénnes. Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique 19, 96–104.
Luraghi, S. (2003). On the meaning of prepositions and cases. The expression of semantic roles in Ancient Greek. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Malchukov, A., Haspelmath, M. & Comrie, B. (2010). Ditransitive constructions: A typological overview. In A. Malchukov, M. Haspelmath, & B. Comrie (Eds.). Studies in ditransitive constructions. A comparative handbook (pp. 1–64). Berlin / New York: Mouton De Gruyter.
Meillet, A. & Vendryes, J. (1927). Traité de grammaire comparée des langues classiques, Paris: Champion.
Mirto, I. & Rosen, C. (1994). Meronyms as predicates: An apparent ‘inalienable possession’ construction. Ithaca, N.Y: Ms. Cornell University.
Nichols, J. (1988). On alienable and inalienable possession. In W. Shipley (Ed.). In honor of Mary Haas (pp. 475–521). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Nichols, J. & Bickel, B. (2005). Possessive classification. In M. Haspelmath et al. (Eds.). The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) (pp. 242–245). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Perlmutter, D. & Postal, P. (1983). The Relational Succession Law. In D. Perlmutter (Ed.). Studies in Relational Grammar 1 (pp. 30–80). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Romagno, D. (2005). La codificazione degli attanti nel Mediterraneo romanzo: Accordo del participio e marcatura
dell’oggetto. Archivio Glottologico Italiano 90, 90–113.
(2006). Gradiente di transitività e codifica dell’oggetto. Dall’accusativo preposizionale al partitivo. Archivio Glottologico Italiano 91, 203–222.
(2007). Canonical and non-canonical marking of core arguments in European languages. A typological approach. In P. Ramat & E. Roma (Eds.). Europe and the Mediterranean as linguistic areas. Convergencies from a historical and typological perspective (pp. 289–315). Amsterdam / Philadelphia: Benjamins.
(2010). Anticausativi, passivi, riflessivi: considerazioni sul medio oppositivo. In I. Putzu, G. Paulis, G. F. Nieddu, & P. Cuzzolin (Eds.). La morfologia del greco fra tipologia e diacronia (pp. 430–441). Milano: FrancoAngeli.
(2014). The aorist in –ην in Homeric Greek: At the Morphosyntax/Semantics Interface. A thorough analysis of Iliad and
Odyssey. Archivio Glottologico Italiano 99, 155–186.
(2017). The accusative of respect in Ancient Greek: Animacy hierarchy, semantic roles and event type. Studi e Saggi Linguistici 55, 65–91.
Rosen, C. (1976).
Accusativus graecus: A relational analysis. In R. L. Brown et al. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 1976 Mid-America Linguistics Conference, pp. 285–295.
Silverstein, M. (1976). Hierarchy of features and ergativity. In R. M. W. Dixon (Ed.). Grammatical categories in Australian languages. (pp. 112–171). Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
Smyth, H. W. (1956). Greek Grammar (revised by Gordon M. Messing). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Andocides, On the Mysteries: Meidment, K. J. (1968). Andocides. Minor Attic Orators in two volumes 1, Antiphon Andocides, with an English translation by K. J. Maidment, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA and William Heinemann Ltd., London.
Aristophanes, Clouds: Hickie, W. J. (1853). Aristophanes. Clouds. The Comedies of Aristophanes, by William James Hickie, vol. I, Bohn’s Classical Library, London.
: Hall, F. W. & Geldart, W. M. (1907). Aristophanes Comoediae, ed. by F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart, vol. 2, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Demosthenes: Vince, C. A. & Vince, H. (1926). Demosthenes with an English translation by C. A. Vince and J. H. Vince, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA and William Heinemann Ltd. London.
Euripides, Medea: Kovacs, D. (1994).
Euripides, Vol. I, Cyclops, Alcestis, Medea
, edited and translated by David Kovacs, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Euripides, Suppliants: Oates, W. J. & O’Neill, E. (1938). Euripides. The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O’Neill, Jr. in two volumes. Vol. 1. The Suppliants, translated by E. P. Coleridge, Random House, New York.
Herodotus: Codley, A. D. (1920). Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Homer, Iliad: Murray, A. T. (1924). Homer. The Iliad with an English Translation, 2 volumes, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Homer, Odyssey: Di Benedetto, V. (2010). Omero, Odissea, a cura di Vincenzo Di Benedetto, traduzione di Vincenzo Di Benedetto e Pierangelo Fabrini, BUR, Rizzoli, Milano.
: Murray, A. T. (1919). Homer. The Odyssey with an English Translation, 2 volumes, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
IG, XIV = Inscriptiones Graecae Siciliae et Italiae, additis Galliae, Hispaniae, Britanniae, Germaniae
inscriptionibus, ed. by Georg Kaibel, Berlin, 1890.
Plato, Republic: Shorey, P. (1969). Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 and 6, translated by Paul Shorey, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA and William Heinemann Ltd., London.
Sophocles, Ajax: Jebb, R. (1893). Sophocles. The Ajax of Sophocles. Edited with introduction and notes, by Sir Richard Jebb, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus: Jebb, R. (1887). The Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles. Edited with introduction and notes by Sir Richard Jebb, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.