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In:Space in Diachrony
Edited by Silvia Luraghi, Tatiana Nikitina and Chiara Zanchi
[Studies in Language Companion Series 188] 2017
► pp. 119–146

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Differential Goal marking vs. differential Source marking in Ancient Greek

 | University of Pavia
Published online: 14 August 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.188.05lur
Differential marking of Goal and Source is a relatively underresearched topic. Available cross-linguistic evidence points toward two possible triggers of differential marking of spatial relations, that is, nouns that denote spatial regions and animate nouns. In this paper, differential Goal and differential Source marking are studied based on the evidence of a diachronic corpus, consisting of the Homeric poems and Herodotus’ Histories. In Homeric Greek, differential marking with nouns that denote spatial regions is available to a marginal extent for Goal, and unavailable for Source, while no differential marking occurs in Herodotus. Animacy conditioned differential marking is well attested both for Goal and for Source in Herodotus, but Homer offers evidence only for differential marking of Source. Apparently, Goal adpositions used for inanimate landmarks are also compatible with animates, while Source adpositions developed at an early stage animacy conditioned meanings that make them unsuitable for indicating simple concrete motion away from a human being.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Differential case marking
    • 2.1Differential marking of core arguments
    • 2.2Other types of DCM
  • 3.Differential marking of spatial relations in Ancient Greek
    • 3.1Nouns with spatial reference
    • 3.2Goal expressions with human landmarks in Homer
    • 3.3Source expressions with human landmarks in Homer
    • 3.4DCM in Herodotus
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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