In:Pragmatic Approaches to Latin and Ancient Greek
Edited by Camille Denizot and Olga Spevak
[Studies in Language Companion Series 190] 2017
► pp. 137–158
Chapter 7The right periphery in Ancient Greek
Published online: 1 November 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.190.07rui
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.190.07rui
Abstract
The paper focuses on the pragmatic functions of elements appearing in the right periphery of the sentence in Ancient Greek. It presents a tentative approach based on a study of Polybius, books 1–5. The second section of the paper centres on the problems related to the concept of right periphery. The syntactic structures which appear in this position are considered in the third section. Section 4 analyses the functions fulfilled by the right periphery elements found in the corpus: (1) they provide clarification of topics; (2) they tend to introduce additional information that is especially salient for the following discourse; (3) in the epitactic pattern, they introduce an additional focus; (4) they have a comment function, expressing the author’s stance.
Keywords: right periphery, Ancient Greek, Polybius, pragmatic function
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The concept of right periphery (RP)
- 2.1Identification of RPE
- 3.Analysis of the constructions at the right periphery
-
3.1Appositions
- 3.1.1Full apposition and partial apposition
- 3.1.2Apposition markers
- 3.1.3Appositions and RPE
- 3.2Conjunct participles
- 3.3Absolute participles
- 3.4Relative clauses
- 3.5Epitactic constructions
-
3.1Appositions
- 4.Towards an overview of pragmatic functions of the RP
- 4.1Repair topic function
- 4.2Introducing additional information
- 4.3Comment function
- 4.4Focalising
- 5.Conclusion
Notes References
References (40)
Acuña-Fariña, Juan Carlos. 2006. A constructional network in appositive space. Cognitive Linguistics 17(1): 1–37.
Allan, Rutger J. 2012. Clause intertwining and word order in Ancient Greek. Journal of Greek Linguistics 1: 5–28.
Averintseva-Klisch, Maria. 2008. To the right of the clause: Right dislocation vs. Afterthought. In Subordination versus Coordination in Sentence and Text: A Cross-linguistic Perspective [Studies in Language Companion Series 98], Cathrine Fabricius-Hansen & Wiebke Ramm (eds), 217–40. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bakker, Egbert. 1992. Homeric discourse and enjambment. Transactions of the American Philological Association 210: 1–21.
Beeching, Kate & Detges, Ulrich. 2014. Discourse Functions at the Left and Right Periphery. Leiden: Brill.
Bertrand, Nicolas. 2014. Apposition. In EAGLL, Vol. 1, Georgios K. Giannakis (ed.), 143–7 Leiden: Brill.
Cabrillana, Concepción. 2009. Nominativo y vocativo. In Sintaxis del latín clásico, José Miguel Baños (ed.), 111–30. Madrid: Liceus.
Dik, Helma. 1995. Word Order in Ancient Greek: A Pragmatic Account of Word Order Variation in Herodotus. Amsterdam: Gieben.
Fuentes, Catalina. 2012. El margen derecho del enunciado. Revista Española de Lingüística 42: 63–93.
Hackstein, Olav. 2010. Apposition and Nominal Classification. Wien: Austrian Academy of Science Press.
Hannay, Mike & Keizer, Evelien. 2005. A discourse treatment of English non-restrictive nominal appositions in Functional Discourse Grammar. In Studies in Functional Discourse Grammar, J. Lachlan Mackenzie & María de los Ángeles Gómez González (eds), 159–94. Bern: Peter Lang.
Haselow, Alexander. 2013. Arguing for a wide conception of grammar: The case of final particles in spoken discourse. Folia Linguistica 47(2): 375–424.
Heringa, Hermanus. 2012. Appositional Constructions. PhD dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. (Utrecht: LOT).
Huddleston, Rodney & Pullum, Geoffrey K. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: CUP.
Koch, Peter & Oesterreicher, Wulf. 2011. Gesprochene Sprache in der Romania. Französisch, Italienisch, Spanisch [Romanistische Arbeitshefte 31]. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Koktová, Eva. 1986. Apposition as a Pragmatic Phenomenon in a Functional Description. Duisburg: Linguistic Agency University of Duisburg.
Kühner, Raphael & Gerth, Bernhard. 1898–1904. Ausfürliche Grammatik der griechische Sprache II, 1. Hannover: Hahn.
Longrée, Dominique. 1996. La phrase à rallonge chez Tacite. In Aspects of Latin. Papers from the Seventh International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics, Hannah Rosén (ed.), 483–96. Innsbruck: Innsbucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft.
. 2007. Les appositions de phrase chez les historiens latins. In Éléments asyntaxiques ou hors structure dans l’énoncé latin, Colette Bodelot (ed.), 233–47. Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal.
Loock, Rudy. 2010. Appositive Relative Clauses in English [Studies in Discourse and Grammar 22]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Matić, Dejan. 2003. Topic, focus, and discourse structure: Ancient Greek word order. Studies in Language 27(3): 573–633.
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
