Pragmatics in ancient Greek

Anyone interested in the colometry or “inner metrics” of the Homeric hexameter is confronted with a wide variety of different approaches, favouring two-, three- or four-colon verses or any combination of these. This article builds on Egbert Bakker’s interpretation of Homeric discourse as a succession of intonation / information units (IUs). Its aim is to provide more secure cognitive-linguistic criteria for determining caesura positions and the resulting cola / IUs.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the construction of concessive participles introduced by kaì taûta in Ancient Greek as an instance of epitaxis, a specific type of coordination. This construction will be differentiated from the concessive participles introduced by adverbial kaí, the usual construction, by its syntactic configuration and pragmatics. The data is drawn from the works of Xenophon of Athens (c. 430–354bc). Keywords concessive participles – coordination – information structure – additive particles – epitaxis – tail (pragmatic function) – stripping

Este trabajo analiza las situaciones de contacto físico en los actos de habla directivos en los que se ven involucrados los términos χείρ y γόνυ. el análisis de estas situaciones en Homero permite, por una parte, establecer la relación entre los actos comunicativos verbales y la gestualidad con manos y rodillas y, por otra, precisar cómo y en qué condiciones se desarrolla este contacto físico. Por último, se determinará con qué actos de habla se vincula el contacto con cada término y cuál es su papel desde la perspectiva de la cortesía y la descortesía.

This paper examines physical contact on directive speech acts involving the terms χείρ and γόνυ. the analysis of these situations in the Homeric corpus allows not only to establish the relationship between communicative verbal acts and hand and knee gestures, but also to specify the conditions for this physical contact. Finally, we shall determine to which speech acts χείρ and γόνυ contact is associated and which is their role from the perspective of politeness and impoliteness.

Anyone interested in the colometry or “inner metrics” of the Homeric hexameter is confronted with a wide variety of different approaches, favouring two-, three- or four-colon verses or any combination of these. This article builds on Egbert Bakker’s interpretation of Homeric discourse as a succesion of intonation / information units (IUs). Its aim is to provide more secure cognitive-linguistic criteria for determining caesura positions and the resulting cola / IUs.

This paper provides the first systematic investigation of the role of insubordination, the diachronic conventionalization of formally subordinate clauses as main clauses, in the syntax and semantics of the Ancient Greek sentence. Since diachronic studies are still a desideratum, this paper details the insubordination of if- and that-clauses from Archaic to Post-Classical Greek. Firstly, a principled diachronic analysis of the insubordination of various if-wishes (with ϵἰ, ϵἰ/αἲ γάρ and ϵἴθϵ/αἴθϵ (γάρ)) and that-wishes (with ὡς and ἵνα) is performed using both functional (discursive vs syntactic independence) and formal criteria (vocatives, particles, sentence complexity, mood extensions) in order to determine their relative degree of conventionalization of the main clause use. Subsequently, insubordinate directive, assertive and evaluative constructions (with ϵἰ, ἐάν, ὅπως and ἵνα) from Archaic, Classical and Post-Classical Greek are analysed before presenting a diachronic constructional typology of insubordination and suggestions for future avenues of research.

The aim of this paper is to describe so-called Substitution clauses in Ancient Greek, from semantic and syntactic perspectives, within the theoretical framework of Functional Grammar as proposed by Dik and the layered structure of the clause as defined by Hengeveld. More specifically, this work includes a study of the type of entity designated by these clauses, their degree of Nominalization, their expression of non-factual State of Affairs and the position in which Substitution clauses are embedded in the main clause. Finally, a pragmatic approach is made, since these clauses introduce Focus.

We try in this essay to create the basis for a method of stylistic analysis aiming to recreate the micro-poetics of literary prose. The analyses being here conducted on the cola of a few Thucydidean periods and their transposition in Plutarch's Life of Themistocles offer its first results. Since the way to organize the placement of the verb and its arguments in relation to each other inside the members is mostly a matter of language, it is not so different from one author to the other despite of the complexity of Plutarch's period ; but the identification of metric clausulae and rhythmic formulae, sometimes recurring as echoes, and even as the so-called ostinato by Plutarch, is a proof of the importance of rhythmic concern for both of these authors. The pragmatic efficiency that rules over communication regulates, yes, the distribution of informations and organizes the speech framework. But its micro-structuration is stylistic: expressive salience and rhythmic aesthetics have been sought at members and period levels, and are closely connected to each other by Thucydides and even more by Plutarch. There is thus strong evidence that the ‘scabreuse asperité’ which made Plutarch's writing so difficult in the eyes of his translator Amyot would be related to Gr. ‘τὸ τραχύ’, a rhetoric term which mainly specifies the ‘austere harmony’ as being made of strong placements of words and spacing between them. Both authors practice the dangerous hyperbaton, but meaning and strength may almost get lost by Plutach, when he practices it so systematically that he interlaces words sometimes even from a member to the other. Particularly at this time the dactylo-trochaïc cadence gives way to the hymnic creto-peonic rhythm, which enhances the meaning to the point of taking precedence over it: prose becomes thus poetic. The harmony of such effects proves that written composition was then based on declamation.

The “deponent” verb ἀποκρίνομαι is a “speech orienter” and typically glossed “I answer.” It occurs 231 times (NA28) in the Gospels and Acts as well as in Col 4:6 and Rev 7:13. Of these instances, the verb occurs mostly in the aorist –θη (“passive”) formation two-hundred thirteen times and, of these instances, one-hundred and three times as a circumstantial participle (often ἀποκριθείς); it also occurs in the aorist middle seven times, the future passive three times, and the present middle/passive eight times. I will use the terms “middle” and “passive” in regards to the Aorist voice for the sake of differentiating the forms even though it has become clear that the so-called passive formation with θη- is a later form that begins to supplant and encompass middle voice senses even in the NT era, notwithstanding semantic senses may be entailed in the differing forms. Problematically, however, twenty-five times the aorist passive of ἀποκρίνομαι is not translated in the NASB (usually a word-for-word “literal” translation). The NIV2011 and NRSV follow suit in all but six instances. This failure to translate is especially frequent after non-speech circumstances or when ἀποκρίνομαι is seemingly redundant.  Conversely, the aorist middle forms are always translated. One wonders whether the middle formation of ἀποκρίνομαι functions differently than the passive θη- formation. Behind this, I would suggest are two related problems––first, a lexical semantic problem in that we have not understood properly a distinction between the aorist passive and aorist middle voice forms, and second, a pragmatic problem concerning the discourse function of ἀποκρίνομαι. The purpose of my paper, then, is to investigate the semantics and pragmatics of ἀποκρίνομαι in the GNT.

El artículo pretende estudiar el comportamiento lingüístico de los vocativos en griego antiguo, atendiendo a tres parámetros diferenciados: el estructural, el posicional y el funcional. Para ello, asume los principios de la Gramática de Parentéticos que enuncian Kaltenböck et al. (2011) y los aplica al texto de la tragedia Medea. Asimismo, indaga en el impacto que causa, a efectos de caracterización lingüística y literaria, la profusión o ausencia de vocativos, la estructura interna de estos y el contraste entre diferentes parlamentos y personajes.