Author: Micheal Palmer

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The Lattice of Case and Agentivity, by Scott Grimm

I just finished reading the first chapter of Scott Grimm’s masters thesis, “The Lattice of Case and Agentivity,” and I’m looking forward to the rest of it!

Grimm shows a very clear grasp of the issues at stake and the limitations of several current linguistic theories. While recognizing the contributions of advances in both syntax and semantics in clarifying our understanding of Case in a number of languages, he also gives a concise presentation of the questions remaining to be answered—mainly the relationship of the oblique cases to syntax and semantics. If his analysis in the remaining chapters is equally lucid, we will have much to gain from reading it.

While it is not his primary objective to resolve the issue of case attraction in Hellenistic Greek, he does address it and propose a new way of understanding the phenomenon. I have not yet read that part, but I’m looking forward to it!

You can download the entire thesis for free.

You can also download his more recent article, “Case Attraction in Ancient Greek.” I’ll start reading that too soon!

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Lesson 21: More on the Aorist Middle and Passive

I have added lesson 21 (Aorist Middle/Passive) to the online grammar. Because I am working late at night—rushing to get it up and running before I go back to work tomorrow—I’m sure there will be a few typographical errors that I will need to correct over the next few days. Still, I thought it would be best to get the text “out there” so you can have a look at it and give my any feedback you would like.

As I have done with other lessons recently, I have uploaded it without the automated practice exercises. I will get to those soon (I hope!).

Lesson 21: Verbs: More on the Aorist Middle and Passive

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Progress on Lesson 21 (Aorist Middle/Passive)

I spent some very good time this morning at a coffee shop working on lesson 21. I’m writing the Reading and Translation section now. I’m working against the clock since I have to go back to work on Monday, and I’ll be out of town a good part of the weekend. As soon as I finish the lesson I’ll post a notice here.

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Dissertation: Infinitival Clauses in Ancient Greek

Here’s another dissertation with clear application of a specific brand of Linguistics to Ancient Greek. Reading it requires some knowledge of generative linguistic theory.

Sevdali, Christina. “Infinitival Clauses in Ancient Greek: Overt and null subjects, the role of Case and Focus.” Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University , Department of Linguistics, 2007.

You can read the abstract here.

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Hellenistic Greek Accent and Optimality Theory

While we’re on the topic of Optimality Theory (see “Case Attraction in Ancient Greek“), I thought you might like to know about Philomen Probert’s article on Hellenistic Greek Accents that appeared in April of this year. It’s available as a PDF download. The article discusses the way Generative Phonology and Optimality Theory handle accent, and uses Hellenistic Greek as a test case to critique and challenge those theories.

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Lesson 20: The Middle Voice, The Aorist Middle

Well… After a very long wait, I’ve finally uploaded my lesson on the Aorist Middle. As I have done with a few other lessons, I’ve uploaded it without the automated practice exercises. I hope to finish those over the next few days. For now, I’d love to have your reaction to the discussion and the particular examples I’ve chosen.

Feel free to criticize, suggest revisions, etc.

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Case Attraction in Ancient Greek

Have any of you read Scott Grimm’s 2007 article, “Case Attraction in Ancient Greek”? (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2007, Volume 4363/2007, 139-153.)

The abstract looks very interesting. You can purchase online access for $25, but I’m not sure what a hard copy costs.

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I'll be back on Sunday

I’ll be out of reach of computers tomorrow (Saturday, October 2), but I’ll be back on Sunday.

I’ve made major headway on the lesson on the Aorist Middle. I hope to have that up and running in a few more days. I’m working on the exercises now.