Have any of you read the following article in the current issue of the Journal of Greek Linguistics? It sounds interesting, but it costs $30 to download. Is it worth the money?
Post a comment if you have read it.
Update to "A Comprehensive Bibliography of Hellenistic Greek Linguistics"
I have added Mike Aubrey’s thesis, The Greek perfect and the categorization of tense and aspect, to the bibliography at Greek-Language.com. When I finish reading it I’ll add some comments, but I wanted to go ahead and get it listed since it clearly meets the criteria for inclusion.
Ancient Greek Relative Clauses
In the latest volume of the Journal of Greek Linguistics (Volume 14), Stefanie Fauconnier has published an article on Ancient Greek relative clauses using data from Zenophon. She argues for a perspective that I have not encountered in work on the hellenistic period. Here is what her abstract says:
In this paper I argue that Ancient Greek has two distinct strategies for relative clause formation, corresponding to what is known in typology as externally and internally headed relative clauses. Furthermore, I explore two differences between these constructions. First, in comparison with their external counterparts, internal constructions are more restricted semantically. They can only be interpreted as restrictive relative clauses, while external constructions can also be interpreted as non-restrictive. Second, internal constructions are more restricted syntactically, given that they are not used when the domain nominal is subject in the relative clause. For external constructions there is no such syntactic restriction. Finally, I point out a number of convergences between internal relative clauses and noun phrases with an attributive participle. The findings presented in this paper are based on a study of Xenophon.
The journal requires a paid subscription to view online. If you do not have a subscription, but want to see an earlier version of Fauconnier’s research on this topic, you can take a look at the outline of a 2011 presentation she gave at the Pavia International Summer School for Indo-European Linguistics (University of Pavia, Italy). That outline shows some of the evidence she used and basic elements of her argument.
If you are aware of similar research on the hellenistic period, please let me know. I would like to have something in the bibliography here at Greek-Language.com on this topic. If nothing is available for the hellenistic period, I’ll add Fauconnier’s article.
The Representation of Speech Events in Chariton's Callirhoe and the Acts of the Apostles
I have just added Adrian Smith’s new book on Speech Events to the Comprehensive Bibliography of Hellenistic Greek Linguistics.
- Smith, Adrian T. The Representation of Speech Events in Charitons Callirhoe and the Acts of the Apostles. Linguistic Biblical Studies 9. Brill Academic Publishers, 2014.
Two things about this book caught my attention. First, it is—as far as I know—the first book-length treatment of speech events in Hellenistic Greek. Second, it deals with two texts, one from the Greek New Testament, and the other from Hellenistic Greek outside the Christian canon. This is something I have longed to see for some time. We need to push our analyses of the language beyond the confines of the literature of our faith. If Smith’s proposals hold true for both early Christian texts and texts from the wider Hellenistic literature, he will have accomplished something of real note.
More Additions to A Comprehensive Bibliography of Hellenistic Greek Linguistics
I have continued to update the bibliography today in a number of ways. There are now more that twice the number of works available for purchase through Amazon.com directly from the bibliography than before. There are also many more articles available either for purchase or for reading online without charge.
To distinguish between articles for a fee and those available without charge, I have devised a consistent convention for linking:
- For articles available for a fee, I have linked the title of the journal to the site where the fee must be paid.
- For articles available for reading without charge, I have linked the title of the article to the online text.
I have also added the following book:
- Lee, John A.L. A History of New Testament Lexicography. Studies in Biblical Greek. Peter Lang International Academic Publisher, 2003.
I eventually hope to connect all dissertations in the bibliography to University Microfilms for easy purchase, but I have not made much progress on this yet.
I hope you enjoy the improvements.
Additions to A Comprehensive Bibliography of Hellenistic Greek Linguistics
I have added the following items to the Comprehensive Bibliography of Hellenistic Greek Linguistics:
- Cirafesi, Wally V. “ἔχειν πίστιν in Hellenistic Greek and its Contribution to the πίστις Χριστοῦ Debate.” Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics. 1:5-38, 2012.
- Danove, Paul. “Features of the Conceptualization of Transference in the New Testament.” Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics. 2:5-28. 2014.
- Huffman, Douglas H. Verbal Aspect Theory and the Prohibitions in the Greek New Testament. 2nd Ed. Studies in Biblical Greek. Peter Lang, 2014.
- Runge, Steven E. Discourse Studies and Biblical Interpretation: A Festschrift in Honor of Stephen H. Levinsohn. Logos Research Systems, 2012.
Of course, this bibliography can never be truly comprehensive, contrary to what the title may imply, because the field is not static. As new works appear that fulfill the narrow criteria for inclusion, I add them to make the bibliography as comprehensive as possible.
If you know of works that you think should be included, please recommend them. You can use the “Bibliography” link in the main menu to do that. That link will take you to a page that explains what kinds of works are accepted, and gives you a form to make your recommendation easily.
I hope you enjoy the new additions.
The Change from SOV to SVO in Ancient Greek
I have added the following article by Ann Taylor to the bibliography at Greek-Language.com:
“The change from SOV to SVO in Ancient Greek.” Language Variation and Change. 6.1 (1994) 1-37.
While the order of major sentence constituents is quite free at every stage in the development of Ancient Greek, the distribution of those constituents is not random at any stage, and one particular constituent order can be shown to be dominant at each stage. Taylor argues that the dominant constituent order was verb-final (SOV) in Homer, but changed to verb-medial (SVO) by the Hellenistic period.
Using the paradigm of Kroch (1989), Taylor constructs two models—one for the verb-final grammar of the Homeric period (before 800 B.C.) and one for the verb-medial grammar of the Hellenistic Koiné (c. 100 A.D.). She describes the intervening period (Herodotus, c. 450 B.C.) as in part like Homer and in part like the Koiné. She shows further that the ratio of these two constituent orders in Herodotus is also supported by an independent measure of the distribution of weak pronouns and clitics.
Mark Janse on Hellenistic Greek
I have added eight works by Mark Janse to my Comprehensive Bibliography of Hellenistic Greek Linguistics. (Thanks to Mike Aubrey for providing the bibliographic information on six of them and a lead to the seventh.)
Dr. Janse is Research Professor in Asia Minor and Ancient Greek at Ghent University. He has written extensively about the history of Greek and related issues in Linguistics. The publications that I have added to the bibliography are ones that consciously apply a specific insight from Linguistics to the study of Greek from the Hellenistic period, or in one case from the Classical period where no similar work has yet been published for Hellinistic Greek.
Here are the items I added:
Janse, Mark. “Aspects of Bilingualism in the History of the Greek Language.” In: J.N. Adams, Mark Janse & Simon Swain (eds.), Bilingualism in Ancient Society. Language Contact and the Written Word. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, 332-390.
________. “The Distribution of the Enclitic Personal Pronouns in New Tetament Greek in the Light of the Septuagint and the Modern Greek Dialects of Asia Minor: A Structural-Functional Analysis.” PhD. dissertation: Ghent University, Department of Latin and Greek.
This dissertation is available from Dissertations Abstracts International 58 (1997) 776-C. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International.
________. “La phrase segmentée en grec ancien. Le témoignage des enclitiques.” Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 86.1 (1991) XIV-XVI. Paris: Klinck sieck.
________. “La position des pronoms presonnels enclitiques en grec neo-testamentaire a la lumiere des dialectes neo-helleniques. In C. Brixhe ed. La koine grecque antique I (1993), 83-121. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy.
________. “Phonological Aspects of Clisis in Ancient and Modern Greek.” Glotta 73 (1995-1996) 155-167. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
________. “The Prosodic Basis of Wackernagel’s Law.” In André Crochetière, Jean-Claude Boulanger & Conrad Ouellon (eds.), Les langues menacées. Actes du XVe Congrès international des linguistes, Québec, Université Laval, 9-14 août 1992. Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1993, Vol. 4, 19-22.
Originally presented as a paper at the 15th International Congress of Linguists, Quebec, August 9 to 14, 1992.
Creve, Sam, Mark Janse, and Kristoffel Demoen, “The Pauline Key Words πνεῦμα and σάρξ and their Translation.” Filología Neotestamentaria. Vol. 20 (2007), 15-31.
Mike Aubrey has himself done a good amount of work on Hellenistic Greek Clitics and reached similar conclusions. He has posted several discussions at ΕΝ ΕΦΕΣΩ.
Additions to Bibliography
Today I added three new books from Peter Lang’s “Studies in Biblical Greek” to my “Comprehensive Bibliography of Hellenistic Greek Linguistics.”
Verbal Aspect, the Indicative Mood, and Narrative: Soundings in the Greek of the New Testament (Studies in Biblical Greek) by Constantine R. Campbell (Paperback – Dec 30, 2007)
Verbal Aspect and Non-Indicative Verbs: Further Soundings in the Greek of the New Testament (Studies in Biblical Greek) by Constantine R. Campbell (Paperback – Jun 2008)
The Greek Imperative Mood in the New Testament: A Cognitive and Communicative Approach (Studies in Biblical Greek) by Joseph D. Fantin (Hardcover – Feb 15, 2010)
Bibliography at Greek-Language.com
My bibliography of Hellenistic Greek Linguistics has moved to a new location and taken on a much nicer look. I have also added a number of new items, and posted links to items available online.
The new address is
http://greek-language.com/Palmer-bibiography.html.