The verb aréskein in Ancient Greek: constructions and semantic change

The paper discusses the diachrony of the semantics and syntax of the verb ἀρέσκειν aréskein. This verb means ‘repair, make amend, appease, please’ in Homeric Greek, in which it mostly features the aorist stem, and always indicates an inchoative situation. In Homer, it takes an argument structure construction that contains a human first participant encoded in the nominative, and possibly a human second participant encoded in the accusative. Co-occurring dative constituents had inanimate referents and encoded the semantic role of instrument. A single occurrence from Hesiod shows an alternative construction with a partitive genitive in the place of the instrumental dative, which conforms to the construction of verbs of satiation. In Herodotus a new construction appears with a human participant encoded in the dative. The verb ἀρέσκειν aréskein occurs most frequently in the present stem, hence indicating a state. The dative constituent encodes an experiencer and qualifies as first argument in the construction, based on semantic and pragmatic evidence. In such construction the stimulus is generally encoded in the nominative and agrees with the verb, but impersonal occurrences with no nominative constituents are also attested. Attic prose writers feature two constructions containing either a dative or an accusative experiencer accompanied by a nominative stimulus. Both the dative and the accusative experiencers qualify as first argument in most cases. Beside the rise of new argument structure constructions, the verb ἀρέσκειν aréskein also undergoes a semantic change and shifts to the domain of experience. This shift was at its onset in Homeric Greek, in which most occurrences had the meaning ‘repair’, ‘make amend’, that did not refer to an experiential situation. This is also shown by the different distribution of aspectual stems in Homer (mostly aorist; no present occurrences) and Herodotus (mostly present).