Paradigmaticity involves obligatoriness. In the case of diathesis, if a language has an active/ passive opposition, the possibility for a verb to display it depends on a semantic property of the verb, i.e. transitivity. In Ancient Greek, several verbs which do not take the accusative, but rather the genitive or the dative, also occur in personal passive constructions; the extent to which such may passivize was limited in Homer, but increased in later prose, showing that they were being reanalyzed as transitive. Only in the Byzantine period was accusative coding also extended to this group of verbs, through actualization of the preceding reanalysis. Thus, while acquiring the features of the transitive construction, verbs which originally took the dative or the genitive acquired its behavior (passivization) before overt coding.
The extension of the passive construction in Ancient Greek.
LURAGHI, SILVIA
2010-01-01
Abstract
Paradigmaticity involves obligatoriness. In the case of diathesis, if a language has an active/ passive opposition, the possibility for a verb to display it depends on a semantic property of the verb, i.e. transitivity. In Ancient Greek, several verbs which do not take the accusative, but rather the genitive or the dative, also occur in personal passive constructions; the extent to which such may passivize was limited in Homer, but increased in later prose, showing that they were being reanalyzed as transitive. Only in the Byzantine period was accusative coding also extended to this group of verbs, through actualization of the preceding reanalysis. Thus, while acquiring the features of the transitive construction, verbs which originally took the dative or the genitive acquired its behavior (passivization) before overt coding.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
