Dag T. T. Haug

Partial Dynamic Semantics for Anaphora: Compositionality without Syntactic Coindexation

This article points out problems in current dynamic treatments of anaphora and provides a new account that solves these by grafting Muskens’ Compositional Discourse Representation Theory onto a partial theory of types. Partiality is exploited to keep track of which discourse referents have been introduced in the text (thus avoiding the overwrite problem) and to account for cases of anaphoric failure. Another key assumption is that the set of discourse referents is well-ordered, so that we can keep track of the order in which they have been introduced, allowing a semantic characterization of anaphoric accessibility across stretches of discourse. Unlike other dynamic approaches, the system defines semantic values for unresolved anaphors. This leads to a clear separation of monotonic and non-monotonic content (in this case anaphoric resolution) and arguably provides a sound basis for a non-monotonic theory of anaphoric resolution.

Big events, small clauses : the grammar of elaboration

Non-finite clause-like structures such as converb and participial constructions, depictive adjectivals, absolute and comitative small clauses are important means of enriching the description of the event or situation conjured up by the main verb; but they have not been studied in depth from that perspective. The present book takes up that challenge. It throws new light on the interface between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and presents new empirical findings based on parallel corpora involving English, German, Norwegian, French, Russian, Latin, and Ancient Greek.

Breaking down and putting back together: analysis and synthesis of New Testament Greek

In this paper we first briefly describe the design of a corpus containing the Koine Greek original text of the New Testament and its translations in to Gothic, Latin, Old Church Slavic and Armenian. We then discuss extensively the annotation that we have applied in each layer of annotation: morphology and syntax, information structure, animacy, and token alignment. For each type of annotation we provide some preliminary results and applications that draw on it, often in combination with other layers of annotation.

On unaccented short vowels in Sabellian and the morphology of the Italic 2nd conjugation

The fate of the short Indo-European vowels in Sabellian is hard to follow. The extent of syncope in Common Sabellian1 and subsequent anaptyxis in Oscan often makes it unclear whether a vowel in an unstressed syllable directly reflects the inherited phoneme, or whether the original vowel was syncopated and a new anaptyctic vowel later inserted. For example, one might at first glimpse be tempted to interpret Oscan salavs ‘saluus’ < Proto-Italic *salowos as evidence for a derounding *o > *a; but on closer inspection, it is clear that the vowel a was generalized from the oblique cases where the middle vowel was regularly syncopated, followed by anaptyxis in the group -lw-: *salowom > *salwom > *salavúm, whence a new nominative salavs after the analogy of nom. húrz : acc. húrtúm; see Benediktsson 1960:255f. Furthermore, it seems that in Sabellian, recomposition (i.e. the leveling of compounds after the corresponding simple forms) was much more widespread than in Latin. Thus, a form like Umbrian amparitu (apparently a verbal stem parior parye/owith the preverb an-) does not prove that a was kept intact in unstressed syllables: rather, we would expect syncope, and the a must be due to the influence of the unattested simple verb. In view of such sifficulties, it is perhaps not surprising that most scholars adopt a ‘null-hypothesis’, namely that there was no vowel weakening in Sabellian – a vowel was either syncopated or kept unaltered, except for some examples of weakening in late Umbrian

The PROIEL treebank family: a standard for early attestations of Indo-European languages

This article describes a family of dependency treebanks of early attestations of Indo-European languages originating in the parallel treebank built by the members of the project pragmatic resources in old Indo-European languages. The treebanks all share a set of open-source software tools, including a web annotation interface, and a set of annotation schemes and guidelines developed especially for the project languages. The treebanks use an enriched dependency grammar scheme complemented by detailed morphological tags, which have proved sufficient to give detailed descriptions of these richly inflected languages, and which have been easy to adapt to new languages. We describe the tools and annotation schemes and discuss some challenges posed by the various languages that have been annotated. We also discuss problems with tokenisation, sentence division and lemmatisation, commonly encountered in ancient and mediaeval texts, and challenges associated with low levels of standardisation and ongoing morphological and syntactic change.

An Unexpected Root Clause

Finiteness is a central concept in many linguistic theories, yet it is poorly understood. In this squib, we provide new data that must be incorporated into current research on finiteness: the Latin infinitival structure known as the “accusative and infinitive” (AcI), which has properties that are typical of canonical nonfinite clauses, can be syntactically unembedded. It is clear that this is unexpected. A common view—found in one variant or another in Hornstein 1990:115–117, 146–154, Klein 1994, Rizzi 1997, Bianchi 2003, Adger 2007, and Giorgi 2010—is that finiteness is responsible for anchoring the clause to the actual utterance (e.g., for the interpretation of tense). Since a root clause must be temporally anchored to the utterance time, one would not expect nonfinite clauses to be root clauses. Finiteness has morphological, syntactic, and semantic dimensions, which do not always align. An example from Latin is clauses with historical infinitives, which are morphologically nonfinite but syntactically unembedded and semantically like finite forms in having deictic time reference and speaker assertion semantics. What makes AcIs different from these and similar structures is that they behave like nonfinite clauses both morphologically and semantically, yet are demonstrably syntactically unembedded in certain situations.

From the Editors: Fulfilling Our Mission?

With the publication of volume 13 of Journal of Greek Linguistics ( JGL) last fall, the journal completed its fifth year, spanning 2009–2013 and volumes 9–13, in our new instantiation under Brill Publishers. In switching to Brill from our previous publisher, we have opened up the journal in a couple of ways. The first is simply a matter of presentation, as we now appear in two issues a year, with a total of some 350 pages. This is not an insignificant change from volumes 1–8, which had only one issue per year and averaged 233 pages, for it means that more content focused on Greek linguistics can be provided in a given year. But more important is the second way in which we have opened up the journal, namely as to the specifics of that content. That is, JGLwas founded in 2000,with amission statement that said wewould “publish papers on any aspect of Greek Linguistics”, but we nonetheless expressed a preference for papers dealingwith “the more recent stages of the language, especially contemporary (Modern) Greek”. Starting with volume 9 (2009), in our new guise, we have explicitly welcomed papers pertaining to all eras of Greek, with no preference for one stage over another.1 That 2009 volume contained articles on Ancient Greek, without any overt looking ahead temporally towards related developments in later stages, as some of the articles in previous issues had, and now we have evenhada special thematic issuedevoted entirely toAncientGreekLinguistics, issue 12.1 (2012). Bywayof seeinghowwellwehavebeen fulfilling ourmission to cover the full chronological rangeof theGreek language,wehave taken stockofwhatwehave published over the past five years. All in all, looking just at research articles, i.e. our regular articles, the occasional short article, and one discussion note that was research oriented, there have been 47 items in the 9 issues from 2009 to 2013. Of those, 29.5 have been on Modern Greek, 16.5 on Ancient Greek, and one onMedieval Greek.2 Given that there aremore journal outlets for linguistic

Syntactic conditions on null arguments in the Indo-European Bible translations

In this paper I examine the use of null arguments in coordinated structures where both conjuncts have the same object. The data come from the Greek New Testament and its translations into old Indo-European languages. I conclude that in Greek, a null argument in the second conjunct is practically obligatory, both in cases of syntactic coordination and in cases of discourse coordination of syntactically subordinate participle clauses. The translation languages basically behave in the same way in licensing null arguments in coordinations, but tend to avoid discourse coordination of syntactic subordinates.

Les dialectes grecs chez Homère

Die griechischen Dialekte bei Homer Dieser Aufsatz untersucht die Besonderheiten der homerischen Sprache und den Gebrauch Homers der griechischen Dialekte. Ein Teil des Aufsatzes ist den methodologischen Problemen einer solchen Untersuchung gewidmet, und der andere Teil untersucht die Frage selbst, ivobei die Wichtigkeit des Aolischen innerhalb der epischen Sprache der Griechen unterstrichen wird.

The Proto-Hexameter Hypothesis: Perspectives for Further Research

Nils Bergs hypothesis of a proto-hexameter, being the combination of a glyconic and a pherecratean with variants, gives new perspectives for further research on the Homeric language. This paper discusses the metrical aspects of the proto-hexameter hypothesis, shows its explanatory force in questions concerning Homers artificial forms, and points out areas where further study is needed.