Silvia Luraghi

On the meaning of prepositions and cases : the expression of semantic roles in ancient Greek

Prepositions and cases constitute a fruitful field of research for semantics. The historical development of their meaning can shed light on the relations among the semantic roles of participants and on the organization of conceptual space. Ancient Greek allows an in-depth study of such development. The book, based on a wide, diachronically ordered corpus, aims at providing a usage-based analysis of possible patterns of semantic extension, including the mapping of abstract domains onto the concrete domain of space. An analysis of the Greek data further highlights the interplay between specific spatial relations and the internal structure of the entities involved, and shows how case semantics may account for differences on the referential level, rather than merely express clause internal relations. The first chapter contains a typologically based discussion of semantic roles, which sets the language-specific analysis in a wider framework, showing its general relevance and applicability.

The origin of the Proto-Indo-European gender system: Typological considerations

Gender fulfills two different functions, i.e. nominal classification and crossreference of constituents through agreement. Besides the generally acknowledged possibility of a grammaticalization process that may lead classifiers to become gender markers, gender systems may also arise as a consequence of special agreement patterns connected with differential marking of core arguments. It is argued that different origins of gender systems imply higher relevance of either function of gender in individual languages, and that this may have consequences on the values of gender within specific gender systems.

Syncretism and the classification of semantic roles

The paper is devoted lO the relations among semantic roles. As a tool to understand which roles are cognitively close to each other instances of syncretism are described [rom languages belonging to different families. Special at tention is paid lo unattested or infrequent types of syncretism. Ilis suggested that semantic factors inherent in the prototypes of each sernantic role interact with syntactic factors and with lexical features. As a conclusion a mental rnap that relates sernantic functions with each other is tentatively drawn.

The extension of the transitive construction in Ancient Greek

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 that do not take the accusative, but rather the genitive or the dative, also occur in personal passive constructions; the extent to which such verbs can passivize was limited in Homer, but increased in later prose, showing that they were being reanalysed 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 that originally took the dative or the genitive acquired its behaviour (passivization) before overt coding.

The Spatial Meaning of διά with the Accusative in Homeric Greek

Abstract The semantic difference between spatial usages of διά with the accusative and with the genitive in Homeric Greek is not clearly described in reference works. The available literature leaves readers the feeling that there is wide overlap between the two cases, possibly to be explained through metrical factors. This paper is an attempt to shed light on the issue, through a careful scrutiny of all passages in which the preposition occurs. It turns out that, if the analysis is extended to a large enough context, semantic motivations for the occurrence of either case can be detected, which lead to a distinction between the genitive on the one hand, and the non-directional and directional accusative on the other. While the genitive occurs in passages in which a unidirectional path or a simple location are indicated, the non-directional accusative indicates multidirectional path or multiple location. Finally, the directional accusative indicates that an entity is crossed over. The semantic description makes use of concepts and terminology common in cognitive grammar.

Partitive cases and related categories

Argument-marking, morphological partitives have been the topic of language specific studies, while no cross-linguistic or typological analyses have been conducted. Since individual partitives of different languages have been studied, there exists a basis for a more cross-linguistic approach. The purpose of this book is to fill the gap and to bring together research on partitives in different languages.

Prepositions in Cause expressions

Summary Several prepositions can denote Cause in Latin. They all have a basic spatial meaning from which the causal meaning is derived through different metaphors. Their usage and distribution varies among authors and through time. Related semantic roles, such as Beneficiary and Purpose, can be expressed to varying extents by the same prepositions that express Cause. In Late Latin Cause and Beneficiary (and later Purpose) merged completely, a development which is still partly visible in the Romance languages. It is argued that merger of these semantic roles is favored by the fact that the prepositions involved expressed some sort of static Location as their original local meaning, and did not denote directionality.

The dative of agent in Indo-European languages

Abstract The paper discusses various constructions of ancient Indo-European languages that have been described as featuring a dative of agent. The occurrence of the dative can be explained either through its beneficiary meaning, or as indicating an experiencer. In fact, a number of passages that have been taken as evidence for the reconstruction of a dative of agent do not contain agent phrases at all. Thus, while different constructions have parallels in two or more ancient languages, it is impossible to reconstruct a dative of agent as a unified category for PIE, except in the case of nominal verb forms denoting obligation.

Definite referential null objects in Vedic Sanskrit and Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek and Early Vedic are pro-drop languages which allow for referential null objects. In this paper we give an overview of the various conditions under which null objects are licensed and compare their use in both languages. In Greek and Vedic null objects occur frequently in conjuncts, be it clauses or sentences. They are also attested with participles embedded into finite sentences. A third type is the syntactically unrestricted discourse conditioned null object, which is typically an anaphora. In Vedic, however, it can also be used cataphorically and with extratextual reference.

The mapping of space onto the domain of benefaction and some unpredicted trends in semantic change

Abstract Morphemes that encode the semantic role of Beneficiary display complex patterns of polysemy. Such patterns have arisen through diachronic processes which are for the most part still unexplored. In the paper I discuss common assumptions about the directionality of semantic extension and about expected and unexpected polysemies. I show that, next to the often mentioned polysemy of Beneficiary, Recipient, Purpose and Direction, another frequent pattern includes Beneficiary, Purpose and Cause. Morphemes that exhibit such polysemy have original spatial meanings which include Location or Path, but not Direction. Notably, such original spatial meanings have been dropped in the course of semantic developments described in the paper. After discussing some well-attested diachronic developments, I show that, at least in the languages of Europe, markers of Beneficiary, Purpose, and Cause underwent an unpredicted semantic extension that led them to also indicate Direction. Such extension provides evidence for a rare development that has led a concrete spatial concept to be denoted by a morpheme that had an abstract meaning.