Search results for "Homeric Greek"

Going in Homer: The Role of Verb-Inherent Actionality Within Self-Propelled Motion-Event Encoding

2019

The paper aims at investigating the encoding of self-propelled motion events in Homeric Greek in the light of the typology of motion events, taking into account the case of to go. The verbal class of the self-propelled motion refers to those verbs expressing the idea of a simple translational motion, such as to go, to move, without any information about the manner of motion (see, by contrast, the class of the manner-of-motion verbs, such as to run, to swim) or about the path of motion (see, by contrast, the class of the path verbs, such as to enter, to exit). According to Talmy (2000), world languages can be distinguished depending on whether they prototypically express the semantic compone…

STRATEGIE DI CODIFICA LINGUISTICA DEGLI EVENTI DI MOVIMENTO NEL GRECO OMERICO

The Homeric compound Ὑπερίων and the sun in the Indo-European culture

2017

This paper aims at reconstructing the semantic meaning of Homeric Ὑπερίων, the epithet of the sun, whose etymology is still not clear. After presenting the modern interpretations, which describe it as an adjective in the comparative form derived from the adverbial particle ὑπέρ ‘up, above’, the ancient grammarians’ hypothesis on Ὑπερίων as a compound is tested, taking into consideration the textual analysis of those discourse contexts in which the terms for sun are used in archaic Greek and Vedic Sanskrit in comparative perspective. In particular, the co-occurrence with the motion verb go, i.e. εἶμι and i from the same IE root *h1ey-, in the Homeric poems and in the Rigveda respectively, mi…

Reaching an Endpoint: Verbal Root Telicity and Motion Event Encoding in Homeric Greek

2020

Έχοντας ως βάση το θεωρητικό πλαίσιο του Talmy (Talmy 1985, 2000), το παρόν άρθρο στοχεύει στο να φωτίσει την κωδικοποίηση γεγονότων μεταφορικής κίνησης στα Ομηρικά ελληνικά, δείχνοντας το ρόλο που διαδραματίζει η λεξική όψη (Aktionsart), κυρίωςτο τέλειο ποιόν ενεργείας, ως εγγενές σημασιολογικό χαρακτηριστικό αναφερόμενο στη λεξική ρίζα. Αυτή η μελέτη, βασιζόμενη σε μία κειμενική ανάλυση της Ιλιάδας και της Οδύσσειας, εξετάζει το πώς τα ρήματα κινήσεως στα Ομηρικά ελληνικά μπορούν να συνεπάγονται την άφιξη του Figure (δηλαδή του κινούμενου αντικειμένου) στο Ground (δηλαδή στο αντικείμενο αναφοράς) ανάλογα με την τέλεια λεξική όψη. Συγκεκριμένα, η ανάλυση λαμβάνει υπόψη τα ομηρικά ρήματα γι…

Towards a Reconstruction of Indo-European Culture: Semantic Functions of IE *men-

2003

The aim of this paper is to recover the semantic values involved in IE *men- in order to reconstruct some cognitive process modalities in regard to "Indo-European ideology" (Campanile 1992). After focusing on the apparent semantic split noticeable between Homeric Greek and Vedic in the uses derived from *men-, I argue for the presence of striking parallel paths using the methods of textual comparison. Then, the role of lexical nucleus' polysemy in originating the linguistic change is highlighted, without disregarding an Indo-European typological perspective within the realm of the so-called "basic lexicon" to which the root at issue belongs.

Sulle origini della ‘telicità’: κίνησις ed ἐνέργεια in Aristotele

2014

Nell’ambito della classificazione aspettuale dei verbi un ruolo particolare riveste la distinzione del tratto telico-atelico, alla base della tradizionale suddivisione tra le classi vendleriane rispettivamente di accomplishment e achievement da una parte e states e activities dall’altra. Nonostante la rilevanza di tale tratto nella riflessione linguistica contemporanea, a tutt’oggi gli studiosi non condividono una definizione univoca della telicità, soprattutto perché dietro ad ogni definizione si nasconde una diversa prospettiva teorica. Scopo del presente lavoro è un’analisi dell’origine del termine nella teoria linguistica, che è solita ricondurre la distinzione del tratto telico-atelico…

Spatial representations of future in Homeric Greek

2015

The aim of this paper is to investigate the space-time mapping of the future in Homeric Greek. It is widely accepted that the spatial adverbs πρόσσω ‘in front’ and ὀπίσσω ‘behind’ in the Homeric poems are used to portray temporal events located in a sequence of aligned entities that follow one after the other on the same path (Dunkel, 1983, p. 66). In such a temporal sequence, or Time-rp model, those adverbs are associated respectively to past and future events in a bipartite spatial representation of time, without involving a deictic ego-experiencer. After analyzing data from the Homeric poems in a cognitive linguistic perspective, it is found that some temporal uses of the preposition πρό…

Spatial Cognition and Frames of Reference in Indo-European

2022

The development of Frames of Reference (FoRs) as coordinate systems in space language has gained increasing attention in current linguistic, neurolinguistic, and psycholinguistic research (Diessel 2013: 687; Kemmerer 2010). Previous studies on typology of spatial expressions have traditionally been based on the universal status of the egocentric or relative FoR found in the Indo- European languages, in which the relation between Figure and Ground is specified by the deictic observer’s viewpoint (Mühlhäusler 2001). However, there is growing crosslinguistic evidence that many non-Indo-European languages do not make use of such deictic or ternary FoR, but interpret spatial relations by referri…

From Thinking to Raging: Reflexes of Indo-European *men- Polysemy in Homer

2020

This paper aims at investigating the semantic value of the verb μαίνομαι “to rage, to be furious” in Homeric Greek, in order to clarify the striking semantic relationship between the common ‘irrational’ meaning of the verb and the original ‘rational’ meaning of the Indo-European root *men- “to think”, to which the verb traces back. The corresponding words for μαίνομαι in other Indo-European languages (e.g. OInd. mányatē; Av. mainyeite; OIr. (do)moiniur; OCS mъnjo; Lit. miniu) can be translated as “to think”, thus showing an opposite meaning. From a textual analysis of all the occurrences of μαίνομαι in the Iliad and the Odyssey, the study aims at finding semantic traces of the original mean…

Sul suppletivismo verbale in Omero: l’apporto della prospettiva tipologica talmiana

2020

This paper aims at investigating the partially uncertain relationship on which the suppletion of the Homeric verbal forms within the paradigm for ‘go’ is based. For this purpose, the Homeric distribution of some motion verbs for ‘go’, as well as their contexts of use, are taken into account. In the light of Talmy’s theoretical framework of the lexicalization patterns, the analysis focuses on the motion events expressed by ἔρχομαι and ἦλϑον (fut. ἐλεύσομαι, pf. εἰλήλουϑα) and their cooccurring spatial elements, i.e. particles, adverbs, nominal case markers, which encode the path followed by the moving object. Building on telicity as a verb-inherent actional feature (i.e. Lexical Aspect), and…