Search results for "Homeric Greek."

Spatio-temporal deixis and cognitive models in early Indo-European

2018

AbstractThis paper is a comparative study based on the linguistic evidence in Vedic Sanskrit and Homeric Greek, aimed at reconstructing the space-time cognitive models used in the Proto-Indo-European language in a diachronic perspective. While it has been widely recognized that ancient Indo-European languages construed earlier (and past) events as in front of later ones, as predicted in the Time-Reference-Point mapping, it is less clear how in the same languages the passage took place from this ‘archaic’ Time-RP model or non-deictic sequence, in which future events are behind or follow the past ones in a temporal sequence, to the more recent ‘post-archaic’ Ego-RP model that is found only fr…

Homeric Evidences of an Inherently Actional Opposition: ἔρχομαι vs ἦλθον

2020

The paper aims at analyzing the paradigmatic relationship between the verbs ἔρχομαι and ἦλθον in Homeric Greek. Both verbs convey the idea of going within a Homeric suppletive paradigm. Although suppletivism between ἔρχομαι, εἶμι, ἐλεύσομαι (future), ἦλθον (aorist), εἰλήλουθα (perfect) is generally accepted, there is still uncertainty on both etymology and semantic features involving inherent actionality, with particular reference to ἔρχομαι. Therefore, the actional status of ἔρχομαι and its relationship with ἦλθον need further investigation. A textual analysis of the Homeric occurrences of both ἔρχομαι and ἦλθον, focusing on the semantic-syntactic discourse context, has shed light on their…

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.

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…

STRATEGIE DI CODIFICA LINGUISTICA DEGLI EVENTI DI MOVIMENTO NEL GRECO OMERICO

INHERENT TELICITY AND PROTO- INDO-EUROPEAN VERBAL PARADIGMS

2016

In recent aspectual classi}cations telicity is described as a compositional syntactic property, and verbs are analyzed as complex structures made up of completely neutral roots. However, semantic changes due to both derivational processes and di‰erent syntactic contexts could have obscured the relationship between root lexical aspect and verb morphological paradigms. The purpose of this paper is to show that telicity can be considered as an inherent lexical property: the co-occurrence in a sentence with arguments, adverbials or speci}c pragmatic contexts which can (de)telicize the event described by a verb has consequences at syntactic level, whereas the prototypical aspect of the root is p…

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…

Lexical Aspect and Motion Event Encoding in Homeric Greek: A Case Study - poster

2017

Lexical Aspect and Motion Event Encoding in Homeric Greek: A Case Study This paper aims to investigate the role that lexical aspect (Aktionsart) plays in motion event encoding in Homeric Greek. In particular, the role of telicity as an inherent semantic property of the verb has been recently re-evaluated within the verbal system of early Indo-European languages (Bartolotta 2016). On the basis of textual analysis of the Iliad and the Odyssey, I will argue how Homeric Greek motion verbs appear to be compatible with the entailment of the arrival of the Figure to the Ground according to their inherent telicity (see Bartolotta forthcoming). Specifically, I will focus on the Homeric verbs for ̔ru…

Lexical aspect and motion event encoding in homeric greek: a case study

2017

This paper aims to investigate the role that lexical aspect (Aktionsart) plays in motion event encoding in Homeric Greek. In particular, the role of telicity as an inherent semantic property of the verb has been recently re-evaluated within the verbal system of early Indo-European languages (Bartolotta 2016). According to Talmy (1985; 2000), a translational motion event consists of an object (Figure) that moves (Motion) through a path (Path) with respect to another reference object (Ground).On the basis of textual analysis of the Iliad and the Odyssey, I will argue how Homeric Greek motion verbs turn out to be compatible with the entailment of the arrival of the Figure to the Ground accordi…

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…