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This introductory chapter discusses the subject matter of this book, namely, word formation in Ancient Greek. The study will look at the morphological and semantic characteristics of the s-stem formations. As a result of this investigation, a number of traditional views will be challenged. In particular, it will emerge that the conventional notion of ‘Caland's Law’ is inadequate, at least for Greek and quite possibly for the parent language as well. It is also shown that these morphological and semantic characteristics of the individual types and their historical development can be defined more closely.

This chapter begins with a brief account of variation in language use in Greek in the late 18th century. Then the chief participants in the language controversy during this period are introduced, and their arguments concerning the language question are discussed. First, the archaists (those who argued that the ancient language was the only variety of Greek appropriate for writing on philosophy), beginning with Evgenios Voulgaris, who can be said to have initiated the language controversy in 1766 by attacking those who wrote on philosophy in ‘vulgar language’; then the compromisers such as Moisiodax, who argued for the use of a variety based on the spoken language, but with a large number of concessions made to Ancient Greek in both vocabulary and morphology; and lastly the vernacularists, who argued for the use of an uncompromising version of the spoken language for written purposes.

This chapter provides a brief account of developments in the Greek language question since 1976, when the struggle between katharevousa and demotic has been superseded by the debate as to whether Ancient Greek should be taught as a compulsory subject to all Greek schoolchildren with the intention of boosting their national identity and improving their use of Modern Greek. Then some of the practical linguistic consequences of the learned/popular distinction are surveyed, and finally some thoughts are expressed about attitudes to language and national identity in Greece today.

This chapter surveys a set of levelings and extensions affecting verb paradigms in two languages: English and Ancient Greek. It shows that pure leveling does not exist and that the emergence of paradigm uniformity is always the imposition of an existing (uniform) pattern on a non-uniform paradigm. It identifies a systematic difference between English and Ancient Greek in the directionality of paradigmatic changes. In English (and other languages), present-tense verb forms influence preterites; in Ancient Greek, presents are influenced by non-presents (aorists). This finding is not readily accommodated by theories invoking frequency or form predictability as the major factors influencing paradigmatic directionality, and a more complex theory is needed that also takes account of the semantics of morphological categories.

This chapter looks at Ancient Greek texts as a foil for Ancient Egyptian literature. Scholars who work on cultural products of premodern societies will always be faced with the question whether, by using modern terminology, they are unconsciously importing anachronistic and thus inappropriate concepts into their research. The word ‘literature’ implies literacy, but it is an open question whether the fundamental qualities of writing can reside in texts which have been produced and received as written and read texts. The chapter argues that the awareness of the special quality of literary texts can indeed be found in the earliest Greek texts. It compares the ways in which speaker and addressee are constructed in early oral poetry (such as lyrics and epic) and early written texts (such as epigrams) and argues that there is no clear-cut boundary between the two modes.

Classic sound change begins in phonetic environments but rapidly gives way to more abstract (phonological, morphological, etc.) conditioning. Extension to broader contexts can initially yield complication but ultimately allow for greater regularity in a different domain. This chapter treats a specific type of denaturalization that involves a split between basic and derived strings. This includes generalization at a morpheme boundary, within a morphological category, as well as examples not so restricted. The former include assimilation in Finnish participles and compensatory lengthening in the Ancient Greek aorist. The latter include the Sanskrit ruki‐rule, assibilation in Finnish, and alternations between aspirate and voiced stop in Ancient Greek.

Words of more than two syllables tend toward moraic balance, while even those are subject to the acceleration processes that yield triplet formation. Triplets tend to shorten to disyllables, which in Ancient Greek, where all disyllables are stable, acquire duple timing when not inhibited by semantic or morphological considerations. This mora‐preference hierarchy is applied to the solution of problems in sound change, particularly in Latin, Greek, and Germanic. Stressed open syllable lengthening can be ranked higher than disyllabism. Different rankings follow from the instability engendered by competing processes. This unified account sheds light on problems as diverse as word localization in poetry, syncope, iambic shortening, monosyllabic lengthening, trisyllabic contraction, and even some consonantal changes, such as assibilation in Ancient Greek, Hittite, and Finnish. Finally, implications are adduced for optimality of the trochaic foot.

The neuter s-stem nouns constitute one of the best established word formation categories in the Indo-European languages and it is certain that they are deep-rooted in the parent language itself. The Proto-Indo-European background of these nouns is briefly assessed in this chapter, giving due regard to problems concerning their inflection and derivation. The conditions under which new s-stem neuter nouns could be formed will then be determined. In keeping with the aim of his book of looking at morphologically and semantically closely defined classes of words in the context of the language system as a whole, the most important suffixes competing with the formations in -εσ/-οζ are examined here.

This chapter accounts for two changes that distinguish Modern Greek from Ancient (Classical and New Testament) Greek: the requirement in Modern Greek that proper names occur with a definite article, and the rise of an indefinite article. It argues that these two changes are related. In Ancient Greek, nominal expressions could receive a singular count interpretation with a null expletive D head. The rise of overt indefinite articles indicates that the feature count had come to be grammaticalized (that is, required spellout). Once this requirement was in place, a null expletive in D became generally unavailable, requiring that the overt determiner in D select a proper name.

Greek possesses a large number of s-stem adjectives of the type δυσμενήζ ‘evil-minded’. More than 6,000 different formations of such adjectives are attested, and even if one subtracts the compounds in -ειδήζ and -ώδηζ, more that 3,000 formations remain. Clearly only a small percentage of these adjectives can be inherited and s-stem adjectives are amongst the most productive word formation categories within Greek, and they are distinctly more productive than comparable formations in Indo-Iranian.

Greek possesses a very small number of non-neuter s-stem nouns. Among these words, feminine nouns are rarer than masculine ones. Yet, the type, though weak, seems to be inherited from the parent language as witnessed by a (possibly imperfect) equation. In Latin, this inflectional paradigm was reasonably successful (compare with the numerous nouns in -ōs and -or like honōs/honor ‘honour’, flōs ‘flower’), but both Greek and Sanskrit show mere relics of this group.

The overall aim of this study is to determine the morphological and semantic characteristics of the various sigmatic formations, while accounting for their development within Greek and from reconstructed PIE into Greek. None of the suffixes involved could be studied in isolation, and to this end the consideration of their mutual interaction as well as of the connection between them and morphologically different but semantically close or equivalent formations was necessary. One lesson to be learned by this study is a fundamental one: that morphology and semantics are inseparable.

This chapter traces the historical complexities of the Greek negative system from Ancient Greek to Standard Modern Greek. Throughout its history Greek has two sentential negators. This chapter discusses the best way to characterise the difference between them, arguing that it is more complex than simply a distinction between a standard indicative negator (Ancient Greek ou, Modern Greek dhen) and a subjunctive negator (Ancient Greek mē, Modern Greek min). The shift from ou to dhen (via ouden) as the main negator is traced as a development akin to but distinct from Jespersen’s cycle. Finally, the chapter traces the development of negative concord and negative imperatives in the history of the language.

In the Ancient Greek world, engagements with the supernatural were mundane, many, and varied: a spectrum of interactions at different social levels, involving different mortal and supernatural personnel and conducted with a variety of intentions. Alongside state-organized events, there was a vast market in supernatural services, offered both by institutions and individuals. This chapter examines the nature of this market, from the ritual specialists (male and female) who sold oracles, binding spells/curses, healing spells and initiations into mysteries, to the many different kinds of oracular sanctuaries scattered across the Greek landscape; as well as examining how modern attitudes to, and understanding of, these activities have changed over time.

This chapter focuses on judicial curse tablets, which offer a unique viewpoint on Ancient Greek litigation, revealing the fears of those going to court. At the same time, they add to the understanding of the legal process, the different roles played by its personnel, and the actual and symbolic significance of litigation within the city. The curse texts indicate that litigation was likely to have been fought in teams, suggesting that current versions of Athenian litigation as consisting simply of one-on-one power struggles between elite politicians are too limited. The range of personnel bound on the curse tablets suggests that not only more people, but more kinds of people (including women) were involved. But this study also questions how we categorize curses as judicial, and argues that for a number of curses usually placed in this category, the context of their creation is far from certain; it suggests other possible explanations for their creation.

To lay the foundations for the linguistic discussion found in the remainder of the book, this chapter begins with a systematic introduction to some of the main features of Ancient Greek, explaining the necessary technical terms along the way. First comes a discussion of the sounds of Greek, focusing on those that are particularly characteristic of Greek, as well as the development of Greek from the Proto-Indo-European parent language. The chapter then introduces some of the ways Greek words, especially nouns and verbs, change their forms to suit the grammatical context, since such morphological richness will come up repeatedly in the book. Excerpts from three texts are then discussed: first, the Iliad, to show how formulaic language marks its origins as an oral composition; second, Thucydides, to highlight the abstract language that characterizes his history; third, the New Testament, to show how much translators sometimes need to rearrange the structure of a sentence in order for the syntax to make sense in English.