Verbal Periphrasis in Ancient Greek Have- and Be- Constructions [Hardcover]

Ancient Greek is commonly considered a 'synthetic' or 'inflectional' language, that is, a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio. Nevertheless, already at the earliest stages of the language one finds traces of multi-word 'periphrastic' constructions similar to those in the modern European languages, as in ἦ*n *g*i*nό#u*e*n*a, 'it was happening', or ἔ*y*e*i ἀ*t*i#uά*s*a*4, 'he has dishonoured'.

Verbal Periphrasis in Ancient Greekoffers a systematic investigation of periphrastic constructions with the verbs 'to be' and 'to have' based on an extensive corpus of texts, ranging from the eighth century BC to the eighth century AD. It clarifies the notions of 'verbal periphrasis' and 'adjectival periphrasis' from a theoretical point of view, and offers a broad introduction to a selection of recent advancements in linguistics. It includes a diachronic analysis which investigates constructions in all three main aspectual domains-perfect aspect, imperfective aspect, and perfective aspect-combining a qualitative with a quantitative approach. In doing so, the volume presents a substantial contribution to our understanding of the ancient Greek verbal system and its development over time.

Foreword
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Theoretical Background
2. 'Verbal' and 'Adjectival' Periphrasis
3. Perfect Aspect
4. Imperfective Aspect
5. Perfective Aspect
Conclusion
Appendix
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

The book constitutes a perfect combination of qualitative and quantitative description and analysis. ... All in all, the book serves its major aims successfully: it addresses a more
general public, which can be helped with the long discussion of the basic concepts, the glossary, and the detailed comments on all passages; it contains an exhaustive analysis of a large corpus of text; and it offers an alternative analysis of the semantl³¼