In my thesis, the correlation between spatial and temporal descriptions of solar movement in Homeric Greek will be investigated, in order to assess whether the temporal FoR was indeed an outgrowth...Show moreIn my thesis, the correlation between spatial and temporal descriptions of solar movement in Homeric Greek will be investigated, in order to assess whether the temporal FoR was indeed an outgrowth of the spatial FoR, as proposed in Bartolotta (2018).Show less
An attempt at reconstructing the practice of bird-divination for the speakers of Proto-Indo-European by comparing the terminology for this practice in Greek, Latin and Hittite texts.
A number of features of the morphosyntactic alignment systems of Indo-European languages suggest that an early stage of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) originally had an ergative case...Show moreA number of features of the morphosyntactic alignment systems of Indo-European languages suggest that an early stage of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) originally had an ergative case-marking system. Opponents of this hypothesis have said that this reconstruction of PIE is typologically impossible, since it does not follow the allegedly universal Silverstein hierarchy, and that PIE thus cannot have been ergative. A concept related to the theory, which may solve the problem that Silverstein’s hierarchy poses, is the hypothesis that this stage of (pre-)PIE had a ‘gap’ in its alignment system: i.e. neuter nouns could not be used as agents of transitive verbs. In my thesis, I weigh the pre-PIE ergativity hypothesis and the ‘neuter agent gap’ against typological data regarding alignment systems and their diachronic development, to see if opponents’ arguments are valid and whether an ergative system and a neuter agent gap can be reconstructed to account for the case-marking systems found in Indo-European languages. I argue that the reconstructed alignment system does not violate Silverstein’s hierarchy, and that an earlier stage of PIE had an ergative system in both common and neuter nouns. Then, I argue that it is not necessary to assume a ‘neuter agent gap’, although a semantic dispreference for neuter agents does help to explain the development of alignment in the Anatolian languages. I then discuss two different hypotheses on what shape the neuter ergative ending may have had, and I will propose for both of them a diachronic pathway along which the Indo-European alignment system may have developed.Show less
The Ancient Greek lexicon contains words that cannot be explained by an Indo-European origin. Many of such words can be explained as loanwords of a Pre-Greek substrate or as Semitic loanwords....Show moreThe Ancient Greek lexicon contains words that cannot be explained by an Indo-European origin. Many of such words can be explained as loanwords of a Pre-Greek substrate or as Semitic loanwords. However, some Greek words seem to originate from a Semitic language, but the morphology and phonology point towards a Pre-Greek origin. To solve this apparent discrepancy, the possibility that Semitic loanwords entered the Greek lexicon via Pre-Greek is examined in this thesis. A sample of fourteen obscure Greek words confirms this hypothesis. The words share semantical and phonological features with equivalent words in Semitic languages, but share phonological and morphological features with Pre-Greek as well. Especially the occurrence of Pre-Greek suffixes that are not present in the Semitic equivalents are strong arguments in favor of this hypothesis. Besides examples of Semitic influence on Pre-Greek, this thesis provides two possible examples of Pre-Greek loanwords in Semitic languages. These findings develop our knowledge of language contact in the Mediterranean region during the Bronze and Iron Age.Show less
