EnCyCLoPEdIA of

AnCIEnt GrEEK LAnGuAGE

And LInGuIStICS
Volume 3
P–Z, Index

General Editor
Georgios K. Giannakis

Associate Editors
Vit Bubenik
Emilio Crespo
Chris Golston
Alexandra Lianeri
Silvia Luraghi
Stephanos Matthaios

LEIdEn • BoSton
2014

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table of Contents

Volume one

Introduction  .................................................................................................................................................... vii

List of Contributors  ....................................................................................................................................... xi
table of Contents ordered by thematic Category ............................................................................... xv
transcription, Abbreviations, Bibliography  ........................................................................................... xxi
List of Illustrations  ......................................................................................................................................... xxiii
Articles A–f  ..................................................................................................................................................... 1

Volume two

transcription, Abbreviations, Bibliography  ........................................................................................... vii

Articles G–o  .................................................................................................................................................... 1

Volume three

transcription, Abbreviations, Bibliography  ........................................................................................... vii

Articles P–Z ...................................................................................................................................................... 1
Index  .................................................................................................................................................................. 547

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462 verb (rhêma), ancient theories of
the thema, concerning which a certain degree of
knowledge is shared by the speech participants
(either deriving from the speech context or from
the preceding discursive exchange, i.e., the co-
text). The textual-discursive thema-rhema rela-
tionship is also referred to as a topic-comment
relationship (→ Functional Grammar and Greek;
→ Topic).
Bibliography
Basset, Louis. 1994. “Platon et la distinction nom/verbe”. In:
Les classes de mots. Traditions et perspectives, ed. by Louis
Basset and Marcel Pérennec, 47–65. Lyon.
Bertagna, Maria I. 2006. “All’origine del valore tecnico di
rhēma: Platone”. In: Esegesi letteraria e riflessione sulla
lingua nella cultura greca, ed. by Graziano Arrighetti and
Mauro Tulli, 89–112. Pisa.
Hoekstra, Marieke and Frank Scheppers. 2003. “Onoma,
rhēma et logos dans le Cratyle et le Sophiste de Platon.
Analyse du lexique et analyse du discours”, L’Antiquité
Classique 72:55–73.
Spina, Luigi. 2001. “Intorno a ‘rhema’ ”. In: Métalangage et
terminologie linguistique. Actes du colloque international
de Grenoble (Université Stendhal, Grenoble III, 14–16
mai 1998), ed. by Bernard Colombat and Marie Savelli,
253–264. Leuven – Paris.
Swiggers, Pierre and Alfons Wouters. 2002. “Grammati-
cal theory in Aristotle’s Poetics”. In: Grammatical theory
and philosophy of language in antiquity, ed. by Pierre
Swiggers and Alfons Wouters, 101–120. Leuven – Paris –
Sterling.
Tempesti, Anna M. 1982. “Da ‘rhēma’ a ‘verbum’. Contributo
alla storia di una definizione”, Studi e ricerche 5:163–197.
Alfons Wouters
Pierre Swiggers
Verb Phrase
1. Verb Phrase: A Definition
At a syntactic level, a phrase can be defined as
made up of one or more words corresponding
to a single unit in the sentence and, conse-
quently, forming a constituent (any node plus
all the nodes that it dominates). The head of the
phrase is the word which assigns the grammati-
cal features characteristic of the phrase itself,
whereas the other elements are its dependents,
i.e., arguments (phrases which are required to
occur with the head) and → adjuncts (optional
phrases expressing information like instrument,
location, manner and time).
A verb phrase (henceforth, VP) is a phrase
headed by a → verb. The traditional descrip-
tion of the VP in linguistics is based on English:
following this description, illustrated here in
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simple terms, the VP may be constructed from
a single verb, or it may contain: (i) the auxiliary
which precedes the verbal head; (ii) arguments,
optional specifiers and adjuncts, like preposi-
tional phrases and adverbial phrases.
From a theoretical point of view, the useful-
ness of the category of VP in Greek is disputed.
In the following sections, we will examine some
aspects of the Greek syntax which seem to pro-
vide evidence against or in favor of the syntactic
relevance of the category of VP in this language.
In other words, we will try to find syntactic clues
of the fact that in Greek finite verbs and their
objects, primarily, form a constituent function-
ing as a single syntactic unit. As to how non-
finite verbs (→ infinitives and → participles) can
be interpreted in this respect, this is a complex
issue which cannot be treated here (→ Argument
Clause).
2. Syntactic Constituents:
Word Order and Discontinuity
The first and, in some respects, main problem-
atic issue with regard to the identification of the
category of VP in Greek is represented by → word
order: as is well-known, this language is charac-
terized by freedom of word order. In particular,
the verb has been described as the element of
the clause which shows “la plus grande mobilité ”
(Humbert 1960:92), with the consequence that
“il ne semble point avoir une place où il se
complaise. Il en résulte qu’il peut être précédé
aussi bien que suivi de son objet, précédé aussi
bien que suivi par les participes qui expriment
des circonstances accessoires de l’action ver-
bale” (Humbert 1960:96). In other words, Greek
exhibits every possible order of the verb and its
complement(s): for instance, focusing on the
direct object, both OV and VO are attested (stud-
ies based on statistical analysis have reached
different results with regard to which of the two
orders has to be considered as predominant: cf.
Taylor 1994).
However, what is more relevant to our topic
is the fact that the verb and its direct object
may be separated by other elements appearing
in the same clause. This has been considered as
the main obstacle to admitting the syntactic rel-
evance of the VP in Greek. An example is the fol-
lowing, where the noun functioning as a subject
(Períandros) is located between the direct object
and the verb (from Taylor 1994:7):
 verb phrase
(1) epeíte gàr tḕn heōutoû gunaîka Mélissan
Períandros apékteine
‘For after Periander had killed his own wife
Melissa’ (Hdt. 3.50)
In other words, if we admit that the category of
VP is relevant to syntactic processes in Greek,
we should also recognize that permutation of
constituents is allowed, and try to explain why
this type of phrase may be discontinuous.
This approach is followed, for instance, in
Morrel (1989): on the basis of X-bar theory, she
assumed that “the basic structure of Greek con-
sists of an Imax node that will accommodate a
subject noun phrase followed by a Vmax pro-
jection that is headed by a verb form” (Morrel
1989:14), where Xmax represents the maximal
projection of the head and the highest node of a
given phrase. In other words, the VP is described
as consisting of the verb, which is the head,
whereas the complement of this first node is
represented by the object position. In Morrel’s
opinion (1989:14–30), what confirms this are sta-
tistical surveys showing a clear preference for
Subject-Verb (SV) over Verb-Subject (VS) order-
ing, and references to word order by ancient
commentators who were native speakers, which
sustain the idea that the underlying structure of
Greek was fundamentally SV(O), although this
structure may greatly diverge from the surface
structure (Morrel 1989:30).
Processes of movement during the delta
phase should be invoked in order to explain
the freedom of word order, which is only appar-
ent (Morrel 1989:116). An interesting example
is the following, where the head of the VP is
in sentence-initial position, in order to express
emphasis, and precedes both the subject noun
phrase and the object noun phrase, marked as a
→ genitive (from Morrel 1989:138; cf. also exam-
ples in section 5.a.):
(2) thaumázō dè égōge tês tólmēs toû adelphoû
kaì tês dianoías
‘I am astounded at the shameless spirit
shown by my brother’ (Antiph. 1.28)
Morrel (1989) also notes that within the corpus
on which her analysis is based, “in comparison
with the number of fronting processes that move
a single minimal or maximal projection to the
first specifier position, fronting processes that
move elements beyond the first specifier posi-
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463
tion occur far less frequently” (1989:139). In her
opinion, this happens in order to avoid syntactic
discontinuity, and is particularly interesting in
light of the fact that discontinuous phrases are
allowed in Greek, since this is consistent with
its rich inflectional system. However, “the fact
that elements move far more often in man-
ners that preserve syntactical continuity than in
ways that create discontinuity is strong evidence
for the premise that constituency and hierar-
chical structure play a fundamental role in the
language” (Morrel 1989:139). According to this
analysis, movements to the third and fourth
specifier positions, which create highly discon-
tinuous syntactic structures, are comparatively
much less frequent (1989:149), in order to pre-
serve constituency and hierarchical structuring.
As mentioned above, some scholars do not
share this type of approach. Instead, they claim
that freedom of word order and discontinuity
are those features which unequivocally suggest
that Greek lacks a VP, as will be shown in the
next section.
3. Greek as a Non-Configurational
Language?
In generative grammar, a distinction has been
proposed between configurational and non-
configurational languages: “the term noncon-
figurational implies that the language has a
rather flat (as opposed to hierarchical) phrase
structure. In the most highly nonconfigurational
languages, there is little or no evidence for the
verb phrase as a syntactic constituent, and there
are no subject-object asymmetries that require
a structural explanation” (Devine & Stephens
1999:142). Apart from lacking a VP, non-con-
figurational languages may have the following
properties, among others:
– Extremely free word order
– Syntactically discontinuous elements
– Complex case system
– Lack of expletives
– Null anaphora
It must be said that the distinction between
these two types of languages is not unanimously
accepted nowadays, not even within the genera-
tive framework. Moreover, it has been noted that
languages which are clearly configurational may
share some properties with non-configurational
464 verb phrase
languages, whereas languages which apparently
are non-configurational may show syntactic
traces of a VP.
As already pointed out in section 2, Greek
has a rich case system and a free word order;
moreover, apart from the existence of differ-
ent possible word order patterns between verb,
direct object and adjuncts (i.e., the hypothetical
constituents of the VP), we find cases of dis-
continuous noun phrases (→ Noun Phrase) and
adpositional phrases (→ Adpositional Phrase).
Furthermore, a special instance of discontinuity
in Greek is represented by → hyperbaton (cf. sec-
tion 3.a.), which, from a cross-linguistic point of
view, appears to be related to the other syntac-
tic features proper to non-configurational lan-
guages (Devine & Stephens 1999:142). Mainly on
the basis of these considerations, Greek has been
described as a non-configurational language:
Taylor (1988) was the first to assume that Greek
has gradually changed from non-configurational
to configurational.
Devine and Stephens (1999:142–153) also
assumed that certain features of Greek syntax,
well attested in particular in Homeric Greek and
presumably of Indo-European origin (→ Indo-
European Linguistic Background), document the
non-configurational nature of the language at an
earlier stage. Apart from free word order and
discontinuity, associated with hyperbaton, these
features are: the absence of articles, the par-
ticular use of prepositions (i.e., their occurring
as adverbs, disjoined by their complements) and
the paratactic nature of Homeric syntax, shared
by Vedic and Germanic poetry, which resembles
the fact that non-configurational languages pre-
fer phrasal juxtaposition for conjunction and
disjunction (Devine & Stephens 1999:147–148).
More precisely, Devine and Stephens (1999:151)
hypothesized that “what we can reconstruct from
survivals in Homer is probably a not so extreme
version of nonconfigurationality, in which some
arguments are admitted into the nuclear phrase
and others are adjuncts, and some modifiers are
integrated and others are paratactic”.
3.a. Hyperbaton
By definition, hyperbaton takes place when the
subconstituents of a noun phrase are not contin-
uous to one another, but are interspersed with
other elements of the clause. In the normal type
of hyperbaton (Y₁ hyperbaton), one can note the
extraction of an adjective referred to the object
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taken by the verb. As pointed out in the pre-
ceding section, following Devine and Stephens
(1999) the phenomenon of the hyperbaton, as
is documented in Homeric Greek, represents a
trace of the prehistoric (Indo-European) non-
configurational syntax. As they state, in Homer
“a single noun could easily form a phrase with
the verb, but a more complex structure like
noun plus adjective or noun plus noun (→ coor-
dination) would run into greater resistance. One
way of handling a modified lexical argument in
a single sentence would be to allow the noun
to form a phrase with the verb and leave the
paratactic modifier in adjunct position” (Devine
& Stephens 1999:151). As compared to Homeric
Greek, Classical Greek presents a partly different
state of affairs: whereas in poetry Y₁ hyperbaton
is still attested in a non-configurational form, its
occurrences in prose document an intermediate
stage from a non-configurational to a configura-
tional syntax (Devine & Stephens 1999:203).
More precisely, in Classical Greek, the superfi-
cial discontinuity caused by hyperbaton implies
that the VP is unordered, but not necessarily
that it does not exist: indeed, although syntactic
discontinuity given to premodifier hyperbaton
“may at first sight appear to be a particularly
strong indication of flat unstructured serial word
order” (Devine & Stephens 1999:3), a deeper
investigation of the Greek data reveals “consis-
tent cross-categorial patterning for premodifiers
in both discontinuous and continuous phrases,
which clearly calls for a phrase structural
account” (1999:3).
In particular, following Devine and Stephens
(1999), Y₁ hyperbaton performs a pragmatic
function in terms of focus marking: the modi-
fier is placed in a left position, different from
its usual position in the noun phrase, since it
has strong focus, whereas the noun referred to
represents tail material. Compare the following
occurrences of the (object) noun phrase pâsan
tḕn pólin ‘all the city’ (from Devine & Stephens
1999:13):
(3) idṑn d’ ēdikēkóta . . . pâsan tḕn pólin
‘When I discovered that he had defrauded
all the city’ (Dem. Or. 24.8)
(4) ou gár esti díkaion tḕn mèn khárin, hḕ pâsan
éblapte tḕn pólin, toîs tóte theîsin hupárkhein
‘It is not fair that those legislators should
enjoy a popularity that injured all the city’
(Dem. Or. 3.13)
 verb phrase
In the first example, the verb precedes the adjec-
tive and the object noun phrase, in the second
the adjective (pâsan) is focused on by means of
hyperbaton, and precedes both the verb (éblapte)
and the direct object (tḕn pólin).
There is another type of hyperbaton (Y₂
hyperbaton), where it is the direct object which
precedes both the adjective referred to it and
the verb. Also Y₂ hyperbaton has a specific prag-
matic function: the noun can be a weak focus or
a topic, whereas the adjective normally repre-
sents a weak focus. In both types of hyperbaton,
an additional element or adjunct can be placed
internally or externally to the structure. I quote
an example illustrating an Y₂ hyperbaton where
the adjunct (es tò Árgos ‘to Argos’) appears inside
the structure (from Devine & Stephens 1999:89):
(5) . . . aphikómenoi es Tegéan lógous proúpem-
pon es tò Árgos xumbatēríous
‘[The Lacedaemonians] arriving at Tegea
sent on to Argos proposals of accommoda-
tion’ (Thuc. 5.76)
The evolution from a non-configurational
(Homeric) syntax to a configurational syntax
can be considered as completely achieved in
the Greek of the → New Testament (Devine &
Stephens 1999:203; cf. also Palmer 1995).
3.b. Lack of Expletives and Null Anaphora
Greek lacks expletives in syntactic contexts
where they typically appear in configura-
tional languages, as with impersonal verbs (for
instance, with weather verbs and impersonal
passives; → Impersonal Verbs/Constructions).
Moreover, it extensively shows a feature gener-
ally attributed to non-configurational languages,
the so-called → null anaphora, i.e., omission of
pronominal arguments.
In principle, the phenomenon of null objects
in Greek may be regarded as evidence against
the existence of a VP. Indeed, the → direct object
of transitive verbs (→ Transitivity) can be omit-
ted also when it refers to a definite antecedent,
which is not necessarily a direct object.
Luraghi (2003) has examined this phenom-
enon in depth, by focusing on null objects
which are definite and referential (henceforth
NOs). This is illustrated as follows (from Luraghi
2003:167):
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465
(6) toîsi dè dexiòn hêken erōidiòn engùs hodoîo
Pallàs Athēnaíē: toì d’ouk ídon ophthalmoîsi
núkta di’ orphnaíēn, allà klánxantos ákousan.
‘Athena sent them a heron to the right of
their route: they could not see it in the
dark night, but heard it screaming.’ (Hom. Il.
10.274–276)
In example (6), the direct object (erōidión) is
shared by the verbs (hêken, ídon and ákousan) of
the three subsequent clauses, but is mentioned
only in the first. Indeed, in the other two clauses
we find an instance of definite NOs (as observed
by Luraghi 2003, pronominal objects are neces-
sary in English in order to make the translation
correct from a grammatical point of view).
In Greek, the omission of the definite direct
object may be discourse conditioned – i.e., the
direct object is omitted if it is recoverable from
the preceding mentions of the referent or, more
generally, from the textual context – or it may
be syntactically conditioned. By focusing on the
last case, there are three contexts in which the
omission of the direct object is conditioned by
the syntactic context, with the result of its being
obligatory:
i. Conjunction participles governed by a verb
form with which they share the same subject
and the same object: both are expressed only
once.
ii. Coordination: in two or more coordinated
clauses linked by coordinating conjunctions
(especially by kaí), the shared direct object
is expressed only once, i.e., in the first clause.
Some examples may simply be interpreted
as cases of VP coordination, characterized
by the reduction of a part of the VP itself, as
may happen in English. In other examples,
however, two distinct coordinated clauses are
found (from Luraghi 2003:179):
(7) kaí min Athēnaîoi dēmosíēi te éthapsan autoû
têi per épese kaì etímēsan megálōs
‘The Athenians buried him at public expense
on the spot where he fell and gave him much
honor’ (Hdt. 1.30)
In a case like (7), we could not say that the VP
is reduced: indeed, the omission of the direct
object (min) would be impossible in a language
like English.
466 verb phrase
iii. Yes/no questions: as a rule, the object which
is coreferential with the direct object men-
tioned in the question is omitted in the
answer. As a consequence, often this consists
of the sole verb. I will come back to this point
in section 5.c.
4. What is Evidence for the
Existence of a VP in Greek?
Although the phenomena examined so far may
be recognized as formal signs of non-configu-
rationality in Greek, they do not provide incon-
trovertible evidence of its lacking a VP. To sum
up, firstly, the idea that discontinuous phrases
were not constituents in Greek has no explana-
tory force: indeed, “free word order could arise
as a result of pragmatically driven movement
from an underlying configurational structure”
(Devine & Stephens 1999:143), which is true also
for discontinuity (cf. sections 2 and 3). Second,
even if we admit that Homeric Greek preserves
traces of a non-configurational syntax, things
are partly different in Classical Greek (cf. sec-
tion 3.a.). Third, there are other phenomena in
Greek which, on the contrary, seem to prove the
syntactic relevance of the VP.
According to Morrel (1989), for instance,
interesting results can be reached by looking
at intrusions, i.e., parenthetical expressions
(including the vocative) which interrupt the
expected syntactical hierarchy of a sentence.
By definition, intrusions “show a distinct prefer-
ence for appearing at ‘major’ structural bound-
aries. Intrusions tend to come at the boundary
of a ‘major’ maximal projection” (1989:56). The
data from Morrel’s corpus show that intrusions
in Greek often mark the boundaries of verb
phrases as distinct from noun phrases with the
function of subject. An example is the follow-
ing, where the intrusive apostrophe (ô ándres)
appears between the subject and the VP (from
Morrel 1989:58):
(8) Hē dè pallakḕ toû Philóneō tḕn spondḕn
háma enkhéousa ekeínois eukhoménois há
ouk émelle teleîsthai, ô ándres, enékhei tò
phármakon
‘But Philoneos’ mistress, who poured the
wine for the libation, while the men offered
their prayers – prayers never to be answered,
gentlemen – poured in the poison with it’
(Antiph. 1.19)
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In the next section we shall briefly examine
some constituency tests for identifying a VP in
Greek.
5. Constituency Tests for
identifying a VP
Constituency tests can be defined as a diagnostic
means for identifying the constituent structures
of a sentence, i.e., phrases, in a given language. In
the relevant literature, various constituency tests
have been proposed, mainly on the basis of Eng-
lish. Some of them may be applied to Greek, and
they seem to provide evidence for the syntactic
relevance of the VP. The passivization test, for
instance, is easily applicable to Greek, where, as
is well-known, the object of an active verb may
be changed into the subject of the correspond-
ing passive verb (→ Passive (Syntax), → Passive
(Morphology)): consequently, on the basis of
this test, the verb and the direct object may form
a constituent. In this respect, Greek differs from
non-configurational languages, which, in prin-
ciple, lack a transformational passive.
Significant results may be obtained also by
applying the coordination test, which is based
on the assumption that only constituents can
be coordinated. As pointed out by Morrel
(1989:40–55), in particular, the conjunction te
functions as a delimiting element for conjoined
phrase structures (→ Coordination (includes
Asyndeton)) and can, thus, be interpreted as
an “indicator of constituency” (1989:55). In the
following example (from Morrel 1989:50), for
instance, te delimits the VP the head of which is
mēkhanôntai, and separates it from the second
VP (paraskeuázousin):
(9) ou gàr dḗpou martúrōn g’ enantíon hoi
epibouleúontes toùs thanátous toîsi pélas
mēkhanôntaí te kaì paraskeuázousin
‘Those who plot the death of their neighbors
do not, I believe, form their plans and make
their preparations in front of witnesses’
(Antiph. 1.28)
Three other tests are particularly relevant to our
case: (a) topicalization; (b) pro-form substitu-
tion; (c) question test. I will briefly examine each
of them in turn.
 verb phrase
5.a. Topicalization
If in a given language a sequence of words may
be moved to the front of the sentence in order
to be topicalized, this may be considered as a
clue that such words form a constituent in that
language.
In Greek the verb and its complement(s) may
be topicalized: in this case the subject occupies
the (marked) final position. Some examples are
quoted here belonging to different chronologi-
cal stages of the language (from Taylor 1994:9;
on Mycenaean (→ Mycenaean Script and Lan-
guage), cf. Panagl 1999):
(10) all’ ei mèn dṓsousi géras megáthumoi
Akhaioí
‘But if the great-hearted Achaians would
give me a prize’ (Hom. Il. 1.135)
(11) épempsan gàr dḕ pentakosías mnéas
arguríou hoi Kurēnaîoi
‘The Cyreneans sent 500 minas of silver’
(Hdt. 3.13)
(12) hōs dè ḗkousan toùs lógous toútous hó te
stratēgòs toû hieroû kaì hoi arkhiereîs
‘When the captain of the temple and the
chief priests heard these words’ (Acts 5.24)
5.b. Pro-Form Substitution: do so-Test
To apply the pro-form substitution test implies
to replace the (presupposed) constituent by
means of pronominalization, i.e., with a pro-
form like a pronoun. A special instance of it is
represented by the do so-test: if the verb and
its complement(s) may be substituted by a pro-
form like do so, one can infer that the verb and
such complement(s) form a constituent, i.e., a
VP. This test may be indirectly applied to Greek,
by examining the occurrences of do so-phrases
in the second clause, in order to avoid the repeti-
tion of the verb attested in the first clause (this
use is more frequent in prose than in poetry).
The application of this test shows that a do so-
phrase substitutes the whole VP, but cannot be
referred to the whole preceding clause. A clear
example is the following, where toûto poiḗsō sub-
stitutes the VP erṓtēson autoús, with a change in
the subject and in the grammatical features of
tense, aspect and mood (→ Mood and Modality,
→ Tense/Aspect):
(13) ei d’apisteîs, erṓtēson autoús, mâllon d’egṑ
toûth’ hupèr soû poiḗsō
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467
‘If you doubt my word, ask them; or rather
I will do it instead of you’ (Dem. Or. 18.52)
5.c. Question Test
The question test is usually applied in order to
verify the constituency of a VP, by testing the
ability of a series of words to stand alone in the
answer to a given question. As already men-
tioned in section 3.b., in the answers to yes/no
questions, the direct object is generally omitted
if it is coreferential with the object mentioned
before. I quote an example illustrating how the
answer may be represented by the verb alone
(from Luraghi 2003:183):
(14) – thômen oûn boúlei, éphē, dúo eídē tôn
óntōn, tò mèn horatón, tò dè aidés?
– thômen, éphē.
– ‘Now, shall we assume two kinds of exis-
tence – said he –, one visible, the other
invisible?’
– ‘Let us assume them – said (Cebes).’ (Pl.
Phd. 79a)
Following Luraghi (2003:183–184), omission of
the direct object can be explained as due to syn-
tactic constraints only in part: indeed, it rather
can be interpreted as a strategy linked to a
relevance principle, since it allows one to make
the answer shorter and to limit the repetition
of the question to the most relevant part of the
information.
In this respect, it is interesting to note that
the direct object is not the only syntactic ele-
ment which may be omitted. Any part of the VP
can be deleted, including the verb (from Luraghi
2003:184):
(15) – taûta ḕ tí eroûmen?
– taûta nḕ Día, ô Sṓkrates.
– ‘Shall we say that, or what?’
– ‘That is what we shall say, by Zeus,
Socrates.’ (Pl. Crit. 50c)
In (15), where we have a disjunctive question,
the answer is made up of the only direct object,
without any verb. Similarly, in (16), only the
indirect object required by the unexpressed verb
(dokeî) is mentioned:
(16) – kaí moi lége; dokeî tí soi eînai híppou
érgon?
– émoige.
468 verb phrase
– ‘Tell me then: would you say that a horse
has a specific work or function?’
– ‘I would.’ (Pl. Resp. 352d8–e1)
It is worth noting that the omission of syntactic
elements may take place in replies to all kinds of
questions, as illustrated below:
(17) – tí toûto légeis?
– empeirían égōgé tina.
– ‘What thing do you mean?’
– ‘I mean a certain habitude.’ (Pl. Grg.
462c2–3)
In (17), only the subject and the direct object are
mentioned in the answer, whereas the verb is
omitted.
In conclusion, the question test does not give
positive results in the search for syntactic evi-
dence of the existence of the VP in Greek. How-
ever, by means of a deep investigation of the
answers to yes/no questions it is possible to see
that “often they contain a constituent only, or a
part of it, which has the highest communicative
dynamism in the question, and conveys the most
relevant part of the information questioned”
(Luraghi 2003:183).
In other words, the deletion of the object as
well as of the verb or of other syntactic elements
in this special type of sentence does not allow us
to identify a VP in Greek, but it does not prove
its non-existence, since it can be interpreted as
pragmatically determined.
6. Subject/Object Asymmetries in
Greek
Apart from the tests examined so far, there is
an interesting aspect of Greek morpho-syntax
which could be relevant to our topic. It is usually
assumed that in languages lacking a VP there is
no structural divergence between subject and
object; on the contrary, in configurational lan-
guages, one expects to find subject-object asym-
metries. By focusing on Greek, traces of such
subject-object asymmetries may be found in
some verbal compounds.
First of all, an interesting case is represented
by verbs in -éō, in which a nominal form pre-
cedes the predicate, as in androktonéō ‘to slay
men’, karpologéō ‘to gather fruit’, oinometréō ‘to
measure out wine’, paidopoiéō ‘to beget chil-
dren (of men); to bear children (of women)’. In
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these forms, based on a process which resem-
bles syntactic incorporation (cf. Pompei 2006),
the first element generally corresponds to the
direct object taken by the verb, but cannot cor-
respond to the subject. This is consistent with
the hypothesis that only the object, as opposed
to the subject, is governed by the verb, since it
is part of a VP. Considering that also adjuncts
may be part of the VP, it is equally consistent
that, among verbs in -éō, there are compounds
in which the first element corresponds to a com-
plement expressing instrument (kērodoméō ‘to
build with wax’), location (hulomakhéō ‘to fight
in the woods’), or having a comitative value
(androkoitéō ‘to sleep with a man’).
A similar phenomenon takes place with verbal
adjectives in -to-: in those which are compounds,
the first nominal element cannot correspond
to the subject. It rather corresponds to a direct
object (aigibótos ‘feeding goats’, odunḗphatos
‘killing pain’) or to a different complement
(douriktētós ‘won by the spear’); it may also be
an adverb referred to the action (eupoíētos ‘well-
made’, polúplanktos ‘much-wandering’).
In conclusion, these kinds of subject/object
asymmetries involving the process of composi-
tion seem to offer indirect, although significant,
support to the existence of a VP in Greek.
Bibliography
Crespo, Emilio. 1997. “Sintaxis de los elementos de relación
en griego clásico”. In: Actas del IX congreso español de
estudios clásicos, 3–42. Madrid.
Devine, Andrew M. and Laurence D. Stephens. 1999. Discon-
tinuous syntax. Hyperbaton in Greek. Oxford.
Hewson, John and Vit Bubenik. 2006. From case to adposi-
tion. The development of configurational syntax in Indo-
European languages. Amsterdam – Philadelphia.
Humbert, Jean. 1960. Syntaxe grecque. Paris.
Kiparsky, Paul. 1997. “The rise of positional licensing”. In:
Parameters of morphosyntactic change, ed. by Ans van
Kemenade and Nigel Vincent, 460–494. Cambridge.
Luraghi, Silvia. 2003. “Definite referential null objects in
Ancient Greek”, IF 108:169–196.
Morrel, Kenneth S. 1989. Studies on the phrase structure of
early Attic prose. Ann Arbor.
Palmer, Michael. 1995. Levels of constituent structure in New
Testament Greek. New York – Bern.
Panagl, Oswald. 1999. “Beobachtungen zur mykenischen
Syntax”. In: Floreant Studia Mycenaea. Akten des X. Inter-
nationalen mykenologischen Colloquiums in Salzburg vom
1.-5. Mai 1995, ed. by Sigrid Deger-Jalkotzy, Stefan Hiller
and Oswald Panagl, 487–494. Vienna.
Pompei, Anna. 2006. “Tracce di incorporazione in greco
antico”. In: Fonologia e tipologia lessicale nella storia della
lingua greca, ed. by Pierluigi Cuzzolin and Maria Napoli,
216–237. Milan.
Taylor, Ann. 1988. “From non-configurational to configura-
tional: a study of syntactic change in Greek”. In: The Penn
 verb phrase
Review of Linguistics. 12th Penn Linguistics Colloquium,
February 1988, 1–15.
——. 1994. “The change from SOV to SVO in Ancient Greek”,
Language Variation and Change 6:1–37.
Maria Napoli
Verba Dicendi
Verba dicendi (‘verbs of speaking’) are plentiful
in the literature of Ancient Greece, a tribute to
the high esteem in which speech was held in
the predominately oral Indo-European culture.
Speech divided the human and animal world,
and, to some extent, the human and divine. Verbs
of speaking regularly developed from roots refer-
ring to mental processes: ‘plan’, ‘reason’, ‘judge’,
‘think’, etc. (e.g. *men- ‘think’ > Hittite memaḫḫi
‘I speak’), and “come later to be used for the oral
expression of these processes” (Buck 1915:137).
Many have cognates in sister languages, allow-
ing a large number of verbs referring to speech
to be reconstructed for the mother language.
Some thirty-five verbs of speaking occur with
notable frequency in Homer, the most com-
mon being phēmí ‘say, declare’ (Linear B pa-si
‘says, affirms’ (Hooker 1980:61); cognates Latin
fāma, likely Sanskrit bhāṣate ‘says’, Armenian
bay ‘says’). Preverbs may add nuances to basic
verbs: katáphēmi ‘say yes, affirm’. Formulaic
phrases involving speaking verbs (e.g. phasí ‘they
say, it is said’) are common. Other frequently
occurring verbs in Homer include eîpon ‘I spoke,
said’ (directly comparable to Vedic ávocam ‘I
spoke’), with cognates Armenian gočem ‘I call’,
Tocharian AB weñ ‘will speak, say’, Avestan vac-
‘say’; audáō ‘speak’ (cognate with Sanskrit vad-
‘speak’); peíthō ‘persuade’ (with accusative of
the one persuaded + infinitive); phōnéō ‘speak
aloud’; agoreúō ‘harangue, speak’ (with an aspec-
tual nuance: ‘speak’ rather than ‘say’, and refer-
ring to public address as does agoráomai ‘hold
assembly, speak’); eírō ‘say’ (cognate with Hittite
wer(i)ye ‘call, summon’); eúkhomai ‘pray, vow,
declare’ (cf. Linear B middle e-u-ke-to = eúkhe-
toi (Hooker 1980:53)), with athematic aorists in
Greek and Avestan suggesting antiquity; kaléō
‘call, summon’ (cognate with Hittite kalless-
‘lure’); muthéomai ‘relate, tell’ (one of several
Homeric speaking verbs later replaced by légō);
aráomai ‘pray, wish, curse’ (cognate with Hittite
ariya ‘pray’, Vedic āryati ‘praises’). See Owen and
Goodspeed (1969:4–22) for a full list.
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469
Because of their important status and plenti-
ful occurrence, verba dicendi are especially valu-
able in tracking changes in lexicon, semantics
and syntax. For instance, laléō, used originally to
express the inarticulate sounds of animals (dogs
and monkeys in Plutarch), had, by Hellenistic
times, lost this special sense and become the
normal verb ‘to speak’ (Buck 1915:13). The verb
légō originally referred to counting and sorting,
and still has that sense in Homer (Il. 23.239),
only later turning toward ‘say’ (in Hesiod), from
then on maintaining its role for some 2000 years
as a common verb meaning ‘say’ (Buck 1915:7).
Appearing regularly in reported speech situa-
tions, verba dicendi allow us to track changes in
subordinate structures which follow them. Greek
shared with Latin the accusative + infinitive con-
struction, possibly as an inheritance from the
mother language: kaí té me (accusative) phēsì
mákhēi Trṓessin arḗgein (infinitive) (lit: ‘and she
says me to help the Trojans in battle’) ‘. . . and
she says that I am helping the Trojans in battle’
(Hom. Il. 1.521). Both Latin and Greek developed
alternative subordinating strategies to the accu-
sative + infinitive, including ‘that’ clauses with
hóti or hōs (always an option in Greek (Moore
1957:140)), with Latin steadily moving toward
subordinate clauses with quod. Following syntax
may affect word meaning: for instance, eîpon,
followed by a subordinate clause with hóti or
hōs, generally means ‘said’; followed by the
infinitive construction, however, the meaning
is ‘commanded’; eîpon, followed by the infinitive
with the meaning ‘said’ is rare but “occurs in
good Attic prose” (Smyth 1920:4.45.2017c).
Bibliography
Buck, Carl D. 1915. “Words of speaking and saying in the
Indo-European languages”, American Journal of Philology
36:1–19, 125–154.
Hooker, J. T. 1980. Linear B: an introduction. Bristol.
Moore, R. W. 1957. Comparative Greek and Latin syntax.
London.
Owen, William B. and Edgar J. Goodspeed. 1969. Homeric
vocabularies. Oklahoma.
Smyth, Herbert W. 1920. A Greek Grammar for Colleges,
accessed from Perseus Digital Library Project. Ed.
Gregory R. Crane. Tufts University. http://www.perseus.
tufts.edu (Updated April 10, 2011)
Sarah Rose