Abstract
This paper aims to explore the main constructions showing a covert encoding of Path of motion in Classical Greek (5th–4th century BC). Based on a corpus study of five texts belonging to different literary genres, it applies the theoretical frameworks and conceptual tools of contemporary linguistic approaches, such as the semantic typology of motion events and Construction Grammar, to the data from an ancient language, in order to address the non-compositional expression of Path. The results of the analysis reveal that, in addition to the overt morphosyntactic encoding of Path information, Ancient Greek resorts to more implicit patterns, in which coercion, meaning extension and inference play a crucial role. Furthermore, as opposed to traditional views on motion expression, this study shows that the encoding of spatial meaning is rarely committed to a single lexical or morphological tool within the clause, but rather it distributes across different linguistic units and results from their interaction with one another.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
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- ‘Well, that’s just great!’: an empirically based analysis of non-literal and attitudinal content of ironic utterances
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- Expressing intent, imminence and ire by attributing speech/thought in Mongolian
- ‘Invisible’ spatial meaning: a text-based study of covert Path encoding in Ancient Greek
- A new resultative construction in Spanish? A reply to Rodríguez Arrizabalaga
- A metalinguistic analysis of the terminology of evidential categories: experiential, conjecture or deduced?
- Book Reviews
- Ksenia Shagal: Participles. A typological study
- Dalrymple, Mary, John J. Lowe & Louise Mycock: The Oxford reference guide to Lexical Functional Grammar
- Tania Kuteva, Bernd Heine, Bo Hong, Haiping Long, Heiko Narrog and Seongha Rhee: World lexicon of grammaticalization
- Verena Schröter: Null subjects in Englishes: A comparison of British English and Asian Englishes
- Aline Godfroid: Eye tracking in Second Language Acquisition and bilingualism. A research synthesis and methodological guide
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Phonological restrictions on nominal pluralization in Sign Language of the Netherlands: evidence from corpus and elicited data
- ‘Well, that’s just great!’: an empirically based analysis of non-literal and attitudinal content of ironic utterances
- Aspectual cognate objects in Hungarian
- Expressing intent, imminence and ire by attributing speech/thought in Mongolian
- ‘Invisible’ spatial meaning: a text-based study of covert Path encoding in Ancient Greek
- A new resultative construction in Spanish? A reply to Rodríguez Arrizabalaga
- A metalinguistic analysis of the terminology of evidential categories: experiential, conjecture or deduced?
- Book Reviews
- Ksenia Shagal: Participles. A typological study
- Dalrymple, Mary, John J. Lowe & Louise Mycock: The Oxford reference guide to Lexical Functional Grammar
- Tania Kuteva, Bernd Heine, Bo Hong, Haiping Long, Heiko Narrog and Seongha Rhee: World lexicon of grammaticalization
- Verena Schröter: Null subjects in Englishes: A comparison of British English and Asian Englishes
- Aline Godfroid: Eye tracking in Second Language Acquisition and bilingualism. A research synthesis and methodological guide