This morning I came across this presentation by Dag Haug on the evolution word order in old Indo-European languages. For those who are interested in the evolution of word order from Attic to Koine Greek, look no further. Errr… Maybe not, but here’s the comparison slide:
So uhm, is this supposed to actually tell us anthing…?
Other than the fact that the chart clearly proves that neither Classical Greek and Koine cannot be described on the basis of Grammatical Relations like English can.
The pdf itself is far more helpful since it focuses more on discourse/pragmatic functions than on where the subject and object are. But I’m not convinced of his thesis & conclusions (the diachronic claims about Topic evolving into Subjects) or his proposed sentence structure for Greek.
Here a very small lit review for Classical & Koine word order: HERE
By: Mike Aubrey on July 1, 2009
at 11:26 am
Thanks for chiming in, Mike. I suppose you have hit the nail on the head.
Maybe I overstating things with the whole “look no further” bit.
Thanks for the link to your post!
By: Michael on July 1, 2009
at 11:29 am
Either way, its definitely worth a link back from my blog.
And I still like your theme.
By: Mike Aubrey on July 1, 2009
at 11:57 am
Thanks for that, Mike.
I was just thinking the same thing about your blog’s theme. You have great taste!
By: Michael on July 1, 2009
at 12:20 pm
[...] leave a comment » Michael Whitenton over at Ecce Homo has linked to a very interesting PDF/power point on word order in Greek and Indo-European by Dag Haug. The PDF is pretty good, though I wouldn’t subscribe to all the conclusions. Do check it out: For the Über-Nerds Among Us. [...]
By: Greek Word Order and Other Stuff « ΕΝ ΕΦΕΣΩ on July 1, 2009
at 11:55 am
Mike,
I moved to wordpress!
http://politicaljesus.wordpress.com/
By: Rod on July 1, 2009
at 2:34 pm
Great! Welcome home, Rod.
By: Michael on July 1, 2009
at 3:54 pm