Adjectival periphrasis in Ancient Greek: a cognitive analysis

• Autores: Klaas Bentein
• Localización: Onomázein: Revista de lingüística, filología y traducción de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, ISSN 0718-5758, ISSN-e 0717-1285, Nº. 27, 2013, págs. 15-34
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In this article, I discuss Ancient Greek constructions consisting of a form of the verb eimi I am and a present, perfect or aorist participle. In particular, I focus on those uses where the participle is said to have an adjectival function. My main goal is to provide a unified semantic description of this phenomenon, adopting a cognitive framework. I show that adjectival periphrasis typically involves the predication of properties, which can be characterized in terms of low transitivity (Hopper & Thompson, 1980). I furthermore argue that a so-called property reading involves a particular kind of conceptual integration, whereby only one component state of the verb eimi is elaborated by the participle.