[B-Greek] Greek Grammar in terms of Descriptive Linguistics?
Kevin Riley
klriley at alphalink.com.au
Sun Aug 28 22:54:43 EDT 2005
I suspect the term you are looking for is "Wackernagel's law" which is used
in IE linguistics to refer to the tendency of unstressed clitic particles to
occur after the first stressed element. From memory that has been modified
by recent research [Hale??] and is now considered to be the result of more
than one process working together which is why the law does not always seem
to apply. Can't remember the details.
Kevin Riley
-------Original Message-------
From: Wayne Leman
Date: 08/29/05 04:39:29
To: Biblical Greek
>
> I don't suppose you're speaking of "postpositives" like MEN, DE, GAR and
> the like, are you?
Yes, I am referring to these postpositives, but in linguistics there is a
long German word named for a German man, something like Haufnagel's position
(I keep forgetting it; it's much easier to remember a descriptive term like
postposition). There are a number of languages where the second position in
a clause is syntactically important. Not all parts of speech which appear in
second position in such languages are postpositions, however, at least not
if they phonologically attach (cliticize) to the preceding word. (I don't
know if Greek postpositives do.)
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