InVerbis

Lingue Letterature Culture

anno V, n. 1, 2015

Linguistic Analysis
and Ancient Indo-European Languages

Carocci editore
InVerbis Lingue Letterature Culture
Semestrale del Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche Universit degli Studi di Palermo

Comitato scientifico: Ignacio Arellano, Laura Auteri, Annamaria Bartolotta, Nicolas Bonnet,
Enrica Cancelliere, Attilio Carapezza, Stephen Greenblatt, Thomas Krefeld, Franco Marenco,
Aurelio Principato, Michela Sacco, Giovanni Saverio Santangelo, Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti

Direzione scientifica: il Direttore pro tempore del Dipartimento Laura Auteri

Comitato di redazione: Luisa Amenta, Francesco Carapezza, Matteo Di Ges, Francesco

Paolo Alexandre Madonia, Assunta Polizzi, Laura Restuccia, Chiara Sciarrino

Direzione e redazione
Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche
Viale delle Scienze, Edificio 12, 90128 Palermo
e-mail: inverbis@unipa.it; dipli@unipa.it

Direttore responsabile: Guido Valdini

Autorizzazione del Tribunale di Palermo n. 5 dell11 febbraio 2011

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Realizzazione editoriale: Studio Editoriale Cafagna, Barletta

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Stampato con fondi del Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche dellUniversit degli Studi
di Palermo.

ISSN 2279-8978
ISBN 978-88-430-7595-9
 Indice

Linguistic Analysis and Ancient Indo-European Languages

Introduction 7
by Annamaria Bartolotta

Etymology and conceptual metaphor:

The case of in vain in Greek and Latin 13
by Maria Lucia Aliffi

Spatial representations
of future in Homeric Greek 25
by Annamaria Bartolotta

Periphrastic constructions,
phasal verbs, and Aktionsart in Hittite 43
by Paola Cotticelli Kurras

The pre-history and latter history

of the infinitive in Greek and some relevant
issues in grammatical analysis 63
by Brian D. Joseph

Quelques notes sur les formes

dites itratives indo-europennes:
Le type patyati et les prsents redoubls en vdique 83
par Leonid Kulikov

3
On the law of appellatives in Greek and Vedic:
Markedness and transcategorization 101
by Romano Lazzeroni

Some reflections on the Gothic optative 115

by Lucio Melazzo

Edward Lhuyds archaeologism and philologism

in the observation of the nature
of the Celtic languages 129
by Diego Poli

Participle constructions in Ancient Greek:

Cosubordination, modification, and symmetry 143
by Anna Pompei

Sociolinguistic variation and diachronic evidence:

A case of Laconian rhotacization in the Lysistrata 159
by Domenica Romagno

Recensioni 171

Abstracts 191

4
 Linguistic Analysis
and Ancient Indo-European Languages
 Introduction
by Annamaria Bartolotta

Using modern linguistic theory to describe dead languages is one

of the theoretical and methodological challenges in contemporary
linguistic research. In fact, theories of the twentieth century mostly
aimed to account for speakers linguistic competence, thus basing their
analysis on live speakers and their intuitions. However, drawing on
evidence from languages such as Vedic, Greek, Latin, Hittite, Gothic,
Celtic and Proto-Indo-European itself, the relevance of the ancient
Indo-European languages to contemporary linguistic theory has
been constantly shown, since the rise of the linguistic sciences in the
early nineteenth century. The observation of ancient Indo-European
languages and their descendants can indeed prove useful as source
of data for testing scientific hypotheses. In particular, as language
universals should by definition be true of all human languages, linguists
can examine not only languages spoken today, but also attested extinct
languages as well (Song, 2001, p. 16). The processes we observe in
living languages can help us to gain knowledge about processes in
the extinct languages and, vice versa, the analysis of data taken from
extinct languages provide further insight that may either confirm or
disprove hypotheses and patterns of development proposed for living
languages. As is well-know, according to the so-called Uniformitarian
Principle, language universals discovered in contemporary languages
should also apply to ancient and reconstructed languages, based on
the fact that languages of the past are not essentially different from
those of the present (see Croft, 2003).
This volume is devoted to the study of ancient Indo-European
languages from the perspective of modern linguistics, within diverse
theoretical or analytical frameworks, and aims to deepen our
understanding of the basic mechanisms underlying the language