On tmesis, word order, and noun incorporation in Homeric Greek

Tmèse, ordre des mots et incorporation nominale en grec homérique

Nicolas Bertrand (1)

1 STL - Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163

Negatives, adverbs, and preverbial particles (P-words) can be located in two positions in the AG clause: either at the beginning of the clause, or immediately before the verb, in which case they form with the verb itself a verbal complex. These positions of the P-word correspond to two kinds of tmeses, external and internal. Structural and typological arguments are adduced to show that a NP can be incorporated into the verbal complex in internal tmesis: semantically, many of these constructions are used to express institutionalized activities; besides, internal tmesis is often a strategy to background a participant and mark it as part of the presupposition.

En m’appuyant sur une étude statistique des tmèses dans un corpus qui représente environ la moitié du texte homérique, je présente des arguments formels, pragmatiques, syntaxiques et typologiques pour montrer que la tmèse lexicale chez Homère correspond synchroniquement à une forme d’incorporation nominale.

Mots clés: Word order and information structure; Nominal incorporation; Tmesis

Mots clés: Ordre des mots; Incorporation nominale; Préverbes

Domaines: Etudes classiques; Littératures; Linguistique

Nicolas Bertrand. On tmesis, word order, and noun incorporation in Homeric Greek. Annamaria Bartolotta. The Greek verb Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics. Proceedings of the 8th International Meeting on Greek Linguistics, Agrigento, October 1–3, 2009 , 128, Peeters, 2014, Bibliothèque des des Cahiers de l'Institut de Linguistique de Louvain, 978-90-429-2722-3. ⟨hal-01704540⟩