Syntactic change in post-Classical Greek: a usage-based approach

后古典希腊语的句法变化：基于用法的方法

• 批准号: 2877539
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Cambridge
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2877539
• 关键词: Syntactic; change; post; Classical; Greek

In course of my Undergraduate Studies and my MPhil I have developed a strong interest in issues of language change and, in particular, in variationist and usage-based approaches to grammar.While thinking of language systems and language change as dependent on actual usage is, of course, nothing particularly new and has attracted much interest in recent years and even decades - in particular in works of Adams, Dickey, Clackson, who concentrated on variation in Latin language - a disproportionately low number of researchers have committed themselves to the issues of syntactic variation or change, and even less in the context of Ancient Greek. Keeping that in mind I propose to research different syntactic features of Greek, paying attention to frequency of use and context.The point of departure of my analysis will be the published Papyri Corpora from Late Antiquity - a feat much simplified thanks to recent digitalisations accessible at PapyGreek, Papyri.info and Trismegistos - allowing us to access far better than literary texts the unmediated language of Ancient Greek speakers. For the same reason I intend to take into account Greek epigraphic data from Egypt, with their linguistically 'intersecting worlds' (W. Clarysse 2020), or contemporary metalinguistic commentary (e.g. Moeris). Based on such evidence, I will identify syntactic schemas and analyse their frequency in different contexts. One example that has sparked my interest, touched upon by K. Bentein (2015) or W. Clarysse (2010), are different ways of expressing purpose/goal - working on which, I will analyse the usage of such constructions as (system doesn't allow greek!) followed by different verb forms, or parataxis, to see their distribution within different contexts - both pragmatic (i.e. with the Lakoffian insight of sociolinguistics) and semantic (i.e. with the cognitive insight of 'syntaxsemantics continuum'). I will arrive thus at a comprehensive account of real-life usage of particular forms with regards to different pragmatic/semantic contexts. Moreover, my research will necessarily delve into later Greek texts, especially the early Christian writings (e.g. John Chrysostom, Ignatius), ideally tracing the development of particular features of syntax as used by different Greek-speaking societies throughout the first centuries of the Common Era, thinking about the plausible reasons for their entrenchment, thus giving my account a much-needed diachronic dimension.Finally, I intend to concentrate on issues of language contact - crucial in the Imperial Era corpora, where much change has been seen as Latin or Semitic in origin (as recently studied by e.g. V. Fendel (2022)). I will, thus, pay particular attention to plausible correspondences with Latin language, seeing which syntactic schemas might be understood as borrowed from/influenced by Latin, especially within the corpora of Latinized settlements (e.g. Mons Claudianus) and whether bilingual communities/writers might have detectably different preferences for usage of different forms and, if so, why that might be the case. Thus I hope ultimately to contribute to our understand of linguistic variation in the Classical World on three different levels - diastratic, diatopic and diachronic - finding out which forms become entrenched over time within which usage contexts, being a unique strength of corpus-based functionalist approach.

在我的本科学习和硕士课程中，我对语言变化问题产生了浓厚的兴趣，特别是对变异主义和基于用法的语法方法。当然，尽管认为语言系统和语言变化依赖于实际用法并不是什么特别的新鲜事，近年来甚至几十年来引起了人们的极大兴趣--特别是在亚当斯、迪基、克拉克森的著作中，他们专注于拉丁语的变化--致力于句法变化或变化的研究人员的数量少得不成比例，在古希腊语的背景下更是如此。考虑到这一点，我建议研究希腊语的不同句法特征，注意使用频率和上下文。我的分析起点将是出版的古希腊晚期Papyri语料库-这一壮举由于最近可在Papy希腊语、Papyri.info和Trismegistos上访问而大大简化-使我们能够比文学文本更好地获取古希腊语使用者的非中介语言。出于同样的原因，我打算考虑来自埃及的希腊墓志铭数据，以及它们在语言上“相交的世界”(W.Clarysse 2020)，或当代元语言评论(例如Moeris)。基于这些证据，我将识别句法图式，并分析它们在不同语境中的使用频率。K.Bentein(2015)或W.Clarysse(2010)提到的一个引起我兴趣的例子是表达目的/目标的不同方式--在此基础上，我将分析这样的结构的用法：(System‘s Not Allow Allow希腊语！)其次是不同的动词形式或意合，以了解它们在不同语境中的分布--既有语用(即社会语言学的拉科菲观点)，也有语义(即认知的句法语义连续体)。因此，我将对特定形式在不同语用/语义语境中的实际使用情况进行全面的描述。此外，我的研究必然会深入研究后来的希腊语文本，特别是早期的基督教著作(例如约翰·克里索斯通，伊格纳修斯)，理想地追踪不同希腊语社会在公元前几个世纪所使用的特定句法特征的发展，思考它们根深蒂固的可信原因，从而为我的描述提供一个亟需的历时维度。最后，我打算集中讨论语言接触的问题-在帝国时代语料库中至关重要的-在帝国时代语料库中，许多变化都被视为拉丁语或闪米特语的起源(例如V.Fendel(2022)最近的研究)。因此，我将特别注意与拉丁语的合理对应，看看哪些句法图式可能被理解为借鉴拉丁语/受拉丁语影响，特别是在拉丁化聚落的语料库中(例如蒙斯·克劳迪亚诺)，以及双语社区/作家是否可能对不同形式的使用有明显不同的偏好，如果是，为什么会这样。因此，我希望最终有助于我们在三个不同的层面上理解经典世界中的语言变异--历时、历时和历时--找出哪些形式随着时间的推移在哪些使用语境中变得根深蒂固，这是基于语料库的功能主义方法的独特优势。