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

在我的本科学习和我的哲学硕士课程中，我对语言变化的问题产生了浓厚的兴趣，特别是对变异论和基于用法的语法方法。当然，认为语言系统和语言变化依赖于实际用法并不是什么新鲜事，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、迪基和克拉克森的作品中，他们专注于拉丁语的变化——致力于句法变化或变化问题的研究人员少得不成比例，在古希腊语的背景下就更少了。考虑到这一点，我建议研究希腊语的不同句法特征，注意使用频率和语境。我分析的起点将是出版的古代晚期的Papyri语料库——多亏了PapyGreek、Papyri.info和Trismegistos上最近的数字化，这项壮举大大简化了——使我们能够比文学文本更好地获取古希腊人的直接语言。出于同样的原因，我打算考虑来自埃及的希腊铭文数据，以及它们在语言学上的“交叉世界”（W. Clarysse 2020），或当代元语言学评论（如Moeris）。基于这些证据，我将识别语法模式并分析它们在不同上下文中的频率。引起我兴趣的一个例子是K. Bentein（2015）或W. Clarysse（2010）提到的表达目的/目标的不同方式——在此基础上，我将分析诸如（系统不允许希腊语！）这样的结构的用法，然后是不同的动词形式，或意合，看看它们在不同语境中的分布——包括语用（即社会语言学的Lakoffian洞察力）和语义（即“句法语义连续体”的认知洞察力）。因此，我将对现实生活中不同语用/语义语境中特定形式的使用进行全面的描述。此外，我的研究将必然深入到后来的希腊文本，特别是早期的基督教著作（如约翰·金索斯托，伊格内丢），理想地追踪在共同时代的第一个世纪中，不同的希腊语社会所使用的语法的特定特征的发展，思考他们的壕沟的合理原因，从而给我的叙述提供一个急需的历时维度。最后，我打算把重点放在语言接触的问题上——这在帝国时代语料库中至关重要，其中许多变化被视为起源于拉丁语或闪米特语（如最近V. Fendel（2022）等人的研究）。因此，我将特别关注与拉丁语的合理对应，看看哪些句法模式可能被理解为从拉丁语借用/受拉丁语影响，特别是在拉丁化定居点的语料库中（例如，Mons Claudianus），以及双语社区/作家是否可能对不同形式的用法有明显的不同偏好，如果是的话，为什么会这样。因此，我希望最终有助于我们从三个不同的层面上理解古典世界的语言变化——灾难性的、历时性的和历时性的——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。

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.