adoption of the ionic alphabet in attica

33
what was already common practice among the ond syllable. Among monosyllabic prepositions,
Athenians, especially in demes, since the mid some are also written with an accent, while oth-
420s. The discovery of more documents would ers, notably ek, en and eis, are not. This indicates
show if this hypothesis stands on firm ground. possible proclisis on the following word. That
prepositions were proclitic is very likely, no mat-
Bibliography ter how they were spelled. An indication of this
Beazley, John D. 1956. Attic black-figure vase painters. Oxford. might also be retraction of the accent in post-
Beazley, John D. 1963. Attic red-figure vase painters. Oxford.
——. 1971. Paralipomena: additions to attic black-figure vase
posed prepositions (e.g. perí > péri, apó > ápo;
painters and red-figure vase painters. Oxford. see further húper in example 13), even though
Brann, Eva. 1961. “Protoattic well groups from the Athenian it must be kept in mind that graphic accents
agora”, Hesperia 30:305–379. (→ Accentuation) were added at a comparatively
Brenne, Stephen. 1994. “Ostraka and the process of ostrako-
phoria”. In: The archaeology of Athens and Attica under late stage in the history of Gk., and it is doubtful
the democracy, ed. by W. D. Coulson, O. Palagia, T. L. that they could fully capture the accentual status
Shear, Jr., H. A. Shapiro and F. J. Frost, 13–24. Oxford. of all types of word many centuries before, in
Immerwahr, Henry R. 1990. Attic script. A survey. Oxford. Hom. Gk. (→ Clitics).
Jameson, Michael H. 2003. “Athens and Phaselis, IG I³ 10 (EM
6918)”, Horos 14–16:23–29. Primary prepositions can occur with noun
Lalonde, Gerald V. 1972. “The Ionic script in Athenian phrases inflected in various cases. Below is a
decrees before 412 BC”, AJA 76:213–214. list of primary prepositions with the cases of
Lang, Mabel L. 1990. The Athenian Agora. Vol. XXV. Ostraka. co-occurring noun phrases in Homer (→ Preposi-
Princeton.
Langdon, Merle K. 1976. A sanctuary of Zeus on mount tions in Homer):
Hymettos (Hesperia Supplement 16). Princeton.
Mattingly, Harold B. 1961. “Athens and Euboea”, JHS Table 1: Primary prepositions and cases in
81:124–132.
Matthaiou, Angelos P. 2000. “Attic decree in honor of the
Hom. Gk.
Siphnian Polupeithes” (in Greek). In: Praktikà A´ Dieth-
noûs Siphnaikoû Sumposíou, ed. by Tz. Zervoudakis, 239–
accusative dative genitive
248. Athens. amphí + + +
——. 2009. “Attic public inscriptions of the fifth century BC
in Ionic script”. In: Greek history and epigraphy. Essays in aná + + +
honour of P. J. Rhodes, ed. by L. Mitchell and L. Rubinstein, antí +
201–212. Swansea. apó +
Meritt, B. D. 1936. “Greek inscriptions,” Hesperia 5:355–441. diá + +
Parlama, Liana. 2000. “A casualty list” (in Greek). In: The city
under the city, ed. by L. Parlama and N. C. Stampolidis, eis +
396–399. Athens. ek/ex +
Threatte, Leslie.1980. The grammar of Attic inscriptions, en +
I. Phonology. Berlin – New York.
epí + + +
Angelos P. Matthaiou hupér + +
hupó + + +
katá + +
Adpositional Phrase metá + + +
pará + + +
1. Primary Adpositions perí + + +
pró +
Greek has a set of primary adpositions (most prós + + +
often referred to as primary prepositions, hence sún +
I use the words adposition and preposition as
interchangeable in this entry) which can also Later, prepositional phrases with primary prepo-
function as → preverbs, as in most other Indo- sitions became fully grammaticalized (Hewson
European languages (see Pinault 1995, Schwyzer and Bubenik 2006, Luraghi 2010). Primary prepo-
1950, Luraghi 2003; on Hom. Gk. see further sitions could only occur prenominally, with the
Chantraine 1953, Horrocks 1981). They constitute only exception of perí. When perí was postposed,
a closed lexical class, as opposed to other adposi- grammarians indicated its position with the
tions discussed in 1.b. name of anastrophe or inversion, thus showing
Primary prepositions are by the most part that they viewed this as a somewhat irregular
bisyllables, with an accent placed on the sec- word order. In the case of bisyllabic ­prepositions,
34 adpositional phrase
anastrophe is indicated by accent retraction on
the first syllable, as remarked above.
In Hom. Gk., all primary prepositions had, at
least in part, some local meaning, and this was
true for all cases of nouns with which they could
occur (→ Space). Abstract meanings were also
attested, but to a lesser extent and often still
clearly connected with the spatial meaning from
which they originated. In Class. Gk., many of the
spatial meanings of prepositions are dropped,
and only abstract meanings remain: often in
such cases primary prepositions were substi-
tuted by secondary ones in spatial expressions
(see 1.b.). Abstract meanings often predominate
even in cases in which some spatial expressions
still occur. Examples of this tendency are diá and
metá, which I will survey in the next section.
1.a. Post-Homeric Developments of Prepositional
Phrases’ Semantics
The preposition diá could take the genitive and
the accusative in Hom. Gk. As compared to other
types of prepositional phrases, prepositional
phrases with diá already displayed a high degree
of grammaticalization, as shown by the fact that
one could not leave out the preposition, which
determines the syntactic function of the noun.
Consider the following example:
(1) kapnòn d’ enì méssēi édrakon ophthalmoîsi
dià drumà puknà kaì húlēn
‘In the midst (of the island) I saw with (my)
eyes smoke through the thick brush and the
wood’ (Hom. Od. 10.196–197)
In (1) it would be impossible to interpret the
noun phrase drumà puknà kaì húlēn as an adver-
bial phrase if the preposition were not there: the
only possible interpretation would be that this is
another direct object, added to kapnón in some
unclear way.
In Homer, diá with the genitive always indi-
cates path and only has a spatial meaning. With
the accusative, its usage is more complex, even
though the accusative is less frequent than the
genitive (77/97). In 64 out of 77 occurrences, diá
with the accusative has the spatial meaning of
‘through’, ‘over’, ‘across’, while in the remaining
13 occurrences it indicates cause, as in (2):
(2) tḗn pote Nēleùs gêmen heòn dià kállos
‘whom Neleus wedded then, because of
(her) beauty’ (Hom. Od. 11.281–282)
In Class. Gk., diá still occurs with both cases,
but the accusative only indicates cause. In addi-
tion, in Att. Gk. the accusative is more frequent
than the genitive. Spatial meaning remains for
diá with the genitive, but this prepositional
phrase displays various semantic extensions,
to time, intermediary and instrument (Luraghi
2003, 2012).
In Homer, the preposition metá takes the
dative, the accusative and the genitive. The fre-
quency of these three cases is as follows: 215/163/5
(for the frequency of cases with this and other
prepositions see Luraghi 1996). This shows that
the dative was especially frequent, while the
genitive, which mostly occurs in the Odyssey,
was a recent innovation. Similar to what has
been remarked in the case of diá, also in the
case of metá various occurrences indicate that
the preposition governed its noun, as it clearly
determined its syntactic function. This is shown
in the following example:
(3) metà prṓtoisi mákhesthai
‘to fight among the foremost’ (Hom. Il. 5.536)
In (3), the dative without preposition would be
a second argument of the verb (in the meaning:
to fight against + dat.), rather than an adverbial
case.
With all three cases metá had the meaning
‘among’, and indicated location. In addition, the
accusative with motion verbs displayed in a lim-
ited number of occurrences the meaning ‘after’,
as in (4):
(4) ankhímolon dè met’ autòn edúseto dṓmat’
Odusseús
‘Close after him Odysseus entered the pal-
ace’ (Hom. Od. 17.336)
In Class. Gk., both the meanings of metá and the
constructions in which it could appear change
dramatically: the preposition only governs the
genitive and the accusative, whereas its spatial
meanings are dropped. Its new meanings are
‘with’ (→ Comitative) with the genitive and ‘after’
with the accusative. Note further that in Herodo-
tus the comitative was most frequently encoded
through sún and the dative as in Homer, while
in Att. Gk. sún was almost completely replaced
by metá plus genitive (Mommsen 1895, Luraghi
2003).
 adpositional phrase 35
Table 2 illustrates the use of cases with prepo- Note that this preposition is mostly used in
sitions in Class. Gk., along with the most fre- Homer in source and direction expressions with
quent meanings of prepositional phrases: proper nouns, as shown in (6) and (7). Although
the genitive and the accusative without prepo-
Table 2: Primary prepositions and cases in sitions could, to a certain extent, code source
Classical Greek. and direction, this was not possible with proper
names. So, strictly speaking, the preposition is
accusative dative genitive not optional even in cases in which the semantic
amphí around role it indicates is coherent with the meaning
aná up of the prepositionless case. (With some motion
antí in exchange for verbs, direction with proper nouns could be
apó from coded by the dative, as with eîmi in Hom. Il.
diá for (cause) through 11.652.)
eis to, into The other IE languages offer several parallels
ek/ex out of to the Gk. examples in (5)–(7). In Sanskrit, for
en in example, one can detect a dependency relation
epí against on on by which a nominal modifier is added to the
hupér beyond above adverb/adposition as an apposition, as in āsyè
hupó under under by (agent) ’ntáḥ, ‘in the mouth, inside’ (with the locative),
katá about down yàd antáḥ, ‘out of (the interior of) the mouth’
metá after with (with the ablative) (adapted from Delbrück
pará to, along (near)by from 1901:673). In these phrases, the noun is a modi-
perí around around about (topic) fier of an adverb, rather than a complement of
pró before, instead an adposition; evidence is provided by the fact
prós toward, (near)by from that the noun alone could express the same
against spatial relation (i.e., yàd can occur alone and
sún with mean ‘out of the mouth’). The adverb, which
is not obligatory, denotes a spatial region; the
(from Luraghi, Pompei, Skopeteas 2004) case ending adds information as to the specific
semantic role of the phrase (e.g. locative or abla-
1.b. Distribution and Meaning of Cases in Prepo- tive, as above). The same adverbs can also take
sitional Phrases a genitive modifier, thus behaving as a noun,
As remarked in 1.a., primary prepositions belong as in antár sárvasya ‘inside the world’ (antár
to the class of Proto-Indo-European preverbs. and antáḥ are forms of the same adverb; from
Preverbs developed into adpositions in virtually Delbrück 1901:673). In such cases, the noun is
all Indo-European languages, and show com- inflected in the genitive, as is normal for nomi-
parable syntax. Adpositional usage of preverbs nal dependency.
started out from spatial expressions, in which In Gk., things are not as straightforward as
preverbs added some semantic specification to they are in Skt., and as they might appear to be
meanings that could largely be expressed by based on examples (5)–(7): a Gk. (most likely
cases alone. Such tendency is exemplified by the Hom.) innovation, not found elsewhere in Indo-
use of pará with the locative-dative, ablative- European, is the use of adpositions with the par-
genitive and allative-accusative in Hom. Gk.: titive → genitive (Chantraine 1953, Luraghi 2003).
In Hom. Gk. the partitive genitive occurred in
(5) mḗ se géron koílēisin egṑ parà nēusì kikheíō location expressions with and without preposi-
‘Let me not find you, old man, by the ships’ tions, as shown in (8) and (9):
(Hom. Il. 1.26)
(6) iónta par’ Eurútou (8) ḕ halòs ḕ epì gês
‘coming from Eurytos’ (Hom. Il. 2.596) ‘either at sea or on land’ (Hom. Od. 12. 27)
(7) eîmi par’ Hḗphaiston (9) ê ouk Árgeos êen . . .?
‘I am going to Hephaestus’ (Hom. Il. 18.143) ‘Was he not in Argos?’ (Hom. Od. 3.251)
36 adpositional phrase
In this function, the genitive came very close to
the locative-dative, as one can see by comparing
(9) with (10):
(10) patḕr d’ emòs Árgeï násthē
‘My father lived in Argos’ (Hom. Il. 14.119)
Indeed, the Homeric poems offer evidence for
ongoing replacement of the → dative by the geni-
tive, as in the case of metá, mentioned in 1.a.
In post-Hom. Gk. this tendency continues, and
leads to substantial reduction of the preposi-
tional dative (see 1.g.).
In addition to the allative, in Hom. Gk. the
→ accusative could also indicate location or
non-directional motion on an extended surface
(the so-called accusative of extension). The non-
directional usage of the accusative occurred in
expressions of multi-directional path, as opposed
to unidirectional path indicated by the partitive
genitive, as shown in example (11) and (12) (see
Luraghi 2003 and 2012):
(11) bàn d’ iénai protérō dià dōmatos, hêos híkonto
Tēlémakhon
‘They walked straight through the hall,
until they reached Telemachus’ (Hom. Od.
15.109–110)
(12) hōs ídon Hḗphaiston dià dṓmata poipnúonta
‘As they saw Hephaestus puffing around
through the palace’ (Hom. Il. 1. 600)
As a consequence of the usage of the partitive
genitive with prepositions, the three-fold asso-
ciation of the dative with the locative meaning,
the genitive with the ablative, and the accusative
with the allative was blurred. This led to the sim-
plification shown in 1.a. reflected by the meaning
of prepositions with cases in Classical Greek.
In Hom. Gk. some prepositions could encode
the same semantic roles, location or direction,
with three cases, as in the case of metá: differ-
ences lay in possible contact/lack thereof, struc-
ture of a trajectory, and so on (Luraghi 2005). In
Class. Gk., each couple consisting of a preposi-
tion and a specific case increasingly tended to be
associated with one or more semantic roles not
encoded by other cases with the same preposition.
Regarding the frequency of cases with pri-
mary prepositions, remarkably the dative, which
was the most frequent case with many preposi-
tions in Homer, becomes less and less frequent
at later stages in the history of the language (see
Luraghi 1996:65–69). There is also a tendency
for prepositions that take more than one case
to only have two possible patterns: either they
take three cases (dative, genitive, accusative), or,
if they take two, these can only be the genitive
and the accusative: double government either
of (a) the dative and the accusative or of (b) the
genitive and the dative is not attested in Classi-
cal Att.-Ion.
The restriction regarding (a) appears to be a
recent innovation of Hom. Gk., which spread to
Att.-Ion. but not to all dialects (see 1.e.). Indeed,
there were at least two prepositions that at an
earlier stage must have taken the dative and the
accusative (but not the genitive): en and metá.
Regarding the latter, it has already been pointed
out that occurrences of the genitive in Homer
were very limited and must be considered a
recent innovation.
The case of en is even more interesting. This
preposition is cognate to Latin in and German in,
which have the same meaning as their Gk. coun-
terpart, except that they allow for case variation,
whereas the Gk. preposition does not. On the
other hand, the Gk. preposition eis (Ion. es) has
no cognates: this is because eis itself is an innova-
tion, deriving from en+s. The form ens is attested
in the dialect of Crete; elsewhere the nasal
has disappeared, determining → compensatory
lengthening of the vowel (the writing ei stands
for [e:]). Indeed, in literary Att.-Ion. we find
traces of the original situation, in which only en
existed: for example, as a verbal prefix en- often
occurs with motion verbs (for further details
on the development of en and eis see Schwyzer
1950:454–457). In some other dialects, en or in
(see example 20 for this form) is used both with
the dative and with the accusative, as in Arcado-
Cypriot, Thessalian, Boeotian, Northwest Greek
and Elean (see further Buck 1955 and the corre-
sponding articles herein). In this way, it appears
that eis was created precisely to avoid case varia-
tion restricted to the dative and the accusative.
1.c. Emergent Constituency in Homeric Greek
As remarked in 1.a., prepositional usage of pre-
verbs was still in part an emerging phenomenon
in Hom. Gk. Indeed, even the order of adpo-
sitions and nouns was flexible, and a limited
number of occurrences display postpositions, as
shown in example (13):
 adpositional phrase 37
(13) teîkhos eteikhíssanto neôn húper
‘They built a wall to protect the ships’ (Hom.
Il. 7.449)
In this passage, the postposition indicates that
the phrase neôn húper has a → beneficiary mean-
ing; it also specifies the syntactic function of
neôn, which otherwise would possibly be taken
as a genitive modifier of teîkhos, so it cannot be
left out.
Much in the same way as prepositions, pre-
verbs were not yet fully grammaticalized. As a
result, there are passages in which it is hard to
tell if a specific item is used as an adposition
or as a preverb, as in example (14) (see further
Schwyzer 1950:430):
(14) purês epibánt’ (or: épi bánt’) alegeinês
‘(Menelaos) set upon the grievous pyre’
(Hom. Il. 4.99)
Compare with (15), where epí is clearly an adpo-
sition (but note that this can only be said on
semantic grounds and because no compound
verb *epipnéō exists after Homer, while epibaínō
does):
(15) hóssa te gaîan épi pneíei
‘whatever breathes on earth’ (Hom. Od. 18.131)
In example (16), we find an occurrence of double
preverbation (see Schwyzer 1950:428):
(16) poliês halòs exanadûsai
‘coming forth from the gray sea’ (Hom. Od.
4.405)
Even if the first preverb ex seems to govern
the preceding noun phrase poliês halòs, a closer
connection with the verb is more likely in this
case. Indeed, postposed adpositions with com-
plex noun phrases usually occurred after the first
word of the noun phrase (e.g. nēòs húper gla-
phurês ‘over the curved ship’, Hom. Od. 12.406),
and the occurrence after a complex noun phrase
as in this case is taken as evidence for preverba-
tion (Irigoin 1954, De Angelis 2004).
The original usage of adpositions as modi-
fiers of noun phrases indicating spatial relation
implies that the relation between the adposi-
tion and its noun was not one of government,
but simply of modification (see Lehmann 1985
and Luraghi 2009 on the classification of depen-
dency relations and on the difference between
modification and government in the case of
adpositions). One might wonder whether gov-
ernment had already risen in Hom. Gk. That it
had not, and adpositional phrases basically did
not exist in Hom. Gk. is the position argued for
in Hewson and Bubenik (2006). A closer exami-
nation of the data, however, points in another
direction.
Among current definitions of government,
some envisage obligatoriness of morphologi-
cal coding as its trademark, as in the following
definition by Zwicky (1985): “[government:] the
selection of the morphosyntactic shape of one
constituent (the governed or subordinate con-
stituent) by virtue of its combining with another
(the governor).” Such definitions do not account
for case variation with the same governor (adpo-
sition or verb), even for languages in which it is
more limited than in Gk., as for example Modern
High German. Other definitions of government
focus on the syntactic relation of the governed
element: “Constituent A governs constituent
B if the syntactic function of B depends on
A” (Moravcsik 1995). Concerning many of the
Homeric examples analyzed in this section, it
has been stressed that the prepositionless noun
phrase would have a different function from the
function specified by the preposition (see exam-
ples 1–4). In this sense, government was already
a feature of adpositional phrases in Hom. Gk.
(see further Luraghi 2011, Haug 2009).
1.d. Preverb or Preposition in Homeric Greek
In several occurrences, preverbs coalesce with
the verb but still seem to govern noun phrases.
Compare the following couples of examples:
(17) a. ek Púlou elthṓn
‘coming from Pylos’ (Hom. Il. 1.269)
b. hṑs eipṑn exêlthe dómōn
‘He said that and left the palace’ (Hom. Od.
20.371)
(18) a. hṑs eipṑn eisêlthe dómous
‘He said that and went into the palace’
(Hom. Od. 21.243)
b. hṑs eis Aídeō dómon ḗluthen
‘As he went into the palace of Hades’ (Hom.
Od. 23.322)
Verbs such as those in (17b) and (18b) are said
by Horrocks (1981) to contain ‘prepositional
preverbs’. Viti (2008 and 2009) has shown that
38 adpositional phrase
there are tendencies that make it more likely
for the same spatial relation to be expressed
through a preverbed verb or an adpositional
phrase. According to her findings, “prepositions
are used when the complement is a common
noun referring to an inanimate landmark, while
the complement of a preverbed verb has [most
often] a human, specific, and topical referent,
which is represented by a personal pronoun.”
(Viti 2009:1).
1.e. Primary Prepositions: Dialectal Variation
Beside the prepositions listed in 1.a., some others
occur in Mycenaean and other dialects. Bartoněk
(2003) mentions the prepositions o-pi and pe-da
in Mycenaean texts. The former is a cognate of
Att.-Ion. epí with a different vowel gradation. An
example of its usage is the expression opi men(n)
ei ‘monthly’. Adverbs and adverbial prepositions
with the same vowel are also attested in Att.-Ion.,
as for example ópisthen ‘behind, at the back’.
The preposition pe-da corresponds to pedá/
petá attested in various dialects, including Arca-
dian, Aeolic and various Doric dialects. Refer-
ence grammars usually refer to it as a dialectal
variant of metá, even though the two preposi-
tions are not etymologically related. Bartoněk
glosses it as ‘nach’ for Mycenaean; as an example
he gives pe-da wa-tu, i.e., peda wastu, which he
translates as ‘in die Stadt’. An example from
Arcadian is (19):
(19) pe<t> tois woikiatais tas theu enai
‘to be among the servants of the goddess’
(IG V² 262: 16)
A peculiarity of Arcadian and Cypriot is consti-
tuted by the fact that the genitive never occurs
with prepositions. The prepositional usage of the
genitive in Att.-Ion. corresponds to the prepo-
sitional usage of the dative in these dialects
(Schwyzer 1950:447–448, Luraghi 1984). Thus,
contrary to the process that we have seen in
Hom. Gk. by which the genitive replaced the
dative in prepositional phrases, it is the dative
that takes the place of the prepositional geni-
tive in these dialects. → Arcadian and → Cypriot
did not participate in the Hom. innovation, by
which the partitive genitive was introduced in
adpositional phrases. Later, the dative extended
to also cover the ablative usage of the genitive
with prepositions. Examples are the following:
(20) in amerais trisi apu tai an to adikēma genēto
‘in three days since the wrong has been
done’ (IG V² 6:4)
(21) esdellontes es toi ergoi
‘banishing from work’ (IG V² 6:49)
(In 21, es corresponds to Att.-Ion. ex)
Other prepositions have dialectal forms, some-
times also occurring in Hom. Gk. For example,
prós alternates with protí and potí in Homer,
a form which also occurs in Doric inscriptions
together with poí and portí (Gortyn Law 5.44).
The form protí, characterized by Schwyzer as
Argive (1923:84.3), occurs in various inscriptions
of the 5th and 4th c. BCE (Tylisus, Argos) and
in the poet Alcman, while in Arcado-Cypriot
the corresponding preposition is pós. Sappho
uses prós at least in compounding, and forms
with <e> vocalism are attested in Pamphylian as
well as in some grammatical glosses (see further
Schwyzer 1923, 1950).
1.f. Prepositions Functioning as Subordinators
A major difference between Hom. and Class. Gk.
is the rise of the definite article. Starting with
Herodotus, the definite article was increasingly
used with infinitives, which could also occur in
prepositional phrases (Schwyzer 1950:360–361).
Prepositional phrases containing an infinitive
with the definite article constitute a new type of
subordinate clause. An early example is metà tò
basileúein (22):
(22) eirṓta tòn Dēmárēton hokoîón ti eíē tò
árkhein metà tò basileúein
‘He asked Demaratus what it was like to
hold office after being king’ (Hdt. 6.67.2)
Some prepositions became very frequent in
such constructions: this is especially true for diá,
eis, epí and prós with the accusative in causal
clauses, as shown in example (23) (see further
Schwyzer 1950:370):
(23) egṑ dè dià tò mèn stérgein pósin kaì
xunthánoim’ án
‘Because I loved my husband I could even
die with him’ (Eur. Hel. 1401–1402)
This development also took place in the case of
some secondary prepositions, such as héneka,
which indicates purpose, as shown in (24):
 adpositional phrase 39
(24) nomízō gàr emautòn eoikénai légonti taûta
héneka toû humâs mâllon ethélein par’ emoì
kataménein
‘For I think it would look as if I were saying
it simply to make you more willing to stay
with me’ (Xen. Cyr. 5.1.21)
1.g. Prepositional Phrases in New Testament
Greek
In the → New Testament, most primary prepo-
sitions are still used, but the process of reduc-
tion of the prepositional dative has gone a step
futher. The dative no longer occurs with perí
and hupó, and very rarely occurs with prós. In
the case of prós, it is not only the dative which
looses ground: the genitive occurs only once.
These trends are confirmed by the Ptolemaic
papyri (→ Papyri, Language of), where neither
the dative nor the genitive occur with prós, while
government by perí and hupó is limited to the
genitive (Rossberg 1909). Only two prepositions
are productive in combinations with all three
cases in the New Testament and in the papyri,
namely epí and pará: the difference with respect
to Hom. Gk., where eight prepositions combined
with the three cases, is dramatic.
In the New Testament in particular, prepo-
sitions developed new meanings, especially in
connection with certain verbs. Consider exam-
ple (25):
(25) pántōn dè thaumazóntōn epì pâsin hoîs
epoíei
‘While they all wondered at all things which
he did’ (Luke 9.43)
In Class. Gk., the verb thaumázein ‘wonder’ takes
the dative of the stimulus (Luraghi and Cuz-
zolin 2007). In this and in similar occurrences,
the preposition may reflect a usage in the lan-
guage of writers who were not native speakers
of Greek, but it can also be used to reinforce the
dative, pointing thus to an initial stage in the
change that eventually led to its loss.
2. Secondary Adpositions
Already in Homer, various adverbs can occur
with a noun phrase that they modify, in a similar
manner as the primary prepositions. The main
difference between such adverbs and primary
prepositions in Hom. Gk., where primary prepo-
sitions are also used as free standing adverbs,
is the impossibility for adverbial or secondary
prepositions to function as preverbs. Examples
are áneu ‘without’, which takes the genitive
(áneu kéntroio ‘without goad’ Hom. Il. 23.387)
and háma ‘together with’, which takes the dative
(háma laôi ‘with the people’ Hom. Il. 1.226).
Mainly after Homer, spatial adverbs, often
deriving from primary prepositions, tend to
replace them in their concrete meaning. This
is a common evolution, which has also been
observed in other IE languages. Adverbs built by
reinforcing primary prepositions, and also func-
tioning as prepositions in Gk. are the following:
éndon ‘inside’ from en, éxō ‘outside’ from ex, eísō
‘toward’ from eis, prósthen ‘in front of ’ from pró,
ánō ‘up, on top of ’ from aná, kátō ‘down(ward)’
from katá, etc. Examples are given below:
(26) exépleusan éxō toû liménos
‘They rowed out of the harbor’ (Xen. Hell.
1.6.20)
(27) stḗsai dè stḗlēn . . . prósthen toû agálmatos
‘The gravestone must be placed in front of
the monument’ (IG II² 34.fr a-d.20–22)
(28) kaì toû Euphrátou dè tàs pēgàs elégeto ou
prósō toû Tígrētos eînai
‘They were also informed that the head-
waters of the Euphrates were not far from
those of the Tigris’ (Xen. An. 4.1.3)
Not all secondary adpositions are consistently
preposed to the noun: a few are generally post-
posed. An example is khárin, which means ‘for
the sake of ’ and encodes beneficiary and pur-
pose, as shown in (29):
(29) hoὶ ou tḕn Athēnaíōn khárin estrateúonto
allà tḕn autôn
‘Who fought for their own sake, rather than
for the Athenians’ (Hdt. 5.99.1)
This adposition, which could occasionally be
preposed, is the accusative form of the noun
kháris ‘grace, favor’, which has undergone a
grammaticalization process. The genitive with
which it occurs is still a hint to its nominal ori-
gin. Another adverbial adposition which could
be pre- or postposed is héneka, see example (24).
Some adverbs can enter more complex con-
structions, in which they take a prepositional
phrase with a primary preposition as their
­complement, rather than a noun phrase. Pri-
mary prepositions which can serve the purpose
40 adpositional phrase
of introducing complements of secondary prepo-
sitions are typically eis and apó. This type of con-
struction can be seen as a hint to a ­development
which took place much later, in Byzantine
Greek, when many more adverbial prepositions
came to be used in this way, with prepositional
phrases as their complements, again with eis or
apó (→ Developments in Medieval and Modern
Greek). An example is given in (30):
(30) tês hodoû apò tês en Babulôni mákhēs ákhri
eis Kotúōra stathmoì hekatòn eíkosi dúo
‘The road from the battlefield near Baby-
lon up to Cotyora was one hundred and
twenty-two stages’ (Xen. An. 5.5.4)
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Silvia Luraghi
Adpositions (Prepositions)
1. The Development of Adpositions
The historical morphology of Greek adposi-
tions is rather problematic, even if we can trace
back to Indo-European almost all of the Greek
lexemes traditionally termed ‘proper’ Greek
prepositions (→ Indo-European Linguistic Back-
ground). Thus (Bortone 2010:140–142) Greek antí
is clearly related to Latin ante; Greek katá and
the prefix kati- in kasígnētos (Thess. katígn[eitos)
match Hittite katti and katta; Greek en matches
Lat. in, Osco-Umbrian en, Old Irish in, and
Gothic in; Greek epí matches Sanskrit api and
(probably) Hitt. appa; Greek hupó corresponds
to Sanskrit upa, Gothic uf and, somehow, Lat.
sub. Very few → Attic prepositions have no clear
Indo-European etymon; diá is probably a Greek
innovation, but perhaps based on the root *dis
(attested in Latin, Germanic and Albanian, but