Expressions of Agency in Ancient GreekAncient Greek expressed the agents of passive verbs by a variety of means, and this work explores the language's development of prepositions which marked the agents of passive verbs. After an initial look at the pragmatics of agent constructions, it turns to this central question: under what conditions is the agent expressed by a construction other than hupo with the genitive? The book traces the development of these expressions from Homer through classical prose and drama, paying attention to the semantic, syntactic, and metrical conditions that favoured the use of one preposition over another. It concludes with a study of the decline of hupo as an agent marker in the first millennium AD. Although the focus is on developments in Greek, translation of the examples should render it accessible to linguists studying changes in prepositional systems generally. |
Common terms and phrases
ablatival prepositions action active Aeschylus Aéyw agent constructions agent expressions animacy animacy hierarchy aorist Aristophanes Attic classical clause considered construe context dative of agent default agent marker Demosthenes denote Euripides examples express the agent frequently genitive Greek Herodotus Homer inanimate instance intransitive language Lysias mark the agent metrically middle narrative theme non-standard agent markers noun occurs PACS participle passage passive verbs patient perfect passive Plato Polybius pronouns prose Protagoras role Schwyzer semantic sentence Sophocles stative suppletive suppletive passives syntactic texts thinking-verbs Thucydides transitive verbs translation usage ÚTÓ ÚTTÓ voice Xenophon ἂν ἀπὸ αὐτοῦ αὐτῷ αὐτῶν γὰρ δὲ δὴ εἶναι ἐκ ἐμοῦ ἐν ἐξ ἡμῖν θεοῦ θεῶν καὶ λέγω μὲν μοι νομίζω οἱ οὐ οὐκ παρ παρά πέμπω πρὸς σοῦ τὰ τε τὴν τῆς τὸ τοῖς τὸν τοῦ τῷ τῶν ὑμῶν ὑπ ὑπὸ ὑπὸ τοῦ ὑπὸ τῶν ὑφ ὡς