Typological comparison in the nominal domain

Articles and bare nouns across Ancient Greek

Cristina Guardiano
Universit`
a di Modena e Reggio Emilia
cristina.guardiano@unimore.it

International Conference on Linguistics and Classical Languages

Roma, February 17-19, 2011

Cristina Guardiano

Typological comparison in the nominal domain

Background

Formal analysis of syntactic structures

Theories on diachronic variation within the generative (formal)
framework (i.e. Roberts and Roussou 2003, Roberts 2007)
Description of syntactic patterns in ancient varieties
Analysis of diachronic change

Principles and Parameters theories (stemming from Chomsky 1981)

Selected subdomain: nominal domain DP-Hypothesis

The development of the article-system in Greek

1
2
3

Rise of the definite article

Rise of the indefinite article
Proper names + definite (i.e. expletive article)

Cristina Guardiano

Typological comparison in the nominal domain

DP-structure
DP
Spec

D
D

NP

Two quantificational features universally encoded in D:

(partial/general) definiteness, (partial and general) count
grammaticalized (Crisma 1997, Guardiano 2006)
One denotational property, reference/person
strong (Longobardi 1994, 2005)
Cristina Guardiano

Typological comparison in the nominal domain

Analysis

Focus on a set of selected phemonena

Distribution and use of the definite article
Interpretation of DPs with and without a visible definite article

Minimal comparison of successive diachronic stages

Homer
Classical Attic
New Testament
Standard Modern Greek

Cristina Guardiano

Typological comparison in the nominal domain

Results
1

Homeric varieties
All types of nouns can be bare
, , t = true (anaphoric) demonstrative
, , t = already a D?
topical/relevant referents; substantivizing function

Classical Greek
, , t selects the whole set of definite readings fon any NP
(gramm def) and kind/(object)-referring interpretations (strong D).
Singular count nouns can be bare no grammaticalized count
null article

New Testament
, , t like CG (gramm def, strong D)
specific (non definite) readings visible D (gramm partial count?)

Modern Greek
o

, h,

like CG, NTG (gramm def, strong D)

required for the count reading (gramm count, no null

eic, mia, ena

article)
Cristina Guardiano

Typological comparison in the nominal domain

Some preliminary results

Gramm part def

Gramm def
Gramm part count
Gramm count
Strong D

HG
+?
0
?

CG
+
+
0
+

NTG
+
+
+?
+

MG
+
+
+
+
+

= Progressive extension of the domains which require a visible D in

order for a DP to be interpreted as an argument
= Step-by-step process of successive micro-changes (parameter
resettings) in the representation of def, count = detectable
crosslinguistically with similar (i.e. universal?) patterns

Cristina Guardiano

Typological comparison in the nominal domain