Against four syntactic relics and for one

Abstract

AbstractChapter 14 returns to questions of linguistic history and prehistory. It begins with four syntactic phenomena sometimes considered relics from a stage before the development of Greek relative clauses as we know them: anaphoric hos, hē, ho; clause-final placement of postnominal relative clauses; verbless relative clauses; apodotic de. The chapter argues that none of these is actually such a relic, but that Greek relative clause syntax does include at least one genuine syntactic relic of an earlier stage: epic te. The earlier stage is, however, not a stage without relative clauses, but one in which relative clauses were necessarily already present. The chapter also makes the somewhat radical suggestion that one variety of early Greek relative clause may actually be a fairly recent development: the non-restrictive relative clause, which has often been taken to be the earliest Greek relative clause construction.