Abstract

AbstractWe study the distribution of the nominal and copular construction of predicate nominals in a subset of authors from the Ancient Greek Dependency Treebank (AGDT). We concentrate on the texts of the historians Herodotus, Thucydides (both 5th century BCE) and Polybius (2nd century BCE). The data comprise a sample of 440 sentences (Hdt = 175, Thuc = 91, Pol = 174). We analyze the impact of four features that have been discussed in the literature and can be observed in the annotation of AGDT: (1) order of constituents, (2) part of speech of the subjects, (3) type of clause and (4) length of the clause. Furthermore, we test how the predictive power of these factors varies in time from Herodotus and Thucydides to Polybius with the help of a logistic-regression model. The analysis shows that, contrary to a simplistic opinion, the nominal construction does not drop into irrelevance in Hellenistic Greek. Moreover, an analysis of the distributions in the authors highlights a remarkable continuity in the usage patterns. Further work is needed to improve the predictive power of our logistic-regression model and to integrate more data in view of a more comprehensive quantitative diachronic study.

Highlights

  • Annotated corpora known as treebanks are doubtlessly a very powerful tool for studying the syntax of a language

  • 7 A previous survey of the Ancient Greek Dependency Treebank (AGDT) treebank reveals that, in a restricted sample limited to main clauses only, with verb at third person, with subjects overtly expressed, 77.88% of the constructions attested in poetry are nominal (817 vs 232 copular); for prose, the amount drops to 45.32% (194 vs 234)

  • On a more superficial observation, like the one we suggested in Section 3.1, Polymambrini figure 5 Effects and interactions in the Logistic Regression model bius seemed to strike a middle path between Herodotus and Thucydides, this predictor enriches the picture with other details

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Summary

Introduction

Annotated corpora known as treebanks are doubtlessly a very powerful tool for studying the syntax of a language. 16 It must be noted, that it is not always easy to distinguish between predicate nominal and subject in an Ancient Greek sentence; in Figure 1 / Example 5, the annotator has chosen to label the demonstrative haútē ‘this’ as the predicate nominal and ártisis tendency is visible in all the authors of our sample (Herod.: 17.9 % of nominal constructions with P-Sb order; 16.1% with Sb-Pnom; Thuc.: 66 % nominal with Pnom-Sb, 43.9% with Sb-Pnom; Polyb.: 37.6% nominal with Pnom-Sb, 24.7 % with Sb-Pnom) These data do not support the null hypothesis that the choice of construction is unrelated to the respective order of nominal predicate and subject. This dispersion is not compatible with the hypothesis that nominal constructions are used predominantly with shorter clauses

A multifactorial analysis
Findings
Conclusion
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