Null vs. cognate objects and language contact: Evidence from Hellenistic Greek

Abstract

Both “pleonastic” clitics instead of referential null objects and cognate objects in the Septuagint and the New Testament have been analyzed as resulting from contact between Greek and Hebrew. We examine the hypothesis of Hebrew interference and argue that the syntactic characteristics of Hebrew of referential overt objects and activity/event noun cognate objects are not transferred directly to Greek. We propose a second hypothesis according to which language contact (between Biblical Hebrew and Greek) results in semantic changes and these semantic changes affect transitivity. The semantic changes related to language contact concern the aspectual features of Greek: the development of the verbal aspect in Greek from expression of situation-type oppositions to expression of viewpoint (+/ − perfective) aspect oppositions can explain the changes observed in transitivity in Hellenistic Greek.