Ancient Greek Accentuation
Synchronic Patterns, Frequency Effects, and Prehistory
ISBN13: 9780199279609ISBN10: 0199279608
Hardback,
480 pages
May 2006,
In Stock
Price:
$199.00 (06)See more from the series
Description
The accent of many Greek words has long been considered arbitrary, but Philomen Probert points to some striking correlations between accentuation and a word's synchronic morphological transparency, and between accentuation and word frequency, that give clues to the prehistory of the accent system. Bringing together comparative evidence for the Indo-European accentuation of the relevant categories with recent insights into the effects that loss of transparency and word frequency have on language change, Probert uses the synchronically observable correlations to bridge the gap between the accentuation patterns reconstructable for Indo-European and those directly attested for Greek from the Hellenistic period onwards.Features
- Provides new insights into language change and the role of frequency - topics of current interest among historical linguists
- Contains a clear account of the evidence for Greek accentuation and the basic characteristics of the accent system
About the Author(s)
Philomen Probert is University Lecturer in Classical Philology and Linguistics, and Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford.
