BORE ASPECTS OP MODERN GREEK SYLTAX by Athanaaios Kakouriotis A thesis submitted fox1 the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies University of London 1979 ProQuest Number: 10731354 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10731354 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 II Abstract The present thesis aims to describe some aspects of Mod Greek syntax.It contains an introduction and five chapters. The introduction states the purpose for writing this thesis and points out the fact that it is a data-oriented rather, chan a theory-^oriented work. Chapter one deals with the word order in Mod Greek. The main conclusion drawn from this chapter is that, given the re­ latively rich system of inflexions of Mod Greek,there is a freedom of word order in this language;an attempt is made to account for this phenomenon in terms of the thematic structure. of the sentence and PSP theory. The second chapter examines the clitics;special attention is paid to clitic objects and some problems concerning their syntactic relations .to the rest of the sentence are pointed out;the chapter ends with the tentative suggestion that cli­ tics might be taken care of by the morphologichi component of the grammar• Chapter three deals with complementation;this a vast area of study and-for this reason the analysis is confined to 'oti1, 'na* and'pu' complement clauses; Object Raising, Verb Raising and Extraposition are also discussed in this chapter. The fourth chapter takes up Relative Clauses but again the analysis is confined to the two main relativizers that is, to •o opios' and *pu'. It is suggested that for *pu' a comple-’ mentizer analysis is quite possible.The second part of the chapter discusses Relative Extraposition which is explained in terms of thematic structure and PSP theory. Chapter five is about Coordination in Mod Greek.An attempt is made to distinguish between 'sentential"and 'phrasal* in terms of 'processes1.Gapping is also examined and pragmatic considerations are taken into account for its analysis. The thesis ends with a section which contains all the relevant bibliography. Ill Acknowledgement a I wish to express my gratitude to my supervisor Dr.f.Bynon for her guidance and constant encouragement throughout the course of this work. !hanks are also due to my patient consultant Dr.Dick Hudson who was kind enough to initiate me into deep mysteries of surface structure. My gratitude to the SOAS Department of Linguistics is endless; I consider myself very lucky for having studied there. fhis work has been partly supported by a British Council "grand-in-aid" which came just in time.J am therefore deeply indebted to those who offered it to me. IV TABLE Off CONTENTS 2 a,ge INTRODUCTION 0 .1 The purpose 1 0 .2 The Content and the Approach 2 0.3 Previous work 10 0.4 Idealization o±' Data 11 0.3 A Note on the Inflectional Properties ■ 12 of Verbs CHAPTER ONE: WORD ORDER AND THE THEMATIC STRUCTURE 1 .1 General 17 1 .2 The Pocus of Information 18 1*3 Theme and Rheme 21 1.4 The Hallidayan Approach 29 1*3 Topic,Comment,Pocus and Presupposition 31 1 .6 Subjects and Objects with a Discourse 36 Function 1.7 Theme and Focus,a Distinction 40 1 .8 Word Order,Stress and the Clitics 43 1.9 Ambiguity due to Free Word Order 46 1 .1 0 Topic and Topicalization 47 l.ll Definiteness,Givenness and Topics 31 CHAPTER TWO: THE CLITICS 2 .1 A Survey 39 2 .2 Examples of Cliticized Words 60 2.3 Syntax of the Clitics 61 2.4 Stress on Clitics 63 2.3 Clitic Objects 64 2,3. 1 Clitic Objects as Nonfocal Elements 64 ia^e 2*5*2 Objective Case Personal Pronouns and Corresponding Clitics 65 2.5.5 Genitive Case Personal Pronouns and their Clitics 66 2 .6 Order of the Clitics 67 2.7 Clitics as Logical Subjects 72 2 .8 Clitics in Sensation Predicates 73 2.9 Clitics in Passives 75 2 .1 0 Clitics with Impersonal Expressions 76 2 .1 1 Ethical Dative Clitics 79 2 .1 2 Some Properties of the clitics 82 2.15 the Syntax of the Clitic Objects 84 CHAPTER THREE: COMPLEMENTATION 3.1 The Complementizers 92 3.1.1 Some Facts 92 3.2 The For-phrase in Mod Greek 94 3.3 Gerundive and Mod Greek 95 3.4 The Syntax of the Complement Clauses 100 3.5 On the Article of Complement Clauses 104 3.5.1 A Survey 104 3.5.2 Fact Deletion 106 3.5.3 A Syntactical Analysis 108 3.6 The ' oti* vs.’na' Opposition 111 3.7 Aspect in 'na1 Complements 117 3.7.1 Habitual vs.Nonhabitual 117 5.7.2 Aspect in Sensory Verbs 120 3.7.3 Instantaneous vs.Durative Events 128 3.8 Raising 132 3 .8 .1 A Case for Raising 132 3 *8 .2 Tensed Sentences 1 3 8 VI » Page 3.8*3 Object Raising 139‘ 3-8,4 Nonclitic Climbing 147 3.8*5 Verb Raising in hod Greek 149 3*9 Extraposition - 156 3*9.1 Extraposition and PSP :t 15& 3.9.2 Extraposition with Bisentential Verbs I63 3*10 The Semantics of Complement Clauses 166 3.10.1 Mod Greek Pactives 16& 3.10.2 Factivity and Stress I67 3.10*3 Pocus and Presupposition 1.7X 3.11 A Semantic Classification of Predicates 18*1 3.11*1 Assertive vs.Nonassertive 181 3*11.2 Weak Assertives 191 3*11.3 Strong Assertives - > 197 3.11.4 Nonassertives 199 3.11.5 Semif actives 2CX7. 3.11.6 Pure Pactives 20.3 CHAPTER POUR: THE RELATIVE CLAUSE 4*1 Inflectional Properties 20 6 4*2 'o opios'j'pu' 20? 4.3 The Accessibility Hierarchy 212 4.4 Constraints on Relativization 218 4.5 Extraposition in Relative Clauses 225 4.6 Relative Clauses and Adverbs 231 4*7 Relative,Subjunctive. and"Presupposition 234 CHAPTER FIVE: COORDINATION 5.1 Sentential and Phrasal a distinction 237 5.2 Coordination and Processes .240 5.3 The Disjuncts ‘ i 1 ieither or 2;49 5.4 1ala1 but ^251 VII Page 5.5 Gapping prg1 - 5.5.1 Gapping and Word Order* 255 5.6 The Coordinate Constituent Gonstrainet 2£9 5.7 Asyndetic Coordination 265 5.8 Asyndetic Subordination 26£ BIBLIOGRAPHY 26? (\ 11 ycvi<lifon 5 'UsSgoL hoc • A ccusQttve. M y /■) d~\cotPt /) dv. h r t Avii aC-e. Ct.Qi-) C & t ic Coyyj jo Co'wjp-C'Yife'nC DPT Dcaic^k't&c Dep^devc^ Ch-tofyj^ p o O it€ c t 0€jecb F$P fujvoju)^ oJl Se-nte^ct P-e*spectt\'£ (rc n G en itive I ^ j O JF^e^a/tivP X'iwjp £4-/. / X h d .(itJ T v oil c<a6/V^L I 0 lyd'/Jce.ofc O i ^ c t r n & P&c-feob/'vp p e p ^ u u P P^jO ffyjPoS/'t/bv7 ^ S iy ^ u d & c 5u^j f(j- [ fainsjotvrf&tu?,yi&I GvQMo*?(Zfc VIII To my wife and. my brother INTRODUCTION ! 0.1 The purpose- The present thesis is an informal discussion of some aspects of Modern Greek syntax. However, I must point out from the outset that what I intend to do is to give a description. My work, then, is 'data oriented' rather than theory oriented. This is mainly due to my belief that linguistics needs first a collection of valuable facts from a diverse cross- section of languages before formulating linguistic theories. Trying to collect all data is like asking for the moon. Hut this does not necessarily mean that a scanty collection of some facts will do the job* The more facts we get, the better we will manage to make valuable generalizations based on these facts. VJhat I mean is simply this: at the present stage of the development of the linguistic 'science';our knowledge and understanding of the languages is still not quite sufficient. As a result, current linguistic theories seem to indulge in a race of refuting one another; so much so, that one feels his faith in linguistics shaken. This situation is worsened by the "smart Alec", "clever-clever" attitude which rival theories maintain towards each other of the Frankestain and the Zombies type. Despite the fact that language changes, I do believe that a good description can become an everlasting possession;and a good description is more viable than a good theory. Indeed, I feel quite sure that l^persen will be referred to by stud­ ents of language when many present-day leading stars of linguistics will have been forgotten. 2 0.2 The Content and the Approach 1 believe that a linguistic description can make a good use of both data derived from introspection and data drawn from texts. 1 have, therefore, taken my material from both, hut since inbrospection involves some well-known risks I have employed informants or7to be more preciset consultants to check the correctness of the material.