Passivization of governed oblique cases in Ancient Greek: A case of hyperanalysis (original) (raw)

In Croft (2000: 121) hyperanalysis is defined as a type of form-function reanalysis whereby “… the listener reanalyzes an inherent semantic/functional property of a syntactic unit as a contextual property […]. In the reanalysis, this inherent property of a syntactic unit is then attributed to the context […], and so the syntactic unit in question loses some of its meaning or function. Hence, hyperanalysis is a major source of semantic bleaching and/or loss in general”. Among examples of hyperanalysis, Croft mentions the loss of governed oblique cases in Russian and in some Germanic languages, and argues that “The inherent semantic value of … case can be reanalyzed as belonging solely to the verb meaning” (2000: 122). Hyperanalysis leads to substitution of the oblique case with the accusative in Russian, whereas in Icelandic a governed oblique can become the subject of a personal passive, even though it is not substituted by the accusative when it functions as object or by the nominative when it functions as subject. In my paper I would like to discuss a case of hyperanalysis involving governed oblique cases in Ancient Greek. In this language, several verbs can take the genitive or the dative, and also occur in personal passive constructions, in which they regularly have nominative subjects. Conti (1998) has shown that only the partitive genitive could become the subject of a passive construction in Homeric Greek, while verbs taking the dative occur in personal passive constructions only in later prose. Hyperanalysis in this case implies reanalyzing the oblique arguments as direct objects. I argue that this type of reanalysis is easier with the partitive genitive due to the peculiar meaning of the partitive, which does not indicate a semantic role, but rather a way of conceptualizing the a referent (see Luraghi 2003a: 60-62); the dative, on the other hand, could indicate semantic roles, so the reanalysis of dative objects as indicating patient was slower. Note that in origin the difference between accusative objects and oblique objects in Ancient Greek lied in different degrees of affectedness, whereby only the accusative indicated total affectedness and thus a higher degree of transitivity. Hyperanalysis consists in the desemanticization of cases; increasing tendency of oblique objects to be treated as direct objects indicates that they tend to loose their role in indicating partial affectedness. After reanalysis, the degree of transitivity of a sentence is no longer indicated both by the meaning of the verb and by the case, but by the verb alone. As pointed out by Conti (1998), passive constructions only occur with highly transitive verbs, i.e. verbs that indicate controlled situations, while verbs that indicate states or processes and take oblique objects are normally not passivized. Conti further argues that, in much the same way, verbs that take accusative direct objects are more frequently passivized if they are highly transitive. Luraghi (2003b) shows that passive agents can be variously encoded in Ancient Greek, but passive constructions with highly transitive verbs require agent phrases encoded through prepositional phrases consisting of hupó with the genitive. This type of prepositional phrase expresses control over the situation, based on the concrete meaning of hupó ‘over’. Thus, high transitivity is a distinctive feature of the passive construction in Ancient Greek. When governed oblique cases are desemanticized due to hyperanalysis, they start being able to occur in passive constructions, because they no longer contribute to expressing the overall degree of transitivity of a sentence.