Discourse accounts for diachronic facts: The case of Classical Greek deverbal nominals

Iris Papadopoulou
2018
In the 1985 paper "The Discourse Basis for Lexical Categories in Universal Grammar, " Hopper and Thompson propose discourse function as the principal factor in the morphosyntactic behaviour of major word-classes, nouns and verbs. The aim of the present paper is to propose that such a continuum of discourse fuctions featuring Discourse-lintity-denoting words (nouns) at the one end, Discourse-Kvent-denoting words (verbs) at the other, and Property-Concept words (adjectives) in the space between,
more » ... nderlies not only the synchronic morphosyntactic behaviour of major word-classes, but also diachronic language change. Classical Greek nonfinite verb forms will be found to be of a hybrid discourse function and, therefore, susceptible to change.
doi:10.26262/istal.v12i1.6683 fatcat:xcflpjqqmngpzo42fgypzpjjji