Collective Aspects of Subjectivity: The Subject Pronoun emeı´B (‘we’) in Modern Greek

2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leila Behrens

According to traditional wisdom, reciprocal predicates can only occur with plural subjects. This is assumed either because the reciprocal predicates in question are constructed by means of a reciprocal anaphor, which is considered as being inherently plural and hence requiring a plural antecedent, or, if there is no binding requirement, the following principle of argument mapping is implicitly assumed: all participants of a reciprocal situation need an overt realization by the same highest syntactic argument. Since a reciprocal relation minimally involves the existence of two participants, and since (in the languages considered so far) the highest syntactic argument is the subject, this mapping principle leads to the idea that the subjects of reciprocal predicates should be confined to plural or conjoined phrases. In this paper, I will show that this principle turns out to be unrealistically strong, once real discourse data are considered, in particular from a cross-linguistic perspective. Under certain structural and pragmatic conditions, participants of reciprocal relations may be backgrounded and also suppressed, with the result that, in the second case, they will lack an overt realization altogether. It will be argued that there is a typological correlation between the following three phenomena: discontinuous reciprocals (where one participant is backgrounded and hence realized as an oblique phrase), “true” singular subject reciprocals (where only one participant is realized overtly, while the other is suppressed), and plural subject reciprocals, admitting the interpretation that each individual among the subject’s referents participates in a reciprocal relation with some other (unknown or arbitrary) individual that is, however, suppressed, i.e. not referred to by the subject phrase or any other phrase in the sentence. I will present data from four languages: Hungarian, German, (Modern) Greek and Serbian/Croatian. In general, a cross-linguistic approach will be favored which considers differences and similarities at all relevant levels of description, e.g. discourse pragmatics, verbal aspect, lexical-semantic fields, interfering effects of ambiguity, etc. in addition to structural constraints in marking reciprocity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-260
Author(s):  
Yatsiv M ◽  

In each historical period, light played an important mystical role in the creation of the sacred space of the temple, and was and is an integral part of religious ritual. Light is an architectural phenomenon, the formative and communicative element of the spatial structure of the temple, the most important factor in the perception of space and layout of the temple. The subject of the analysis contained in the article is the light environment in the space of modern churches of Ukraine. An analysis of the functions of light in churches is made on the example of recently built iconic Greek Catholic temples. The peculiarities of the distribution of natural and artificial light in the space of modern churches, the similarities and differences in the organization of the light environment, as compared to the historical temples, have been revealed. The influence of the light on the architectonics of temples and the visual perception of their object environment, on the formation of the corresponding mystical mood and sacred atmosphere is defined. The values and functions of electric lighting in the structure of the light environment of the temple, the directions of development of electric lighting systems due to the expansion of their utilitarian and decorative functions are determined.


2021 ◽  

The publication sets new directions in the research on Polish Philhellenism, in particular in two areas: gaining thorough knowledge of the Poles supporting Greek struggle for independence and the coverage it received in Polish press. The articles of the renowned experts on the subject are the introduction to the issue of Polish Philhellenism, they also concentrate on reconstructing biographies of the Polish participants in the Greek uprising and the interest in modern Greek songs the Poles have developed.


Languages ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Ana de Prada Pérez

Subject pronoun expression (SPE) in Spanish has been widely studied across monolingual and bilingual varieties, showing a consistent effect of functional predictors. In recent papers, the role of the mechanical predictor priming, or perseveration, has been the source of debate. Additionally, little is known about the interaction of perseveration and significant functional predictors (e.g., grammatical person). In this paper, we expand on previous research by examining first-person singular (1sg) and third-person singular (3sg) data from sociolinguistic interviews with Spanish–English bilinguals from Florida to explore the possible difference in priming in deictic vs. referential subjects. The results from a mixed-effects variable rule analysis only offered clear evidence of priming in 1sg. We hypothesize that this result could be due to either surprisal (1sg overt pronominal subjects are rarer in the corpus that 3sg overt pronominal subjects) or to 3sg involving reference-tracking and perseveration only being evident in contexts where the subject form does not signal for pragmatic content.


1936 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. M. Dawkins

The names given to plants in ancient and modern Greek are not only of interest in themselves but have some bearing upon a general point in the history of the meaning of words. Many of the names of plants in ancient authors can only be interpreted with a certain vagueness: of νάρκισσος we can only say that it is some sort of daffodil; κρίνον is pretty certain to be a lily of some kind; we can hardly go further. In these straits it is natural enough to enquire into the meaning of these words in Modern Greek, and here we certainly find no lack of information, but unless we scrutinise this modern evidence with some care we are apt, I think, to let it lead us too far, or even in some wrong direction. How this modern evidence ought, in my opinion, to be used is the subject of this present paper.


1975 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan S. Kaye

Diglossia has been the subject of attention of many linguists and philologists dealing with Arabic for many decades. The term itself was coined by W. Marçais (1930) and was brought to the attention of general linguists and ethnologists (socio-linguists in particular) by Ferguson in 1959. Diglossia is also a well-known phenomenon in Modern Greek, Swiss German, and Haitian Creole. Fishman (1967) and Valdman (1968) deal with it in terms of methodology and theory. Kaye (1970, 1972a) deals with it in the light of modern linguistic theory and is restricted (not entirely though) to a discussion of Arabic. The monograph under review is an attempt to survey the diglossia situation using Classical Arabic and colloquial Iraqi (almost entirely Baghdadi) data. Much of the work can already be found in Altoma (1957, 1966).


1910 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. M. Dawkins

This paper is the result of some six weeks' local study of the dialects of the Greek-speaking villages of Cappadocia and of the village of Silli near Konia in the summer of 1909. The account below of the more important books shows that a good deal has already been written on the subject, but the material is very scattered and incomplete, and does not do more than suggest a great many unanswered questions, nor does it touch more than a few of the villages. Besides giving an account of the dialects, I have therefore tried to smooth the way for future workers by collecting and setting in order this already published material.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-167
Author(s):  
Herlina Herlina ◽  
Maria Ramasari

This research aimed to find out the students  ability in producing the sentences of simple present tense at STMIK Musi Rawas. The research was a qualitative study. As stated in findings, it interpreted that there were 34 students (62.91 percent) in the low category. Thus, there were 15 students (27.50 percent) in the good category. Finally, there were 5 students (9.59 percent) in the excellent category. Hence, it can be concluded that students ability in producing the sentences of simple present tense was still low. It showed that many students still got difficulties in producing the sentences of simple present tense especially for verb in third person singular as the subject pronoun. Keywords: students ability, simple present tense, sentences


2005 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Loukia Droulia

<p>This paper deals with the subject of Modern Greek consciousness which can be said epigrammatically to have its starting point in the Provisional Constitution of Greece ratified by the Assembly of Epidaurus in January 1822. For it was then necessary that two crucial questions be answered, namely who were to be considered as citizens of the new state about to be created and what regions it covered. The attempt to find answers to these questions necessarily led to the re-examination of the Greek nation's historical course over the millenia.</p><p>For this purpose the terms that express the concepts which register the self-definition of a human group and their use over time, are here examined as well as the links that formed the connection between the groups of Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians who, as a result of historical circumstances, had until then been geographically scattered. One solid link was the unbroken use of their common language; the "ancestral culture" was the other definitive element which had a continuous though uneven presence throughout the centuries. Finally the "place", having preserved the same geographical name, "Hellas", through the centuries although its borders were certainly unclear, now took on a weighty significance as regards the conscious identification of the historical land with the new state that the Greeks were struggling to create in the nineteenth century. These and other factors contributed to the acceptance by the Greek nation of the nomenclature <em>Ellines, Ellada</em> which were unanimously adopted during the Greek war of Independence, instead of the terms <em>Graikoi, Romioi, Graikia</em>.</p>


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