The Baltic *-ā́-illative

The Lithuanian-Latvian illative was formed from the IE accusativus directivus and the local postposition *-ā́. Traces of the postponed *-ā́ have been preserved in yrà ‘is, are; OLith. there is, there are’ < *ī-r-ā́, and Lith. čià ‘here’ < *tj-ā́. Typologically, the Baltic illative can be compared to Greek derivatives with -δε, e.g. οἴκα-δε ‘homewards; at home’. As for the origin of the postponed *-ā́, two hypotheses can be formulated: 1. *-ā́ comes from the IE allative postposition *-eh₂ (see Hajnal 1992); 2. *-ā́ boils down to the instr. sg. of the anaphoric pronoun *h₁o-h₁. The primary illative plural ended in -s-ā́, e.g. OLith. (debesisa) ‘into heaven’. The postposition -na, which can be found e.g. in the ill. pl. miškúosna ‘into forests’, is an innovation resulting from reanalysis of the acc. sg. *-n + *-ā́ → *-nā́. The neutralisation of the privative opposition inessive : illative originally comprised an area much larger than today’s and included the West Aukštaitian dialect. The starting point of this neutralisation was plural forms. This primary state of affairs has remained until the present day in East Aukštaitian in the north from the line Raguva-Ukmergė-Molėtai-Salakas, where inessive sg. and illative sg. are distinguished, but inessive pl. and illative pl. are not, due to apocope of the final vowel, i.e. píevos ‘on meadows’ (= iness. pl. píevose) alongside píevos ‘onto meadows’ (= ill. pl. píevosna) (Zinkevičius 1966: 201). In the privative opposition inessive : illative, the illative form derived from the IE accusative of direction is the marked member of the opposition.

Periphrastic passive and resultative in Hittite and Proto-Indo-European

There are several ways to express passive meaning in ancient Indo- European languages, one of them being periphrastic constructions. This paper argues that periphrastic passives in these languages developed from earlier object-oriented resultative constructions, which can be reconstructed for the proto-language as well.

Small-scale patterns in a larger picture

Telling apart family-internal developments from contact-induced changes and socio-geographically conditioned areal trends is still one of the main challenges in tracing the development - and stability - of languages. Notably prima facie contact phenomena might turn out to have resulted from the interaction of a variety of sources upon closer inspection; assessing their interaction is a crucial requirement for comprehending the dynamics of change. Based on the example of simplification patterns in the system of short personal pronouns observed in the Balkan Slavic dialects located in the territory of North Macedonian and Greece, the present paper illustrates the necessity of identifying the multiplicity of triggers and their interaction, thereby making a case for the relevance of small-scale, transient patterns in understanding diachronic processes. In particular, it places the simplifications within the pronominal system into the larger context of differential object indexing by preverbal pronominal elements in the Balkan languages. With the loss of agreement distinctions on pronouns being characteristic for the last phase in the emergence of object indexing, both processes appear to be closely related. Obviously, in this case, the convergence of various different processes has created a favorable environment for the mutual reinforcement and stabilization of two otherwise highly volatile phenomena.

Future conditionals in Lycian

Lycian funerary inscriptions, being overall legal statements regarding the correct management of the tomb after the death of its owner, comprise many future conditional clauses consisting of two types, paratactic and hypotactic. In the latter a preposed relative clause precedes a resumptive main clause, while in the former two adjoining main clauses are interpreted as protasis and apodosis without any obligatory subordinator. In the last case, the general rule is that some constituent pertaining to the preceding prohibition clause against unauthorized burial undergoes left dislocation, the contrastive topic pointing to the conditional character of the sentence. The lack of an overt subordinator in the paratactic type - the odd modal particle e͂‘if’ is at best optional - points to an archaism in Lycian, as opposed to Hittite and Luwian. This paper aims at providing a critical description of the future conditionals in the corpus, accounting for how they are formed and used.

Tocharian B santse ‘daughter-in-law’

In Ogihara’s edition of the Tocharian B so-called “Avadāna-Manuscript”, a fragment from the Dhanika-Avadāna contains a word santse. On the basis of parallel texts, it is shown that santse means ‘daughter-in-law’. This newly identified word is cognate with a.o. Greek νυός ‘daughter-in-law’ and derives from Proto-Indo- European *snusó-.

A functional discourse approach to the particle ἀτάρ in Classical Greek

Taking into consideration both discourse structure and the pragmatics of contrast, this paper draws on Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) to provide a comprehensive and unified account of ἀτάρ in Classical Greek. In classical Greek drama, the particle ἀτάρ designates two main types of contrast. In its most common usage, it marks a discourse contrast, a boundary in conversational structure, such as the beginning of a new exchange or adjacency pair. More specifically, ἀτάρ can signal a change of addressee; the introduction of a new topic or new visual focus; or an abrupt thematic discontinuity such as an interruption. Moreover, ἀτάρ can also mark denial of expectation, especially when preceded by a preparatory μέν. When expressing counterexpectation, the particle instructs the addressee to process the next discourse segment in such a way as to contradict or eliminate some piece of information possibly inferred from the preceding segment. Very similarly, the classical prose of Herodotus, Plato and Xenophon shows analogous usages of ἀτάρ, namely, as a boundary between larger portions of discourse with or without thematic discontinuity, or as a marker of denial of expectation between acts and moves.

παλίντονος

The Ancient Greek feminines to u-stem adjectives (e.g. ἡδεῖα ‘sweet’ to ἡδύς) diverge from their Old Indic counterparts in terms of accentuation (cp. Ved. svādvī´ ). Homeric Greek possesses a couple of corresponding archaisms with oxytone accent (θαμειαί, ταρφειαί); in this paper, I will propose that Greek in fact runs the gamut, showing recessive accentuation as well, specifically in stems that have been “demorphologized” (e.g., λίγεια). This threefold accentuation provides a unique window onto the diachrony of accents in the prehistory of Greek. I bring to bear previously undertreated, and untranslated, evidence from ancient grammarians to bolster my position. Beginning from this reexamination, I turn to the controversial class of nouns in -υια, which have been held to show extraordinarily archaic properties of accent and ablaut. I propose that these nouns reflect not archaisms, but inner-Greek innovations.

Die karische Endung -τ

Zusammenfassung Based on the contextual analysis of the Carian inscription from Hyllarima (C.Hy 1) this paper argues that the Carian nominal ending -τis neither genitive plural nor dative plural as previously proposed but ablative. This is supported both by its phonological history and its other attestions.