Constituent Order In Classical Latin Prose

Latin is a language with variable (so-called 'free') word order. "Constituent Order in Classical Latin Prose "(Caesar, Cicero, and Sallust) presents the first systematic description of its constituent order from a pragmatic point of view. Apart from general characteristics of Latin constituent order, it discusses the ordering of the verb and its arguments in declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences, as well as the ordering within noun phrases. It shows that the relationship of a constituent with its surrounding context and the communicative intention of the writer are the most reliable predictors of the order of constituents in a sentence or noun phrase. It differs from recent studies of Latin word order in its scope, its theoretical approach, and its attention to contextual information. The book is intended both for Latinists and for linguists working in the fields of the Romance languages and language typology.

Latin is a language with variable (so-called 'free') word order. Constituent Order in Classical Latin Prose (Caesar, Cicero, and Sallust) presents the first systematic description of its constituent order from a pragmatic point of view. Apart from general characteristics of Latin constituent order, it discusses the ordering of the verb and its arguments in declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences, as well as the ordering within noun phrases. It shows that the relationship of a constituent with its surrounding context and the communicative intention of the writer are the most reliable predictors of the order of constituents in a sentence or noun phrase. It differs from recent studies of Latin word order in its scope, its theoretical approach, and its attention to contextual information. The book is intended both for Latinists and for linguists working in the fields of the Romance languages and language typology.

The Noun Phrase in Classical Latin Prose offers an account of the semantic and syntactic properties of nouns and modifiers and their ordering within the noun phrase.

The internal ordering of Latin noun phrases is very flexible in comparison with modern European languages. Whereas there are a number of studies devoted to the variable placement of modifiers, The Noun Phrase in Classical Latin Prose proposes an entirely new approach: a discussion of the semantic and syntactic properties of both nouns and modifiers. Using recent insights in general linguistics, it argues that not only pragmatic factors but also semantic factors (whether we are dealing with an inherent property, the author’s assessment, or a further specification of a referent) are responsible for the internal ordering of Latin noun phrases. Additionally, this book discusses prepositional phrases functioning as modifiers, and appositions, which have received little attention in the literature.

Shows how certain prominent features of classical Latin prose became established because of factors that conditioned the formation of archaic prose. Presents texts ranging from about 450 BC to about 100 BC to exemplify such features in their original setting and to illustrate the linguistic and styl

This volume assembles 50 contributions presented at the XVII International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics. They embrace essential topics of Latin linguistics with different theoretical and methodological approaches: phonetics, syntax, etymology and semantics, pragmatics and textual analysis. It is a useful resource for the study of comparative and general linguistics, not only for linguists but also for scholars of classical philology.

Pragmatics forms nowadays an integral part of the description not only of modern languages but also of ancient languages such as Latin and Ancient Greek. This book explores various pragmatic phenomena in these two languages, which are accessible through corpora consisting of a broad range of text types. It comprises empirical synchronic studies that deal with three main topics: (i) speech acts and pragmatic markers, (ii) word order, and (iii) discourse markers and particles. The specificity of this book consists in the discussion and application of various methodological approaches. It provides new insights into the pragmatic phenomena encountered, compares, where possible, the results of the investigation of the two languages, and draws conclusions of a more general nature. The volume will be of interest to linguists working on pragmatics in general and to scholars of Latin and Ancient Greek in particular.

In this two-volume work, the first full-scale treatment of its kind in English, Harm Pinkster applies contemporary linguistic theories and the findings of traditional grammar to the study of Latin syntax. He takes a non-technical and principally descriptive approach, based on literary and non-literary texts dating from c.250 BC to c.450 AD. The volumes contain a wealth of examples to illustrate the grammatical phenomena under discussion, many of them from the works of Plautus and Cicero, alongside extensive references to other sources of examples such as the Oxford Latin Dictionary and the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. While the first volume explored the simple clause, this second volume focuses on the complex sentence and discourse. The first three chapters examine different types of subordinate clause; the following four then explore relative clauses, coordination, comparison, and secondary predicates. Later chapters investigate information structure and extraclausal expressions, word order, and discourse and related features. The Oxford Latin Syntax will be a valuable and up-to-date resource both for professional Latinists and all linguists with an interest in Classics.