From WITH-languages to AND-languages: insights from Ancient Greek

Abstract

This paper is part of a larger research project on conjunctions within a typological perspective in ancient Indo-European languages. The aim of this analysis is to investigate on the role of comitative constructions as a coordination strategy in Ancient Greek. In particular, the case study of comitative constructions involving ἅμα ‘together; at the same time’ will be used as a litmus test to determine if archaic Greek shows residual traces of an earlier WITH-stage before stabilizing into an AND-stage, conforming to the typological prediction according to which the so-called WITH-languages exhibit a tendency to drift towards the status of AND-languages (Stassen 2000; 2003). The linguistic analysis of ἅμα in both Iliad and Odyssey will show how this multifunctional adverb developed different prepositional and conjunctive functions, at both phrasal and sentential levels.