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Habilitation project by Dr. David Sasseville

Indo-European Syntax. A Comparative Study of Word Order in the Ancient Greek Prose Inscriptions of the Archaic and Classical Periods

The ancient Greek language has always provided a complex picture of word order. The syntax of the classical authors has already been examined, but has not yet yielded a satisfactory account of the basic word order of subject, object and verb. The resulting assertion that ancient Greek had no canonical word order and that this was merely dependent on information structure is, however, typologically improbable. The literary Ionian and Athenian prose of the classical period that has come down to us is so heavily loaded with pragmatics that it is not suitable as a basis for our linguistic research question.

Ancient Greek inscriptions have so far been neglected for the study of syntax and word order for various reasons. Although every fully preserved inscription represents a self-contained and manageable work, there is a hurdle with regard to the information structure, namely that the context in which an inscribed object was set up at the time is sometimes misunderstood and cannot be grasped without archaeological understanding. Nevertheless, the aim of this habilitation thesis is to investigate the canonical word order of ancient Greek in archaic and classical prose inscriptions, taking into account the ancient context. In addition, the less numerous inscriptions of Phrygia, Lydia and Italy from the same periods are also examined with regard to their word order and the influence of information structure. Finally, this work will shed new light on ancient Greek syntax and establish its position within the Indo-European family.