Philomen Probert – författare

This book has two complementary aims: to improve our grasp of the ideas about Greek enclitics that ancient and medieval scholars have passed down to us, and to show how a close examination of these sources yields new answers to questions concerning the facts of the ancient Greek language itself. New critical editions of the most extensive surviving ancient and medieval texts on Greek enclitics, together with translations into English, lay the foundations for an improved understanding of thought on Greek enclitics in those periods. Stephanie Roussou and Philomen Probert then draw out the main doctrines and the conceptual apparatus and metaphors that were used to think and talk about enclitic accents, consider the antiquity of these ideas within the Greek grammatical tradition, and make use of both ancient and medieval sources to explore two much-debated questions about the facts of the language itself. Firstly, the Greek sources turn out to shed new light first of all on the circumstances under which enclitic ἐsτί was used and the circumstances under which non-enclitic ἔsτι appeared. Secondly, ancient and medieval evidence from several directions comes together in a way that has gone unnoticed until now, and suggests a new answer to the question of how sequences of consecutive enclitics were accented in antiquity.

Early Greek Relative Clauses contributes to an old debate currently enjoying a revival: should we expect languages spoken a few thousand years ago, such as Proto-Indo-European, to be less well-equipped than modern languages when it comes to subordinate clauses? Early Greek relative clauses provide a test case for this problem. Early Greek uses several kinds of relative clause, but all these are usually thought to come from one, or at most two, prehistoric types. In a new look at the evidence, this book finds that a rich variety of relative clause types has been in place for a considerable time. The reconstruction of prehistoric linguistic stages requires detailed work on the individual languages descending from them. A substantial part of the book is therefore devoted to a new look at the relative clause systems found in a wide variety of early Greek texts. It emerges that the same basic system is in use across all these texts. Different kinds of relative clause predominate in different kinds of text, however, because relative clause syntax and semantics interact with the needs of different kinds of text. Considering material as diverse as the Homeric poems, laws inscribed in stone on the island of Crete, and the philosophical prose of Heraclitus, the discussion remains clear and straightforward as Probert considers the uses and histories of different relative clause types.

Latin Grammarians on the Latin Accent offers a fresh perspective on a long-standing debate about the value of Latin grammarians writing about the Latin accent: should the information they give us be taken seriously, or should much of it be dismissed as copied mindlessly from Greek sources? This book focusses on understanding the Latin grammarians on their own terms: what they actually say about accents, and what they mean by it. Careful examination of Greek and Latin grammatical texts leads to a better understanding of the workings of Greek grammatical theory on prosody, and of its interpretation in the Latin grammatical tradition. It emerges that Latin grammarians took over from Greek grammarians a system of grammatical description that operated on two levels: an abstract level that we are not supposed to be able to hear, and the concrete level of audible speech. The two levels are linked by a system of rules. Some points of Greek thought on prosody were taken over onto the abstract level and not intended as statements about the actual sound of Latin, while other points were so intended. While this book largely sets aside the question whether the Latin grammarians tell us the truth about the Latin accent, focussing instead on understanding what they actually say, it begins to offer answers for those wishing to know when to 'believe' Latin grammarians in the traditional sense: the book shows which of their statements are intended - and which are not intended - as statements about the actual sound of Latin.

The accent of many Greek words has long been considered arbitrary, but Philomen Probert points to some striking correlations between accentuation and a word's synchronic morphological transparency, and between accentuation and word frequency, that give clues to the prehistory of the accent system. Bringing together comparative evidence for the Indo-European accentuation of the relevant categories with recent insights into the effects that loss of transparency and word frequency have on language change, Probert uses the synchronically observable correlations to bridge the gap between the accentuation patterns reconstructable for Indo-European and those directly attested for Greek from the Hellenistic period onwards.

This book examines the operation of laws, rules, and principles in Indo-European, the language family which includes the Celtic, Germanic, Italic/Romance, and Baltic/Slavic subfamilies as well as the predominant languages of Greece, Iran, parts of Southern Asia, and ancient Anatolia.Laws and rules are crucial to Indo-European studies: they constrain the reconstructions and etymologies on which knowledge of the history and prehistory of Indo-European in particular and ancient languages more generally is based, and which allow processes of morphological change, semantic shift, and borrowing to be identified. But these laws and rules require constant reassessment in the light of new evidence, theory, and method. Through a series of case studies re-examining specific laws and rules in the Indo-European language family, this book explores the implications of new insights into language change andof increasing opportunities for attention to chronology and detail in the treatment of primary material. The languages and language families under consideration include Celtic, Germanic, Italic and Romance, Armenian, Greek, and Indo-Iranian languages as well as Proto-Indo-European.Laws and Rules in Indo-European brings together leading scholars from all over the world. It makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of the history of ancient languages and the reconstruction of their ancestors, as well as to research methods.

The original aim of this book was to provide an updated reprint of J.P. Postgate's "Short Guide to the Accentuation of Ancient Greek" (1924). It has developed considerably during the preparation, still including what was most useful in Postgate but now incorporating much additional material and information based on the latest scholarship. It is intended for those who have already learned some Greek but who wish to acquaint themselves with the workings of the accent system, either for the first time or by way of revision. An introductory part outlines clearly the evidence for our knowledge of Greek accentuation and quotes some of our ancient sources for the sound of the accent. The remainder of the book is designed to facilitate the learning of the accents themselves. Exercises are included throughout.