Monday, May 26, 2014
Why We Chose to Study Classics
David Sansone, review of Helma Dik, Word Order in Ancient Greek: A Pragmatic Account of Word Order Variation in Herodotus. Amsterdam Studies in Classical Philology 5. Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1995, in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 95.11.08:
Newer› ‹Older
But, when it comes to the practical realities, what exactly are the "rules" for word order in ancient Greek? A number of attempts have been made over the years; until now the most successful effort has been that of Sir Kenneth Dover, whose Greek Word Order of 1960, however, has not been as influential among classicists as it might have been, in part, perhaps, because of the presence in it of statements like the following (47): "Here FASI/N is strictly speaking Mq in character, and the word-group which I have analysed as N Cq C is therefore on the borderline of the category 'C group'; it admits of the analysis N Mqq C." It was in order to avoid having to read sentences like this that many classicists became classicists in the first place.
