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Word Order in Greek Tragic Dialogue
Helma Dik
304 pages
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6 tables
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216x138mm
978-0-19-927929-6
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Hardback
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26 July 2007
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- Foregrounds communication, as opposed to the formal constraints of poetry, so that we can understand better what the effects of particular word orderings are
- Sample readings enable the reader to see how the conclusions drawn can be applied to Greek drama more generally
Helma Dik approaches word order in Greek tragic dialogue from the perspective of language rather than metre. The tragic poets engaged in mimesis of natural dialogue; therefore the analysis of the linguistic characteristics of the dialogue precedes exploration of the metrical dimension, on the assumption that poets would not be overly constrained by the iambic trimeter, which, after all, was the most natural speaking verse according to Aristotle. Dik analyses the word order of tragic dialogue in pragmatic terms, arguing that, in sentences, words functioning as Topic (the 'starting point' of an utterance) or Focus (the most salient piece of information) will come early, and that other less important words will follow. Similarly, the position of adjectives
within noun phrases is analysed as a function of their relative salience rather than in terms of their semantics. This approach aims to account for word order in sentences generally, but it also allows for a new interpretation of familiar phenomena in Greek, such as 'postponed interrogatives'. The book concludes with a commentary on the word order in four passages of Sophocles' Electra. Readership: Scholars and students of classics, especially of Greek drama; of historical linguistics.
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Helma Dik, Associate Professor of Classics, University of Chicago
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"D. deserves mush credit for giving a new focus to study of world order, and for the tenacity she shows in attempting a rigorous discussion of what are, in fact, difficult problems in the close reading of tragic dialogue." - Nicholas Baechle, JHS "With this book, D. convincingly demonstrates that word order in tragic dialogue can be explained insightfully by means of pragmatic notions, thereby showing that it is more like prose...It will be of great interest not only to Greek linguists, but to anyone who wishes to attain a better understanding of the language of Greek drama." - Rutger Allan, The Classical Review "a valuable book" - D. M. Goldstein, Brwn Mawr Classical Review
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1: Introduction
2: Accounting for word order variation in Greek
3: Tragic ways of dying: word order in the clause
4: Word order in the noun phrase
5: Enter dialogue: questions in Sophocles and Euripides
6: Back to the trimeter
7: Back to the text: four readings in Sophocles' Electra
8: Conclusion: reading word order, slowly
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