Word Order in Greek Tragic Dialogue

• 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

Readership: Scholars and students of classics, especially of Greek drama; of historical linguistics.

Helma Dik, Associate Professor of Classics, University of Chicago

"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

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