PaGHEMMo · Particles in Greek and Hittite as Expression of Mood and Modality

Particles in Greek and Hittite as Expression of Mood and Modality

The project discusses the use and the interaction between moods and particles in Ancient Greek and Hittite (spoken from XVI until XII BC) and how this interaction helped expressing modality, i.e. how the moods, particles and the interaction between them expressed different nuances about the veracity and the probability of the statement and about how the speakers viewed their own statements. The investigation into this issue will be performed in three steps. First, the data for Greek will be analysed, second, those for Hittite and in a third step, we will investigate how subordinate clauses fit into this schema. The importance for society is that this research about ancient languages can provide insights into the uses in modern languages, be they of (Indo-)European origin or not. Greek and Hittite are related languages, but the differences between their verbal systems are nevertheless significant and yet, both languages succeed in conveying all the necessary nuances (they can all express certainty, probability, possibility and impossibility). When we understand how this process occurred in ancient languages, it can provide us insights into the systems of modern languages as well and therefore, this research could be expanded to related languages of other language families. This is also of importance for the study of languages in general, as it can shed new light on the question whether all languages start from a simple structure and evolve into more complicated syntactic constructions or not. In order to investigate this, we included the study of non-Indo-European languages. A second element that this research also addresses the issue of possible contact between these two languages, as some of the issues studied have been explained by contact between them, but our study has shown that the explanation as contact cannot be sustained. This is also important for the study of other languages, as it provides a case study on how one can analyse possible contact-induced syntactic phenomena. The objectives are the following: for Greek, we intend first to catalogue all the verb forms in Greek epic and the oldest inscriptions as to their mood and their co-occurrence with the particles, and second, to analyse why a certain mood is used and why the particle is (not) present; for Hittite, a list of the particles used to mark modal meanings and an analysis of which particles were combined with which verb forms and/or what other particles. Finally, the project also analyses the concept of subordination and determines if the subordinate clauses of Greek can be reanalysed as original main clauses, and if so, which instances are evidence of this. This project will be the basis for additional and more elaborate investigations into the origin of the moods in the different old Indo-European languages and into the historical syntax of the oldest Indo-European languages.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union