Dispersioni formali del medio indoeuropeo

This paper investigates the relationship between verb inflection and diathesis in Ancient Greek, focussing on the asymmetry between the bipartite present system (where only two distinct inflectional forms occur -the so-called middle vs active endings- to encode diathethic oppositions) and the tripartite aorist system (with a third, innovative, class, represented by the -thē- /-ē- aorists). An original hypothesis is suggested in the the framework of the notion of syntactic “mediality” first developed by Nunzio La Fauci on Latin and Romance data. In this framework, syntactically “middle” structures (whose final Subject is an Object in non final strata) are opposed to “non-middle” structures (whose final Subject does not have this property). In Greek, the bipartite structure of the present system reflects the “middle” / “non-middle” correlation (and the syntactic variety within “middle” constructions is not registered in verb inflection). By contrast, in the aorist system, the “middle” domain splits, with the emergence of a futher opposition (which is “latent” in the present system): distinct verb morphemes characterize passive and unaccusative structures on the one hand and reflexive, reciprocal, “antipassive” (etc.) structures on the other. The notion of Multiattachment (i.e., convergence of the functions Subject and Object on the same element at some syntactic level), as developed by Carol Rosen, is invoked to account for this kind of split in the syntactically “middle” domain: passives and unaccusatives -in contrast with the other constructions quoted above- do not involve a Multiattachment. The interrelations of forms and functions are thus accounted for in a parametric way: the parameter [+/- middle] is sufficient to account for the situation in the present system; by contrast, an additional parameter, [+/- multiattachment], is required to account for the more complex situation of the aorist system.