Filip De Decker

Since West’s seminal 1989 article, it has been assumed that there were (only) four instances in epic Greek (Homer, Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns) in which the injunctive (often called an unaugmented indicative in the commentaries) could be interpreter as having a timeless (or omnitemporal) meaning. In an article, divided into two parts, I will argue and show that there could be more of these forms. I will also analyze several other instances in which an injunctive has been transmitted, instances in which it refers to a background action or an event in a remote past. In part 1, I address the interaction and difference in use between the injunctive and the (augmented) indicative in epic Greek, paying special attention to the gnomic aorist, the similia, the instances with τε-épique and the so-called “Hymnic aorist”, explaining why they mostly comprise the augment. Following West 1989 for Greek and Hoffmann 1967 for Vedic, I argue that the injunctives or unaugmented indicatives are not simply metrical variants of the indicative, but have their own distinct meanings and functions, as they are used to “mention” or describe background actions, preserve an old “timeless” meaning or refer to a more remote (and often mythical) past. As some of the instances have an aorist and others a present injunctive, I also take into account the aspectual difference(s) between these forms, discussing scholarship on tense and aspect in general and Homer in particular. In part 2, I proceed to actual instances and will investigate them for both the use of the injunctive or indicative and for that of the aspectual stem.

This article presents an etymological case study on Pre-Greek (PG): it analyzes about 20 words starting with the letter M that have been catalogued as

In this article, I discuss the use and absence of the augment in the 3rd singular forms ἔθηκε(ν) and θῆκε(ν) in the Iliad. In the previous article (De Decker 2020), I explained why I chose this corpus and determined the value of the different forms. Here I proceed to the actual analysis of the forms: do they confirm the previous syntactic and semantic observations that have been made for the use and absence of the augment (the clitic rule by Drewitt and Beck, the reduction rule by Kiparsky and the distinctions: speech versus narrative, foreground versus background and remote versus recent past)?

This article presents an etymological case study on Pre-Greek (PG): it analyzes about 20 words starting with the letter N that have been catalogued as ‹PG› or ‹PG?› in the new Etymological dictionary of Greek (EDG), but for which alternative explanations are equally possible or more likely. The article starts by discussing the Leiden etymological dictionaries series, then discusses the EDG and the concept of PG and then analyzes the individual words. This analysis is performed by giving an overview of the most important earlier suggestions and contrasting it with the arguments used to catalogue the word as PG. In the process, several issues of Indo-European phonology (such as the phoneme inventory and sound laws) will be discussed.

In this article, I analyze the use and absence of the augment in the 3rd singular forms ἔθηκε(ν) and θῆκε(ν) in the Iliad and try to determine the value of the transmitted forms. In doing so I first analyze the forms by checking permitted elisions and by applying metrical laws, bridges and caesurae. The forms that can be analyzed by those criteria are of type A (metrically secure). I then proceed to the forms whose value cannot be established by these metrical criteria and check if an “internal reconstruction” can solve the issue. The method I use is based on Barrett’s metrical and morphological analyses of the augment in Euripides and Taida’s analyses on the augment in the Homeric Hymns. This method analyzes the metrically insecure forms by looking at their position in the verse, the passages in which they appear, and by comparing them to the metrically se­cure forms in the same paradigm. The forms that can be analyzed by this method are catalogued type B; the forms that cannot are of type C. The forms of type A and type B will be the basis for subsequent syntactic and semantic analyses of the augment use in these forms in the Iliad (elsewhere in this journal).

The present article investigates the problem of *h₂o and *oh₂ in Indo-European. suggestions (Ruijgh-Lindeman, Rix-Beekes, Kortlandt and Hamp) have been made, but no agreement has been reached in the scholarship. In Mayrhofer 1986 Rix-Beekes was followed, in Bammesberger’s 1988 survey work of the Laryngeal Theory, two of the four theories were posited: Kimball 1988 following Rix-Beekes and Ruijgh 1988 following Kortlandt. More recently, Sihler 1995 agreed with Ruijgh- Lindeman, and in Mallory-Adams 2006 Hamp was followed. We first discuss the four different theories critically, and then proceed to the evidence by analysing the active perfect vocalism in ā, the compounds in -ηγός/αγός and the compound ἱππημολγός. The article finds that the perfect vocalism in ᾱ can be explained by the Greek tendency to create an ablaut paradigm a/ā (as argued by Kimball and Hackstein) and by a double analogy with the aorist (as is proved by the perfect form τέθηκα, which is also due to analogy with the aorist). With regard to the compounds, the article finds that the compounds in -η/αγός can be explained by analogy with the verb forms in a and ā and that the ā in ἱππημολγός is a form of Kompositionsdehnung, which is proved by the compounds ἱππήλατος and θανατηφόρος. We therefore hold that *h2 did not colour o into a and that there is no need for *h₄ either.*

In the final part of the investigation into the use of the (un)augmented 3rd singular forms ἔθηκε(ν) and θῆκε(ν) in the Iliad, I focus on some loose ends, such as the enjambments, the compound forms, the formulaic nature of the epic language, the subordinate and negative sentences, and on some thornier issues such as the exceptions to the rules and the Mycenaean te ke and do ke and what this can tell us about the original meaning and origin of the augment.

In epic Greek both the optative and the indicative (the so-called “modal indicative”) can be used in contexts where the degree of realization is uncertain or even impossible, while in Attic Greek only the indicative is used. In these two articles I discuss whether there is a difference between the optative and the modal indicative in these contexts and/or if it can be determined which was the original mood. As there are about 1500 optatives and 250 modal indicatives in Homer, it is not possible to discuss them all and, therefore, I focus on the passages in which aorist forms of γιγνώσκω, βάλλωand of ἴδονappear, and those conditional constructions in the Odyssey in which the postposed conditional clause is introduced by εἰμήwith either a “modal” indicative or optative. The corpus comprises 100 forms (80 optatives and 20 indicatives), but in each example I also address the other modal indicatives and optatives in the passages, which adds another 50 forms to the corpus. In this part (part 2) I address the modal indicatives, and discuss the postposed conditional clauses introduced by εἰμήin the Odyssey, both in the indicative and the optative. Subsequently I analyze several instances in which the interpretation depends on the viewpoint of the hearer and the speakers, as what is pos­sible for a speaker might be impossible for the hearer and vice versa. When comparing the data relating to the optative and the indicative, and especially that of the postposed conditional clauses introduced by εἰμή, it can be noted that the indicative has more frequently an exclusively past reference and that it is more often genuinely unreal than the optative, which often combines the notion of the possible, remotely possible and unreal. In my opinion this clearly indicates that the indicative eventually prevailed and replaced the optative because of the past reference.

In epic Greek both the optative and the indicative (the so-called “modal indicative”) can be used in contexts where the degree of realization is uncertain or even impossible, while in Attic Greek only the indicative is used. In these two articles I discuss whether there is a difference between the optative and the modal indicative in these contexts and/or if it can be determined which was the original mood. As there are about 1500 optatives and 250 modal indicatives in Homer, it is not possible to discuss them all and, therefore, I focus on the passages in which aorist forms of γιγνώσκω, βάλλω and of ἴδον appear, and those conditional constructions in the Odyssey in which the postposed conditional clause is introduced by εἰ μή with either a “modal” indicative or optative. The corpus comprises 100 forms (80 optatives and 20 indicatives), but in each example I also address the other modal indicatives and optatives in the passages, which adds another 50 forms to the corpus. In this part (part 1) I address the optative. First, I provide an overview of the research on the optative in Homeric Greek, discuss the different suggestions for the co-existence of the optative and indicative in these uncertain and/or unreal contexts, explanations which can be summarized into two categories, those assuming that the indicative replaced the optative and those arguing that both moods were original, but had different meanings. Then I explain why this corpus was chosen, prior to the analysis that focuses on two elements, namely the temporal reference (does the mood refer to the past or not) and the degree of possibility (is the action described likely, possible, remotely possible or unlikely/impossible). Initially I consider the optatives with a past reference, then the optatives that could be interpreted as remotely possible or unlikely/impossible (“irrealis” in the terminology of Classical Philology) and conclude by discussing two passages that have been reused in the epics in different contexts with different protagonists and, consequently, with different modal meanings for the same forms. The conclusion of the first part of the article is that the optative was at the most unreal extreme of the irrealis-continuum and could initially refer to the present and future, as well as the past, but that the instances in which there was an exclusive past reference were (very) rare.