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Functionalist and Usage-based Approaches to the Study of Language: In honor of Joan L. Bybee
Edited by K. Aaron Smith and Dawn Nordquist
[Studies in Language Companion Series 192] 2018
► pp. 17–58

Constructional pressures on ‘sit’ in Modern Greek

| San José State University

This study argues for a constructional account of the non-postural senses of Modern Greek verb kaθοme ‘I sit’. Corpus data provide a detailed account of the constructional pressures on kaθοme as V1 in conjunctive coordination of verbs (V1 and V2) and show that the non-postural senses emerge in syntactically compact versions of the string with shared subject and tense/aspect where locative adverbials and posture and disposition adjectives, characteristic of the postural interpretations, never occur. In such uses, the morphologically coded aspectual frame further determines a deliberate action or an extended duration interpretation framing V2 verbs, typically of mental activity or communication. Pragmatic inferences tied to the construction provide further motivation for considering the string a form-meaning composite.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The semantics and morphology of kaθοme ‘I sit’
  • 3.Coordination and pseudo-coordination
  • 4.Why corpus methodology?
  • 5.Contextual cues
    • 5.1Semantic types of coordination
    • 5.2Tense and aspect
    • 5.3Semantic types and tense/aspect correlation
    • 5.4Syntactic compactness of the string
    • 5.5Semantic types and their structural traces
      • Extended
      • Deliberate
      • Simultaneous
      • Sequential
      • Collection
    • 5.6Subject Person/Number
    • 5.7V2 verbs and their frames
    • 5.8Pragmatic confluences
    • 5.9Summary
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 1 March 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.192.02svo
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Giusti, Giuliana, Vincenzo Nicolò Di Caro & Daniel Ross
2022. Chapter 1. Pseudo-Coordination and Multiple Agreement Constructions. In Pseudo-Coordination and Multiple Agreement Constructions [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 274], ► pp. 2 ff. DOI logo
Logozzo, Felicia & Liana Tronci
2022. Pseudo-coordination and serial verbs in Hellenistic Greek?. Journal of Greek Linguistics 22:1 ► pp. 72 ff. DOI logo
Onufrieva, E. S.
2023. Modern Greek Constructions with Position Verb <i>κάθομαι</i>. Nauchnyi dialog 12:10 ► pp. 104 ff. DOI logo

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