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Reorganising Grammatical Variation: Diachronic studies in the retention, redistribution and refunctionalisation of linguistic variants
Edited by Antje Dammel, Matthias Eitelmann and Mirjam Schmuck
[Studies in Language Companion Series 203] 2018
► pp. 175–208

Reorganising voice in the history of Greek

Split complexity and prescriptivism

| National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
In this study, I analyse the reorganisation of voice variation in Greek in terms of an increase or decrease in complexity. I support the view of split complexity (E[xternal]- vs. I[nternal]-complexity), and I add the role of parametric routes to the whole picture of grammatical complexity in cases of reorganisation of variation. In this respect, the new active anticausatives resulted in a lower degree of complexity in terms of derivation; conversely, the parametric route became more complex because a microparameter determines the lexically constrained group of active anticausatives. In terms of E-complexity, the option of this microparameter results in lower complexity because it is related to frequent elements. However, E-complexity is also affected by a prescriptive rule that favours elements that are less frequent (nonactive anticausatives).
Keywords: complexity, prescriptivism, Voice, anticausatives, Greek
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background on complexity: Contradictions and split complexity
    • 2.1Contradictions in the analysis of complexity
    • 2.2Split complexity
      • 2.2.1E- vs. I-complexity
      • 2.2.2Hypothesis of further split complexity: d-I- vs. p-I-complexity
  • 3.Voice morphology variation in Greek and complexity
    • 3.1Voice morphology in Greek
    • 3.2Anticausatives in the Greek diachrony: an overview of a reorganisation
  • 4.Split complexity and the (morpho-)syntax of Voice in Greek
    • 4.1Processing results and corpus frequencies
    • 4.2Parametric routes for Voice in Greek
    • 4.3The role of prescriptivism
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 October 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.203.07lav
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