Polysemous Particles in Ancient Greek - The Language of Classical Literature by Kees Thijs Hardcover

About the Book

This book offers (i) an up-to-date theoretical treatment of the concept of pragmatic particles, with a focus on Ancient Greek, and (ii) two detailed case studies providing a new, polysemous analysis of the particles μήν and δή.

Book Synopsis

Anyone reading an Ancient Greek text will notice the abundance of pragmatic particles (e.g. ἄρα, γάρ, γε, δέ, δή, μέν, μήν, οὖν), a much-debated and challenging class of expressions. What are their semantic contributions, and how should we account for their notorious polyfunctionality? In this book, Kees Thijs provides a state of the art of modern particle theory, which he then applies to two of the most versatile Greek particles, μήν and δή. Using a diachronically oriented polysemy approach and a large-scale, varied research corpus, Thijs offers a new, unified account that significantly improves on both traditional handbooks (e.g. Denniston) and more recent particle studies.

About the Author

Kees Thijs (PhD 2021) is a lecturer in logic and Ancient Greek at Radboud University Nijmegen. His research is at the crossroads of Ancient Greek, linguistics, and philosophy of language, with a focus on pragmatic particles and Greek word order.