Word order patterns in Greek nominals: aspects of diachronic change

Abstract

In this paper I investigate a change in the word order patterns of Greek nominalizations that took place from the Classical Greek (CG) period to the Modem Greek (MG) one. Specifically, in CG both the patterns in (A), with its two subtypes, and (B) were possible; the MG system, on the other hand, exhibits only the (B) pattern. The difference between the two systems is that agents can only be introduced in the form of prepositional phrase in MG nominals in a position following the head noun, while they could appear in a prenominal position bearing genitive case in CG. Moreover, the theme genitive, i.e. the objective genitive, could precede the head nominal in CG; this is no longer the case in MG, where the theme genitive follows the head noun obligatorily: (A) i) Det-(Genagent)-Nprocess-Gentheme 1 ii) Det-Gentheme-Nprocess (B)Det-Nprocess-Gentheme (Ppagent) I argue that the unavailability of (A) in MG is linked to the nature and the properties associated with a nominal functional projection contained within process non~inals and to other related changes in the nominal system of Greek.