A. Keidan. M. L. Kisilier, V. V. Fedchenko. S. D. Kleiner, P. A. Kocharov. Branch-crossing Indo-European isoglosses: a call for interest Genitive Forms and Correspondent Periphrastic Constructions in Tsakonian. The translation of periphrastic constructions with imperfect forms of εἰμί attested in the four Gospels from Greek Koine to Gothic and Classical Armenian (pp. 429–444)

Author

A. Keidan. M. L. Kisilier, V. V. Fedchenko. S. D. Kleiner, P. A. Kocharov (Sapienza University of Rome Saint Petersburg State University Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences)

Keywords\n Branch-crossing isoglosses, Indo-European languages Modern Greek dialects, Tsakonian dialect, Genitive, reduction of case system Koine, Gothic, classical Armenian, actionality, participle, translation

Pages\n 429–444

Summary\n

This paper describes a new research programme to be undertaken by a group of comparative linguists from the universities of Rome, Gent, Tübingen, and Leiden. A key idea of the programme is to change the direction of the research by moving from the proto-language and looking into the common innovations emerging in various languages since the dissolution of the Indo- European Family into varying linguistic groups. The basic goal of the programme is to collect, analyze, and classify isoglosses permeating the various branches of the Indo-European linguistic tree. The basic goal of this publication is to motivate a broad spectrum of researchers to join the programme. The degree of engagement may vary from providing data processing assistance to taking part in the conference to take place in Rome in May 2014. The conference will discuss theoretical issues pertinent to the project and, possibly, some preliminary results. Tsakonian is the most mysterious Greek dialect. It was hardly ever compared to other Greek dialects mostly because the majority of Tsakonian phonetic features doesn’t coincide with the renown phonetic isoglosses. That is why Tsakonian falls out of all current classifications of Greek dialects. However, certain similar interdialectal peculiarities might be found in morphology. One of these is the use of Genitive and/or periphrastic constructions used instead of Genitive. This article is the first attempt to analyze the phenomenon in Tsakonian and to introduce new relevant field- research data. The present article concerns the translation of periphrastic constructions with imperfect forms of εiμί attested in the four Gospels from Greek Koine to Gothic and Classical Armenian. The Gothic verb better fulfills the stylistic trend to copy original working due to its analytic constructions. The choice between the Gothic analytic constructions with present or past participle largely depends on actionality and transitivity of the underlying predicates and to a lesser extent – on the corresponding Greek participle. The Armenian translation is more distant from the original due to the extensive use of synthetic imperfect to render the Greek participial constructions. Again, the choice of formal expression is primarily governed by the lexical and grammatical features of predicates rather than analytism imitating the Greek original. Both Gothic and Armenian show cases of adverbial interpretation of the original participial constructions in locative contexts.

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