Perfect Periphrases in Post-Classical and Early Byzantine Greek: An Ecological-Evolutionary Account

Abstract

I analyze the use and development of perfect periphrases with the verbs “be” (εἰμί) and “have” (ἔχω) in Post-classical and Early Byzantine Greek. While their importance has often been stressed in the context of the restructuring of the verbal system (more in particular the loss of the synthetic perfect), they have not received an in-depth, corpus-based treatment yet. The approach adopted in this article builds on insights from recently developed ecological-evolutionary models, which recognize the fact that language change is a two-step process, consisting of innovation and propagation, and that multiple ‘ecologogical’ factors influence the spread of a construction through the population (what I discuss in terms of ‘register’).

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