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Άρθρα = Articles

• Landsman, David M.

In this paper, the history of the Greek negatives ου and μη is considered, from their Indo-European origins to Modern Demotic Greek. The pattern of changes explained as a series of weakenings and strenghthenings, on the phonologicals well as on the syntactic and semantic levels. The argument includes brief discussions on the formation of compound negatives, the modern disjunctive negative όχι and a number of related grammatical and semantic questions. Finally, comparisons are drawn with the Romance languages and some recently advocated word-order typological explanations for changes in negation patterns are rejected.

• Languages and Literature

• Greek language
• Γλωσσολογία
• Phonetics
• Grammar, Comparative and general

Περιέχει σημειώσεις και βιβλιογραφία, My work on Greek negation began as part of my studies for the M. Phil. degree in Linguistics at the University of Cambridge and I am grateful to my supervisors for that degree, Professor P. H. Matthews and Dr. D. W. Holton. An earlier draft of the present paper was read and most usefully criticised by Professor R.G.G. Coleman, Dr. G. C. Horrocks and Mr. N. B. Vincent. I am also grateful for comments from members of the Cambridge Indo-European Seminar on another version of this work. Any errors and infelicities that remain stand as evidence of my stubbornness in the face of so much good advice.