The Colon Hypothesis: Word Order, Discourse Segmentation and Discourse Coherence in Ancient Greek

Offering a wealth of detailed information concerning topics in Ancient Greek linguistics—including clisis, apositivity, lexicalization phenomena, sentencehood, and genre—this study argues that a number of Ancient Greek word order rules, most notably Wackernagel’s Law, apply to the “colon” or “intonation unit” rather than to syntactic units such as the clause. Based on an extensive corpus-database, comprising the whole Corpus Lysiacum and four Platonic dialogues, this reference contains detailed and enlightening excerpt analyses and follows a radically pragmatic approach to discourse coherence. This account will appeal to academics devoted to the Classics and linguistics.