The spread of participial clauses in Biblical Greek

Abstract

In this study, a construction marginally found in Ancient Greek is addressed, namely the participial clause, which is a clause whose main verb is a participle. This construction displays a considerable increase in frequency in Biblical Greek (mainly between the 2nd century bce and the 2nd century ce), which is the language found in Judaeo-Christian literature and which features, in various ways and to various degrees, the influence of Semitic languages. Since the participial clause is a very common construction in these tongues, wherein it even exhibits increasing productivity and frequency at the time at issue, I suggest that the frequency increase observed in Greek should be attributed to the influence of these Semitic languages, with a crucial role played by multilingualism. The issue is addressed from the perspective of language contact, which provides the theoretical and terminological frame by which the phenomenon is individuated and defined.