Morphological and Syntactic Change in Medieval Greek and South Slavic Languages

This monograph explores the converging and diverging development of nominal, pronominal and verbal morphology and syntax of Byzantine Greek and South Slavic languages (Church Slavonic, Medieval Bulgarian and Macedonian). Its argumentation is based on primary data culled from medieval literary documents (11-15th c.). In nominal morphology several intermediate paradigmatic sets between Hellenistic and Modern Greek are reconstructed; the realignment of morphology and semantics in di- and triptotic nouns in archaic dialects is brought into discussion. The putative causal nexus between the reduction of the synthetic morphology of case and the emergence of the postpositive article in Bulgaro-Macedonian is re-evaluated. In pronominal morphology Medieval Greek and Macedonian converged in favoring the strategy of proclisis with finite verb forms (but only Macedonian went as far as reducing the pronominal clitics to quasi-affixes). A special attention is paid to the nature of innovations in their aspectual systems (the emancipation of the future tense from an aspect-dominated system; the reanalysis of the old 'be'-perfect as the inferential mode in Bulgaro Macedonian; and the rise of the 'have'-perfect in Macedonian). New alignments in the Greek diathetic system and the issues in the placement of the reflexive clitics in Slavic (Wackernagel's vs. Behagel's Law) are examined. In syntax the non-finite and finite expressions of deontic modality, and hypotactic and paratactic realizations of the causative are studied in the framework of the gradual finitization of the infinitival clause.