Sul suppletivismo verbale in Omero: l’apporto della prospettiva tipologica talmiana

Abstract

This paper aims at investigating the partially uncertain relationship on which the suppletion of the Homeric verbal forms within the paradigm for ‘go’ is based. For this purpose, the Homeric distribution of some motion verbs for ‘go’, as well as their contexts of use, are taken into account. In the light of Talmy’s theoretical framework of the lexicalization patterns, the analysis focuses on the motion events expressed by ἔρχομαι and ἦλϑον (fut. ἐλεύσομαι, pf. εἰλήλουϑα) and their cooccurring spatial elements, i.e. particles, adverbs, nominal case markers, which encode the path followed by the moving object. Building on telicity as a verb-inherent actional feature (i.e. Lexical Aspect), and on its crucial role played on both the development of verbal paradigms and the motion event encoding in Homeric Greek, the study sheds light on the uncertain actional status of ἔρχομαι as well as on the suppletive relationship between ἔρχομαι and ἦλϑον, based on their inherent (a)telicity.