The spread of participial clauses in Biblical Greek: The importance of being multilingual

Abstract

In this study, a construction marginally found in Ancient Greek is addressed, the participial clause, i.e. a clause whose main verb is a participle. This construction displays a considerable increase in usage frequency in Biblical Greek (ii cent. bce-ii ce), which is the language found in the Judaeo-Christian literature and which variously undergoes the influence of Semitic languages. In these tongues, the participial clause is a very common construction, and it even exhibits an increase in productivity and, thus, usage frequency at the time at issue. These parallel Greek-Semitic developments, and the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data suggest that a crucial role in the frequency increase observed in Biblical Greek should be attributed to multilingualism. The issue is also addressed from the perspective of language contact, which provides the theoretical and terminological frame by which the phenomenon is individuated and defined.