Anna Bonifazi

Dr.
Anna Bonifazi

Telefon	84394
Raum	1.010
E-Mail	anna.bonifazi@ts.uni-stuttgart.de
Adresse	Azenbergstr. 12
Sprechstunde	folgt in Kürze

 

Weitere Angaben:

Arbeitsschwerpunkte:

- Pragmatics and discourse analysis applied to archaic Greek epic (Homer), lyric (Pindar), and Classical historiography (Herodotus and Thucydides)
- Ancient Greek particles
- Discourse segmentation; pre-print and modern punctuation
- Deixis
- Anaphora processing
- Discourse markers
- Text and performance: the interface between linguistic and nonlinguistic communication in literature
- Guslar epic; multimodality of discourse
- Cognitive linguistics and cognitive poetics

Wissenschaftlicher Werdegang:

Education

• PhD in ancient Greek literature, and in linguistics, sehr gut, mit Auszeichnung bestanden, Universität Innsbruck, Austria.
• Laurea in Lettere Classiche, 110/110 e lode, Universita' di Trento, Italy.
• Diploma di pianoforte, 9.25/10, Conservatorio di Trento, Italy.
  
  

PhD dissertation

• Pragmatica della poesia epinicia in Pindaro [Pragmatics of epinician poetry in Pindar] Advisors: E. Thummer (ancient Greek) and M. Kienpointner (linguistics).
  
  

Academic appointments and awards

• 2015. Research associate, Institut für Literaturwissenschaft and Stuttgart Research Centre for Text Studies, Universität Stuttgart, Germany.
• 2015. Head of the Emmy-Noether project for a 6-month extension funded by the DFG.
• 2015. Fulbright Fellowship. Host institution: Department of Linguistics, University of Berkeley, USA. Title of the research project: “Old evidence of new insights: discussing ancient Greek features that support contemporary studies in grammar and cognition”.
• 2010-2014. Head of an independent research group within the Emmy Noether program, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Host institution: Klassische Philologie, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany. Title of the project: "Pragmatic functions and meanings of ancient Greek particles".
• 2008-2009. Lectureship, Institut für Linguistik: Anglistik, Universität Stuttgart, Germany.
• 2005-2008. Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship (MOIF, funded by the European Commission). Outgoing host institution (September 2005-August 2007): Department of the Classics, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA; European host institution (September 2007-August 2008): Centro di Scienza Cognitiva, Universita' e Politecnico di Torino, Italy. Title of the research project: "Pragmatics of Archaic Greek Literature".
• 2004 (February) and 2005 (May). Fellowship, Advanced Seminar in the Humanities 2004-2005, "Literature and Culture in the Ancient Mediterranean: Greece, Rome, and the Near East Mediterranean", Venice International University, Italy.
• 2003-2004. Contract lectureship, Facolta' di Lettere e Filosofia, Universita' di Trento, Italy.
• 2002-2003. Fellowship, Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington D.C., USA; title of the research project: "Pragmatics of the Lyric Performance".
  
  

Teaching

• 2017-2018. The communicative functions of punctuation markers across literary genres and styles (Winter Semester), Universität Stuttgart, Germany.
• 2017-2018. Particles in prose and poetry: Reconsidering the last chapter of Ancient Greek grammars (Winter Semester), Universität Heidelberg, Germany.
• 2017. Metaphors, metonymies, and similes in literary texts: A cognitive approach (Summer Semester), Universität Stuttgart, Germany.
• 2017. Metaphors, metonymies, and similes in ancient Greek prose and poetry: A cognitive approach (Summer Semester), Universität Heidelberg, Germany.
• 2016-2017. Recalling people and objects in literary texts: cognitive processing, local effects, global strategies, and viewpoint (Winter Semester), Universität Stuttgart, Germany.
• 2016-2017. Words and tears: pragmatics and embodied cognition in the poetics of weeping (Winter Semester), Universität Heidelberg, Germany.
• 2016. Applying cognitive linguistics to literature (Summer Semester), Universität Stuttgart, Germany
• 2016. The Iliad in a cognitive linguistic perspective (Summer Semester), Universität Heidelberg, Germany.
• 2015-2106. Reading between the lines: linguistic and nonlinguistic cues for discourse organization in literary narratives, Universität Stuttgart, Germany.
• 2015-2016. How do we chunk prose? Rethinking discourse segmentation in ancient Greek historiographical texts (Winter Semester), Universität Heidelberg, Germany.
• 2012-2013. Poikilia in Herodotus' and Thucydides' Language (Winter Semester), Universität Heidelberg, Germany.
• The Wind of Songs. Pindar's Discourse Strategies (Summer Semester), Universität Heidelberg, Germany.
• Homeric Utterances (Summer Semester), Universität Heidelberg, Germany.
• Greek Philology and Pragmatics (Summer Semester), Universität Heidelberg, Germany.
• 2008-2009. Pragmatics I (Winter semester) and Pragmatics II (Summer Semester), Universität Stuttgart, Germany.
• 2006-2007. The concept of the hero in Greek civilization (teaching assistant, Fall semester), Harvard University, USA.
• 2003-2004. Italiano scritto (Fall semester), Universita' di Trento, Italy.
  
  

Habilitations

• 2013. Approval of habilitation to associate professorship in Italy (Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale - professore seconda fascia)
  
  

PhD theses directed

• Mark de Kreij, “The Metalanguage of performance: A discourse perspective on particle use in Homer and Pindar,” Universität Heidelberg, Germany.
• Annemieke Drummen, “Dramatic pragmatics: A discourse approach to particle use in ancient Greek tragedy and comedy,” Universität Heidelberg, Germany.

Participation in PhD committees

• PhD thesis “Formulaicity in Jbala Poetry” by Sarali Gintsburg, February 2014, University of Tilburg, The Netherlands.
• PhD thesis “Communication in Demosthenes’ Symbouleutic Speeches” by Tzu-I Liao, October 2016, University College London, UK.
• PhD thesis “From coherence to procedures. A relevance-theoretic approach to the discourse markers δέ, γάρ, and οὖν in Basil the Great’s Hexaemeron, Gregory of Nazianzus’s Invectives Against Julian, and Heliodorus’s Aethiopica” By Samuel Zakowski, May 2017, University of Ghent, Belgium.

Professional development

• 2012, February, June, August. Uni-Heidelberg "Auf dem Weg zur Professur", Lobbach, Germany.
• 2011, March. Uni-Heidelberg "Coaching zur Mitarbeiterführung", Heidelberg, Germany.
• 2010, July. Uni-Heidelberg "Mitarbeiterführung II", Lobbach, Germany.
• 2010, April. Uni-Heidelberg "Mitarbeiterführung I", Lobbach, Germany.
• 2009, September. DFG workshop "Personalmanagement" for Emmy-Noether fellows, Wiesloch, Germany.
  
  

Research abroad

• January to March. Visiting scholar at UCSB, Linguistics and Classics.

 

Bücher:

• Bonifazi, A., 2016a. Particle Use in Herodotus and Thucydides. Volume IV (142.064 words) in Particles in Ancient Greek Discourse. Five Volumes Exploring Particle Use Across Genres, A. Bonifazi, A. Drummen, and M. De Kreij. Washington D.C.
• Bonifazi, A. 2012a. Homer's Versicolored Fabric: The Evocative Power of Ancient Greek Epic Word-Making. Hellenic Studies Series, Washington D.C. and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reviews available at: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2013/2013-04-41.html; http://rogueclassicism.com/2013/04/10/cj-online-review-bonifazi-homers-versicolored-fabric/; http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7834/phoenix.67.issue-1-2 67, No. 1/2, Spring-Summer/printemps-été 2013, pp. 182-184.
• Bonifazi, A. 2001. Mescolare un cratere di canti. Pragmatica della poesia epinicia in Pindaro. Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso.
  
  

In Vorbereitung:

• Bonifazi, A., Elmer, D. F. Discourse and Performance in an Epic Song: A Study of Alija Fjuljanin’s “Halil Hrnjičić and Miloš the Highwayman” (Milman Parry Collection n. 662, Harvard University).

 

Aufsätze, Handbuchartikel, Sammelbände:

• Bonifazi, A. forthcoming. “The forbidden fruit of compression in Homer” for the volume The Routledge Companion to Classics and Cognitive Theory, P. Meineck ed.
• Bonifazi, A. forthcoming. “Autos and the Center-Periphery Image Schema” for the volume The Embodied Basis of Constructions in Greek and Latin, W. M. Short and E. Mocciaro (eds.), Berlin: De Gruyter.
• Bonifazi, A. forthcoming 2018. “Embedded focalization and free indirect speech in Homer as viewpoint blending,” in Telling Homer, Telling in Homer, J. Ready and C. Tsagalis (eds.), 230-254. Austin: University of Texas Press.
• Bonifazi, A. and Elmer, D. F. 2016. "Visuality in South Slavic and Homeric Epic." Epic." Classics@ 14. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hlnc.essay:BonifaziA_and_ElmerD.Visuality_in_Bosniac_and_Homeric_Epic.2016.
• Bonifazi, A. 2016. “Particles as cues to structuring in South Slavic and early Greek epic”, in Oral Poetics and Cognitive Science, eds. C. Pagán Cánovas and M. Antović, 125-147. Berlin: De Gruyter.
• Bonifazi, A. 2015. “Problematizing syndetic coordination: Ancient Greek ‘and’ from Homer to Aristophanes,” in Perspectives on Historical Syntax, C. Viti (ed.), 251-269. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
• Bonifazi, A. 2013. "Topic" in Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics (EAGLL), eds. G. Giannakis et al., Leiden and Boston: Brill:vol. 3:411-414.
• Bonifazi, A. 2013. "Deixis" in Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics (EAGLL), eds. G. Giannakis et al., Leiden and Boston: Brill:vol. 1:422-429. 
• Bonifazi, A. and Elmer, D. F. 2012b. "The Meaning of Melody: Remarks on the Performance-Based Analysis of Bosniac Epic Song", in Child's Children: Ballad Study and Its Legacies, J. Harris and B. Hillers (eds.), Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier: 293-309.
• Bonifazi, A. 2012b. "Drops of poetry, drops of music: Performing as weeping" in A Virtual Birthday Gift Presented to Gregory Nagy on Turning Seventy by his Students, Colleagues, and Friends. Washington DC. (online publication: http://chs.harvard.edu/wa/pageR?tn=ArticleWrapper&bdc=12&mn=4606) 
• Bonifazi, A. and Elmer, D. F. 2012a. "Composing lines, performing acts: clauses, discourse acts, and melodic units in a South Slavic epic song", in Orality, Literacy and Performance in the Ancient World, E. Minchin (ed.), Leiden and Boston: Brill: 89-109.
• Bonifazi, A. 2010. "Anaphoric pronouns αὐτός and κεῖνος in Homer: a cognitive-pragmatic approach", to appear in La morfologia del greco tra tipologia e diacronia. Atti del VII Incontro internazionale di linguistica greca, Cagliari 13-15 settembre 2007, I. Putzu, G. Paulis, G. Nieddu, P. Cuzzolin (eds.), Milan: Francoangeli: 97-114.
• Bonifazi, A. 2009c. "Inquiring into nostos and its cognates", American Journal of Philology 130: 481-510.
• Bonifazi, A. 2009b. "Discourse cohesion through third person pronouns: the case of κεῖνος and αὐτός in Homer", in Discourse Cohesion in Ancient Greek, G. Wakker and S. Bakker (eds.), Leiden and Boston: Brill: 1-19.
• Bonifazi, A. 2009a. "The pragmatic meanings of some discourse markers in Homer", in Pragmatische Kategorien: Form, Funktion und Diachronie. Akten der Arbeitstagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft von 24. Bis 26. September 2007 in Marburg, E. Rieken and P. Widmer (eds.), Wiesbaden: Reichert: 29-36.
• Bonifazi, A. 2008b. "Early Greek Explorations Across the Mediterranean and the Semantics of Nostos in Homer", in Papers on Ancient Literatures: Greece, Rome and the Near East, E. Cingano and L. Milano (eds.), Padua: Sargon: 105-133.
• Bonifazi, A. 2008a. "Memory and Visualization in Homeric Discourse Markers", in Orality, Literacy, Memory in the Ancient Greek and Roman World, E. A. Mackay (ed.), Leiden and Boston: Brill: 35-64.
• Bonifazi, A. 2004c. "Relative Pronouns and Memory: Pindar Beyond Syntax", Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 102: 41-68.
• Bonifazi, A. 2004b. "κεῖνος in Pindar: Between Grammar and Poetic Intention", Classical Philology 99: 283-299.
• Bonifazi, A. 2004a. "Communication in Pindar's Deictic Acts", Arethusa 37: 391-414.
• Bonifazi, A. 2000. "Sull'idea di sotterfugio orale negli epinici pindarici", Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 95: 69-86.

 

Vorträge:

• 2017, July. “Multimodality and the poetics of weeping from Homer to Arvo Pärt,” 14^th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, University of Tartu, Estonia.
• 2017, June “Ill mind and body horror: Herodotus’ verbal strategies to depict nonverbal abnormality,” invited paper, workshop “Religion, Violence, and Interaction? An Interdisciplinary Approach to Herodotus’ Narrative on Cambyses,” University of Heidelberg, Germany.
• 2017, June: “The multimodal poetics of weeping from Homer to the Beatles,” International Conference on Multimodal Communication, University of Osnabrück, Germany.
• 2017, February: “Discourse segmentation in literary texts: linguistic and nonlinguistic cues”, invited talk, Cologne Center of Language Sciences, University of Köln.
• 2016, November: “How do we chunk Herodotus? Rethinking prose segmentation”, invited lecture, Department of Romance languages and Classics, University of Stockholm.
• 2016, October: “Typography as interpretation: verbal and nonverbal communication in print versions of ancient Greek historiographical texts”, paper presented at the conference “Vom Denken der Typographie. Ästhetik, Semantik und Materialität der Textgestalt in Philosophie und Wissenschaft:, University of Stuttgart, Germany.
• 2016, May: “A blend of registers in the same historiographical account: Thucydides’ language in the chapters on the plague (2.47.3-2.54)”, paper presented at the Conference “Language in Style”, University of Oxford, UK.
• 2016, February: “Discourse segmentation in literary texts: linguistic and nonlinguistic cues”, University of Stuttgart, Germany.
• 2015, November: "L’organizzazione del discorso letterario: spunti linguistici e nonlinguistici”, University of Trento, Italy
• 2015, May. “Gems with many facets: An exploration of particle use across five ancient Greek genres,” Berkeley, USA.
• 2014, October. "Herodotus' account of the battle of Thermopylae, and the contribution of particles to shaping discourse," paper presented at the conference "Textual Strategies in Greek and Latin War Narrative," Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• 2014, September. "Persuasive discourse strategies: particles revealing the doing of saying in Herodotus and Thucydides," paper presented at "The Language of Persuasion" at University College London, United Kingdom. 
• 2014, July. "Rediscovering the flow of discourse in Herodotus and Thucydides," presentation delivered at the study day "A fresh perspective on ancient Greek particles" organized by the Emmy-Noether group, Heidelberg, Germany. 
• 2014, February. “Metanarration in Homer and in guslar epic”, invited lecture, Classics Department, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA.
• 2013, November. “Discourse, performance, and particle use in Origen’s first two homilies on Psalm 15”, paper presented at the international workshop “Der ‘neue’ Origenes im Codex Mon. Graec. 314. Philologie, Theologie und Poesie der Psalmen”, Heidelberg, Germany.
• 2013, September. “Narrative pragmatics back in the 5th cent. BC: classical Greek Historiography beyond grammar rules”, 13th International Pragmatics Association Conference, New Delhi, India.
• 2013, May. "The contribution of particles to discourse organization in Herodotus and Thucydides", Annual Meeting of the Classical Association Canada, Winnipeg, Canada.
• 2013, April. "Omero cangiante: grammatica epica e strategie narrative", invited lecture, University of Venice, Italy. 
• 2013, March. “An Emmy-Noether project on ancient Greek particles: why?”, invited lecture, UCSB, Santa Barbara, USA.
• 2013, March. “An Emmy-Noether project on ancient Greek particles: why?”, invited lecture, UCI, Los Angeles-Irvine, USA. 
• 2013, February. “The Doing of Saying: Herodotus, Thucydides, and the role of particles”, invited lecture, UCLA, Los Angeles, USA. 
• 2013, January. “The contribution of particles to poetic structuring in South Slavic and Homeric epic”, keynote speaker presentation at the conference “Oral Poetics and Cognitive Science”, Freiburg, Germany.
• 2012, December. “Our Emmy-Noether project: how to make sense of particles”, and “Less discussed functions of particles in prose: the case of Herodotus and Thucydides”, presented at the workshop “Ancient Greek Particles Across Genres”, Bologna, Italy.
• 2012, November. "Greek particles in archaic and classical literature: a discourse-oriented approach", paper co-authored with A. Drummen and M. de Kreij; "Discourse Markers in Corpus Languages", University of Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain.
• 2012, September. "Problematizing early IE syndetic coordination: ancient Greek 'and' from Homer to Thucydides", paper presented at the International Conference "Syntactic Change and Syntactic Reconstruction: New Perspectives", Zurich, Switzerland.
• 2012, May. "The body and bouquet of connectives: Pindar's usages of δέ, τε, and καί", paper presented at the Emmy-Noether Workshop "The story teller's path. Particles and discourse organization in Homer and Pindar", Heidelberg, Germany. 
• 2012, March. "Multifunctional kai as part of Thucydides' discourse strategies", paper presented at the 108th CAMWS Meeting, Baton Rouge, USA. 
• 2011, November. "Vividness through variety: Introduction to the joint discussion", at the Emmy-Noether Workshop "Vividness through variety: narrative discontinuities in Herodotus and Thucydides", Heidelberg, Germany.
• 2011, July. "Discourse organization in oral traditions and in literatures of the past: the interface between linguistic and para-/extra-linguistic features", panel including contributions by A. Drummen, M. Montes de Oca Vega, P. O'Connell, R. Person, G. Williams, D. F. Elmer, A. Bonifazi; Twelfth International Pragmatics Association Conference, Manchester, UK.
• 2011, April. "Less Bouquet, More Body: Rethinking Ancient Greek Particles", invited lecture, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia. 
• 2010, December. "Leaving the comfort zone: Greek particles in syntactic-semantic-pragmatic interfaces", paper co-authored with M. de Kreij and A. Drummen, and delivered by A. Drummen; "Ancient Greek and Semantic Theory", Radboud University, Nijmegen.
• 2010, December. "Visuality in South Slavic and Homeric Epic", paper co-authored with D. F. Elmer; Singer and Tales in the 21st Century: The Legacies of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
• 2010, July. "Composing lines, performing acts: relationships between melodic units, clauses and discourse acts in a South Slavic epic song (Milman Parry collection, PN 662)", paper coauthored with D. F. Elmer; IX Orality and Literacy in the Ancient Graeco-Roman World Conference, Canberra, Australia.
• 2009, October. "(E)keinos and autos in Homeric Greek: anaphora processing, discourse relevance and pragmatic impact", Ninth International Conference in Greek Linguistics, Chicago, USA.
• 2009, July. "Particles vs punctuation: how to get the discourse structure of ancient Greek texts?", Eleventh International Pragmatics Association Conference, Melbourne, Australia.
• 2008, December. Invited responding paper given at the workshop "The Language of Time. Conspiracy narratives and their temporal organization. Herodotus and Tacitus", Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Holland.
• 2008, April. "Fammi un favore e taci. Analisi pragmatiche e cognitive del discorso. Appunti metodologici", invited presentation, Centro di Scienza Cognitiva, Universita' e Politecnico di Torino, Italy.
• 2008, March. "Odysseus in Odyssey xiv: Beggar, Master, and Cult Hero", invited paper, Yale conference "Epic Heroes Then and Now", New Haven, USA.
• 2008, March. "Pindar without Punctuation and the Discourse Function of Particles", invited lecture, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Holland.
• 2008, March. "Pindar without Punctuation and the Discourse Function of Particles", invited lecture, Universiteit Leiden, Holland.
• 2007, November. "Pindar without Punctuation and the Discourse Function of Particles", invited lecture, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Holland.
• 2007, November. "Marcatori del Discorso in Omero tra Racconto e Visualizzazione", invited lecture, Centro di Scienza Cognitiva, Universita' e Politecnico di Torino, Italy.
• 2007, September. "Discourse Markers in Homer", Arbeitstagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft "Pragmatische Kategorien. Form, Funktion und Diachronie", Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany.
• 2007, September. "Anaphora Processing in Homer: the Case of αὐτός and κεῖνος", Settimo Incontro Internazionale di Linguistica Greca, Universita' di Cagliari, Italy.
• 2007, June. "Anaphora Processing in Homer: the Case of αὐτός and κεῖνος", Sixth International Colloquium on Ancient Greek Linguistics, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Holland.
• 2007, March. "Sailing to Survive. Nostos as Historical and Poetic Frame of Reference", invited lecture, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA.
• 2006, December. "Sailing to Survive. Nostos as Historical and Poetic Frame of Reference", invited lecture, Yale University, New Haven, USA.
• 2006, November. "Discourse Markers in Homer", International Conference on Advances in Oral Literature Research, University of Belgrade, Serbia.
• 2006, October. "Poetic Identity Marks: From Odysseus κεῖνος to Odysseus αὐτός", invited colloquium, Columbia University, New York, USA.
• 2006, August. "Oral Medium and the Empirical Reception of the Odyssey", Tenth Conference of the International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature and Media, Fraueninsel, Chiemsee, Germany.
• 2006, July. "Homeric Discourse Markers as Visual Prompts", Seventh International Conference on Orality, Literacy and Memory, The University of Auckland, New Zealand.
• 2006, April. "Poetic Identity Marks: From Odysseus κεῖνος to Odysseus αὐτός", invited lecture, Duke University, Durham NC, USA.
• 2005, July. "Some Pragmatic Markers in Homer", Ninth International Pragmatics Association Conference, Riva del Garda, Italy.
• 2005, January. "The Communicative Usages of αὖ, αὖτε, αὖτις and αὐτάρ in Homer", Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association, Boston, USA.
• 2005, May. "Protocolonial Perceptions and nostos in Early Greek Epic. Sensing, Sailing, Surviving", Advanced Seminar "Literature and Culture in the Ancient Mediterranean: Greece, Rome, and the Near East Mediterranean", Venice International University, Italy.
• 2003, April. "Pindar: linguistically hard, extralinguistically easy", presentation of the research project "Pragmatics of Lyric Performance", Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington D.C., USA.
• 2002, July. "Applicazioni pragmatica cognitiva - lirica greca arcaica, con particolare riferimento a Pindaro", Centro di Scienza Cognitiva, Universita' e Politecnico di Torino, Italy.

 

Emmy-Noether Projekt:

“Pragmatic functions and meanings of ancient Greek particles,” (Universität Heidelberg, 2010-2014, plus a 6-month extension in 2015). This is a project on ancient Greek literary texts, funded by the DFG through an “Emmy-Noether Programme”; I was/am the P.I. Please check our webpage:
http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/fakultaeten/philosophie/skph/emmy_noether/index.html

As of August 2015, the research group members mainly work—from different places—on an online pre-print publication that is going to be available soon, published by the Center for Hellenic Studies (Washington DC). The work, PADG (Particles in Ancient Greek Discourse) is sizable: the first four volumes will appear first (I. Foundations; II. Particle use in Homer and Pindar; III. Particle use in Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes; IV. Particle use in Herodotus and Thucydides); the fifth will follow (V. The Online Repository of Particle Studies—an online resource containing summaries of five hundred years of scholarship on a selection of the most frequent particles).

The volumes gather the results of the research group investigations, and reflect a good deal of joint thoughts as well as individual ideas. Particles are mostly monosyllabic words that are extremely frequent in ancient Greek language, not always have a specific syntactic role, and are still underdiscussed. We contribute studies in their pragmatic meanings and their discourse functions across different literary genres. We suggest a number of ways of making sense of them by means of different theoretical tools as well as readings in situ.

After working on Pindaric poetry and on the Homeric epics, it was a great pleasure for me to devote special attention to prose narratives, and in particular to observe the strategies enacted by Herodotus and Thucydides to tell about historical events. Whenever I look at particles, sentence adverbials, and conjunctions as the text unfolds, I am interested in learning about clause combining patterns, on the one hand, and in inferring mismatches between periodic segmentation and discourse acts, on the other. The analysis of discourse acts (whether involving particles or not) adds to the study of phonological phrases, and to the study of prose colometry in AG.

Great empirical and theoretical input to the work on these phenomena comes from another joint research project I started earlier, focusing on the linguistic and non-linguistic articulation of a Serbocroatian epic poem recorded by Milman Parry in 1934. Monosyllabic particles and interjections hardly work as ‘fillers’; especially in connection with the melodic contours underlying the verbal utterances, in that tradition they guide the listener (and the singer as well) by marking the progress of the song almost step by step.