36.3509, Books: The Life Cycles of Counterfactuals in the History of Greek: La Roi (2026)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3509. Tue Nov 18 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.3509, Books: The Life Cycles of Counterfactuals in the History of Greek: La Roi (2026)

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Date: 14-Nov-2025
From: Rosanna Woensdregt [rosanna.woensdregt at degruyterbrill.com]
Subject: The Life Cycles of Counterfactuals in the History of Greek: La Roi (2026)


Title: The Life Cycles of Counterfactuals in the History of Greek
Subtitle: Aspect, Modality and Typology
Series Title: Empirical Approaches to Linguistic Theory
Publication Year: 2026

Publisher: De Gruyter Brill
           https://www.degruyterbrill.com/?changeLang=en
Book URL: https://brill.com/display/title/73566

Author(s): Ezra la Roi

Hardback ISBN: 978-90-04-74992-4
E-Book ISBN: 978-90-04-74993-1

Abstract:

We constantly refer to counterfactual events—things that didn’t happen
but could have—through conditional, wish, and modal constructions.
Yet, despite their ubiquity, we still know surprisingly little about
how these constructions have evolved across languages and through
history. This book breaks new ground by tracing, for the first time,
the development of counterfactual systems across different
constructions, texts, linguistic registers, and historical stages.
Drawing on extensive corpus data from Indo-European languages and
nearly three millennia of Greek, it offers the first unified account
of counterfactual and avertive constructions as core expressions of
non-realization. In doing so, it also proposes a revised model of the
counterfactual life cycle—one that integrates semantic,
morphosyntactic, and pragmatic dimensions—providing typologists with a
powerful framework for exploring how counterfactual expressions evolve
across languages.
Readership: Scholars and readers interested in the history of Greek
and Indo-European languages, historical linguists, linguistic
typologists and classicists.

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics
                     Typology

Subject Language(s): Ancient Greek (to 1453) (grc)
                     Modern Greek (1453-) (ell)

Language Family(ies): Indo-European




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