Support Verb Constructions in Greek and Latin: a comparative study between Caesar and Xenophon
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to provide a comparative study on the usage of support verb constructions in Latin and Greek on the basis of two classical historians: Xenophon (HG 1; An.1) and Caesar (Gall.1; ciu.1). The first part of the paper presents the global data of these constructions, which reveal a higher frequency in Caesar than in Xenophon (§ 2.1), and examines their syntactic classification (§ 2.2) and the most widely used support verbs in each author (§ 2.3). On the basis of major quantitative differences, in the second part (§ 3) three constructions equivalent in both languages and related to the military world are studied in detail: to wage war and to engage in combat (μάχην and πόλεμον ποιεῖσθαι vs. proelium facere and bellum gerere), to hold a draft (συλλογὴν ποιεῖσθαι vs. dilectum habere) and to escape (φυγὴ ἐγένετο vs. fugae mandare). These three constructions show significant qualitative differences and, ultimately, betray the idiosyncratic behaviour of this sort of collocations.
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