title: Verg. Aen. 9. 427: A linguist’s perspective
metadata.name: dc.contributor.author
metadata.value: Zheltova, Elena V.
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.accessioned
metadata.value: 2023-08-22T20:00:20Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.available
metadata.value: 2023-08-22T20:00:20Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.issued
metadata.value: 2023-03
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.citation
metadata.value: Zheltova E. V. Verg. Aen. 9. 427: A linguist’s perspective. Philologia Classica 2023, 18 (1), 139–148. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu20.2023.112
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.identifier.other
metadata.value: https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu20.2023.112
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.uri
metadata.value: http://hdl.handle.net/11701/43849
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.description.abstract
metadata.value: This article offers a linguistic commentary on the verse Verg. Aen. 9. 427 me, me, adsum qui feci, in me conuertite ferrum, in which the personal pronoun in the accusative needs interpretation. Since the time of Servius and Donatus, the opinions of commentators have been divided. Servius and his followers believe that the pronoun in the accusative is a direct complement that depends on an implied (omitted) verb like interficite, occidite, or petite, and consider this place as a rhetorical figure of aposiopesis. Donatus, on the other hand, argues that the accusative me, me is independent, while discontinuous intonation with which the whole verse must be uttered emphasizes the extreme degree of despair of Nisus, who cannot prevent the death of his beloved friend Euryalus. A review of the commentaries on the Aeneid shows that there are slightly more supporters of Donatus’ hypothesis than that of Servius’, but all of their reasoning is intuitive and does not explain why it is the syntactically independent accusative that gives the agitated sounding to Nisus’ last words. The author of the article applies the pragmatic approach to the interpretation of this place, analyzing similar examples of “non-syntactic” use of the accusative and considering both traditional and modern views on this phenomenon. As a result, the author comes to the conclusion that the verse under consideration corresponds to what in modern linguistics is called “cleft construction”. Such constructions exist in different languages and serve to express the focus of contrast. At the end of the study, the author attempts to answer the question of why Latin employs the accusative as a tool to express intense emotions.
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.description.sponsorship
metadata.value: The study was conducted as part of the collective research project “Grammar of covert categories in
  Latin and Ancient Greek” supported by the Russian Science Foundation (project no. 22-28-00531).
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.language.iso
metadata.value: en
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.publisher
metadata.value: St Petersburg State University
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.relation.ispartofseries
metadata.value: Philologia Classica;Volume 18; Issue 1
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: Virgil
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: Aeneid
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: Latin
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: pragmatics
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: accusative
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: contrastive focus
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: cleft constructions
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.title
metadata.value: Verg. Aen. 9. 427: A linguist’s perspective
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.type
metadata.value: Article
metadata.lang: en_GB
resources.filename: 12.pdf
resources.url: https://dspace.spbu.ru/bitstream/11701/43849/1/12.pdf
resources.format: Adobe PDF
resources.size: 692,47 kB