= Paper =

 

Among the most salient features of the Homeric poetic language, separability of preverbs (so-called “tmesis”) and reversibility of prepositions (so-called “anastrophe”) are particularly well documented. The aim of this paper is to investigate a third, less known type, which may be formally described either as “reverse tmesis” or as “verbal anastrophe”, e.g. fugw;n u{po nhlee;~ h\mar “escaping from the merciless day” (F 57). From an accentual point of view, such constructions with [verb + postverb] are regularly parallel to nominal anastrophe [noun + postposition], but both from a syntactical and from a semantical point of view the nature of the postposed verbal particule is ambiguous : it might be seen either as a real postverb, mirrored by a preverbal counterpart, or as an independent adverb, freely added to the verbal form. It can be shown that originally the adverbial analysis is probably the right one, but the type has been reanalized as verbal anastrophe and used consequently as a poetical device inside the Homeric tradition.