Lambros Kamperidis and Denise Harvey (eds.), Alexandros Papadiamandis, The Boundless Garden. Selected Short Stories, Volume II. Limni, Evia: Denise Harvey (Publisher), 2019. Pp. xx, 363.

Abstract

geographical source of examples, nor does it figure in the list of locations under ‘regional variation’ in the Index, though it does appear in the title of one subsection on p. 1949. One might have welcomed an explanation for the almost complete absence of the Βασιλεύουσα from the Grammar: does it imply that there is little regionally specific linguistic evidence to be found in texts from Constantinople, or that texts from Constantinople were composed in a non-regional variety – or neither? Although some eighteenth-century examples are included in the Grammar, from a linguistic point of view that century largely remains a terra incognita in the history of Greek. Should we think of it as being the final stage of ‘Early Modern Greek’, as Tasos Kaplanis has suggested, or (as the authors seem to imply) as the first stage of ‘Modern Greek’? On this score, it is interesting that the authors of the Grammar appear to have discovered no instance of the epistemic use of θέλει + personal verb. By contrast, eighteenth-century writers from Constantinople, who frequently use personal θέλω + infinitive for the future (θέλουν έρθει ‘they will come’), besides θενα and θα + personal verb, reserve impersonal θέλει + personal verb for epistemic use (θέλει ήρθαν ‘they must have come’). The term ‘epistemic’ is absent from the index of the Grammar, as are ‘probability’ and ‘possibility’. It would be good to know what constructions were available for the expression of probability during the period covered by the Grammar. In a brief review it is impossible to do justice to such a monumental intellectual undertaking as the CGMEMG. Suffice it to say that technical language is always elucidated, and the volumes are impeccably edited; the number of typographical errors is infinitesimal given the length and complexity of the text.