Considerazioni sintattiche sulla tmesi in Omero

In this study I will attempt to describe the syntactic properties which characterize the so called tmesis in Homeric Greek. Following the generative framework, my aim is to demonstrate that tmesis is not simply an archaism but it is a syntactic process triggered by syntactic-pragmatic factors; namely, preverbs may move from the VP to the beginnning of the sentence when they are required to activate a special contextual relation, which can be checked only in some specific field of the left periphery of the clause.