Paratactic and hypotactic strategies in the discourse organization of the multilingual Achaemenid texts
Author(s)
Date Issued
2024
Type
article
Volume
5
Issue
1
Start Page
73
End Page
97
Journal
Abstract
The concern of the present paper is the clause linkage and discourse organization strategies, and in particular paratactic and hypotactic strategies, adopted by the scribal staff of the Achaemenid royal chancellery responsible for the composition of the trilingual (Old Persian, Babylonian and Elamite) royal inscriptions and the degree in which the three versions diverge from each other. The analysis is conducted along the “Text production strategies and translation strategies in the Achaemenid documentation” research line, started some years ago by the author in the frame of the DARIOSH Project and proves that the authors of the different units of the royal multilingual texts have been aware of the pragmatic effects that they wanted to achieve in sentence planning and that they have consistently and aptly used the tools for profiling events available in the three languages of the Achaemenid documentation. Different factors may be envisaged in their choices: textual typology and content, language constraints, individual or scribal school preferences, accuracy in text editing. Changes over time can also be clearly identified.