This book provides a brand new treatment of Ancient Greek (AG) verb-first (V1) compounds. In AG
the very existence of this type is surprising: its left-oriented structure goes against the
right-oriented structure of the compound system in which there also exists a large class of
verb-final (V2) compounds (many of which express the same agentive semantics). While past
studies have privileged either the historical dimension or the assessment of semantic and
stylistic issues over a systematic analysis of V1 compounds this book provides a comprehensive
corpus of appellative and onomastic forms which are studied vis-à-vis V2 ones. The diachronic
dimension (how these compounds developed from late PIE to AG and then within AG) is combined
with the synchronic one (how they are used in specific contexts) in order to show that far
from being anomalous V1 compounds fill lexical gaps that could not for specified
morphological and semantic reasons be filled by more 'regular' V2 ones. Introductory chapters
on compounding in morphological theory and in AG place the multi-faceted approach of this book
in a modern perspective highlighting the importance of AG for linguists debating the
properties of the V1 type cross-linguistically.
