The adjective class in Homeric Greek and the parts of speech change in the Indo-European languages

The data discussed in the present paper aims at demonstrating that in the turn of the prehistory and the history, the IE family underwent a deep typological change at the level of the Part of Speech (PoS). The adjective class lexicalized and the PoS system passed from the type [N (AV)], which is still preserved in RV Sanskrit, to the type [N, A, V], which is perfectly visible in Latin. Homeric Greek is intermediate between the two extremes, albeit closer to Latin: it falls in the type [N, A, V], but the encoding of the ADJECTIVE is “diffused” over many constructions, none of which overpasses the 50%: as a result, compound adjectives show a frequency similar to that in RV Sanskrit and deverbal adjectives are more frequent than in Latin. A similar classification of Homeric Greek is not surprising, since IE scholars have often considered Sanskrit, Greek and Latin as three steps of increasing innovativeness in the passage from PIE to the IE languages. However, it brings in a substantial confirmation of the structural change occurred in the IE family at the level of PoS.