Ludonimia e classi lessicali: lo statuto degli avverbi di gioco in -ινδα del greco

The so called -ινδα adverbs are a peculiar and poorly attested class of words in Ancient Greek which denote games. This paper considers their status as a class by taking into account their main morphological, syntactic and semantic characteristics. At the end of the analysis, the conclusion is drawn that the ancient and traditional classification of the -ινδα ludonyms as adverbs is in fact inconsistent, though they are not prototypical nouns either. Rather, they are a non-prototypical category whose properties are due to their reference to the semantic field of games.