PHRASING HOMER:ACOGNITIVE-LINGUISTIC APPROACH TO HOMERIC VERSIFICATION MARK JANSE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS,GHENT UNIVERSITY,BELGIUM; CENTER FOR HELLENIC STUDIES,HARVARD UNIVERSITY, USA Anyone interested in the colometry or “inner metrics” of the Homeric hexameter is confronted with a wide variety of different approaches, favouring two-, three- or four-colon verses or any combination of these. This article builds on Egbert Bakker’s interpretation of Homeric discourse as a succession of intonation / information units (IUs). Its aim is to provide more secure cognitive-linguistic criteria for determining caesura positions and the resulting cola / IUs. Keywords: Homer; epic; hexameter; caesura; colometry; versification; discourse; information structure; information units; intonation units; word order . Introduction Anyone interested in the colometry or “inner metrics” of the Homeric hexameter is bound on a long and frustrating quest. It will be long because so much has been written about the divisions of Homeric verse and what exactly such divisions represent. It will be frustrating because the information found in the numerous handbooks and commentaries is often conflicting or even contradictory. Particularly frustrating is the question of where to place the caesura(e) and whether this should be done with or without regard to meaning. Based on twenty-five years of experience in teaching courses on Homeric language and meter at Ghent University and the University of Amsterdam and in guest lectures and seminars on Homeric versifica- tion at numerous universities in Europe and North America, the present article discusses the linguistic criteria that can be used to deter- mine caesura positions within the hexameter and consequently also the shape and content of the resulting cola, building on earlier work by Bakker (, a, b, ) and Janse (, , , ©  Symbolae Osloenses Symbolae Osloenses,  Vol. , No. , –, https://doi.org/./.. 