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The distribution of object clitic pronouns in the Grottaferrata manuscript of Digenis Akritis *

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Jorie Soltic
Jorie Soltic*
Affiliation:
Ghent University
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Abstract

The Grottaferrata manuscript of Digenis Akritis may be of more interest to Medieval Greek linguists than previously assumed. This rather ‘archaizing’ version obeys the same medieval distribution rules for object clitic pronouns postulated by Mackridge for the more ‘vernacular’ Escorial version. Moreover, it is shown that the medieval rules – divided into a syntactic and a pragmatic principle – clearly constitute a gradual continuation of older, post-Classical, tendencies. Much attention is paid to the pragmatic principle in relation to verbs, which is invoked as an explanatory principle for apparent exceptions.

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Articles
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , 2012 , pp. 178 - 197
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 2012

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Mark Janse, Peter Mackridge and two anonymous referees of BMGS for their valuable and inspiring comments. My work was funded by the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (grant no. B/10040/02).

References

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13 Horrocks, G., ‘Clitics in Greek: a diachronic review’, in Roussou, M. and Panteli, S. (eds.), Greek outside Greece, II (Athens 1990) 41 Google Scholar.

14 Ibid., 38. Horrocks calls this phenomenon ‘head-dependency’.

15 Janse, ‘Clitic doubling’, 176.

16 Horrocks, ‘Clitics in Greek’, 40.

17 Janse, M., ‘La position des pronoms personnels enclitiques en grec néo-testamentaire à la lumière des dialectes néo-helléniques’, in Brixhe, C. (ed.), La koiné grecque antique I (Nancy 1993) 87 Google Scholar.

18 Ibid., 87.

19 Horrocks, ‘Clitics in Greek’, 41.

20 Janse, ‘La position des pronoms personnels enclitiques’, 90.

21 In the sense of Janse, ‘Convergence and divergence’.

22 Janse, ‘Clitic doubling’, 180.

23 Dover, Greek Word Order, 20.

24 Horrocks, ‘Clitics in Greek’, 41. This seems to be a cross-linguistic tendency: see Givón, T., Syntax: An Introduction, I (Amsterdam 2001) 250 Google Scholar: ‘the less predictable the information is or the more important, the more likely it is to be placed earlier in the clause (or in whatever relevant unit of structured information)’.

25 Janse, ‘Clitic doubling’, 180. Note that καί is a prepositive word and as such does not count for the determination of P2, see Dover, Greek Word Order, 13.

26 Janse, ‘La position des pronoms’, 94.

27 Demonstrative pronouns for example are considered preferential words by Dover (Greek Word Order, 2), but at the same time they can be emphasized, cf. 3: ‘this, my friends, I think, was well said’.

28 Mackridge, ‘An editorial problem’, 325.

29 Ibid., 340.

30 Ibid., 341.

31 Ibid., 329.

32 Cf. Janse, ‘Clitic doubling’, 181: ‘Whether or not the Medieval Greek pronouns were still enclitic, as in Ancient Greek, or had become proclitic (...), is a moot question’. The postverbal OCPs are always enclitic.

33 Some modern dialects such as Cypriot and Cappadocian have preserved the medieval distribution; see Ralli, A., ‘Syntactic and morpho-syntactic phenomena in Modern Greek dialects: The state of the art’, journal of Greek Linguistics 7 (2006) 121-59Google Scholar; Pappas, P., Object clitic placement in the dialects of Medieval Greek’, in Janse, M. et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Conference of Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory (Mytilene 2004) (Patras 2006) 314-28Google Scholar; Janse, M., Object position in Cappadocian and other Asia Minor Greek dialects’, in Janse, et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Conference, 115-29Google Scholar; Chatzikyriakidis, S., Clitics in Pour Dialects of Modern Greek: A Dynamic Account (PhD thesis, London 2010)Google Scholar.

34 Philippaki-Warburton, I., ‘Verb movement and clitics in Modern Greek’, in Philippaki-Warburton, I. et al. (eds.), Themes in Greek Linguistics (Amsterdam 1994) 53–60 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Jeffreys, E., Digenis Akritis: The Grottaferrata and Escorial Versions (Cambridge 1998) xx Google Scholar.

36 Trapp, ‘Learned and vernacular literature in Byzantium’, 121 (my italics). The precise relationship between E and G and their relationship to the Urfassung, as well as the question of which nature this original text was, have caused heated discussions, but are of no concern here. For further bibliography, see Beaton, R. and Ricks, D. (eds.), Digenis Akritis: New Approaches to Byzantine Heroic Poetry (London 1993)Google Scholar.

37 Toufexis, N., ‘Diglossia and register variation in Medieval Greek’, BMGS 32.2 (2008) 204.Google Scholar

38 Lauxtermann, M. D., The Spring of Rhythm: An Essay on the Political Verse and Other Byzantine Metres (Vienna 1999)Google Scholar.

39 The average breathing capacity, the rare occurrences of elision between the eighth and ninth syllable and the fact that the ninth is the only syllable (next to the first) among the uneven ones which can occasionally receive an accent, all point in this direction; cf. Apostolopoulos, P., La Langue du Roman Byzantin Callimaque et Chrysorrhoé (Athens 1984) 211-14Google Scholar; Eideneier, H., Von Rhapsodie zu Rap: Aspekte der griechischen Sprachgeschichte von Homer bis heute (Tübingen 1999) 104 Google Scholar.

40 E. and Jeffreys, M., ‘The style of Byzantine popular poetry: Recent work’, in Mango, C. and Pritsak, O. (eds.), Okeanos. Essays Presented to Ihor Ševčenko on his Sixtieth Birthday by his Colleagues and Students (Cambridge 1983) 309–343 Google Scholar; Beaton, R., ‘The oral traditions of Modern Greece: A survey’, Oral Traditions 1.1 (1986) 110-33Google Scholar; Ricks, D., ‘Is the Escorial Akrites a unitary poem?’ Byzantion 59 (1989) 184–207 Google Scholar; Fenik, B., Digenis: Epic and Popular Style in the Escorial Version (Herakleion 1991)Google Scholar; Sifakis, G. M., ‘Looking for the tracks of oral tradition in Medieval and Early Modern Greek poetic works’, Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 27 (2001) 61–86 Google Scholar.

41 Mackridge, ‘An editorial problem’, 339; Pappas, , Variation and Morphosyntactic Change in Greek (Basingstoke 2004) 73ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Condoravdi and Kiparsky (‘Clitics and clause structure’ (2004) 172ff.) favour the constant enclitic nature of the Medieval Greek OCPs, whereas Pappas (op.cit., 13) believes the OCPs are in se clitic: ‘Late Medieval Greek weak pronouns are always phonologically attached to the verb, either as enclitics or proclitics’. Revithiadou and Spyropoulos (A Typology of Greek Clitics, 30) agree with the latter: ‘In this respect, we are in total agreement with Pappas that in the language of the texts of the 12th century and beyond pronominal clitics can be either proclitics or enclitics, depending on the structure’.

43 The most recent edition of E and G is used: Jeffreys, Digenis Akritis. Jeffreys’ translations are only given if I consider them indispensable (especially in contexts with ad hoc emphasized constituents). The demarcation into intonation units and the italics in the translated passages are my own.

44 Mackridge, ‘An editorial problem’, 326.

45 The use of particles has strongly diminished and can thus be considered as an archaizing characteristic, see Jannaris, A. N., An Historical Greek Grammar Chiefly of the Attic Dialect: As Written and Spoken from Classical Antiquity down to the Present Time (London 1897) 400 Google Scholar. G has 274 instances of γάρ, whereas E gives only 30 tags. The same applies to δέ: G: 434 versus E: 43.

46 Ruíjgh, C. J., ‘La place des enclitiques dans l’ordre des mots chez Homère d’après la loi de Wackernagel’, in Eichner, H. and Rix, H. (eds.), Sprachwissenschaft und Philologie: Jacob Wackernagel und die Indogermanistik heute (Wiesbaden 1990) 213–233 Google Scholar; Wills, J., ‘Homeric particle order’, Historische Sprachforschung 106.1 (1993) 61–81 Google Scholar.

47 Mackridge, ‘An editorial problem’, 340; Mackridge, ‘The position of the weak object pronoun’, 134.

48 Dover, Greek Word Order, 20ff.

49 Janse, ‘Convergence and divergence’, 240.

50 Ibid., 235.

51 Cf. Mackridge, ‘An editorial problem’, 329: ‘καί removes the force of the preceding subordinating conjunction’; cf. example 42. The Cypriot coordination conjunction fee has the same effect; see Agouraki, Y., ‘The position of clitics in Cypriot Greek’, in Ralli, A. et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the First International Conference of Modern Greek Dialects and Linguistic Theory (Patras 2001), 1–18 Google Scholar; Pappas, P., Object clitic placement in the history of Cypriot Greek’, in Heselwood, B. and Clive, U. (eds.), Proceedings of Methods XIII: Papers from the Thirteenth International Conference on Methods in Dialectology, 2008 (Frankfurt 2010) 260-9Google Scholar.

52 De Boel, G., ‘The genesis of clitic doubling from Ancient to Medieval Greek’, in Kallulli, D. and Tasmowski, L. (eds.), Clitic Doubling in the Balkan Languages (Philadelphia 2008) 95 Google Scholar. Mackridge (‘An editorial problem’, 327) also associates the complementizer οτι and the causal conjunction διότι with postverbal OCPs, but this cannot be confirmed by G because of the lack of (suitable) examples.

53 With the exception of εί (cf. 4.2).

54 Browning, R., Medieval and Modern Greek (Cambridge 1999) 43 Google Scholar; cf. Horrocks, ‘Clitics in Greek’, 49.

55 Cf. Markopoulos, T., The Future in Greek: From Ancient to Medieval (Oxford 2009 Google Scholar): θά does not appear in the Greek language until the 16th century.

56 For example, νά is far more common in E (330) than in G (47), despite the greater length of the latter. As such, there is a statistically greater chance of preverbal OCPs in E, since νά attracts OCPs into preverbal position without exception.

57 Pappas, Variation and Morphosyntactic Change in Greek, 44.

58 Cf. Condoravdi and Kiparsky, ‘Clitics and clause structure’; Revithiadou and Spyropoulos, A Typology of Greek Clitics; Janse, ‘Convergence and divergence’; Thoma, ‘Distribution and function of clitic object pronouns’. Unfortunately, no uniform terminology is used: some linguists for example work with the topic-focus distinction (e.g. Janse); I use the somewhat vague term ‘emphasis’, by which I understand ‘marked information’ (cf. Thoma).

59 Condoravdi and Kiparsky, ‘Clitics and clause structure’, 166.

60 Dover, Greek Word Order, 20ff.

61 In E, πώς is also used as a complementizer which attracts OCPs into preverbal position. In G, it solely functions as an interrogative. Both have to be considered as different items.

62 Cf. 4.4.3: this example could also be listed among the so-called ‘light verbs’.

63 Mackridge ranks subjects - together with temporal adverbs - among environments where the position of OCPs is relatively free.

64 Note that in 1.325 the trigger for pre-position acts even across the caesura. As such, this verse is illuminating with regard to the phonological character of OCPs in G (cf. 3.3): if we accept that the caesura constitutes a breathing pause, σε can only form a phonological unit with the preceding word ζώσαν and is thus an enclitic. Cf., for example, 6.688.

65 For clitic placement and emphasis on verbs, see Janssen, M. C., ‘H πρόταξη και επίταξη του αδύνατου τύπου της προσωπικής αντωνυμίας την εποχή του Ερωτόκριτου και της Θυσίας του Αβραάμ’, Cretan Studies 6 (1998) 129-44Google Scholar.

66 Janse, ‘La position des pronoms’, 90.

67 However, many elements which trigger pre-position are incompatible with imperatives (e.g. subordinating conjunctions). This fact naturally contributes to the dominance of postverbal OCPs.

68 As an anonymous referee indicates, the behaviour of OCPs in periphrastic constructions, as in the main clause of this example, provides interesting material for future research.

69 Other examples in which the competing motivations are solved in favour of postverbal position are 6.817; 4.387; 2.59. In some of these exceptional examples, metre probably reinforced the choice of postverbal OCPs; one example (cf. 8.138; 4.776):

Ποία δέ γε περίστασις # χωςίσει uè σοΰ πόθου; (2.122) ‘What circumstances will separate me from your desire?’

If we accept the constant enclitic nature of the OCPs in G (cf. 3.3), it is not possible to position με before χωρίσει (and thus after the interrogative constituent), since it would immediately follow the caesura and thus would have no preceding word to lean on. However, I assume that if the poet had really wanted a pre-verbal OCP, he would have chosen a different formulation (cf. 3.2).

70 Crystal, A Dictionary, 270.

71 Cf. 1.291; 3.99; 4.38; 6.688.

72 Crystal, A Dictionary, 79.

73 Note that 47 and 48 do not contain a finite verb, but an imperative, which is - as already mentioned (cf. 4.4.1) - typically emphasized and thus associated with postverbal OCPs.

74 Mackridge, ‘An editorial problem’, 330.

75 Jeffreys, Digenis Akritis, xxix.

76 Mackridge, ‘An editorial problem’, 332.

77 Ibid, 338.

78 In some cases, metre cannot be excluded as a factor contributing to the postverbal position of the OCP.

79 I have not reckoned quasi-enclitic particles intervening between verb and OCP among the separations.

80 The verb opens the intonation unit.

81 As mentioned, θά is completely absent from G.

82 A constituent preceding the verb does not necessarily carry emphasis and thus cannot automatically be called an ‘ad hoc emphasized constituent’.