Chapter 4 The πολιτικὸς στίχος: a natural and flexible metre
4.2 Much flexibility
4.2.1 Background information on clitics
4.2.1.1 Terminology and typology
Clitics are small words which are inherently unstressed and consequently have to lean – “κλίνω” in Ancient Greek – on another word: a phonological “host” (Zwicky 1977: 9).19 If
this phonological host is the following word, we speak of a proclitic; if it selects a preceding word as phonological host, it is an enclitic.It is important to note that the syntactic host does not need to be the same as the phonological host.
The most studied Greek clitics are the particles and the OCPs. The large class of Greek clitics further also includes unstressed possessive pronouns, indefinite pronouns, the definite article and a few verbs (cf. Jannaris 1897: 73f.). With particles, I refer both to enclitic particles written without an accent, such as τε and γε, and particles which traditionally receive an accent, such as δέ, γάρ, μέν and οὖν (remember that this accent is a mere orthographic convention in the Byzantine manuscripts; cf. supra 4.1.1.1). The OCPs, whose grammatical function is to mark the (in)direct object and whose syntactic host is thus the verb, have also been termed “weak” pronouns (Holton, Mackridge & Philippaki-Warburton 2004: 87), since they constitute the “counterpart” of the strong personal pronouns.20 Although “clitic” is a charged term and its status has been disputed
with regard to (later) Greek, I maintain the wide-spread term “clitic” for the sake of consistency (cf. infra 5.2.3 on “ clitic doubling”).21
4.2.1.2 Diachronic sketch
It is, of course, especially the rules for the distribution of OCPs in LMG which will play a major part in the two case studies below. However, these LMG OCP distributional rules cannot be understood without briefly situating them within their diachronic development in Greek, for they are the – rather complex – result of a history of different mechanisms and competing motivations, as Janse (2000: 245) warns: “The evolution of the Greek (...) clitic pronouns thus provides us a very intricate picture of variation, fixing of discourse strategies, grammaticalization and reanalysis”. We can already give
19 For references on the general status of clitics, see Anderson’s (2005) monograph.
20 Remember that the strong personal pronouns have many variant forms in the LMG πολιτικὸς στίχος poetry
(e.g. ἐμέ, ἐμένα and ἐμέναν); cf supra 1.1.1.2.2.
21 Pappas (2004) makes a plea that the LMG OCPs, just like the Modern Greek ones according to some linguists
(Joseph 1989), are actually (atypical) affixes (cf. book title: “Variation and Morphosyntactic Change in Greek: From Clitics to Affixes”). Janse (1998c) argues that they constitute a category sui generis.
away that the history of the Greek OCPs is one of growing convergence between the two hosts of clitics, i.e. the phonological and the syntactic one, and can thus be read as a steady process towards grammaticalisation. As for the diachronic evolution of the clitic particles, which ultimately die out, more is to be found in 5.3.1.
4.2.1.2.1 Homeric Greek
Let me – perhaps surprisingly – begin this diachronic sketch of the Greek OCPs in the 19th century, with the Swiss philologist Jacob Wackernagel. Wackernagel (1892) has
discovered that, in Indo-European, there was a strong tendency for enclitics to stand in second position (P2) in the sentence/clause. This also holds for the Greek OCPs, which are enclitic in origin, so that we find them in P2 in the oldest attested literary Greek, the Homeric epics. Consider, for instance, the OCP μοι in the next example:
κλῦτε φίλοι• θεῖός μοι ἐνύπνιον ἦλθεν ὄνειρος (Il. 2.56)
“Hearken, my friends, a Dream from heaven came to me in my sleep”
Note that this P2 tendency also applies to the Greek particles, such as γάρ in the next example:
ὃς γὰρ δεύτατος ἦλθεν Ἀχαιῶν χαλκοχιτώνων (Od. 1.286)
“for he was the last to reach home of the brazen-coated Achaeans”
Hence, these particles have been labelled “peninitial”, “postpositive” or “P2” particles.22
As for the OCPs, the effects of Wackernagel’s “Law” are quite remarkable since, due to their preference for second position, they are often separated from their syntactic host, the verb. In the above example, for instance, the OCP μοι attaches to its phonological host θεῖος and not to its syntactic host ἦλθεν. Consequently, syntactic and phonological host do not necessarily coincide in this period.
“P2”, however, should not be considered an absolute notion, for example:
Κύκλωψ, εἰρωτᾷς μ’ ὄνομα κλυτόν, αὐτὰρ ἐγώ τοι
“Cyclops, thou askest me of my glorious name, and I will tell it thee; ἐξερέω• σὺ δέ μοι δὸς ξείνιον, ὥς περ ὑπέστης. (Od. 9.364-365) “and do thou give me a stranger's gift, even as thou didst promise”
22 For a definition of P2 particles in Ancient Greek, see Ruijgh (1990), Marshall (1987: 8-13), H. Dik (1995: 31-34),
So-called prepositive words, such as αὐτάρ in the above example, do not count for the determination of P2 (Dover 1960).23 The same holds for proclitics, such as the definite
article.
Moreover, if several enclitics are combined, they cluster together in P2, as is the case with δέ μοι in the above example. It has been observed that the position of a particular clitic within such a clitic cluster is not at all arbitrary: “l’ordre interne (...) est déterminé par une règle assez stricte” (Ruijgh 1990: 217). Especially with regard to Homeric clitic clusters, a detailed hierarchy has been established (Ruijgh 1990; Wills 1993). If an OCP co-occurs with a particle, the latter must precede the former:
αὐτὸς γάρ σφιν δῶκεν ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν Ἀγαμέμνων (Il. 2.612)
“For of himself had the king of men, Agamemnon, given them [benched ships]” πῶς γάρ μοι μύθῳ ἐπιτέλλεαι ἠδὲ κελεύεις; (Il. 10.61)
“With what meaning doth thy word thus charge and command me?
The same order is still canonical in later Greek (Marshall 1987: 8), as the following example illustrates:
ἐγὼ γάρ σοι ὑπὲρ ἐκείνου ἀποκρινοῦμαι (Plato, Respublica 590a3) “for I will answer you in his behalf”
Furthermore, it has been argued that P2 must be interpreted as the attachment of the enclitic to the first word or constituent within the IU rather than within a syntactic unit such as the sentence or the clause, although “the two may and in fact often do coincide” (Janse 2008: 173; cf. supra 2.3.3).24
4.2.1.2.2 Classical Greek
In Classical Greek, Wackernagel’s Law is still active, as the following two examples testify:
ἵνα μοι μηδεὶς συνειδείη, ἐν ᾧ μοι ὁ πᾶς κίνδυνος ἦν (Antipho, De caede Herodis 43.3)
“to ensure that no one was privy to it, for there lay my one great danger”
23 Other examples of prepositives are prepositions, such as ἐν, ἐκ/ἐξ and εἰς, and the coordinator καί (Dover
1960).
24 For the “delayed position” of the P2 particles as evidence for IU boundaries, I refer to Fraenkel (1932, 1933 &
τοῦτό μοι, ὦ φίλοι, εὖ δοκεῖ ἔχειν (Plato, Respublica 2.368a.5) “This, my friends, I think, was well said”
On the other hand, there is an increasing number of examples in which the OCP stands after the verb, its syntactic host. This tendency can be considered “natural”, since “the phonological dependence of the enclitic pronouns then coincides with their syntactic dependence” (Janse 2008: 176), for instance:
ὡς μὲν ἀφῆκέ με πάντων (Demosthenes, Contra Pantaenetum 37.21.1) “that he released me from all claims [I have proved to you]”
This is a truly illuminating example, since the particle μέν still occupies P2. Indeed, the P2 particles remain obedient to Wackernagel’s Law. These two different principles, though, do not necessarily conflict, since the original and the new system can of course co-occur. This was already apparent in the Homeric example (Od. 9.364-365): εἰρωτᾷς μ’: the OCP μ(ε) both occupies P2 and stands after the verb.
4.2.1.2.3 Post-Classical Greek/Koine
In the next example as well, the OCP is obedient to Wackernagel’s Law but at the same time follows the verb, which opens the IU. Again, phonological and syntactic host coincide:
ἥψατό μου τις (Lc. 8.46) “Someone did touch me”
With this example from the Gospels, we have reached the post-classical period. The New Testament constitutes a suitable corpus to illustrate the development towards postverbal position: its language is close to the spoken Koine, in which simple sentences consisting of only a verb and an (in)direct object in the form of an OCP were without doubt many. The importance of such “minimal sentences” can hardly be overestimated with regard to this evolution, which must have been “based on statistically frequent patterning” (Horrocks 1990: 41). In sum, postverbal position becomes the unmarked order, yet preverbal OCPs are still present in large numbers, for instance:
Τίς μου ἥψατο; (Mc. 5.31) “Who touched me?”
The OCP μου is not phonologically attached to its verb, but encliticises to the immediately preceding word τίς. This attraction of the OCP to the interrogative can be historically explained, for an important consequence of Wackernagel’s Law is that words which prefer to open the utterance and thus stand in P1, are often found in
combination with a following OCP, holding its normal second position (Dover 1960; Janse 2000). These words with a natural preference for P1, which attract OCPs towards P2 in preverbal position, can be divided into three categories: function words, preferential words and ad hoc emphasised constituents.25
With function words I refer to words which are syntactically obliged to open a subordinate clause, namely all sorts of subordinators (complementation, condition, time, comparison, finality; e.g. ἵνα μοι). Pronominal relatives (e.g. ἐν ᾧ μοι) are reckoned among the function words as well, since they behave as subordinators. The functioning of function words must be sought on a purely syntactic level: “the one characteristic that these words share and which sets them apart from all other elements associated with preverbal placement is that they only have grammatical meaning” (Pappas 2004: 41). Speakers must have regarded these frequently occurring combinations as “collocations” (Janse 2000). This reanalysis of course thwarts the evolution towards convergence between phonological and syntactic host, as the OCP encliticises to the P1 word, but syntactically belongs to the verb.
The same reanalysis must have been applied to words which often stand at the front of the IU due to emphatic reasons, such as interrogatives (e.g. τίς μου), negations, demonstratives (e.g. τοῦτό μοι), strong personal pronouns (e.g. ἐγὼ γάρ σοι; ἐγώ τοι; σὺ δέ μοι), as well as distinctive (e.g. μόνος, ἄλλος, ἕτερος) and quantitative adjectives (e.g. πᾶς, πολύς). Dover (1960: 20) calls these words, which are “disproportionally common” at the beginning of an utterance, “preferential words”.
By extension, ad hoc emphasised constituents, which can belong to all word classes, optionally attract OCPs into preverbal position, since “a characteristic position for items of emphasis or contrast in Greek is initial position” (Horrocks 1990: 41).26 In another
example from the Gospels, the noun phrase ὁ κόσμος, which is contrasted with ἐγώ and thus emphasised, indeed occurs with a preverbal OCP:
καὶ ὁ κόσμος σε οὐκ ἔγνω, # ἐγὼ δέ σε ἔγνων (Jn. 17.25) “the world hasn’t known you, but I knew you”
However, we cannot draw a sharp line between the last two categories, since preferential words are actually “des mots qui sont, pour ainsi dire, emphatiques de
25 For a discussion of the notion of emphasis, see infra 5.2.1.3.1.
26 This seems to be a cross-linguistic tendency: “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)” (Givόn 2001: 250).
nature” (Janse 1993a: 94). As a consequence, a continuum might constitute a more suitable way to present these P1 words which are responsible for many instances of preverbal OCPs, yet the threefold classification is maintained here for the sake of clarity.
4.2.1.2.4 Late Medieval Greek
In LMG, the period which interests us, these remnants of Wackernagel’s Law take on a more compelling character: the tendencies for preverbal position detected in post- Classical Greek are now labelled “rules” by Mackridge (1993: 325). We should not forget, however, that postverbal position had become the unmarked order. Consequently, the LMG distribution seems to be a logical continuation of the post-classical period, yet at the same time it constitutes the steppingstone to the modern distribution of Greek OCPs.27
It is Peter Mackridge (1993; 1995 & 2000) who has done pioneering work with regard to the OCP distributional rules in the 12th to 15th centuries.28 The immediate cause of the
formulation of these rules is − rather unexpectedly − criticism concerning the editorial practice of Alexiou (1985) with regard to the “vulgarising” E version of the Digenis
Akritis. Contrary to Alexiou, Mackridge (1993: 338) observes a clear regularity in the
placement of OCPs: “the redactor and/or scribe of the Escorial Digenis Akritis displays a remarkable consistency in his application of the rules governing the position of the clitic pronoun”. In other words, Mackridge has been the first to illustrate from a linguistic point of view that the language of the LMG πολιτικὸς στίχος poetry is not a complete “hotchpotch” (cf. Beaton 19962: 215; cf. supra 1.1.1.2.1).
In parenthesis, it should be mentioned that Mackridge consciously left aside the “archaising” G manuscript, in the conviction that “in the Grottaferrata version of Digenis
Akritis, which contains a greater number of archaic features than the Escorial version
(...) the order is not the proper medieval one, but a more archaic one” (Mackridge 1993: 332; cf. supra 1.1.2.2.2). Pappas (2004), who was the first to undertake a quantitative analysis of the OCP distribution in the entire LMG period, has taken the study of Mackridge as his starting point: the earliest text from his corpus is the Digenis Akritis,
27 Therefore, a statement such as that “the Grottaferrata Digenes Akrites, where the medieval rules are mixed
with the rules of ancient and Hellenistic Greek” (Mackridge 1993: 338) perhaps gives a false impression, since the history of the Greek OCPs reads as a natural development, namely a grammaticalisation process towards convergence between phonological and syntactic host – a process that has been completed in Standard Modern Greek.
28 Rollo (1989) must also be mentioned because of his pioneering work, but it is the article of Mackridge (1993),
more specifically, E. The G version is again ignored. As a matter of fact, I have discovered that G is erroneously disregarded in the numerous recent studies on LMG OCPs, for even in this so-called archaising version we can identify the contemporary rules for OCPs (Soltic 2012). Consequently, Mackridge’s rules have more validity than he himself realised…
In any case, the formulation of these rules by Mackridge has triggered an impressive number of publications on the distribution of LMG OCPs: I can cite Ramoutsaki (1996); Janssen (1998); Pappas (2001; 2002 & 2004); Condoravdi & Kiparsky (2001 & 2004); Janse (2000 & 2008); Vejleskov (2005); Revithiadou & Spyropoulos (2006 & 2008) and Thoma (2007). As a consequence, the LMG OCP distributional rules are by far the best studied issue in LMG syntax (Chila-Markopoulou 2004: 199). This should not surprise us, for the distributional pattern of the LMG OCPs is indeed truly fascinating.
The most important difference from the previous (post-Classical) period is that the LMG OCPs obligatorily appear adjacent to the verb of which they constitute the direct or indirect object: “the clitic object pronoun ceased to be a freely moving part of the clause and instead became part of the verb phrase” (Mackridge 1993: 339). Whether the OCPs appear before or after their verb depends on the element immediately before the verb, i.e. the preverbal element. In broad lines, preverbal OCPs are “more or less obligatory” if the verb is preceded by function words (Mackridge 1993: 340), for instance:
(1) Καὶ ὁ ἀμιρὰς ὡς τὸ ἤκουσεν, # μακρέα τὸν ἀποξέβην (DA E 52; Mackridge 1993: 328) E. Jeffreys (1998: 241): “When the emir heard this, he withdrew some way from the youth”
Besides this (quasi-)obligatory syntactic rule, preverbal position seems regulated by a pragmatic principle, for after “semantically emphasised” constituents preverbal OCPs are “almost obligatory” (Mackridge 1993: 341). This principle refers to the above mentioned preverbal OCPs after preferential words and ad hoc emphasised constituents (cf. supra 4.2.1.2.3), for example:
(2) Κὺρ Ἥλιε, τί μᾶς ἔποικες # καὶ ἐκακοδίκησές μας; (DA E 94; Mackridge 1993: 329) E. Jeffreys (1998: 245): “Lord Sun, why have you done this to us and wronged us?” (3) Τοῦτα ὁ Θεὸς τοῦ τὰ ἔδωκεν, # ἔχει μέγιστον κάλλος (DA E 1333; Mackridge 1993: 331)29
E. Jeffreys (1998: 339): “God has granted him all this: he has the greatest good looks”
Needless to say, if none of the above mentioned words is present, the OCP appears immediately after the verb:
(4) καὶ ἐθεώρει τον λοιπὸν # καὶ ἀποκαμάρωνέ τον (DA E 595; Mackridge 1993: 327) E. Jeffreys (1998: 283): “and gazed at him then and admired him”
Postverbal position is thus still the unmarked position of OCPs (cf. supra 4.2.1.2.3). This observation also seems to apply to OCPs which are the object of an infinitive, a participle/gerund or an imperative. In these cases, the placement of the pronouns is robustly postverbal (Pappas 2004: 70). Even after preferential words and ad hoc emphasised elements, the OCPs sometimes may occur postverbally, for OCPs occurring in combination with a preferential word/ad hoc emphasised constituent do not
necessarily appear immediately before the verb. On the other hand, the class of function
words attracts the OCPs into preverbal position almost without exception.
In sum, the distribution of LMG OCPs is determined by a quasi-obligatory syntactic rule (preverbal OCPs after function words and to a lesser extent after preferential words) and a rather optional pragmatic principle (preverbal OCPS after ad hoc emphasised constituents): “the rules are primarily a matter of syntactic context and secondarily a matter of pragmatics (in this case, emphasis)” (Mackridge 1993: 326).30
Nonetheless, although Mackridge’s description of the phenomenon has generally been accepted as the standard, the pragmatic principle has been disputed, i.e. the fact that ad hoc emphasised words trigger OCPs into preverbal position. Even the replacement of Mackridge’s rather vague notion of emphasis by the linguistically established concept of focus has not led to agreement in the field. In the core chapter of this dissertation, I will provide further evidence for the importance of the topic/focus pair (cf. infra 5.2.1.3.1).
4.2.1.2.5 Standard Modern Greek
The obligatory adjacency between verb and OCP finally leads to the grammaticalisation of the OCPs in Standard Modern Greek: at this stage, the exact position of the OCP is no longer regulated by the nature of the preverbal element, but depends on the mood of the verbal form (cf. Philippaki-Warburton 1994). If the verb is an imperative or a gerund, the OCPs appear after the verb:
30 Of course, the pragmatic principle cannot be completely detached from syntax, since the fact that the
μίλα μας “talk to us” μιλώντας μας “talking to us”
In combination with an indicative or subjunctive, on the contrary, preverbal OCPs are required, for instance:
μας μιλά
“(s)he talks to us” να μας μιλήσει
“that (s)he would talk to us”
Note that the addition of “Standard” to Modern Greek is an important one, for some modern dialects such as Cypriot and Cappadocian have preserved the LMG distribution (cf. infra 5.2.1.3.3). Furthermore, Pontic has generalised the postverbal position (in the form of suffixes).31 The different behaviour of the OCPs is one of the main syntactic
dialectal isoglosses in Greek, since it sets Standard Modern Greek apart from other Modern Greek dialects, in particular those from Asia Minor (Kondosopoulos 1985; Ralli 2006: 141ff.). However, in the standard language phonological and syntactic host now always coincide: postverbal enclitics form the counterpart of preverbal proclitics (cf. infra 4.2.2.2.2).32 With this perfect convergence between phonological and syntactic
host, I conclude the diachronic overview and pass to my first case study.