RandallButh wrote:I follow you on most of this, but wonder why you want to drop the accent on ὑμᾶς? By my rules, as a circumflex it retains its accent even in context.
This has nothing to do with--and does not affect--your general point about the survival of the circumflex accent into Koine. The issue is specific to the accusative and dative plurals of the first and second personal pronouns. There are two lines of evidence:
First, Smyth § 325f. says that there is evidence (mainly in Attic poetry) that the final syllable of these pronouns are short when unemphasized (accented as ἧμιν, ἧμας, etc.), and occasionally even when they are emphasized (accented as ἡμίν, ἡμάς, etc.). So what this means is that for unemphasized forms of these pronouns, there really wasn't a long vowel to support a true circumflex accent in Koine's predecessor, and so whatever reflex of the circumflex remained in Koine in other places, it is not there for these unemphasized pronouns.
The second line of evidence is that when these pronouns are unemphasized (i.e. not in focus or as a contrastive topic), they tend to follow Wackernagel's Law, suggesting to me that that are probably as enclitic as τινι, τινα, τισι, τινας, etc.
With this in mind, I now would emend my proposal of Mark 1:8 to
Mark 1:8 scc 2.0 wrote:ἐγώ, ἐβάπτισά ὑμας ὕδατι · αὐτός δε, βαπτίσει ὑμὰς ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ
(I have not come to a decision about the use of the grave on a two-syllable enclitic following a paroxytone.)
RandallButh wrote:I do suspect that there were quite a few 'mini commas' when fronted, topical, and focal material was displaced from a default order. However, I'm not sure that we need to mark these since a responsible reading puts them back in when focusing on meaning.
I fully agree, but the point is too strong. One could say that about all punctuation. They weren't really there to begin with and responsible reading put them in. The issue is more on where to draw the line as to how much punctuation to put in. I favor being rather more explicit for the following reasons:
1. I think it is important to convey to modern readers what the prosody of the Greek sentence is, which the current punctuation practice of the critical editions does not do. By having a somewhat more unfamiliar system of punctuation, it lets the modern reader not only know but feel that they are not in Kansas anymore.
2. The prosody of the Greek sentence is not taught in Greek classes, and there is almost no training for current Greek teachers about this information structure stuff, so it would be nice if the edition of the Greek text did a lot of that work for them.
3. It is actually the practice of some Greek manuscripts. Though medieval manuscripts vary in the extent of their punctuation, some of them do mark these constituents with a hypostigme (the equivalent of a comma).
4. With a more liberal use of commas, one can get oxytones on certain fronted constituents for free, without having to propose a new convention for accentuation.
RandallButh wrote:Another quibble:
Stephen wrote
Mark 1:8 ἐγώ, ἐβάπτισα ὑμᾶς ὕδατι · αὐτός δε, βαπτίσει ὑμᾶς ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ
I would prefer reading fronted Contextualizing Constitutents (aka 'Topic') without a pause and thus dropping any final acute accent. As mentioned above, Focal consituents are another matter and probably had different patterns, with a slight pause and therefore with a final acute accent.
Natually, as with most pragmatic matters, there are occasions when different readings are possible. Your verse Mark 1.8 can be read as simple frontings (non-Focal contextualization) if the main point is in how the baptisms differ, or a Focal intonation may be added as well, if the main point is "we're different." The previous verse might point to "we're different" as the main point, but I prefer to read
ἐγὼ ἐβάπτισα ὑμᾶς ὕδατι · αὐτὸς δὲ βαπτίσει ὑμᾶς ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ
which leaves the main point as the difference in baptism.
It's probably a different interpretation of the information structure, but I view ἐγώ and αὐτός as
contrastive topics (Goldstein's strong topics)--though they are topics, they also have the secondary focus in a double-contrast configuration (my theory of information structure is closer to Manfred Krifka's than Knud Lambrecht's, so I can tolerate more than one focus). Pronouns are also used for "switch topics," but they are not followed by a pause and I would not propose a comma for those.
RandallButh wrote:That may come from reading Luke 3, where 'water' is a marked focus:
εγω μεν υδατι βαπτιζω υμάς
ερχεται δε ο ισχυρότερός μου ού ουκ ειμι ικανος λυσαι τον ιμαντα τών υποδηματων αυτού
αυτος υμάς βαπτισει εν πνευματι αγιω και πυρί
οὐ το πτυον εν τή χειρι αυτού διακαθαραι την αλωνα αυτού και συναγαγείν τον σιτον εις την αποθηκην αυτού
το δε αχυρον κατακαυσει πυρι ασβεστω.
PS: I marked final syllable accents that resist dropping (mostly circumflex). Other words receive their normal pre-final accents.
And here's how I'm leaning to punctuating Luke 3:16b-17.
Luke 3:16 scc wrote:16b ἐγώ μεν ὕδατι, βαπτίζω ὑμάς. ἔρχεταί δε ὁ ἰσχυρότερός μου · οὗ, οὔκ εἰμι ἱκανὸς λῦσαι τον ἱμάντα των ὑποδημάτων αὐτοῦ. αὐτός ὑμας βαπτίσει ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ και πυρί. 17 οὗ το πτύον, ἐν τῃ χειρὶ αὐτοῦ διακαθᾶραι την ἅλωνα αὐτοῦ, και συναγαγεῖν τον σῖτον εἰς την ἀποθήκην αὐτοῦ. το δε ἄχυρον, κατακαύσει πυρὶ ἀσβέστῳ.
As you can see, I am still willing to retain most accents, including the standard accentuation on lexical words (e.g. nouns and verbs). I'm also willing to retain the smooth and rough breathings because I'm not convinced that Koine has completely become psilotic, especially in careful, elite speech (i.e., Luke).
It seems like we have somewhat different philosophies of punctuation, Randall. Yours seems aimed at the fluent Koine reader (where your proposal is not terribly different from the early manuscripts I've σεεν except with more spacing), while mine is more aimed at conveying graphically what the Greek sentence is doing prosodically. (I suppose you're already doing a lot of that, not graphically, but orally by verbalizing the text for your students.) Different strokes for different folks, I guess.