Word Order of Genitive (Enclitic) Pronouns

RandallButh
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Re: Word Order of Genitive (Enclitic) Pronouns

Post by RandallButh »

MAubrey wrote:
RandallButh wrote:Also #3 could potentially be read with two different intonations, one Focal. (Though I would expect that most of such order were Focal. (Do you have a list of any MOY in such clauses?)
...
Mark 5:30 τίς μου ἥψατο τῶν ἱματίων;
It helps to interpret against the options. This sentence has several:

a. (Mark 5:30) τίς μου ἥψατο τῶν ἱματίων;

b. τίς ἥψατο μου τῶν ἱματίων;

c. τίς ἥψατο τῶν ἱματίων μου;

d. τίς μου ἥψατο;

e. τίς ἥψατό μου; Cf. Luke 8.45 τίς ὁ ἁψάμενός μου;

I would call "c" unmarked/default, where the pronoun follows its headnoun. "e" is also unmarked/default but with a different object.
Τhat means that both "a" and "b" reflect some movement for μου.
So how does differentiate "a" from "b"?

On the otherhand, Luke 8:46 does not have many options with τις:

f. ἥψατό μού τις.

g. *ἥψατό τίς μου. (This puts an accent on τις which makes it a homonym with "who?" and potentially confusing.)

h. *τίς ἥψατό μου. (This also puts an accent on τις which makes it a homonym with "who?" and potentially confusing.)

i. ἥψατό τις τῶν ἱματίων μου. (Adding an object allows another positions for τις.)

...
Randall, if you say this ordering (V αὐτοῦ NP) is a marked construction, but not marked for focus, then what is it marked for? Incidentally, I don't think I've ever seen an ἐμοῦ ordered like V αὐτοῦ NP, only the enclitic μου.
Well, your observation leads to answers for your question. If you've never seen (V ἐμοῦ NP) doesn't that imply that (V μου NP) is not Focal? Then (V μου NP) signals/is-marked-for presupposed-information/demotion/less-saliency. And it adds weight to whichever phonological phrase it is attracted to, "a" or "b" above.
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Re: Word Order of Genitive (Enclitic) Pronouns

Post by MAubrey »

RandallButh wrote:Well, your observation leads to answers for your question. If you've never seen (V ἐμοῦ NP) doesn't that imply that (V μου NP) is not Focal? Then (V μου NP) signals/is-marked-for presupposed-information/demotion/less-saliency. And it adds weight to whichever phonological phrase it is attracted to, "a" or "b" above.
To get come clarification...

V μου NP certainly is not marked for demotion. If an entire clause were presupposed, it wouldn't have been spoken to begin with--or if it was the audience would responded "Yeah, I know." So I can only assume that you did not quite mean what you wrote. Do you mean μου is marked for demotion? Or you do mean V is marked for demotion? Or that NP is marked for demotion?

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has said that V μου NP is focal. What Stephen and I have said is that in such a constructional sequence, V is focal--or more accurately, Stephen has said V is focal and I have said that V association with the primary stress in its intonation unit...which then associates iconically with focus (at least most of the time, contrastive topics may also associate with primary stress).
RandallButh wrote: a. (Mark 5:30) τίς μου ἥψατο τῶν ἱματίων;
b. τίς ἥψατο μου τῶν ἱματίων;
c. τίς ἥψατο τῶν ἱματίων μου;
d. τίς μου ἥψατο;
e. τίς ἥψατό μου; Cf. Luke 8.45 τίς ὁ ἁψάμενός μου;

I would call "c" unmarked/default, where the pronoun follows its headnoun. "e" is also unmarked/default but with a different object.
Τhat means that both "a" and "b" reflect some movement for μου.
So how does [one; sic] differentiate "a" from "b"?
That's fairly easy to answer. Option "b" simply isn't possible assuming the particular words in this clause. Jesus would have had to say something else. You would need to create a sufficiently (prosodically) heavy initial question constituent so that the speaker would then be inclined to create an intonation break before the verb. Otherwise, the speaker would leave the μου in the default "c" position following after its syntactic NP (e.g. Luke 19:23 καὶ διὰ τί οὐκ ἔδωκάς μου τὸ ἀργύριον ἐπὶ τράπεζαν;). This Luke example is the only one I'm aware of for syntactically NP-internal genitive enclitics in the corpus mentioned above and this sort of position for enclitics functioning as arguments when there's a fronted focal element is also rare, but still predictably according to what I've just described. So to the extent that the largest realization of this clause is: τίς μου ἥψατο τῶν ἱματίων; then option "b" is phonologically impossible. I'm also inclined to say the same about "e" The participle in Luke 8:45 complicates things such clauses pattern differently than normal indicatives. With regular indicative clauses, we only get the ordering in "e" when, again, you have a heavier initial prosodic constituent (though I do have one (in thousands) counter-example to this generalization that appears at John 9:26).
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RandallButh
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Re: Word Order of Genitive (Enclitic) Pronouns

Post by RandallButh »

MAubrey wrote: ...Do you mean μου is marked for demotion?
I assumed that we were talking about the movement of μου. So, yes, μου is marked as pre-supposed with demoted saliency.
MAubrey wrote:
RandallButh wrote: a. (Mark 5:30) τίς μου ἥψατο τῶν ἱματίων;
b. τίς ἥψατο μου τῶν ἱματίων;
c. τίς ἥψατο τῶν ἱματίων μου;
d. τίς μου ἥψατο;
e. τίς ἥψατό μου; Cf. Luke 8.45 τίς ὁ ἁψάμενός μου;
... You would need to create a sufficiently (prosodically) heavy initial question constituent so that the speaker would then be inclined to create an intonation break before the verb. ... (e.g. Luke 19:23 καὶ διὰ τί οὐκ ἔδωκάς μου τὸ ἀργύριον ἐπὶ τράπεζαν;).
... then option "b" is phonologically impossible.
I've never considered δια τί to be prosodically heavy on a clause level.
MAubrey wrote: I'm also inclined to say the same about "e" The participle in Luke 8:45 complicates things such clauses pattern differently than normal indicatives. With regular indicative clauses, we only get the ordering in "e" when, again, you have a heavier initial prosodic constituent (though I do have one (in thousands) counter-example to this generalization that appears at John 9:26).
Well, let's quote John 9:26
τί ἐποίησέν σοι;
πῶς ἤνοιξέν σου τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς;

Seems like good Greek to me, so it needs to be included in the options.
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Re: Word Order of Genitive (Enclitic) Pronouns

Post by MAubrey »

RandallButh wrote:I've never considered δια τί to be prosodically heavy on a clause level.
Well, then our options are as follows:

(1) You could reconsider the possibility.
(2) You could put forward an alternative analysis that accounts for both the low frequency and its consistent collocation with complex/compound question words like δια τί.

I'm perfectly open to there being an alternative analysis. I just don't know what it would be.
RandallButh wrote:Well, let's quote John 9:26
τί ἐποίησέν σοι;
πῶς ἤνοιξέν σου τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς;

Seems like good Greek to me, so it needs to be included in the options.
If its good Greek, is it good Greek in the same way that τί σοι ἐποίησέν is good Greek? Why is it so incredibly rare that this the only one we have? I have hypotheses for how these could be grammatical, but little more (I cannot demonstrate anything without data and there is none beyond this verse). The ordering is so utterly anomalous that I truly wonder how you could recognize it as "good."
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Stephen Carlson
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Re: Word Order of Genitive (Enclitic) Pronouns

Post by Stephen Carlson »

MAubrey wrote:I'm perfectly open to there being an alternative analysis. I just don't know what it would be.
RandallButh wrote:Well, let's quote John 9:26
τί ἐποίησέν σοι;
πῶς ἤνοιξέν σου τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς;

Seems like good Greek to me, so it needs to be included in the options.
If its good Greek, is it good Greek in the same way that τί σοι ἐποίησέν is good Greek? Why is it so incredibly rare that this the only one we have? I have hypotheses for how these could be grammatical, but little more (I cannot demonstrate anything without data and there is none beyond this verse). The ordering is so utterly anomalous that I truly wonder how you could recognize it as "good."
David Goldstein in his dissertation (pp. 159-163) proposes that this pattern involves a kind of presupposition cancelling in (rhetorical) questions. He argues that it "can be seen as an extension of the exhaustive focal readings in declarative sentences."

If this hypothesis hold for Koine, it would imply that the questions in John 9:26 are not sincere.
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RandallButh
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Re: Word Order of Genitive (Enclitic) Pronouns

Post by RandallButh »

Stephen Carlson wrote:
MAubrey wrote:I'm perfectly open to there being an alternative analysis. I just don't know what it would be.
RandallButh wrote:Well, let's quote John 9:26
τί ἐποίησέν σοι;
πῶς ἤνοιξέν σου τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς;

Seems like good Greek to me, so it needs to be included in the options.
If its good Greek, is it good Greek in the same way that τί σοι ἐποίησέν is good Greek? Why is it so incredibly rare that this the only one we have? I have hypotheses for how these could be grammatical, but little more (I cannot demonstrate anything without data and there is none beyond this verse). The ordering is so utterly anomalous that I truly wonder how you could recognize it as "good."
David Goldstein in his dissertation (pp. 159-163) proposes that this pattern involves a kind of presupposition cancelling in (rhetorical) questions. He argues that it "can be seen as an extension of the exhaustive focal readings in declarative sentences."

If this hypothesis hold for Koine, it would imply that the questions in John 9:26 are not sincere.
That analysis would make pragmatic sense if the position of the non-salient ("demoted") enclitic had the rhetorical effect of adding prominence to the verb by bringing syntactic and phonological weight to the verb phrase.
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Re: Word Order of Genitive (Enclitic) Pronouns

Post by MAubrey »

Stephen Carlson wrote:David Goldstein in his dissertation (pp. 159-163) proposes that this pattern involves a kind of presupposition cancelling in (rhetorical) questions. He argues that it "can be seen as an extension of the exhaustive focal readings in declarative sentences."

If this hypothesis hold for Koine, it would imply that the questions in John 9:26 are not sincere.
Well, that's precisely what my (unspoken) hypothesis was! (which I might have unconsciously stolen from Goldstein...having read it myself last year...)

The (formerly) blind man calls them on it too in his response: you've already asked me that and I've told you (implicitly: you're not interested in my answer).
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Re: Word Order of Genitive (Enclitic) Pronouns

Post by RandallButh »

The ordering is so utterly anomalous that I truly wonder how you could recognize it as "good."


Off-topic, aside.

This reminds me of a story. My daughter came home once from a class where the prof had said that Isaiah 6.1 was 'corrupted Hebrew'
(prepositional phrase followed by wayyiqtol). She asked my opinion. I told here that it was rare but acceptable BH where the wayyiqtol was upgrading the clause, putting it "on line, foregrounded," in ways that a qatal would not. Fortunately, when she asked how I would know that the manuscript was not corrupt I smiled and said that we have two examples of the structure in stone (Moabite, a.k.a East-DeadSea Canaanite).
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Re: Word Order of Genitive (Enclitic) Pronouns

Post by MAubrey »

RandallButh wrote:
The ordering is so utterly anomalous that I truly wonder how you could recognize it as "good."


Off-topic, aside.

This reminds me of a story. My daughter came home once from a class where the prof had said that Isaiah 6.1 was 'corrupted Hebrew'
(prepositional phrase followed by wayyiqtol). She asked my opinion. I told here that it was rare but acceptable BH where the wayyiqtol was upgrading the clause, putting it "on line, foregrounded," in ways that a qatal would not. Fortunately, when she asked how I would know that the manuscript was not corrupt I smiled and said that we have two examples of the structure in stone (Moabite, a.k.a East-DeadSea Canaanite).
Yeah, that's basically what I was looking for, too, though most of the time if a form occurs in natural text and there aren't a pile of scribes trying to correct it in the manuscript tradition, I'm willing to accept it as natural.
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Iver Larsen
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Re: Word Order of Genitive (Enclitic) Pronouns

Post by Iver Larsen »

I'd like to comment on the following:
MAubrey wrote: On that front: here's some data that was instrumental for my change in perspective away from an approach similar to Iver's toward the one I have now. The relative prominence approach depends centrally upon there being a contrastive alternative for the pronoun (Iver mentioned 2 Tim 3:10 and suggested the contrastive focus reading "MY teachings, etc. as opposed to other teachers." But that doesn't work super well for imperatives.

Matt 17:15 κύριε, ἐλέησόν μου τὸν υἱόν
Mark 9:24 βοήθει μου τῇ ἀπιστίᾳ.

More often than not a pronoun is pulled forward and no contrastive alternative is available (there's only one son being talked about and one person's belief being talked about). At the same time demotion makes a whole lot of sense. These imperative forms come with significant emotional force on the petitioned act: HAVE MERCY, HELP. Incidentally, I'd say that these two clauses are good examples of instances where Stephen's #4 *can* be viewed as marking Focus. Randall, if you say this ordering (V αὐτοῦ NP) is a marked construction, but not marked for focus, then what is it marked for? Incidentally, I don't think I've ever seen an ἐμοῦ ordered like V αὐτοῦ NP, only the enclitic μου.
The reason I like the principle that left movement implies hightened relative prominence is that it can nicely explain all the data with a simple and powerful principle. However, I should clarify that hightened prominence does not necessarily presume a contrastive alternative. The quote from Levinsohn shows that there can be a thematic prominence, where the speaker wants to remind the heares of WHO we are talking about and that what is being said is about this particular person who is the main character in the context.

As we have been focusing on personal pronouns, the heightened prominence relates to the person whom the pronoun refers back to. This applies whether the pronoun is a direct/indirect object of the verb and therefore a constituent in the verb phrase or whether it is a constituent in the noun phrase. In English in some context this is best translated by adding "own".

In the two examples above with imperatives, an imperative is naturally prominent because it focuses on the action, and it would normally come first in its clause, before the NP object. (It may follow an aorist participle, but I would take that as a subordinate clause.) It is also necessary to look at the semantic weight of the verb. In Matt 3:3 the clause starts with εὐθείας ποιεῖτε, where the semantically most prominent information is in the adjective: make-straight.

I look at the clause level and phrase level separately. In ἐλέησόν μου τὸν υἱόν, there is relative prominence on the speaker over the son: Lord, please help me, i.e. my son who is sick. It does not intensify the verb, but it does highlight the person who is crying for help. The same with the other example: Help me, i.e., me, who lacks faith.

We saw the same in John with the eyes and the ear: Jesus anointed him on the eyes. When recounting the incident, the blind man is highlighting himself as the one who was anointed and healed. That it was the eyes is not quite as prominent as the person. Similarly, Peter cut the servant of the high priest with a sword. He specifically cut off his ear. The servant as a person is more prominent than where he was cut.

I like to look at data, so let me repeat the set from earlier:

a. (Mark 5:30) τίς μου ἥψατο τῶν ἱματίων;
b. τίς ἥψατο μου τῶν ἱματίων;
c. τίς ἥψατο τῶν ἱματίων μου;
d. τίς μου ἥψατο;
e. τίς ἥψατό μου; Cf. Luke 8.45 τίς ὁ ἁψάμενός μου;

The question word τίς naturally comes first, because it sets the scene as a question. It also helps to distinguish it from the indefinite pronoun which rarely comes first in its clause, and if it does it is probably a fronted constituent in a noun phrase.

I would explain the difference between b. and c. by saying that in b. the person speaking is more prominent than the clothes - who touched me (somwhere at my garments). In c. the clothes are relatively more prominent than the person, but you could also say that this is the default order, so there is no particular emphasis. But still, the fact that there is a choice indicates that the speaker chose not to highlight the person.
In a. the person has an even higher degree of prominence by being placed further to the left, in front of the verb.
In d. and e. the choice is between highlighting the touching or the person who is being touched. When the disciples repeated Jesus' quesion in v. 31 they left out the last two words and said d. This supports the claim that the person is highlighted, not the clothes. But when the woman said/thought earlier in v. 28 Ἐὰν ἅψωμαι κἂν τῶν ἱματίων αὐτοῦ she was focused on touching just his garments, not Jesus himself.
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