RandallButh wrote:
MAubrey wrote:and the inherent nature of personal pronouns as involving "given" information caused the phonology.
Look at French. The pronouns have developed tight little spots in front of the verb. Spanish has pronouns in front of a verb like French but it also has infinitives with pronouns
tacked on at the end. Hebrew has object suffixes fused
at the end of the verb. Modern Greek likes to put the pronouns in front of the verb something like French. All of these languages are showing the given information being attracted to the weightiest semantic element of the clause to the point where they grammaticize, morphologize, and cliticize.
So yes, the 'givenness' of the pronouns and certain words like ἐστιν developed into a system in Greek where they followed semantic heads and pragmatically marked items and de-accented. It is a case where pragmatics and phonology have worked together to set up patterns in the texture of the message.
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It seems to me that it is helpful to distinguish between personal and possessive pronouns. The personal pronouns naturally attach themselves to the verb or verb root, either before or after. The position may or may not be a matter of prominence, depending on the language, i.e. how free or bound the pronoun is. Affixes are bound to the root, words are not and clitics are in between. In my language I can say "Jeg elsker dig" (I love you) with focus and stress on the verb, but I can also say "Dig elsker jeg" (You I love) with focus on "you". In the second instance, the object pronoun is stressed, in the first instance, stress is on the verb. But the phonological stress is a consequence of the pragmatic meaning intended. The sentence "Jeg elsker dig" can also have stress on either of the two personal pronouns rather than the verb, and that would result in focus on the pronoun which is stressed. So, pragmatic prominence may be marked either by stress or by word order, sometimes both. It is difficult to study stress in Koine Greek, but word order is there for all to see.
In Matthew 16:18 we are not dealing with a personal pronoun, but a possessive pronoun. A possessive pronoun is part of a noun phrase, and I prefer to look at the position of such pronouns within the phrase they are part of. If the possessive pronoun is fronted within its phrase it may well occur close to the verb. Can the so-called Wackernagel's "law"/tendency/theory explain the variation in sentences like the following:
Mt 2:6 ὅστις ποιμανεῖ τὸν λαόν μου τὸν Ἰσραήλ
Mt 2:15 Ἐξ Αἰγύπτου ἐκάλεσα τὸν υἱόν μου.
Mt 7:24 ὅστις ἀκούει μου τοὺς λόγους τούτους ... ὅστις ᾠκοδόμησεν αὐτοῦ τὴν οἰκίαν ἐπὶ τὴν πέτραν
Mt 8:8 ἵνα μου ὑπὸ τὴν στέγην εἰσέλθῃς...καὶ ἰαθήσεται ὁ παῖς μου
Mt 11:10 ἐγὼ ἀποστέλλω τὸν ἄγγελόν μου πρὸ προσώπου σου, ὃς κατασκευάσει τὴν ὁδόν σου
Mt 12:18 θήσω τὸ πνεῦμά μου
Mt 16:18 οἰκοδομήσω μου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν
etc. etc.
Sometimes the distinction between a possessive pronoun and personal pronoun may be blurred. What is the difference between "my disciple" and "disciple of me"? I am asking because I looked at the variation of word order in the following:
Lk 14:26,27,33 οὐ δύναται εἶναί μου μαθητής (He cannot be a disciple of me)
Jn 8:31 ἀληθῶς μαθηταί μού ἐστε (You are truly my disicples.)