Word Order of Genitive (Enclitic) Pronouns

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RandallButh
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Word Order of Genitive (Enclitic) Pronouns

Post by RandallButh »

Peter Streitenberger wrote:Dear Friends,

thank you ! So you agree that the fronting of MOU has phonological reasons and there is not intention to stress the pronoun ? I initially thought that would be the case.
Yours
Peter, Germany
I'm not sure where I stand on the phonological issue. Did the phonology cause the word order, or did the word order with a limited class of words give rise to the enclitic phonology?
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Re: Word Order in Mat 16,18

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Peter Streitenberger wrote:So you agree that the fronting of MOU has phonological reasons and there is not intention to stress the pronoun ? I initially thought that would be the case.
Yes, if you stress a pronoun, you won't have a clitic anymore.
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RandallButh
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Re: Word Order in Mat 16,18

Post by RandallButh »

Stephen Carlson wrote:
Peter Streitenberger wrote:So you agree that the fronting of MOU has phonological reasons and there is not intention to stress the pronoun ? I initially thought that would be the case.
Yes, if you stress a pronoun, you won't have a clitic anymore.
And if you use fronting for either Focus or Contextualization ('topic') it goes before the core template, the verb in this case, not after the verb.
MAubrey
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Re: Word Order in Mat 16,18

Post by MAubrey »

RandallButh wrote:I'm not sure where I stand on the phonological issue. Did the phonology cause the word order, or did the word order with a limited class of words give rise to the enclitic phonology?
Phonology caused the word order and the inherent nature of personal pronouns as involving "given" information caused the phonology. That is to say, the referents of personal pronouns are inherently activated because of the nature of the pronouns themselves. They only receive stress when there's a need for contrast, topic change, or in rare instances, focus. And in such cases, you will have the fully accented form. Lambrecht talks about the de-accenting of known information. Personal pronouns are the ultimate example of that. So the relationship between the status of the pronoun accent is iconic with the status of the referent in the speaker & hearer's mental representations.
Stephen Carlson wrote:In the second intonation unit, Wackernagel's "law" holds and the stress on οἰκοδομήσω pulls the clitic μου forward to behind the verb.
Where did Wackernagel's "law" come from and why does it operate? Simply saying something is Wackernagel's law doesn't explain anything. Surely there's some kind of phonological substance that motivates. This is the reason, I look to sentence stress as a solution. Language doesn't just do things arbitrarily.
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Re: Word Order in Mat 16,18

Post by Stephen Carlson »

MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:In the second intonation unit, Wackernagel's "law" holds and the stress on οἰκοδομήσω pulls the clitic μου forward to behind the verb.
Where did Wackernagel's "law" come from and why does it operate? Simply saying something is Wackernagel's law doesn't explain anything. Surely there's some kind of phonological substance that motivates. This is the reason, I look to sentence stress as a solution. Language doesn't just do things arbitrarily.
Well, if you're curious about where Wackernagel's comes from and how it operates, then I invite you to re-read David Goldstein's thesis and the references he cites. But it cannot be the case that you don't know this. At any rate, I have stated that there is a stress on οἰκοδομήσω, but I'm just not convinced that there is anything to be gained by calling it the sentence stress.
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RandallButh
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Re: Word Order in Mat 16,18

Post by RandallButh »

Stephen Carlson wrote:
MAubrey wrote:...
Where did Wackernagel's "law" come from and why does it operate? Simply saying something is Wackernagel's law doesn't explain anything. Surely there's some kind of phonological substance that motivates. This is the reason, I look to sentence stress as a solution. Language doesn't just do things arbitrarily.
Well, if you're curious about where Wackernagel's comes from and how it operates, then I invite you to re-read David Goldstein's thesis and the references he cites. But it cannot be the case that you don't know this. At any rate, I have stated that there is a stress on οἰκοδομήσω, but I'm just not convinced that there is anything to be gained by calling it the sentence stress.
Well, I haven't read Goldstein's thesis, but we can learn from observing how these things work in slightly tighter languages. Some of Michael's answer comes from his own statement.
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.

by the way, sometimes pronouns that are not enclitic will pattern as if they were enclitics. This leads me to suspect that they were being treated as cliticized by some speakers or as in the same pragmatic class(es) with the other enclitics even if the accents that were written in the middle ages simply regularized a set of rules. The preservation of the Greek accent system for a thousand years after the long vowels dropped out of speech is one of the marvels of the history of the Greek language.
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Re: Word Order in Mat 16,18

Post by MAubrey »

Stephen Carlson wrote:Well, if you're curious about where Wackernagel's comes from and how it operates, then I invite you to re-read David Goldstein's thesis and the references he cites. But it cannot be the case that you don't know this. At any rate, I have stated that there is a stress on οἰκοδομήσω, but I'm just not convinced that there is anything to be gained by calling it the sentence stress.
The term "sentence stress" isn't a technical one. It's one that I've used when talking with biblical scholars because other terms are less accessible.

As for Goldstein, my sense has always been that his approach to motivation was thoroughly unsatisfying cognitively and substantively. Indeed, the failure to provide a satisfying account of why second position phenomenon exist at all is really one of the very few flaws that I could think of for Goldstein's otherwise impeccable work. If you think I'm missing something, perhaps there's a page number to point me to? It certain isn't in his conclusion (which I just went back and read).
RandallButh wrote:by the way, sometimes pronouns that are not enclitic will pattern as if they were enclitics. This leads me to suspect that they were being treated as cliticized by some speakers or as in the same pragmatic class(es) with the other enclitics even if the accents that were written in the middle ages simply regularized a set of rules. The preservation of the Greek accent system for a thousand years after the long vowels dropped out of speech is one of the marvels of the history of the Greek language.
Indeed. The current debate in Medieval & Modern Greek is whether the pronouns have been grammaticalized into verbal affixes rather than clitics. Most have concluded that the clitics have been grammaticalized into affixes.

Variation and Morphosyntactic Change in Greek: From Clitics to Affixes (Palgrave Studies in Language History and Language Change)
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Re: Word Order in Mat 16,18

Post by Stephen Carlson »

MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:Well, if you're curious about where Wackernagel's comes from and how it operates, then I invite you to re-read David Goldstein's thesis and the references he cites. But it cannot be the case that you don't know this. At any rate, I have stated that there is a stress on οἰκοδομήσω, but I'm just not convinced that there is anything to be gained by calling it the sentence stress.
The term "sentence stress" isn't a technical one. It's one that I've used when talking with biblical scholars because other terms are less accessible.
OK. I don't find the term very helpful. It sounds like there's only one sentence stress and it doesn't explain why clitics hardly ever get pulled out of subordinate clauses (or in other words why there can be multiple, relevant prosodic domains for clitics within a sentence).
MAubrey wrote:As for Goldstein, my sense has always been that his approach to motivation was thoroughly unsatisfying cognitively and substantively. Indeed, the failure to provide a satisfying account of why second position phenomenon exist at all is really one of the very few flaws that I could think of for Goldstein's otherwise impeccable work. If you think I'm missing something, perhaps there's a page number to point me to? It certain isn't in his conclusion (which I just went back and read).
Well, "why does Wackernagel's law seem to work?" is a different question than I thought what you were asking about, and the answer to it is not really necessary to explain the word order phenomena. At some point, the explanation has to bottom out. I admit that Goldstein is a little cagey and perhaps over-cautious in not committing to the phonological mechanisms underlying it. In fact, explaining those mechanisms in detail would require another thesis, though there is Devine and Stevens's study of the intonation unit (their "major phrase"). At any rate, the discussion on pp. 109-111 is the place to look.
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Iver Larsen
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Re: Word Order in Mat 16,18

Post by Iver Larsen »

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.
...
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.)
RandallButh
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Re: Word Order in Mat 16,18

Post by RandallButh »

Iver Larsen wrote:...

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.
..
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.)
Thanks Iver. Those are worth a quick discussion. Maybe Stephen and Michael can add a piece, too.
Mt 2.6--probably shows a lack of crossing a Hebrew source-text threshhold
Mt 2.15--same
Mt 7.24-- here the MOY is attracted to the verb very like Wackernagel. More importantly, so is the AYTOY in spite of having an accent. Both of these pronouns have overcome the Hebrew threshhold somewhere along the line of transmission and become more traditionally Greek.
Mt 8.8--While I can see 'under my roof as the focal phrase and the MOY inelegantly moved out of the way, I would have expected MOY after 'roof'. So this would be a good probable case of a Focal enclitic. One would simply re-edit with a circumflex, despite not having EMOY.
Mt 11.10--Again, Greek transmission has not overcome the Hebrew threshhold.
Mt 12.18--Again, Greek transmission has not overcome the Hebrew threshhold.
Mt 16.18--Wackernagel/LIPOC
Lk 14.26,27,33--Wackernagel/LIPOC
Jn 8.31--The ἐστε is placed after the Focal 'my disciples'.
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