[b-greek] Re: Person Deixis Mk 11:27-12:12

From: clayton stirling bartholomew (c.s.bartholomew@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Wed Dec 06 2000 - 16:06:23 EST


I would agree with Matt and others from Roehampton that lexical chains are
used in discourse to mark off spans of related material. I would also agree
that participant deixis (see SEPorter, Idioms p. 310) is one sub type of
lexical chaining and that the repeated mention of the same set of
participants makes for increased cohesion within a discourse unit.
However, I am currently exploring a somewhat different issue and from a
different perspective.

Levinsohn* in his chapter on participant reference discusses Givon's**
Iconicity Principle:

"The more disruptive, surprising, discontinuous or hard to process a topic
is, the more coding material must be assigned to it."

Levinsohn points out that this principle is useful but must be combined with
other observations about participant reference. First of all he sets up a
hierarchy of participant reference (p.136). I have modified his hierarchy
somewhat to fit my purpose :

0 implicit reference, verb inflection (zero anaphora)
1 articular pronouns
2 independent (demonstrative or intensive) pronouns
3 full noun phrases (including proper names)

Then he shows how Givon's Iconicity Principle fails to take into account the
status of the participant. After that he talks about default and marked
encoding of participants. All of this put together is quite complex and I
don't intend to discuss it all here and now.

My main concern is to point out how Levinsohn' s participant reference
hierarchy can be used to locate discourse boundaries with special attention
given to the use of full noun phrases. In other words I would break
Levinsohn's hierarchy into two groups made of full noun phrases and
everything else. When we see a full noun phrase, outside of reported dialog
and a few other special cases mentioned by Levinsohn, we should ask why it
is there. When we see the Majority Text supply a full noun phrase where NA27
shows zero anaphora we should ask ourselves what is going on.

Some further observations about Person Deixis in Mk 11:27-12:12. Note the
use of demonstrative pronouns in the parable. This is an example of Givon's
Iconicity Principle, the demonstrative KAKEINON is used to point out each
different DOULOV. Note also that the use of zero anaphora in MK 12:12 for
hOI ARCIEREIS KAI hOI GRAMMATEIS KAI hOI PRESBUTEROI does not violate
Givon's principle, since the third person plural verb inflection removes any
potential ambiguity about the referent. Nor does it violate Levinsohn's rule
about reintroducing a participant (p. 136) since the parable is an embedded
discourse which can be factored out which would place Mk 12:12 immediately
following Mk 11:33.

My previous comments on this passage (quoted below) go somewhat beyond the
explicit statements of Givon or Levinsohn, but I think that they are a
logical extension of both. I am simply trying to illustrate that the choice
of zero anaphora over against a full noun phrase in Mk 12:12 is significant
in that it ties Mk 12:12 to Mk 11:27-33 across the span occupied by the
parable. If Mark had used a full noun phrase in Mk 12:12 the reader would be
tempted to think there was a new narrative scene being introduced.


Clay

--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062


*Levinsohn, Stephen Discourse Features of New Testament Greek, 2nd Ed.
 SIL 2000. See chaper 8, pps. 134-136.

**Givon, Talmy. Topic Continuity in Discourse, Benjamins, Amsterdam, 1983.
See page 18.


on 12/05/00 11:43 AM, clayton stirling bartholomew wrote:

> UBSGNT/3 breaks Mk 11:27-12:12 at 12:1 to set apart the parable, but the
> person deixis (i.e., pointers to discourse participants) show us that this is
> all one narrative event.
>
> Mk 11:27 reintroduces a group of familiar participants hOI ARCIEREIS KAI hOI
> GRAMMATEIS KAI hOI PRESBUTEROI. Mark had already warned us about these guys
> (cf. Mk 10:33, 11:18) but now they are actually introduced as participants.
>
> From Mk 11:27 - 12:12 these participants are *never again referenced with a
> full explicit noun phrase. At the end of the discourse segment, in Mk 12:12 we
> have *several instances of zero anaphora making reference to our good friends
> hOI ARCIEREIS KAI hOI GRAMMATEIS KAI hOI PRESBUTEROI. This use of the lowest
> level of person deixis (i.e., zero anaphora) at the end of this section ties
> the discourse together into a unit by indicating to the reader that these are
> the same guys we have been talking about all along but have not named
> explicitly since Mk 11:27. If Mark had chosen to use a full noun phrase to
> point to these guys in Mk 12:12 the discourse cohesion/continuity would have
> suffered since the reader would not have been alerted to the fact that these
> participants were already/still present in the narrative.
>
>

> * the following list of the person deixis for hOI ARCIEREIS KAI hOI GRAMMATEIS
> KAI hOI PRESBUTEROI in Mk 11:27-12:12 was put together with great haste so I
> suspect a few errors might be found. The main point however is illustrated by
> the list.
>
>
> Mk 11:27 ELEGON - zero anaphora
> Mk 11:29 AUTOIS - pronoun
> Mk 11:29 APOKRIQHTE - zero anaphora
> Mk 11:30 APOKRIQHTE - zero anaphora
> Mk 11:31 DIELOGIZONTO zero anaphora
> Mk 11:31 hEAUTOUS - pronoun
> Mk 11:31 EIPWMEN - zero anaphora
> Mk 11:31 EPISTEUSATE - zero anaphora
> Mk 11:32 EIPWMEN - zero anaphora
> Mk 11:32 EFOBOUNTO - zero anaphora
> Mk 11:33 LEGOUSIN - zero anaphora
> Mk 11:33 OIDAMEN - zero anaphora
> Mk 11:33 AUTOIS - pronoun
> Mk 11:33 hUMIN - pronoun
> Mk 12:1 AUTOIS - pronoun
> Mk 12:10 ANEGNWTE - zero anaphora
> Mk 12:12 EZTOUN - zero anaphora
> Mk 12:12 EFOBHQHSAN - zero anaphora
> Mk 12:12 EGNWSAN - zero anaphora
> Mk 12:12 APHLQON - zero anaphora


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