Greek Prepositions: From Antiquity to the Present

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Greek Prepositions

for Sandra

Greek Prepositions from Antiquity to the Present PIETRO BORTONE

1

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With ofﬁces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York # Pietro Bortone 2010 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Library of Congress Control Number: 2009935885 Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by the MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn ISBN 978–0–19–955685–4 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Contents Acknowledgements Foreword

Part I. Background to Greek prepositions

vi vii

1

1 On the function of prepositions 1.1 Prepositions and related items 1.2 Prepositions and postpositions 1.3 Adpositions and cases 1.4 Adpositions with cases 1.5 Prepositions and cases as synsemantic expressions 1.6 Compound prepositions 1.7 The structure of prepositional phrases

3 3 4 6 16 20 25 27

2 On the meaning of prepositions 2.1 The meaning(lessness) of cases 2.2 The meaning(lessness) of prepositions 2.3 The polysemy of cases and prepositions 2.4 Contiguity of meanings 2.5 The role of spatial meanings 2.6 Language acquisition and development 2.7 Temporal and other meanings 2.8 Examples of spatial metaphors 2.9 Explaining polysemy 2.10 Parallel and different metaphorizations 2.11 Additional factors affecting prepositional meaning 2.12 The ex silentio argument for spatial primacy 2.13 The direction of semantic change 2.14 Does diachrony corroborate the localistic hypothesis?

33 33 35 41 43 47 53 57 62 71 75 78 81 82 84

3 On the development of prepositions 3.1 Cases and adpositions 3.2 Sources for prepositions 3.3 Nouns as a source for adpositions 3.4 Types of nouns that become adpositions

86 86 89 93 101

vi

Contents 3.4.1 Parts of the body 3.4.2 Environmental terms 3.4.3 Object parts

101 102 104

Part II. The history of Greek prepositions

107

4 Prepositions and cases in Ancient Greek 4.1 Greek in this study 4.2 The Classical Greek case system 4.3 The prepositional syntagms of Classical Greek 4.4 The differences from preﬁxes 4.5 The extent of prepositional use in Classical Greek 4.6 Pre-Classical insights: the Greek of Homer 4.7 Case usage in Homer 4.7.1 Accusative 4.7.2 Genitive 4.7.3 Dative 4.7.4 Adverbial cases 4.7.5 The -çØ case 4.8 The Classical Greek prepositions in Homer 4.8.1 Inventory 4.8.2 Government 4.8.3 Compounding 4.8.4 Meaning 4.9 The syntax of Greek adpositions in Homer 4.10 Before Homer 4.11 Main synchronic characteristics of the Ancient Greek system 4.11.1 The choice of case in PPs depended on the semantics of the case 4.11.2 Many prepositions show synonymy - especially in non-spatial senses 4.11.3 Some prepositions can be followed by [P+case] instead of just case 4.11.4 Prepositions with similar spatial sense are often alike in other meanings 4.12 Main diachronic trends of the Ancient Greek system 4.12.1 From prehistoric times, cases show a tendency to merge 4.12.2 Furthermore, the dative appears to be on the wane

109 109 110 115 119 121 123 124 124 125 128 128 130 131 131 131 131 132 133 140 143 143 147 149 150 153 153 154

Contents 4.12.3 The use of other plain oblique cases for spatial relation decreases 4.12.4 The use of all plain oblique cases also decreases in verb phrases 4.12.5 The semantic differences between cases used after a preposition are lost 4.12.6 More adverbs develop prepositional use 4.12.7 Fine semantic differences between many pairs of spatial prepositions fade 4.12.8 Ablative meanings show particular weakness 4.13 Contrasting the semantics of synonymous “proper” prepositions 4.14 Contrasting the semantics of “proper” and “improper” synonyms 5 Prepositions and cases in Hellenistic Greek 5.1 Late Ancient Greek: the Koine´ and its problems 5.2 The plausibility of Biblical Greek 5.3 The inﬂuence of Biblical Greek 5.4 Prepositional and case usage in Biblical Greek 5.4.1 There is a visible increase in prepositional use 5.4.2 There is a marked increase in the use of the “improper” prepositions 5.4.3 There is a reduction in the use of the dative 5.4.4 The number of cases governed by prepositions tends to be reduced 5.4.5 The meaning of the case governed by a preposition fades 5.4.6 It becomes clear that some prepositions are falling out of use 5.4.7 There are a few new (“improper”) prepositions 5.4.8 Many such “newer” prepositions seem to be used only in a local sense 5.4.9 There are improper prepositions that are combined with a simplex preposition, and then followed by plain case 5.4.10 Developments seen in the Koine´ are not always in line with later Greek 5.5 Synopsis of trends in the Koine´ 6 Prepositions and cases in Medieval Greek 6.1 Problems with Medieval Greek

vii 155 155 156 160 160 165 166 169 171 171 173 175 177 179 180 181 183 183 184 187 188 191 192 194 195 195

viii

Contents

6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8

The choice of Medieval Greek texts The cases and their recession The revolution in case government Medieval prepositional usage One addition to the inventory—or not General observations Semantic mergers 6.8.1 K ¼ æþaccusative ¼ K ¼ N 6.8.2 KŒþgenitive ¼ rBþgenitive ¼ Iþgenitive (¼ Ærþgenitive) 6.9 Phonetic mergers 6.10 Losses and births amongst the new 6.11 Sound changes 6.12 Parallels in neighbouring languages and their possible inﬂuence 6.13 The compounding of prepositions 6.14 Which combinations are compounds? 6.15 The “improper” prepositions in Medieval Greek 6.16 The exceptions 6.17 The older prepositions in Medieval Greek 6.17.1 Group Æ 6.17.2 Group 6.17.3 Group ª 6.17.4 Summary 6.18 Something new in the old 7 Prepositions and cases in Modern Greek 7.1 Problems with Modern Greek 7.2 Trouble with the neighbours 7.3 Cases in Modern Greek 7.4 The Modern Greek prepositional inventory 7.5 The compound prepositions today 7.6 Compound prepositions allowing a single combination 7.7 Compound prepositions with contrastive combinations 7.8 Semantic innovations in the compound prepositions 7.8.1 I ÆØ 7.8.2 I Æ 7.8.3 ªæﬁø 7.8.4 KØÆ

197 202 203 205 206 208 208 209 210 212 214 215 215 218 221 222 225 227 231 232 233 234 235 238 238 240 245 254 264 267 272 278 278 279 279 279

Contents 7.8.5 ø 7.8.6 KŒ 7.8.7 Œø 7.8.8 Œ 7.8.9 ÆÇ 7.8.10 ÆŒæØ 7.8.11

Æ 7.8.12 æ 7.8.13 ø 7.8.14 Discussion 7.9 Today’s usage of the simplex prepositions 7.9.1 I 7.9.2

7.9.3 ªØ 7.9.4

7.9.5 æ 7.9.6 7.9.7 åøæ 7.9.8 ‰ 7.9.9 ŒÆ 7.10 Simplex prepositions revived productively by purism 7.10.1 I 7.10.2 7.10.3 åæØ 7.10.4 Ææ 7.10.5 æ 7.11 Simplex prepositions revived less productively by purism 7.11.1 K þ genitive ‘during the government/rule of ’ 7.11.2 ŒÆ þ accusative 7.11.3 ŒÆa c ØæŒØÆ (þ genitive) 7.11.4 I 7.11.5 N (in this form, not as ) 7.11.6 KŒ 7.11.7 K 7.11.8 KÆ 7.11.9 K 7.11.10 ŒÆ þ genitive 7.11.11 æ

ix 279 280 280 280 281 281 281 282 282 282 283 284 285 285 286 287 287 288 288 288 289 290 290 291 291 292 292 292 293 293 294 294 295 295 296 296 297 297

x

Contents 7.11.12 æ 7.11.13 æ 7.11.14 7.12 Simplex prepositions revived in fossilized phrases

Epilogue References Index

298 299 299 300 302 304 337

Acknowledgements For lack of guidance people fall: salvation [lies] in the multiplicity of advisors. (Prov. 11:14)

Many people have been of help in my work for this book, and I would like to express my gratitude towards them. Although I bear sole responsibility for the end result, I wish to acknowledge corrections, explanations, and support I received from different sources. I want to thank above all Anna MorpurgoDavies, Eirene Philippaki-Warburton, Peter Mackridge, and Jim Miller for corrections to the doctoral thesis on which this book is mostly based. I am also indebted to Elizabeth Jeffreys for suggestions on setting up my corpus of Medieval Greek texts, to Gillian Ramchand and Sandra Paoli for feedback on syntactic questions, and to Philomen Probert for elucidations an accentuation issues. I am very thankful to the Dumbarton Oaks institute of Harvard for a fellowship in the summer of 2003, that enabled me to carry out further checkings of Medieval texts and enjoy their wonderful facilities. I wish also to thank six native Modern Greek speakers for vetting all my Modern Greek examples, and amongst these Emmanuel Papoutsakis in particular. My gratitude also goes to Peter Starr and Nefeli Papoutsaki for providing signiﬁcant help with Arabic and with German secondary literature, and to Jonathan Miller of the Oxford University Computing Service, who steered me through computer problems with extraordinary kindness and expertise. I also appreciate the input provided by two anonymous readers who appraised a draft of the book for Oxford University Press. Special thanks, ﬁnally, are due to Andrew Farlow for his late-hours help quemvis efferre laborem suadet et inducit noctes vigilare serenas.

Foreword This book traces the evolution of the Greek prepositional system in its entire history (which had never been done before), and assesses what general trends, if any, emerge from it. The aim is not to formulate an abstract theory, nor to describe Greek usage strictly within a preconceived theoretical framework, but to present a philological compte-rendu with data-driven observations. The most important of these, perhaps, is that the history of Greek prepositions, if analysed in its entirety, is largely congruent with the “localistic hypothesis” that concrete spatial meanings are the earliest ones, and entirely congruent with the “unidirectionality hypothesis” that spatial meanings evolve into non-spatial ones but not vice-versa. The conjecture that cases and prepositional phrases start their life with spatial meanings is very old, has been declared plausible by many, and has been documented in sporadic cases—but not on as large a scale as can be seen here. Similarly, the idea that prepositional meaning can only change from spatial to “abstract” needed to be tested systematically on a language for which we have exceptionally extensive historical evidence; Greek, owing to its extraordinarily long history—the longest attested history of any IndoEuropean language—is an ideal and fruitful choice. Although Greek offers a unique testing ground for historical linguistics, as well as being the vehicle of one of the highest literary traditions, very few are the aspects of the Greek language whose diachrony has been studied from the ancient to the modern period. There are very many books on the Ancient Greek prepositional system, beneﬁtting from the ﬁndings provided by centuries of previous classical scholarship, but they never go beyond the Hellenistic period. They therefore leave almost two millennia of the history of the language unchartered. For that time period, pre-existing research on prepositions is almost non-existent, so that fresh textual work, in-depth familiarity with Medieval and Modern Greek, and at least a glance at other Balkan languages, are required. It is the contention of this book that only if the whole history of Greek, especially of the latter periods, is taken into consideration, a fundamental mechanism behind the Greek prepositional system becomes apparent, and a remarkable picture emerges. And if the diachrony of Greek has a lot to say about prepositions, prepositions have a lot to say about the diachrony of Greek. Prepositions are an

Foreword

xiii

extraordinary category, for in their diachrony the whole history of the Greek language is reﬂected: the changes in the phonology, the morphology, the syntax, the semantics, the lexicon, as well as social and political aspects. Everything plays its role and is interconnected in the history of Greek prepositions: the tendency to elide initial unstressed vowels, the disappearance of the dative, the shift towards analysis, the loss of the rest/goal distinction, the increasing polysemy, the effect of purism, and the inﬂuence of neighbouring or ruling peoples: prepositions are a microcosm of Greek at large. The book is divided into two sections: an introductory part providing a basic background to the form, the semantics, and the history of prepositions in general (Chapters 1, 2, and 3 respectively); and a main part providing a detailed analysis of the Greek prepositional system in ancient, in Hellenistic, in medieval, and in modern times, with synchronic snapshots and diachronic observation (Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 respectively). Chapter 1 broadly identiﬁes the objects of the ensuing enquiry. It considers which structures are prepositional phrases, and which linguistic items constitute prepositions. It argues that there are functional parallels between (local) adverbs, case inﬂexion/afﬁxes, post-/prepositions, combinations of adpositions with cases, and combinations of (local) adverbs with prepositions. All these items, at least in some of their uses, can therefore be taken as being equivalent to the more prototypical prepositions. This leads also to the conclusion that we do not need to give much weight to the distinctions traditionally drawn between the “proper” and “improper” prepositions of Ancient Greek (e.g. KŒ vs. ø), or between the simple and compound prepositions of Modern Greek (e.g. I vs. ø I). Chapter 2 looks, more extensively, at adpositional (and case) meaning. Many scholars stated that prepositions, cases, and equivalent elements have a mere relational function and are inherently meaningless; the multiple and unpredictable meanings of prepositions and cases are often highlighted as proof. Considering the varying degrees of meaningfulness of case forms, from semantic emptiness to extreme polysemy, it can however be argued that polysemy is not unprincipled—there are clear and demonstrable links between, for example, locative, comitative, and instrumental/modal meanings. The “localistic” interpretation of this is that the various non-spatial senses of cases or adpositions are related in a chain of semantic extensions which starts from a spatial notion. What is the evidence for such a hypothesis? Some synchronic evidence is provided by research in psychology and philosophy: studies in language acquisition show that spatial relations are the ﬁrst to be

xiv

Foreword

learnt. The idea that mental concepts (and knowledge in general) must be originally derived by sensory sources—from our visual or tactile perception of the space around us and of what it contains—has been accepted by many scientists and, long before, it has been endorsed by many philosophers. Furthermore, there is a range of cross-linguistic evidence supporting an interpretation of human language (and human cognition in general) as based on our subjective, human experience of the world. Thus, instead of assuming that polysemy is random, we should ask why it should exist at all, and why common and basic notions such as agency do not have their own adposition or case. We can see polysemy as a principled sequence—in line, for instance, with the Cognitive Linguistics school. A concrete spatial notion can be seen—along the lines of Prototype Theory—seen as the semantic starting point, with subsequent grafting of the structure of the spatial semantic ﬁeld onto abstract domains. Chapter 3 considers the historical development of adpositions. It also presents the clear but scattered evidence for a “localistic” interpretation that can be collected from different language families: we can see cases being born from postpositions, which may explain why prepositions, usually have more “concrete” meanings than cases: perhaps it is just that prepositions are “younger” than cases. Adpositions, in turn, come from adverbs, and adverbs often derive from nouns. Adpositions can also develop from verbs, adjectives, or more complex phrases—and can even be loanwords. There are reasons for being at least aware of all this before we move onto Greek. Furthermore, the development of an abstract meaning from a spatial one is attested in important and common prepositional uses, such as expressions of possession and of existence. All this evidence is intriguing but still anecdotal and far from systematic. This is where Greek comes in. The second part of the book, tracing the history of Greek prepositions from the earliest evidence to the present day, begins with Chapter 4. Here Ancient Greek usage comes under scrutiny. The focus is prepositional and case usage in classical Attic-Ionic (the so-called “improper” prepositions being included), with two chronological excursions into earlier evidence. The Ancient Greek prepositional system was plentiful and increasingly rich in synonyms; old prepositions with similar spatial sense were often alike in their non-spatial meanings, which suggests that there was a logic to their polysemy. We see prepositions competing with one another (usually new “improper” ones ousting old “proper” synonyms), while the semantic contribution and the extent of use of cases was diminishing. Above all,

Foreword

xv

we see evidence that new “improper” adpositions tended to be mainly or exclusively spatial. In the pre-Classical Greek of Homer the local meanings of the cases are more discernible and more prevalent; the information drawn from Linear B, and from Proto-Indo-European as we reconstruct it, gives further credit to the conjecture that Greek prepositions started their life as local adverbs. Homeric Greek also shows adpositions and cases beginning to come together, and adpositions being combined. The problem, however, is that it is not possible to observe what kind of meaning the prepositions of Classical languages had at their birth, because our records do not stretch far enough back in time (one of the claims of this book, however, is that the history of Greek is long enough for us to ﬁnd more telling evidence in later stages). Contrasting the semantics of the “proper” prepositions with the younger “improper” synonyms, we can see that the newer set was rarely non-spatial (especially at earlier stages, such as in Homer), and that the new prepositions whose birth is attested after the beginning of our records (like Œø) had only spatial senses—while their older counterparts (ŒÆ, ) had extensive non-spatial use. There are, on the other hand, a few “improper” prepositions that are only non-spatial in all their attested history. Chapter 5 focuses on Hellenistic (“Koine´”) Greek, examining usage in Biblical Greek—taking into account, as will also be necessary for later stages of the history of Greek, the inﬂuence of other languages. Koine´ Greek conﬁrms an increase in the use of adpositions, of the “improper” ones in particular. The tendencies observed in Ancient Greek—newer prepositions being rarely non-spatial, the older ones being often non-spatial—in the Koine´ are even more distinct. Most signiﬁcantly, in Hellenistic Greek there were new prepositions, and many were used only in a local sense; the older prepositions that were being replaced by new ones in spatial uses, on the other hand, were increasingly conﬁned to non-spatial meanings. Koine´ Greek also shows that many older prepositions were becoming obsolete. Chapter 6 analyses usage in Medieval Greek—the least known period in the history of the language, and the most revealing. This is the period when the modern prepositional system took shape, and the old one was discarded. The inﬂuence of Classical and Biblical models is evident, and we take its interference into account. A close study of a selected corpus of texts approximating vernacular Greek provides a clear picture of prepositional and case usage. The accusative was gradually becoming the only (structural) case for nouns that were objects of prepositions; many synonyms in the old set of “proper” prepositions were dropping out of spoken use (I ç, I, K, ŒÆþgen., æ, æ, æ, , æ, —ousted also by the increasing use

xvi

Foreword

of the newer “improper” ones)—until only N, , I, ªØ, , åøæ, ‰ and some uses of ŒÆ remained. Amongst the “improper” items too there were losses, but also new arrivals, such as Œ and ÆÇ. It became increasingly common for prepositions (even some “proper” ones) to be compounded (Iø N, Id ªØ). Most importantly, the texts show that the use of the newer prepositions was almost exclusively spatial, and that the newest ones (e.g. ªæﬁø) were purely spatial. Furthermore, according to the degree (if any at all) to which old prepositions had a new replacement, they were losing their old spatial sense, “transferred” onto the new item. If the old items developed new meanings, they could only be non-spatial ones. In other words, if old prepositions survived, they specialized in the non-spatial senses that their young counterparts could not express. In sum: new items attest that spatial senses were the ﬁrst to appear, while the old items show that non-spatial senses were the last to be shed. Chapter 7 examines the prepositional system of Modern Greek, taking into account the profound impact of the learned tradition, whose style was, for a long time, even imposed by law in Greece, and the inﬂuence of the Balkan Sprachbund of which Greece is part. We see that the syntactic format of prepositions is now even more frequently that of “compound prepositions”. These are adverbial forms combined either with simplex prepositions or with weak pronouns in the genitive (the criterion for the choice of the simplex preposition being again in line with a localistic and human-centred interpretation, as it reﬂects the opposition between what is and what is not readily perceptible and available for interaction). When we assess the semantic innovations found in Modern Greek, we see that the development of the prepositional system has come full circle. On the one hand, the old prepositions still in use are now virtually only non-spatial, unless lacking a replacement; on the other hand, the younger (previously only spatial) prepositions now have also a range of non-spatial meanings—indeed, a few have lost their spatial meaning altogether, thus repeating in full the semantic cycle shown by the previous generation of prepositions. Greek thus testiﬁes that among new prepositions spatial meanings are preponderant, are slowly extended to nonspatial notions and eventually disappear, transferred, as it were, onto new prepositions. This can be seen to occur with systematic regularity. In this book, non-English words and sentences used in the exempliﬁcation are normally translated; whenever it seemed useful, even quotations from secondary literature are given translations. Transliterations are provided (except when irrelevant to the discussion) for all non-Latin alphabets other than Greek, Hebrew, and Cyrillic. All translations, and all computer drawings are by the author.

Part I Background to Greek prepositions

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1 On the function of prepositions Æƒ ªºH

ÆØ N Å E N d . . . E I Ø Languages serve as evidence . . . for those who do not believe (I Cor. 14: 22)

To understand Greek prepositions and the analysis presented in the main body of this book, some basic background is in order. Let us begin with a look, in three successive chapters, at a few issues concerning, respectively, the function, the semantics, and the history of prepositions and of related items. Naturally, only questions and facts relevant to our main concern will be touched upon here, to help us contextualize the reasons for this study, and the signiﬁcance of its results.

1.1 Prepositions and related items The terminology found in the literature to refer to case forms, postpositions, and prepositions, can be represented as shown in Figure 1.1. Case preﬁxes and inﬁxes are not added to the list only because they are almost non-existent.1 pre-positions post-positions case suffixes case inflections or endings

adpositions

K case-forms

FIGURE 1.1

The use of K as an Oberbegriff, a non-phrasal category, is taken from Fillmore: 1 Only recently have some case preﬁxes, apparently, been found in the Mangarany language of north Australia (Lehmann 1995: 86). Adpositions may either precede or follow a noun phrase, but case forms almost always follow it. And the tendency towards sufﬁxation instead of preﬁxation is not limited to case marking: there is an overwhelming preference for sufﬁx morphology across languages, even in languages that on structural grounds we would predict to opt for preﬁxes (Cutler et al. 1985:

4

Background to Greek prepositions

prepositions, postpositions, and case afﬁxes—semantically relevant or not—are all in fact realisations of the same underlying element, say K (for Kasus). (Fillmore 1968: 30)

The term K is not standard, but it corresponds, for instance, to the concept of “case signs” in Kracht (2002: 169–70) and of “case relations” or indeed “case” in Anderson (1971: 11, 2006b: 2, 52–3 et passim). Many linguists highlight the fact that the functions of cases are logically independent of whether their surface realization is by means of independent lexical items (pre- or postpositions), of word-order, or of endings (sufﬁxes or inﬂections). The basic analogy between adpositions and case forms is even more obvious if we accept that “words” are sequences of morphemes and not per se grammatical entities (Julien 2007a), since syntax works with morphemes, and the output as words or afﬁxes need not be regarded as stemming from a different syntactic representation. What is clear is that the various items listed above as manifestations of Kasus are, to a large degree, crosslinguistically equivalent— whether the comparison be between different languages or different stages in the history of one. Therefore, many considerations that can be made about one type of item can also be made about the others, even if the more speciﬁc terms cannot be jettisoned altogether, nor be always used indifferently because, as we shall see, in some languages some subtle differences exist. What we need to assess is to what extent these distinctions are relevant to Greek.

1.2 Prepositions and postpositions Pre-positions and post-positions do have a great deal in common, and the somewhat artiﬁcial term adpositions, which subsumes both, is very useful. In more casual speech, the term preposition is used also for postpositions, even if the term is originally a syntactic description. It was invented in Greek (as æŁ Ø “fore-placing”), by the grammarian Dionysus Thrax, who was the ﬁrst to identify prepositions as a self-standing category; the term was rendered in Latin with prae-positio, and in most modern European languages with a

723). Only inﬁxing is even less frequent. Psycholinguistic studies on lexical access indicate that word onsets are more salient than the rest of the word, and that the processing of stems is independent of that of preﬁxes and sufﬁxes: stems are preferentially processed ﬁrst, and need therefore to be ordered before afﬁxes. Afﬁxes, consequently, tend to be sufﬁxes rather than preﬁxes. The development of case preﬁxes (presumably from prepositions) would take place in a language in which all modiﬁers and determiners follow the noun, so that prepositions should immediately precede it in all instances. Languages of this kind have not been reported (Kilby 1981: 121). Hebrew, for instance, has preﬁxed prepositions, undeniably bound forms, but they are not nominal case preﬁxes: they cliticize onto any ﬁrst element in the NP, such as numerals and articles (cf. also Kahr 1976: 136–7).

On the function of prepositions

5

compound beginning with “fore-”, as in Russian ghtlju “fore-lay”, German Vorwort “fore-word”, Polish przyimek “fore-noun”, Dutch voorzetsel “fore-set”, Latvian prieva¯rds “fore-word”, Lithuanian prielin˜ksnis “fore-case”, Albanian parafjale¨ “fore-word”. But even in Estonian, a language characterized by postpositions, the term for a postposition is eesso˜na, which literally means “front-word”. Already in the sixteenth century Sanctius Brocensis (1587: 40) observed that praepositio etiam si postponatur non deﬁnit vocari praepositio, and the distinction between pre- and postpositions is commonly considered “trivial . . . mere pedantry” (Lyons 1968: 302ff.). It is indeed unnecessary for Greek, where postpositions were used only in the earliest stages of the language (cf. pp. 110–14). Observe also: (1.1)

German a nach meiner Meinung ‘in my view’ b meiner Meinung nach ‘in my view’

(1.2)

Estonian a mo¨o¨da maad ‘on earth’ b maad mo¨o¨da ‘on earth’

(1.3) English a your objections notwithstanding b notwithstanding your objections In some instances, however, adpositions can vary their meaning or syntax according to whether they precede or follow the noun. In Estonian itself, for instance (Haman 1962: 42): (1.4)

a u¨le ta¨nava ‘across the street’ b raamatu u¨le ‘about the book’

(1.5) a la¨bi linna ‘through the city’ b hooletuse la¨bi ‘owing to negligence’

6

Background to Greek prepositions

The difference in meaning is not due to the context, as some “minimal pairs” indicate (examples from Raun and Saareste 1965: 30): (1.6) a selle peale ‘onto this’ b peale selle ‘in addition to this’ (1.7)

a u¨le ma¨e ‘over the mountain’ b ma¨e u¨le ‘concerning the mountain’

The difference, besides being semantic, can also be syntactic: there are a few German adpositions that can appear either before or after the noun, taking different cases accordingly (Fries 1991: 74): (1.8)

a entlang [dieses Weges] ‘along this way’ (preposition þ genitive) b [dem Weg] entlang ‘along this way’ (dative þ postposition).

1.3 Adpositions and cases Since adpositions mark a function of a noun, the category to which they are obviously closest is case forms. Given the interplay between the two in Greek, this is an issue worth discussing in some detail. The equivalence between inﬂections and adpositions as markers of a deeper notion of case was assumed by European grammarians as early as the sixteenth century. They observed the correspondence between the Latin case forms and the prepositions of their own languages. The Italian scholar Bembo (1525: 182ff.) called prepositions segni di caso, when referring to di “of ”, a “to”, and da “from”, perhaps because these correspond to Latin cases, and called other prepositions proponimenti, probably taking the Latin pro-pono as calque on the Greek æ-ŁÅ Ø, whence æŁ

Ø. Salviati (1586: 110ff.) referred to prepositions as the vicecasi, just as the pronouns were then called vicenomi. According to Moreux (1968: 31), ‘Les tours pre´positionnels jouent le meˆme roˆle que les cas. . . . Jusqu’ ici tout le monde est d’accord’. Linguists in recent decades have recognized that adpositions and cases are similar in function (cf. Lyons 1968: 302; Fillmore 1968: 29; Huddleston

On the function of prepositions

7

and Pullum 2002: 601).2 Traditionally, however, the term “case” was used only in reference to a change in the form, typically at the end, of a noun, pronoun, or adjective, reﬂecting a change in grammatical function; but the category has, on closer inspection, proved hard to pin down (Butt 2006: 3– 8). In truth, the different morphosyntax does raise some issues;3 but cases and adpositions can be said to be functionally homologous, and a closer look at their morphology reveals further (at least historical) afﬁnities. The use of adpositions and plain case sufﬁxes in Estonian, given the exceptionally transparent morphology, shows this well. In Estonian one may either sufﬁx a noun with a “local” case form, or attach the same sufﬁx to another noun that is then used as an adposition, linked to the ﬁrst noun by a genitive sufﬁx. Thus “(on)to the roof ” can be expressed either as “to the roof ” or “to the head of the roof ” (data from Haman 1962): (1.9)

a katus-e pea-le roof-GEN head-ALLAT ‘onto the roof ’ b katuse-le roof-ALLAT ‘onto the roof ’

Likewise (1.10)

a katus-e pea-lt roof-GEN head-ABLAT ‘from the roof ’ b katuse-lt roof-ABLAT ‘from the roof’

Now, let us note the internal structure of these sufﬁxed forms:

2 A distinction must be made between (a) case forms, also called case endings or case sufﬁxes (according to segmentability), or case markers (then often including adpositions), or surface cases (by generativists), or just cases (with small-case initial), which constitute an inﬂectional or lexical category; and (b) case functions, in the literature referred to—with some differences—as case relations/case roles/deep cases/abstract cases or just Cases with capitalized initial, which are sets of semantic distinctions (semantic roles or theta roles being another name or a sub-distinction). 3 See Rauh (1993: 99), Do¨pke and Schwarze (1981: 19ff.). Comparative studies of Finnish and Swedish (Wande 1990: 223ff.) have even claimed that whether a language has cases or adpositions may affect, in a Sapir–Whorf way, the speakers’ conceptualization of space.

8

Background to Greek prepositions

(1.11)

a katus-e-le NOUN-GEN-ALLATIVE b katus-e-lt NOUN-GEN-ABLATIVE

The allative and the ablative sufﬁxes are added to an oblique form of the noun identical to the genitive. Indeed, if we look at the full declension of an Estonian singular noun (Haman 1962: 143, 174), we see that this is true of most cases (all hyphenation is added): Nominative Genitive # Illative Allative Inessive Adessive Elative Ablative Comitative Abessive Translative Terminative Essive

ven-d ‘brother’ ven-na ven-na-sse ven-na-le ven-na-s ven-na-l ven-na-st ven-na-lt ven-na-ga ven-na-ta ven-na-ks ven-na-ni ven-na-na

The diachrony of this surde´clinaison is also relevant to our enquiry and will be discussed later (pp. 86–8); what we need to notice here is the synchronic similarity between the internal structure of the inﬂected nouns and that of the postpositional phrases: PP = Case =

noun+GENITIVE + postposition: katus-e pealt noun+GENITIVE + case ending: katus-e-lt

The difference between case sufﬁx and postposition therefore boils down only to bound/unbound status. Is that signiﬁcant? No categorial distinction is made, for example, between the independent and even preposed article of some languages, and the sufﬁxed article of other (even closely related) languages: Dutch French

de hond = le chien =

Danish Romanian

hund-en ‘the dog’ cıˆine-le ‘the dog’

On the function of prepositions

9

the two forms of the article can co-occur (as cases and adpositions can); in Swedish, the deﬁnite article is sufﬁxed to the noun, but if a relative clause follows, it is preposed (in a different form, but the etymologies are synchronically irrelevant): bil-en ‘the car’ ta˚g-et ‘the train’

> den (bra) bil, som.… > det (fo¨rsta) ta˚g, som…

‘the (good) car which …’ ‘the (ﬁrst) train which …’

Bound and unbound articles can even mark the same noun phrase: den ba¨ttre bil-en kostar mera ‘the better car costs more’ Here we see that a bound sufﬁx, a separate preposed form, and a combination of the two can be grosso modo functionally equivalent—which is what we want to say about bound case sufﬁxes/inﬂections and unbound adpositions. Many scholars who studied cases, nonetheless, thought that prepositions are extraneous to their subject: le syste`me des pre´positions reste par de´ﬁnition en dehors de notre engagement the prepositional system remains by deﬁnition outside of our concern. (Hjelmslev 1935: 135) das System der pra¨positionalen Fu¨gungen ist nicht mit der ﬂektierenden Deklination zu verwechseln . . . die Bedeutung der Kasus und der Pra¨positionen . . . deutlich voneinander unterscheiden the system of prepositional arrangements is not to be confused with inﬂectional declensions . . . the meaning of the cases and that of the prepositions . . . are clearly distinct from each other. (Jakobson 1936: 245)

What are the differences? Kilby (1981: 104–9) said that distinguishing prepositions from cases in Russian, Latin, or German is easy, indicating the following as key distinguishing features: case afﬁxes follow the head noun of an NP while prepositions precede it; prepositions, unlike cases, occur only once at the beginning of the NP and may not be repeated; cases express subject–object relations, while prepositions do not. The criteria indeed hold, at least in reference to languages referred to by Kilby (1981), particularly Russian; these differences, however, are often assumed to be universal: Rubio (1966: 168ff.) seems to be making statements of general application, when he dedicates a whole section of his treatise on Latin syntax to the contrast between prepositions and cases. His claims are, again, that Ps are a different category from cases because they are separable from the noun

10

Background to Greek prepositions

while cases are not, and because Ps are not repeated while case must be. Lo´pez (1972: 82) echoes the claims with no reference to any speciﬁc language, and declares that Rubio identiﬁed the differences between cases and prepositions ‘con una agudeza extraordinaria’. A glance across languages, however, shows us that what are often assumed to be intrinsic characteristics of the category “adposition” (vs. bound case markers) are only the e´tat de langue of the more commonly known European languages. First, it is often stated that adpositions can be distinguished from cases by lack of agreement, for case afﬁxes occur on all co-indexed words whereas adpositions appear only once (Kahr 1976: 111). This is incorrect, however, because bound case markers appearing after only one noun may also cover the other elements of the noun phrase, which are left unmarked: [Peter and Lucy]’s mother [the Duke of Edinburgh]’s residence [that guy you saw]’s name In Turkish, a single case marker can “cover” all nouns in an NP although appearing on one noun alone, and its bound status is conﬁrmed by vowel harmony (its vowel conforms to the vowel of the last syllable of the word it is attached to): ‘in Greece and Turkey’ > ‘in Turkey and Greece’ >

Yunanistan ve Tu¨rkiye’de Tu¨rkiye ve Yunanistan’da

Languages of several different families mark case (and indeed other features) on the phrase rather than the word. One such language is Basque (Saltarelli 1988: 81): (1.12) etxe zahar house old SING-CASELESS SING-CASELESS ‘in large old houses’

haundi- etan big–in PLUR-LOCATIVE

There are also “intermediate” instances of languages which repeat case markers on each noun for some cases but not for others; besides Estonian, IndoEuropean languages such as Tocharian (p. 87) do so. And there are other phenomena which show that the use of case endings is not as systematic as it is often thought. In many languages, cases on the road to extinction are coordinated with different and only partly synonymous cases: in Latin, the obsolescent locative was colloquially coordinated with the ablative:

On the function of prepositions (1.13)

11

Antiochı¯ae . . . na¯tus est . . . celebrı¯ quondam ‘in Antiochia[LOC] he was born, a once famous[ABL] urbe (Cic. Arch. 3.4) city[ABL]’

In Ancient Greek, the obsolescent locative was conjoined with the dative: (1.14) I Łºø ŒAæı . . . ˇPºı Æﬁ ŒÆd ‘herald of contests at Olympia[DAT], ˝ Æﬁ Nemea[DAT]’

I Ł E Isthmus[LOC] and (Pi. N.IV 73ff.)

Secondly, there are instances of prepositions being repeated. In Russian itself (Mary MacRobert, p.c.), in folk poetry, and in the colloquial, prepositions also appear on the adjectives preceding or following the noun.4 Lastly, the third difference between cases and prepositions noted by Kilby (cases mark subjects and objects but adpositions do not) is not true of all languages. The Hebrew preposition ‘A /ey/, for example, is a preposition with synchronically virtually only grammatical sense,5 mostly marking deﬁnite direct objects. It is traditionally described as nota accusativi, although it may also mark the subject of a passive or intransitive verb (Saydon 1964: 195). It has cognates in Arabic, Phoenician, Aramaic, and Punic. Syriac too (Brown et al. 1906: 84b; Robinson 1962: 18) can mark the object with a preposition, L /l@/ (unrelated to Hebrew ‘A) which also has spatial meanings. In Hebrew, its cognate M /l@/ is also occasionally used as object marker (Gesenius et al. 1910: 366ff.). This use is also found in Ethiopic. Indo-European languages also have similar constructions: in Urdu, deﬁnite animate objects can be marked by the postposition ko “to/for”. Parallels also abound in Romance languages. While in Classical Latin the meanings of the preposition ad “at/to” were spatial or abstract but not syntactical (no Latin preposition had “grammatical” functions, such as the marking of subjects or direct objects), in colloquial

4 Biblical Greek has constructions such as ŒÆd åŁæÆ Ł ø Ima

m ı ŒÆd Ima

m B ªıÆØŒ, literally “and enmity I shall put between you and between the woman” (after the Hebrew original Ej AE PJBh x Q Jd ‘JA EB JAF in Genesis 3:15); here the preposition, which intrinsically entails a double referent object, occurs before both nouns; but this is less signiﬁcant because the nouns are separated by a conjunction. 5 Just like the accusative case in Indo-European languages, ‘A /ey/ in Hebrew was occasionally the marker of the goal of motion (Ez. 21:25). Its origin is seen as deictic, since use sometimes resembles that of a demonstrative, in Classical as in Mishnaic Hebrew. Various etymologies of ‘A have been suggested—see e.g. Wright (1890: 112ff.). Scholars have no doubt it was a noun—cf. Gesenius et al. (1910: 362), Brown et al. (1906: 84b). On the development of adpositions, see Chapter 3.

12

Background to Greek prepositions

Classical Latin ad had already started to mark the indirect object which standard Classical Latin marked with a plain case, the dative: (1.15) Classical hostibus exuvias dabit ‘He will give spoils to the enemies’ (1.16) Colloquial ad hostis exuvias dabit (Plaut. Epid. 38)

[PLAIN DATIVE]

[ad þ

ACCUSATIVE]

It is true that ad in Latin could never have marked the (traditionally termed) direct objects of verbs such as “see” or “call”, as the plain accusative did: (1.17) a Antonium non vidi ‘I have not seen Anthony’ b fratrem tuum clamavisti ‘you called your brother’

[PLAIN ACCUSATIVE] [PLAIN ACCUSATIVE]

but these sentences do correspond, in daughter languages, to: (1.18) Swiss Italian (Canton Grigioni) eu nun ha viss a To¨na hast clama` a teis frar (1.19)

(Rohlfs 1969: 8–9)

Spanish (standard) Yo no he visto a Ton˜o has llamado a tu hermano

Thus the preposition ad (>a) has come to be used as object marker. This also shows the marking of the object as an extension of a spatial meaning. Another Latin spatial preposition, per, has had a similar evolution in Romanian: it still appears as a preposition (pe), with spatial and ﬁgurative meanings, but it has also come to be an object marker. The two sentences above translate as: (1.20)

Romanian a nu lam va˘zut pe Anton not him I have seen PE Anthony b lai chemat pe fratele ta˘u him you-have called PE brother-the your

Romanian grammarians, such as S¸tefa˘nescu-Dra˘ga˘nes¸ti and Murrel (1970: 131) insist that the object marker pe must be distinguished from the preposition pe. But that is unjustiﬁed: it is the same particle historically, and it is now

On the function of prepositions

13

used both as a spatial preposition and as a syntactic marker without any morphological or phonological distinction. It should therefore also be regarded as the same particle synchronically.6 The same applies to the Spanish deﬁnite accusative marker a, commonly claimed to be “non-prepositional”— even by Langacker (1992: 302), a linguist sympathetic to a “localistic” view of cases. The assertion that prepositions are not really object markers like inﬂections or afﬁxes is often based on the fact that object-marking prepositions also signal other features—typically deﬁniteness or animacy. The best known example of this is the “prepositional accusative” we just saw, used in many varieties of Romance, although not in standard Italian and French. Semantically, its application is conﬁned to objects that are deﬁnite and animate. Observe the use of the object-marking preposition in the Spanish rendering of ambiguous English sentences like “I want a friend” and “to elect the president”: deseo un amigo = any person, hitherto unknown, is wanted as a friend deseo a un amigo = a speciﬁc, known person, who is already a friend, is sought elegir el presidente = someone unspeciﬁed is being chosen for the post of president elegir al presidente = someone already president is elected to some other position Unrelated languages that employ prepositions to mark object status, such as the Hebrew ‘A /ey/ discussed earlier (p.11), have the same additional entailments. One might therefore suggest that object-marking adpositions are not semantically comparable to the accusative case of languages like Latin and Greek. 6 As Romanian pe shows, the three kinds of senses (local, metaphorical, and grammatical) are an ordered diachronic development, and can coexist synchronically. However, being historically a chain, it is to be expected that by the time the last type of meaning is developed, the ﬁrst is being lost. This is indeed the case of Spanish, where a is no longer much used in its spatial meaning.

14

Background to Greek prepositions

However, the traditionally accepted case-inﬂections of Latin or Greek declensions also carry multiple morphosyntactic features mapped onto a single morph: in addition to case, they mark gender, number, and originally (at least in part) animacy. If we attempt to segment the endings of languages like Latin into morphs, the result, as Lyons (1968: 189) noted, is ‘arbitrariness, inconsistency, and the proliferation of allomorphs’. The lack of isomorphism in the case forms is the very reason for the ancient system of handling inﬂection by ÆæÆª ÆÆ (cf. Matthews 1991: 186ff.). Moreover, even in agglutinative languages such as Turkish, in which, by deﬁnition, there is meant to be a one-to-one relation between morphs and morphemes, sufﬁxes that mark syntactic functions such as object status express some additional connotation: just as Hebrew ‘A /ey/, Spanish a, or Romanian pe, the Turkish accusative marker sufﬁx also indicates deﬁniteness—an independent feature that other languages mark on the article (e.g. English) or on the verb (e.g. Hungarian). Thus, if the object is totally indeﬁnite, in Turkish it appears in the same unmarked case as the subject—a case to which many Turkish grammars and linguists (e.g. Mardin 1961: 17; see also Bastuji 1976: 68) give the highly dubious label of nominative : (1.22) a bir kitap ¸cıktı one book exit-ed ‘a book came out’ b bir kitap okuyorum one book I-read ‘I am reading a book’ c kitap okuyorum book I-read ‘I am book-reading’ d bir kitabı okuyorum ACC . DEF ] I-read one book[ ‘I am reading a certain book’ e kitabı okuyorum book[ACC.DEF] I-read ‘I am reading the book’ Moreover, various markers (allomorphs) of the same case may differ as to which additional features they mark beside case. In Russian, for instance, we can identify two genitives for the same class of nouns—although most Russian grammars do not recognize this. The ending -/u/ seems to be used

On the function of prepositions

15

only with reference to a part of a non-countable entity in a small set of nouns, whereas in the ending -/a/ this partitive nuance is not obligatory (Wierzbicka 1983: 248ff., whence the examples): xfirf xf˛ pfgf[ xfz

‘cup of tea’ ‘scent of tea’

(= containing some) (= belonging to)

One cannot dismiss this by postulating the existence in Russian of a separate partitive case: not only is a partitive meaning possible also for the -/a/ genitive, but both endings are regularly conjoined (Wierzbicka 1983: 250): ghbytcb xf˛ b bvjyflf

‘bring tea[-u] and lemonade[-a]’.

Therefore, both cases and prepositions, marking objects or other functions, may or may not have extra features. The third argument used to deny the equivalence between prepositions and cases bites the dust. One question remains: is there not (as Kilby and many other scholars suggested) a general tendency for cases to indicate syntactic meanings and for prepositions to express “concrete” ones? The answer is actually yes; both concrete and grammatical relations may be expressed by (1) word order, (2) bound morphs, and (3) adpositions; but concrete meanings are more likely to be expressed by inﬂections than by word order, and most likely by prepositions. Kilby was right about this; right also was Becker (1841: 212ff.), who felt that cases and prepositions differ insofar as cases indicate relation of action (Tha¨tigkeit) whereas prepositions indicate relations of space (Raum); and so was Kuryłowicz (1949: 147), when he emphasized that the “semantically empty” marking of syntactic roles (such as object) in Classical Arabic is done with cases (nom. -/u/, gen. -/i/, acc. -/a/) while concrete meanings are expressed by prepositions— even if, we should add, several Arabic verbs do govern prepositional phrases (PPs), and Arab grammarians regard them as ordinary transitive verbs (cf. e.g. Wright 1898: II:46). Right also were the many other linguists (e.g. Lyons 1968: 304, Lo´pez 1972: 83, Korponay 1986a: 116), who felt that cases tend to be more abstract and syntactic in meaning, while prepositions tend to be more spatial. Cases are usually fewer than prepositions; bound afﬁxes are invariably a small set. In languages that have both case forms and adpositions, like Classical Greek, inﬂectional morphemes are likely to be employed to express relations that constitute a small set, such as grammatical ones, whereas the larger ranges of relations, such as local ones, are best realized by free morphemes (cf. Kilby 1981: 120). But although the diachronic reason for this is, as we shall see (p.88), highly consequential to our enquiry, in purely synchronic terms this is a nuance of little importance.

16

Background to Greek prepositions

1.4 Adpositions with cases Some languages (“analytical” languages) use only adpositions, other languages (“synthetic” languages) use cases; many languages (of “mixed typology”) use both adpositions and cases; moreover, quite a few, including Ancient Greek and Latin, use combinations of adpositions and cases. In many instances, a preposition is added to a case, “reinforcing” its meaning: (1.22) Latin a. eo [Romam] I go Rome-ACC ‘I go to Rome’

> eo [ad Romam] > I go to Rome-ACC

b. proﬁciscor [Roma¯] > proﬁciscor [ab Roma¯] I depart Rome-ABL > I depart from Rome-ABL ‘I leave Rome’ In Estonian, the abessive case (indicating distant position, absence, or lack) is increasingly “reinforced” semantically by a preposition (Haman 1962: 101ff.):7 so˜brata # ilma so˜brata

‘(without) friend[ABESSIVE]’ ‘without friend[ABESSIVE]’

In the same way, the Estonian terminative case (motion to a limited distance) can have the preposition kuni “as far as” added to it (Haman 1962: 141): (1.23)

(kuni) linna-ni on viis kilomeetrit to townTERMIN is ﬁve kilometres ‘it’s ﬁve kilometers (from here) to town’

In Estonian, the case expressing accompaniment can, similarly, take a synonymous adposition: (1.24) Estonian plain comitative > u¨hes or koos þ comitative The expression of a comitative meaning in many Indo-European languages has an analogous history:

7 It must be emphasized that when we characterize the meaning of particular forms (e.g. as comitative, instrumental, causal, etc.) we do not and cannot regard these labels as universal semantic primes, but purely as broad, context-based descriptions; these, at a theoretical level, may be further analysed as reﬂexes of other deeper (combinations of) semantic roles.

On the function of prepositions (1.25)

17

Tocharian sesa sa¨swampa ˙ PREPOS. NOUN-COMIT together sons-with ‘together with [her] sons’

Likewise, in Sanskrit (Coulson 2006: 49–50) the instrumental case, which also has comitative meaning, may have its comitative sense reinforced and indeed disambiguated by the postposition saha: (1.26) ba¯lair a¯gacchati > ba¯laiH saha a¯gacchati ‘he is coming with the children’ In Greek, too, we ﬁnd that the comitative meaning of the dative case can be reinforced (or, more likely, disambiguated as comitative) by means of a preposition, : ¥Ø . . . N

f E ƒF Ø

‘going with horses’ ‘with the horsemen’

(Il. 16.683) (Xen.Cyr. 7.1.39)

In Latin, an accompaniment or an instrument was expressed by the ablative case, but increasingly by a combination of a comitative preposition and the ablative. The Latin ablative, by the Middle Ages, was no longer believed to have ever had a clear meaning on its own; Scioppius (1659: 28) stated that “omnis ablatiuus a sola praepositione expressa aut suppressa regitur”, maintaining that a preposition was ellipsed in phrases such as: gladio hunc jugulo

lit. ‘sword[ABL] him I kill’

The addition of the preposition cum here would also clarify that the meaning to be given to the ablative case is instrumental and not any of the other possible senses of the plain ablative case in Latin (locative, beneﬁciary, etc.). In general, if a language has both case forms and adpositions, the latter “normally exhibits ﬁner distinctions” (Blake 1994: 11). Similarly, the ablative case of Turkish has, on its own, several possible meanings, including place whence, cause, and time since. The last sense is more clearly selected if a temporal postposition is added (cf. Bastuji 1976: 101): (1.27) a du¨nden yesterdayABL ‘since yesterday’

18

Background to Greek prepositions b du¨nden beri yesterdayABL þ POSTPOS ‘since’ ‘since yesterday’

It is, however, also possible for prepositions to be combined with a particular case for reasons that have little to do with semantics. A preposition may select a case owing to structural levelling: some trait prevalent in the overall casemarking system (typically, the generalized use of one given case with all adpositions) may cause adpositions to take a case that can appear semantically unjustiﬁed.8 A shift from semantically-motivated to syntactically-motivated case government occurred in the history of Greek, resulting in virtually all prepositions governing the accusative in Modern Greek. In Finnish, where there is an increasing tendency to use adpositions instead of plain cases, adpositions generally take the partitive case or, less commonly, the genitive. Thus, the plain abessive case is being replaced by a prepositional construction (as we saw earlier in Estonian), but in Finnish the preposition, instead of being just added to the abessive (which is what happens in Estonian), is preposed to the partitive: ‘without money’:

raha-tta > ‘money[ABESS]’

ilman ‘without

raha-a money[PART]’

In brief, a language has three basic options: (i) it may use plain case endings or sufﬁxes with spatial meanings—as Turkish does; (ii) it may combine adpositions with various cases, a particular meaning being expressed by a particular combination—as in Latin;

8 To complicate the picture further, there is always the possibility of the inﬂuence of another language. This can be seen, for instance, in the Latin of Apuleius and of some Christian Latin authors: the cases governed by their (Latin) prepositions are not the ones Classical Latin requires, but the ones required in Greek by the corresponding prepositions (Szantyr 1965: 243–78):

CLASSICAL CONSTRUCTION ab þ ablative coram þ ablative post þ accusative ultra þ accusative usque þ accusative intus þ acc./ablat.

IMITATIVE CONSTRUCTION ab þ genitive coram þ genitive post þ genitive ultra þ genitive usque þ genitive intus þ genitive

GREEK SYNONYM MODEL I þ genitive æ Ł þ genitive O ø þ genitive æÆ þ genitive ø þ genitive K/Y ø þ genitive

On the function of prepositions

19

(iii) it may just combine all its adpositions with one case, whose selection is syntactic rather than semantic—as happens in Hindi. One of the remarkable things about Greek, and its long history, is that within it (as we shall see in later chapters) we ﬁnd all three systems at different times. Prepositions can also be added to other prepositions, in a process of semantic reinforcement parallel to the compounding of adpositions and cases. In Ancient Greek, comitative prepositions were occasionally doubled: – Æ (Eur.Ion 717), a – Æ (Pl.Cri. 100.115). This is not unlike what Modern Greek does when it turns a simplex preposition into a compound one through the addition of a (less polysemous) adverb: Modern Greek

>

ÆÇd

“together with”

Modern Greek alone would otherwise cover a very wide semantic range: Ø lº e Æ æÆ ı ÆØØ lº e Æ æÆ ı ÆØØ lº ºøçæE Œ ººÆ lº e Æº ª ØÇ e æØ lº ŒæÆ ºÅ lº æØçæÅ Å ª ºÆ lº c æçæ ı

‘he lives with his father’ ‘he travels with his father’ ‘(s)he travels by coach’ ‘the girl in a coat’ ‘(s)he ﬁlled the glass with wine’ ‘(s)he spoke with contempt’ ‘(s)he laughed at his accent’

Location Company Instrument Description Content Mode Cause

Adverbs are added to prepositions in several languages, and the aim (or the result) appears to be always semantic strengthening or disambiguation: reinforcing the meaning or one out of several meanings.9 In Dutch too there is, in popular speech, a tendency to use prepositions compounded with adverbs, and these forms are indeed referred to as the verzwaarde vorm “reinforced form” (Heestermans 1979: 37 et passim), because they are used de verloren gegane aanschouwelijkheid van het voorzetsel te herstellen, of de betekenis van het voorzetsel te nuanceren ‘to restore the lost clarity of the preposition, or to add a nuance to the meaning of the preposition’. (Heestermans 1979: 149)

In the Ja¨mtland dialect of Swedish, the simplex prepositions of the standard language appear compounded with another preposition indicating motion in the same direction (Reinhammar 1992: 35-6): standard av “of[f]” is ta which is from ut þ av, literally ‘out þ of[f]’:

9 On semantic reinforcement in language, see also Lehmann (1995: 22ff.).

20

Background to Greek prepositions

Ja¨mtlandic

tvo ta dra¨ngom ¼

Swedish tva˚ av dra¨ngarna

‘two of the boys’

Standard Swedish ur “out of ” appears as tu, which is from ut þ ur, literally “out þ out-of ” (like post-Classical Greek ø-Ł): Ja¨mtlandic

ga˚ tu veia ¼ Swedish ga˚ ur va¨gen ‘go out of the way’.

1.5 Prepositions and cases as synsemantic expressions Anyone familiar with a Classical Indo-European language like Latin and Greek, or indeed with Modern German, knows that combinations of prepositions and cases can yield unique combinatory meanings. Therefore, the schema at p.3 should be expanded to recognize that adpositional phrases and caseinﬂected nouns can also be semantically equivalent to combinations of adposition þ case: (i) [preposition] or [postposition] (ii) [(noun) þ case] (iii) [preposition] þ [(noun) þ case] or [(noun) þ case] þ [postposition] Is the fact that adposition and case are separate not a problem for inclusion in the list above? To answer this question we can start by noting recognized instances of discontinuous morphology elsewhere in the grammar. Let us also note that it is traditionally accepted that in a phrase such as, for example, K KåŁæH åøæH “from hostile lands”, the two genitives are selected only once: the preposition does not govern two genitives. It is assumed that the preposition assigns, through government (rectio), case to the noun, and then, the adjective acquires it via agreement (concors). Applying Matthews’ (1974: 149) argument to Greek, we can say that here -H . . . -H is a single discontinuous (allo)morph of the case.10 We can then agree with Hjelmslev (1932: 17) that ‘La grammaire e´tablit a` tort une diffe´rence essentielle entre la rection et la concordance’. Some modern morphologists (cf. Aronoff and Fudeman 2005: 184 n.6) endorse the view that the whole NP receives case, via government, as a discontinuous feature. Some would take this kind of analysis one step further. They may also describe K . . . H, the combination of preposition and case, as a discontinuous morph. Matthews (1974: 158) initially advised against proceeding on this path, because “the whole basis for the division of 10 The fact that -H is a cumulative exponent (an element carrying two inextricable features) GEN þ PLUR is also of interest but extraneous to the present discussion.

On the function of prepositions

21

morphology and syntax would be swept away”, but he later conceded (1991: 206ff.) that the syntax/morphology boundary is questionable. Other linguists, even earlier ones, had accepted the blurring of morphology and syntax as fact: Cate´gorie et rection sont donc en fonction l’une de l’autre. . . . Le syntagmatique et le paradigmatique se conditionnent constamment. Aussi n’a-t-on jamais re´ussi, malgre´ tous les efforts, a` se´parer comple`tement la morphologie et la syntaxe. Category and government are thus interdependent . . . The syntagmatic and the paradigmatic constantly affect each other. So, despite all efforts, we have never managed to separate morphology and syntax entirely. (Hjelmslev 1932: 15)

Matthews (1974) pointed out that the analysis of preposition and case as a single discontinuous element is usually spurned because it rejects wordboundaries and so denies that there is a closer relation (in my examples) between åøæ- and -H than between K and -H. This is, presumably, deemed undesirable because -H immediately follow åøæ- and is bound to it, whereas it is separated from K. Morphemes are not necessarily discrete elements linearly ordered. The classical notion of morpheme that we inherited from structuralists sees morphemes as indivisible units, in a one-to-one correspondence with actual morphs. But what constitutes a unit conceptually need not appear as such on the surface. The evidence is plentiful (cf. also Aronoff and Fudeman 2005: 3): reduplication, inﬁxation, morphologically-governed ablaut, and supraﬁxation (variation in tonal pattern to mark inﬂection). Approaches have been developed that handle these phenomena without transformational formalisms; one of these, for example, is Nonconcatenative Morphology (NCM), propounded by McCarthy (1981: 376ff.).11 Developed for Arabic and Semitic languages, NCM is not entirely unlike the notation of autosegmental phonology, and re-echoes the “staggered” or “long components” of structuralism (cf. Harris 1951: 165, 299ff.). In Classical Greek there are known instances of combinatory case marking, which are accepted as equivalent to case marking by means of inﬂection alone in other declensions: Nominative: Ææ# lengthened grade vowel þ stem-ﬁnal accent þ zero ending Genitive: Æ#æ zero grade of the vowel þ accent on ending þ ending Accusative: Æ æÆ /e/ grade of the vowel þ stem-ﬁnal accent þ Æ ending 11 His deﬁnition of a morpheme is ‘an ordered string of 1xn feature matrices associated autosegmentally with a root node . . . . All morphological rules are of the form A > B/X, where A is a single element or zero, and B and X are (possibly null) strings of elements.’

22

Background to Greek prepositions

Icelandic too has declensions that mark case with both umlaut and sufﬁxation: Nominative plural: Genitive plural: Dative plural:

menn-# mann-a mo¨nn-um

‘men’ ‘of men’ ‘to men’

Other types of morphemes are commonly split into two submorphemes. An example is the plural morpheme in many Germanic languages:12 German Dutch Yiddish Swedish Norwegian (Nynorsk)

ein Kraft een schip eyn hoiz en spa˚ng ei bok

> > > > >

zwei Kra¨ft-e force(s) twee schep-en ship(s) tsvey haiz-er house(s) tva˚ spa¨ng-er pole(s) book(s) to bøk-er

In the case of such plural markers, a “discontinuous element” view has long been accepted. That those morphemes can be split into submorphemes appearing at different points along the phonological string is no novelty in Indo-European philology, “Rien de plus banal” according to Kuryłowicz (1949: 132). Discontinuous plural marking is also widely attested outside of Indo-European. It seems to have been used in Etruscan too (Bonfante 1990: 19ff.): (1.27) clan > ‘son’

clen-ar ‘sons’

These splits can occur in many areas of the grammar: Icelandic repeats the pattern in its verbal conjugations: ‘thou goest’ ‘we go’ ‘they go’

þu´ við þeir

fer-ð fo¨r-um far-a

However, in the verbal conjugation of several Germanic and Romance languages, as well as in Modern Greek, one ﬁnds polylectic combinations equivalent to monolectic forms. In Modern Greek, there are periphrastic

12 Umlaut, of course, is historically a form of assimilation of the stem-vowel to the ending, but this is synchronically immaterial. The fact that we are dealing with cumulative exponents that also mark number is likewise irrelevant to the present discussion.

On the function of prepositions

23

tenses like åø ªæłØ “I-have written”. The existence of two separate sub-morphemes, å- and ªæłØ, is not just an orthographical convention, for å(ø) also exists independently, and other items can come between them: åø XÅ ªæłØ “I have already written”. Nonetheless, åø ªæłØ (like its counterparts in Romance or Germanic) is rightly regarded as essentially equivalent to the monolectic tenses: Modern Greek German Italian

åø ªæÆłØ ich habe geschrieben ho scritto

¼ ªæÆłÆ ¼ ich schrieb ¼ scrissi

In many varieties of Italian and Germanic (northern Italian, Schwyzertu¨u¨tsch, Yiddish, Afrikaans) the compound form has replaced the monolectic form altogether. In Germanic, the elements ge- . . . . .-en of geschrieben are themselves a discontinuous morph, a circumﬁx (cf. Bauer 2003: 28–30), not unlike the inﬁxes and transﬁxes of the Arabic ‘broken plurals’ ( ) or of the Hebrew verbal ‘building’ templates (NJQ JQ B). The Ancient Greek perfect tenses could also be said to have discontinuous morphs, as they are usually marked by both the initial ‘reduplication’ (IÆØºÆ ØÆ ) and the characteristic -Œ- element, e.g. º -ºı-Œ-Æ. In Greek [preposition þ case] syntagms, the two elements are relatively independent, and other constituents are freely inserted: (1.29) K prepos. ‘in

ﬁB art. þ case the

[H ¯ ººø] [other constituent] [of the Greeks]

åæÆﬁ noun þ case land’

We saw earlier (p.9) that the Swedish article can be either an ending or a preposed free form; let us note that if no relative clause follows, and a qualiﬁer is inserted, the Swedish noun has both deﬁniteness markers, which must be seen as two subparts of one: den fo¨ljande bil-en

‘the following car’

Furthermore, if a Swedish deﬁnite noun is characterized by an adjective (and no relative clause follows), the adjective in itself, besides being preceded by an article, also contains another (submorph of the) deﬁniteness marker. Thus the deﬁniteness marker (the article) appears before the two items and is sufﬁxed to both of them: den bla˚-a bil-en

‘the blue car’

(cf. en bla˚ bil ‘a blue car’)

24

Background to Greek prepositions

We could therefore say that the Swedish deﬁniteness marker here consists of three parts, an unbound one followed by two bound ones, which is what some wish to say about the case marker in constructions like K KåŁæH åøæH: K þ H þ H. It has been argued (Julien 2007b: 35–9) that the Swedish multiple deﬁniteness exponents above can convey slightly different aspects of deﬁniteness (speciﬁcity and inclusiveness) at different points in their sequence; the ancient Greek, Latin, or German, combinations of preposition þ case may also, in some instances, convey different speciﬁcations, such as location þ direction (if any): Classical Greek

Ææþ GENITIVE Ææþ DATIVE Ææþ ACCUSATIVE

¼ ¼ ¼

from near at near to near

ablative sense locative sense allative sense

In Kracht’s (2002: 31) terminology, there is a modalizer and a localizer. We should not assume, however, that in the languages where we ﬁnd prepositions but no cases, the preposition alone expresses a single spatial relation; as pointed out by some analyses of English (e.g. Bennett 1975: 18) directional expressions also imply a locative expression, even when this is not morphologically evident: to a place ¼ to [at a place] from a place ¼ from [at a place] It may not be evident in constructions such as it went

under [the table]

but in other constructions direction is clearly expressed distinctly from position: it came

from [under [the table]]

So, combinations of prepositions and cases, and combinations of multiple prepositions can perform the same function as prepositions alone. Prepositions in Ancient Greek were initially added to an inﬂected noun in order to add to the meaning of the case form. This gave rise to combinations in which the original individual senses of the preposition and the case were still clear. Gradually, the syntagm [preposition þ case] developed unpredictable combinatory meanings which the initial components did not have: at that stage only a synsemantic (and, some would say, monomorphemic) description is plausible (cf. also Jime´nez Lo´pez 1994: 226). The meaning of the preposition can then only be determined by taking it together with the case;

On the function of prepositions

25

Kuryłowicz (1949: 134) had a point when he said that if the meaning of two [preposition þ case] combinations is completely different despite the same P, we have “deux pre´positions diffe´rentes”. The capacity that some prepositions have to govern different cases constitutes, therefore, no evidence that the case form is semantically autonomous. Furthermore, in a number of languages, case forms alone incorporate both locative and directional morphs, as combinations of prepositions and cases can. They reﬂect in their linguistic complexity the cognitive complexity of the spatial relation expressed (Svorou 1994: 34). In Estonian, directional morphemes seem to be added to the one expressing static location: katus-e-l katus-e-l-e katus-e-l-t

ADESSIVE ALLATIVE ABLATIVE

‘at (¼on) the roof’ ‘to (¼onto) the roof’ ‘from (¼off) the roof ’

So in Malayalam (Prabhakara Variar 1976: 99), a Dravidian language spoken in southern India: (1.30) muri- yil room LOCAT ‘in the room’

muri- yil- e:kk# room LOC ALLAT ‘to the room’

muri- yil- u:t:e room LOC PERLAT ‘through the room’

muri -yil -ninn# room LOC ABLAT ‘from the room’ This further conﬁrms the comparability of cases, prepositions, and combinations of prepositions and cases.

1.6 Compound prepositions Many theoreticians recognize that certain sequences constitute “complex prepositions” (cf. Miller 1985: 57ff.); and there are now studies on the compound prepositions of several languages—for example Ilinski (2003: 143–262) for French, Hoffman (2005) for English. But not all linguists agree that compound prepositions exist in the ﬁrst place.13 In the classiﬁcation of prepositions made by Brndal (1940: 13)—a widely inﬂuential pioneering 13 Opinions vary not only as to whether compound prepositions are prepositions, but also as to which prepositions are to be regarded as compound(ed). It may seem surprising, for instance, that Quirk et al. (1972: 301) do not regard without, aboard, or notwithstanding as compound (unlike except for).

26

Background to Greek prepositions

study on the category (cf. Jakobson 1936: 243)—not only were such forms not regarded as compounds, but they were refused the status of prepositions altogether. Brndal (ibid. and 1928: 80) speciﬁcally states that combinations of two prepositions (like English into, without, or Greek Æ) are not prepositions. Even more linguists would deny prepositional status to constructions consisting of P1–N–P2 sequences, such as with regard to, or in accordance with. A few—notably Sigurd (1993: 197)—have, on the contrary, argued for the “multi-word preposition” status of sequences such as in spite of, because it is intuitively and distributionally equivalent to the preposition despite, and just as invariable. But these sequences usually receive no autonomous status distinct from the individual lexical items that constitute them. They start off, of course, as open syntactic phrases, and many other P1–N–P2 strings do not constitute units. The degree of cohesion or invariability of all these strings can even be measured on a scale (see Quirk et al. 1972: 302; Quirk et al. 1985: 671), according to whether the noun(s) they encapsulate can be inﬂected for number or replaced by synonyms; whether articles can be added, deleted, or swapped; whether the ﬁnal preposition can be changed; whether intensiﬁers can be freely added; and so forth. How can one decide if a sequence of prepositions constitutes a single compound preposition? One diagnostic criterion could be semantics. Consider English as to, the meaning of which cannot be immediately derived from those of as and to. In these instances, the total is more than the sum of the parts, as the components acquire a particular sense only if together ( ı

Å ÆØ). There is, therefore, a case for postulating that as to is, semantically, a compound. Matthews (1981: 87ff.) described up till as a “complex preposition” because up exists on its own but has a different meaning, so in up till the second element is required; he concluded that in terms of constituency analysis, up and till form a single syntagm distinct from their noun phrase, for example [[up till] Friday]. This is consistent with our analysis of [preposition þ case]: such syntagms can likewise be either the sum of the individual meaning of the two original components, or develop a new combinatory meaning. Only in the latter instance can we talk of a single, synsemantic unit. We will make similar considerations for Modern Greek sequences: Modern Greek also has combinations in which the meaning of the compound differs from that of the ﬁrst element alone, or of the second element alone, or of the ﬁrst element in combination with other simplex prepositions, so that, for example, Œø I, literally “under” þ “from”, can mean “to under”.

On the function of prepositions

27

Thus the postulation of compound prepositions makes sense on semantic grounds; next, it needs to be deﬁned in syntactic terms.

1.7 The structure of prepositional phrases Which structures are possible for (and can be regarded as) PPs? In the early 1970s, Jackendoff aptly remarked: People seem never to have taken prepositions seriously . . . they deny that the category “preposition” has any real intrinsic syntactic interest other than as an annoying little surface peculiarity. . . . The neglect of prepositions arises from the assumption that prepositional phrases invariably take the form: P–NP: if this were the case, prepositions would indeed be dull. (Jackendoff 1973: 345)

Modern grammars (e.g. of English, cf. Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 598–9) now accept that prepositions include many more elements than traditionally thought. Following Jackendoff ’s analysis of English PPs (ibid.), we can recognize that there are several types of PPs in Modern Greek. This is desirable, in particular, because many important prepositions of English and of Ancient Greek translate into Modern Greek as combinations of prepositions. A fuller picture of the Modern Greek prepositional system is given in Chapter 7, but let us note here that, beside the accepted type A a e E

‘we go after the meal’

there are reasons to postulate other structures. First, an even simpler one: A a

‘we go after(wards)’

The unity between prepositions and many adverbs is suggested by their frequent morphological identity, as we just saw with , and by their syntactic similarity, since they satisfy equally the subcategorization requirements of the same verbs (cf. Jackendoff 1973: 345–6, 1983: 162): Æº a Ø ºÆ [ e æçØ] Æº a Ø ºÆ [Œø]

‘(s)he put the books [on the shelf]’ ‘(s)he put the books [down]

In English there are some 40 such adverb-prepositions (Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 612). The synchronic afﬁnity between prepositions and adverbs (cf. Quirk et al. 1985: 662) has long been noted. Aristotle (Poet. 1456b) had grouped prepositions and adverbs (as well as other items) under the heading

Ø, whence the Latin con-junctiones; Arab grammarians also lumped prepositions and adverbs together (with conjunctions and interjections)

28

Background to Greek prepositions

under the label of /huru:f/ (Haywood and Nahmad 1965: 412). Old grammarians simply stated that prepositions “adverbia faciunt si quando illas non subsecuntur casus” (Diomedes, ed. Keil 1857: I: 409). Many modern linguists (cf. Tallerman 2005: 47–8) agree, and call adverbs “intransitive prepositions”; Jespersen (1924: 87–9) had taken the same view, pointing out that verbs are not traditionally split into totally separate categories according to whether they take objects or not, which is the same difference that we ﬁnd between prepositions and their corresponding adverbs: æø -----------æø e çÆªÅ ı

(intrans. verb) (transit. verb)

‘I am eating’ ‘I am eating my food’

A --------A a e E

(‘adverb’) (‘preposition’)

‘we go afterwards’ ‘we go after the dinner’

As noted by Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 612–15), although there are adverbs that we would not want to classify as prepositions, of those we would, most are spatial, some temporal, and only very few have other meanings; some adverbs, they say, should be recognized as ‘marginal members’ of the category ‘prepositions’ (ibid.: 615). Jackendoff (1973) recognized prepositions, particles, and adverbs as prepositions, Miller (1985: 59,92) reached analogous conclusions, and so do many in the generative tradition (Radford 1988: 134, Tallerman 2005: 47). The differences of environment could be handled in the lexicon with subcategorization frames.14

14 The question of the classiﬁcation of other items, such as non-spatial adverbs, conjunctions, and “particles” (however deﬁned) is beyond the scope of this study. Some English grammars accept conjunctions as prepositions (Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 600). Let us just note that subordinating conjunctions, which Jespersen (1924: 89) had called “sentence prepositions”, can be seen as “simply prepositions used with a clausal complement” (Radford 1988: 137), and are indeed often morphologically identical to prepositions (before [the ﬁlm]/before [we watch the ﬁlm]). “Particles” are more problematic because there is no consensus on the meaning of the term: the Dictionary of Language (Crystal 2001: 252) candidly deﬁnes a particle as “An invariable item with a grammatical function. The term is especially used for a form which does not readily ﬁt into a standard classiﬁcation of parts of speech”. If we simply accept the deﬁnition of “particle” given by Jackendoff (1977: 79), “the [- complement] counterpart of a P”, corresponding to items which Quirk et al. (1985: 713–16) termed “prepositional adverbs”, we have to agree that they do exhibit strong similarities with prepositions and adverbs: frequent phonological identity and acceptance of the same modiﬁers (e.g. she went [straight] up [the ladder]), as well as fulﬁlment of co-occurrence restrictions with the same verb (he put the cake in/inside/in the oven). Emonds (1985: 253–63) argued that such particles are prepositions, and Svenonius (2004: 18) also observes that they “share with adpositions all the characteristics which do not speciﬁcally refer to complements”.

On the function of prepositions

29

The same verbal subcategorization requirements can also be seen to be satisﬁed by some sequences of adverb þ preposition, which suggests that those sequences may form a single constituent: (1.31)

a Æº a Ø ºÆ [KŒE] ‘(s)he put the books [there]’ b Æº a Ø ºÆ [ø] ‘(s)he put the books [on top/up(stairs)]’ c Æº a Ø ºÆ [ c ŒÆæ ŒºÆ] ‘(s)he put the books [‘at’ the chair]’ d Æº a Ø ºÆ [ø c ŒÆæ ŒºÆ] ‘(s)he put the books [‘on at’ the chair]’

The combination of a primarily intransitive and an obligatorily transitive preposition (ø ) is therefore a compound preposition, another possible expansion of a PP. Jackendoff (1973: 348) described this as “quite common (though frequently overlooked)”. Thus, in Greek: A a Ie e E

‘we go after [lit. after from] the dinner’

Alternations like the Greek synonymous [ [NP]] and [ a Ie [NP]] have parallels in other European languages; cf. English adjacent þ NP / adjacent to þ NP, Italian sopra þ NP / sopra a þ NP. So, although on the surface we see linear sequences of prepositions, they are not always independent prepositions in succession. The postulation of this is particularly important for Modern Greek. If sequences of this kind were to be ruled out from the category of ‘prepositions’, the Modern Greek prepositional inventory would be very meagre; and since sequences of this kind have replaced numerous simplex prepositions of the Classical language, the history of Greek prepositions would just be one of loss. To accept some sequences of prepositions as a single compound preposition is, however, in utter contravention of the traditional deﬁnitions of prepositions, such as those laid down by Brndal (1940: 1). His deﬁnition required prepositions to be short, general, and few. Whether he realized it or not, his three postulates are interrelated: (i) To be short means monolectic. Thus, in Modern Greek and I meet the requirements but Œa and a I do not; (ii) For a preposition to be short, it also has to be monomorphemic, in effect banning from the inventory all items that make multiple

30

Background to Greek prepositions semantic speciﬁcations—typically, those also marking dimensionality. Again, Modern Greek I “from” passes muster, but ø I “above”, contrasting with ø “on”, does not. Thus the accepted prepositions, by being short, are indeed (as Brndal demanded) also only general; (iii) The exclusion of polymorphemic or polylectic prepositions naturally narrows down the number of expressions classiﬁable as prepositions: hence they are indeed few. As Hage`ge (1975: 74) noted, Brndal really “limite de manie`re draconienne le nombre” of prepositions. In Modern Greek, monolectic prepositions like I are very few: “adverbs” like Œ “near”, ø “behind”, unlike their English synonyms, cannot function as prepositions and need to be compounded in order to be transitive:15

(a) [from] the house ! (Æ) [Ie] e Ø (b) [behind] the house ! ( ) *[ ø] e Ø ! [ ø Ie] e Ø Brndal (1940: 12–13) afﬁrmed categorically that Det flger umiddelbart af Deﬁnitionen af Begrebet Præposition som Sprogets simpleste Udtryk for Relation, at kun Ord af helt enkel Struktur br anerkendes som Præpositioner. Som uægte eller uegentlige maa alltsaa udskilles alle Dannelser af sammensakt Karakter: dels syntaktiske (som Talemaader og Sammensætninger), dels morphologiske (som Aﬂedninger og Ord af mere complex Karakter). It follows directly from the deﬁnition of the concept of preposition as the simplest expression of relation in language, that only words of completely simple structure should be recognized as prepositions. As untrue or improper, therefore, must also be distinguished all formations of compound character: both syntactically (such as turns of phrase or compounds) and morphologically (such as derivatives and words of more complex character).

But we should agree with Jackendoff (although he was only referring to English) rather than with Brndal, because this enables us to distinguish compound prepositions from accidental sequences of independent prepositions belonging to separate PPs. His approach enables us, for instance, to distinguish the function of

Æ in the following sentences: (1.32)

a ªÆ r ÆØ [

Æ º Øa ıºÆ] the cat is inside in a cupboard ‘the cat is inside a cupboard’

15 Except with enclitic weak forms of pronouns with animate referent: Œ ı, ø ı. See p.258.

On the function of prepositions

31

to be contrasted with: b ªÆ rÆØ [

Æ] [ b Øa ıºÆ] the cat is inside in a cupboard ‘the cat is indoors in a cupboard’ In other words, in Modern Greek the same strings of prepositions sometimes do and sometimes do not constitute compound prepositions (i.e. they are intransitive prepositions followed by a standard prepositional phrase). The fact that there is a closer link between

Æ and ( ) in the ﬁrst sentence above than in the second is corroborated by the fact that in the ﬁrst it is less tolerant of interjections; if the sequence is interrupted, the non-compound reading is more likely: (1.33) ªÆ rÆØ

Æ, Çø, c ıºÆ ‘the cat is inside, I think, in the cupboard’ ¼ ‘the cat is indoors, I think, in the cupboard’ If we contrast combinations that seem to produce compound prepositions with other sequences that do not, the standard tests for constituency appear to corroborate the distinction: ø I “outside” is different from ø

“out, in”: (1.34) a ø Ie c ºÅ ‘outside the city’ b ø (b) c ºÅ ‘out, in the city’ Observe again how the latter phrase is breakable (the “sentence fragment test”): (1.35) a rÆØ ø; Æ, c ºÅ rÆØ ‘is (s)he out? / yes, (s)he is in town’ b rÆØ ø; *Æ, Ie c ºÅ rÆØ ‘is (s)he out? / yes, (s)he is from town’ (not the meaning required) To a limited extent, English has similar surface ambiguities: she is out—of the city she is out][in the city

32

Background to Greek prepositions

There are of course, numerous other distinctions that can be made between various sequences of prepositional phrases—the main being between complements and adjuncts: (1.36) a › ˆØÅ ÇØ Æ Ø º e ŒÆÆ

‘John puts a book on the sofa’ (PP is a complement) b › ˆØÅ ØÆ ÇØ Æ Ø º e ŒÆÆ

‘John reads a book on the sofa’ (PP is an adjunct) but this is not relevant to our concerns of how each Greek preposition evolved diachronically, and will not be pursued in any detail. Given the central role that they play, on the other hand, we will treat the modern “compound prepositions” (e.g. ø I, ø ) and the classical “improper” prepositions (e.g. åæØ, – Æ) as equally central to this study as the “few, short and general” basic, monolectic, transitive, case-governing prepositions.

2 On the meaning of prepositions Prepositions can be taken as exemplary in the study of the semantic representation and processing of lexical units in general (Zelinski-Wibbelt 1993: 10)

2.1 The meaning(lessness) of cases Before looking at the semantics of prepositions, let us look at the semantics of case forms. In the course of time, linguists have disagreed in their conception of the semantics of case, postulating different numbers of meanings for each case, varying degrees of relatedness between them, or lack of any relation between them, or indeed the lack of any meaning altogether. The only point on which old and modern scholars concur is that the issue is of exceptional difﬁculty and has not been settled: Casus igitur per veterum deﬁnitionem quid sit non satis cognosci potest. (Scaliger 1540: 146) cases form one of the most irrational parts of language in general. (Jespersen 1924: 186) Case-categories . . . resemble various situations in the practical world but never with any consistency. (Bloomﬁeld 1933: 272) there is general consensus that the category of case is more resistant to analysis than other grammaticalized semantic domains. (Brecht and Levine 1986: 18)

Cases appear to be unpredictable, and were therefore assumed to be per se semantically empty. And many examples can be found that seem to suggest they are. For example, regardless of what case they take in the singular, all Latvian prepositions take the dative in the plural, without change in meaning. The prepositions uz “on”, for instance, requires the nouns it governs to be in the genitive if singular, but in the dative if plural, the choice of case obviously not being dictated by the semantics of the preposition:

34

Background to Greek prepositions

‘on the chair’ ‘on the chairs’

> >

uz kre¯sla (genitive sing.) uz kre¯sliem (dative plur.)

The only way to cut the knot is to postulate a separate case that happens to coincide morphologically with the genitive in the singular and with the dative in the plural (cf. Budina Lazdina 1966: 39; Endzelıˆns 1951: 395). ˙ ˙ The early versions of Chomsky’s Generative Grammar were based on a rule system essentially independent of meaning (Lee 2001: 1); the generative interpretation of morphological case saw case as a phenomenon dictated by structure or by lexical speciﬁcations (subcategorizations) so that “case forms are basically meaningless” (Brecht and Levine 1986: 21, see history and discussion in Butt 2006: 46–88). This indeed gave the impression that “generative grammar has on the whole had little to say about meaning” (Jackendoff 2002: 268).1 Other linguists have argued, on the contrary, that case forms (and prepositions) do have intrinsic meaning. Wierzbicka (1980: xvii–xix), asked “why should languages be so perverse and wasteful” as to impose on users countless meaningless categories. She defended the semantic import of cases, and chastised not only Government and Binding (GB) theory, but also other approaches from the 1960s onwards, such as Case Grammar (Fillmore 1968), for assuming case forms to be meaningless and for dismissing them as surface phenomena. Fillmore, however, did give increasing thought to case meaning, as testiﬁed by his later papers (Fillmore 1977b, 1977c, 1977d). By the 1980s, Generative Grammar too moved away from the dogma that semantics should be excluded from syntax, and introduced semantic relations (y-roles) in Government and Binding (Chomsky 1981: 35) increasing their import in the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995: ch. 3 }3.2). It is easy to ﬁnd counterexamples to the Latvian examples above—instances of case usage in which the case form appears to carry a signiﬁcant semantic load. For instance, in Russian (Brecht and Levine 1986: 25): (2.1)

a jy [jlb d gfhr ‘he walked to the park [B þ accusative]’ b jy [jlb d gfhrt ‘he walked in the park [B þ locative]’

1

In some instances case choice may also seem to be independent of the syntactic function of the noun. The same case may mark opposite or incompatible functions, such as the subject and the object in synonymous active and passive sentences: Latin

mihi persuadet mihi persuadetur ab illo

‘he persuades me[DATIVE]’ ‘I[DATIVE] am persuaded by him’.

On the meaning of prepositions

35

In Classical Greek too, there are similar instances: (2.2) a qºŁ Ææa Æ Øº Æ ‘(s)he went to the king[ACCUSATIVE]’ b qºŁ Ææa Æ Øº ø ‘(s)he came from the king[GEN(
2.2 The meaning(lessness) of prepositions Looking at prepositions, in many instances we ﬁnd that, like cases, they seem to have minimal semantic load. Some English prepositions can be of so little semantic value as to be optional (Kjellmer 1985: 233): admit (of) only one explanation, arrived (on) that night, waited (for) an hour. Chomsky too (1986a: 142) talks of the preposition of as “semantically empty”. The same can also be seen in compound prepositions: sometimes the choice of the second preposition does not bear upon the meaning, and may even be optional. For example, in Italian all the following combinations are synonymous and mean “inside”: dentro da (archaic) dentro di (with pronouns) dentro a dentro

literally literally literally literally

‘inside from’ ‘inside of ’ ‘inside to’ ‘inside’

Many scholars took the view that prepositions are meaningless. Aristotle, who did not distinguish prepositions from other Ø, asserted that

2 3

For the details of the various proposals, see Blake (1994: 36ff.). For an overview of case theories, see Agud (1980) and Butt (2006).

36

Background to Greek prepositions

“ K Ø çøc ¼ Å ” “syndesmos is a meaningless word” (Poet. 1456b). Campanella (1638: I: VIII: I) somewhat echoed: “praepositio . . . per se non signiﬁcat nisi addatur nominibus” “a preposition has no meaning in itself unless it is added to a noun”. Modern analyses ﬁnd (as they do for case meaning) that “les pre´positions . . . font partie des mots qui re´sistent le plus a` une analyse se´mantique” “prepositions . . . are amongst the words that are most resistant to a semantic analysis” (Cervoni 1991: 5). The same preposition can also, in context, take on meanings so diverse as to be antonymic. Glaring examples of this can be found in Semitic languages. The Phoenician prepositions B, usually glossed as “in”, L, usually glossed as “to”, and ’L, usually glossed as “unto”, can all indicate rest at a place, motion to it, and motion from it (Segert 1976: 206). This is thought to be due to the fact that since there are so few prepositions in Phoenician (and in Semitic languages in general), each preposition has to cover a vast semantic area. Likewise, Ugaritic b can mean “in; into; by” but also “from”, whereas the main ablative preposition, l besides “from” can also mean “to; for” (Gordon 1965: 92ff.). The opposite meanings “to” and “from” are also ascribed to the Hebrew preposition M /l‰/ and the Akkadian ina. According to Sarna (1959: 310ff.), in some contexts, Hebrew d /b‰/ and PJO /min/ both mean “in” and “from”, as does m in Ugaritic.4 Similar phenomena occur also in Arabic, and Arab grammarians (Haywood and /mutaba:dilatun/ “inNahmad 1965: 413) have often termed prepositions terchangeable”. Analogous instances can also be found amongst Indo-European languages: according to Zymberi (1991: 187), the Albanian preposition nga (< *en þ *kwo-), can mean either “from” or “to(wards)”. Even in compounds, prepositional meaning may seem so vague or absent as to allow antonyms to combine. In the Ja¨mtland dialect of Swedish (Reinhammar 1993: 36) the standard preposition i “in” appears as ti, from a contradictory ut þ i “outþin”. If we consider the non-spatial meaning of prepositions (and cases) that have, otherwise, a fairly well-deﬁned concrete spatial meaning, we also ﬁnd that the relationship between the two types of meaning is not easily predictable. Cross-linguistically, the same abstract meaning can be expressed by prepositions of very different basic spatial meaning. The choice of preposition (or case) used to introduce the object of speaking is a good example: English: Classical Greek: German: Modern Greek: 4

talk about ¸¯ˆ —¯PI sprechen u¨ber Øºø ªØ

(ABOUT) (AROUND) (OVER) (FOR)

The relevance of this to Koine´ (Biblical) Greek will be examined in Chapter 5.

On the meaning of prepositions Italian: Hebrew: Icelandic: Finnish: Irish: Arabic:

parlare di MS YdD M Ð Ð segja fra´ puhua -sta ag caint faoi

37

(OF) (ON) (FROM) (OUT OF) (UNDER) (INSIDE)

Here the adpositions (or cases) seem to indicate a generic relation with the object, without speciﬁc individual meaning. It is perhaps instances like this that have prompted the deﬁnition of prepositions simply as relation markers, as linking words. In the languages in which the word for ‘preposition’ does not literally mean ‘fore-placement’ or ‘fore-word’ (see p.5), it usually means “word of relationship”: German Verha¨ltniswort, Danish Forholdord, Modern O. The view that prepositions are generic relators is already Hebrew RHJ ‘M ÐÐ implicit in Aristotle’s classiﬁcation of prepositions as Ø, and this deﬁnition is found throughout linguistic work of different schools and philological literature of different language groups—for example Bernhardi (1805: 173), Moreux (1968: 31), Quirk et al. (1985: 657), Crystal (1995: 213), Smyth (1956: 365), Lipin´ski (1997: 459), Taylor (1993: 153), Zelinski-Wibbelt (1993: 8). An identical deﬁnition has been given for case: ‘est cas une cate´gorie qui exprime une relation entre deux objets. . . . La vue plus juste . . . consiste a` conside´rer tous les cas comme des expressions de relations’ (Hjelmslev 1935: 25, 96). For post-positions, too, the deﬁnition usually found in the philological tradition of languages that have them is the same: So¨zcu¨kler arasında ilgi kuran so¨zcu¨klere ilgec¸ denir. ˙Ilgec¸ler, bir so¨zcu¨kten sonra gelir ve bir so¨zcu¨k ile o¨teki so¨zcu¨kler arasında ilgi kurar The name postposition is given to words that establish a relation between words. Postpositions come after a word, and forge a relation between a word and other words. (Hengirmen 1997: 167)

Analogous deﬁnitions are given by other prominent Turkish grammarians, such as Koc¸ (1992: 149) and Bozkurt (1995: 131), and the modern Turkish term for “postposition”, ilgec¸ (from il- “to noose, fasten” and gec¸, agentive) essentially means “linking (term)”. Brndal has been the main propounder of the purely formal and abstract deﬁnition of prepositions as lexemes indicating a relationship. He ﬁrst outlined this view in his treatise on word classes (Brndal 1928), and then expounded it more extensively in his much-quoted and widely translated Præpositionernes Theori (1940: 11). His a priori intent was to interpret language in terms of logic,

38

Background to Greek prepositions

and even of hard sciences, and his work, perhaps because it was one of the ﬁrst full-scale studies of prepositions, gained quite some notoriety, and has had a lasting legacy.5 Brndal (1940: 11) claimed that a preposition is sufﬁciently deﬁned as the expression of relation in general (“Relation i Almindelighed”). According to his theory of word classes, in every lexical item one or two of four fundamental semantic qualities appear: Relatum (R), Descriptum (D), relator (r), descriptor (d). Thus numerals are D, nouns Rd, verbs rd, etc. Prepositions are r: pure relations. Brndal’s classiﬁcations, however, dictated by theory, remain fuzzy and imprecise; they have been attacked for their “apriorisme” (Lejeune 1951: 381) and extreme “logicismo” (Pisani 1953: 402) that makes them hard to apply; they have been accused of being largely unveriﬁable (Lepschy 1961: 229, Pisani 1953: 402), given the degree of abstraction and generalization resorted to (Scalise 1969: 143); they have been found unjustiﬁedly complex and ineffective (Hewson and Bubenik 2006: x), even for Brndal’s native language, Danish (Togeby 1989: 108–18). Expressing a relation is a truthful description of what adpositions and cases do, but it is so vague and broad that it cannot be said to quite deﬁne the category, beside the fact that, as Hjelmslev (1932: 15) observed, “il y a d’autres mots que les pre´positions . . . qui indiquent la relation”. To say that prepositions only express a generic relation between items attributes the entire semantic load to the context. This seems conﬁrmed by phrases with nouns and verbs associated with a (case or) preposition that is practically synonymous with different (cases or) prepositions in similar contexts, as in the English marriage to, anger with, indignation at. From a synchronic viewpoint, it seems (Horrocks 1987: 61) that the choice of preposition is intrinsic to the individual nominal, and is to be listed in the lexicon because it is not predictable from the context. In a similar vein, Crisari (1971: 97) argued that prepositions function like a plus sign: they solely link two lexical items and, as in arithmetic additions like [3þ2] and [2þ2], the outcome does not differ because of a difference in the sign, but in the addenda. Two reagents produce a reaction in the presence of a catalyst. We see this also in English and in Modern Greek: (2.3) a qæŁ cia ıe æ ‘(s)he came for two days’ (for ¼ duration) b qæŁ cia ıe ºªı ‘(s)he came for two reasons’(for ¼ motive) 5 Besides being ubiquitously quoted, Brndal was also taken as basis for related theories. For example, Ljunggren (1951: 13) was amongst the linguists who endorsed Brndal’s theory but modiﬁed his classiﬁcation.

On the meaning of prepositions

39

Crisari (1971: 99) concluded that to ascribe, as grammar books do, a large number of different meanings to prepositions is as inappropriate as to say that in different sums the + signs are different if the totals are different. This is an extreme view, but it highlights the point that the context is a key factor. That is, not only does a preposition dictate the relation between the terms involved, but conversely: Les deux termes de la relation commandent donc dans une certaine mesure, le choix et la valeur de la pre´position qui les unit. Il en re´sulte qu’une meˆme pre´position peut exprimer des rapports tre`s diffe´rents selon les termes entre lesquels elle s’inse`re. ‘the two terms in the relation do, to some degree, dictate the choice and the function of the preposition that links them. As a result, the same preposition can express very different relations depending on the terms between which it gets inserted’. (Galichet 1947: 46–7)

The choice of preposition, however, in some instances can radically change the overall semantic reading of a sentence: (2.4)

a çıª cia e —Ææ Ø ‘(s)he left for Paris’ b çıª Ipe e —Ææ Ø ‘(s)he left [from] Paris’

In the ﬁrst half of the nineteenth century, Horne Tooke (1829: I: 287) was observing: if prepositions are meaningless on their own, why have many meaningless prepositions when one could perform the function of any other? It is rare for cases or adpositions to be interchangeable. In some instances, adpositions carry a critical semantic load. Observe the complementary Spanish sentences (cf. also Guasch Leguizamo´n 1949: 59ff.): salir presidente salir de presidente

‘become the chairperson’ ‘quit as chairperson’

So, what does the variable semantic load of a preposition depend upon? If, to a variable degree, the semantic context dictates (and enables us to predict) the required preposition and its meaning, when is it more likely to do so? Let us compare local and less local meanings. In Danish, when one indicates the means of transportation that one uses to go somewhere the preposition can vary considerably: med pa˚ til i

toget cykel fods bil

(lit. with train) (lit. upon bicycle) (lit. to foot) (lit. in car)

40

Background to Greek prepositions

If one states the place where one is going, prepositional choice is still variable, but to a more limited degree and more rarely. In Danish one goes: i byen (city), i skole (school), i kyrke (church), i teatret (theatre), i biografen (cinema),

but pa˚ hospitalet (hospital); but pa˚ universitet (university); but pa˚ arbejde (workplace); but pa˚ cafe´ (cafeteria); but pa˚ kontoret (ofﬁce)

Here the choice is restricted to two prepositions, both somehow semantically justiﬁed: “in” i and pa˚ describe, among other things, allative motions. Consider now how the use of the same preposition is cross-linguistically less predictable depending on the degree of concreteness of the meaning intended. In Modern Greek: (2.5) a IªæÆ Æ Æ Hæ cia Æ b KØÆç æ ÆØ cia c ªºø

ºªÆ To render (2.5a), other languages would use likewise a preposition with benefactive/directional meaning : English Italian French German Turkish

I have bought a present for you ho comprato un regalo per te j’ai achete´ un cadeau pour toi Ich habe eine Geschenke fu¨r dich gekauft senin ic¸in bir hediye aldım

whereas ªØ in (2.5b) corresponds to: English Italian French German Turkish

I’m interested in linguistics m’interesso di linguistica je m’inte´resse a` la linguistique Ich interessiere mich auf Sprachwissenschaft dilbilim ile ilgileniyorum

(lit. IN) (lit. OF) (lit. AT) (lit. ON) (lit. WITH)

It is therefore clear that the choice of preposition gets more unpredictable when the meaning that needs to be expressed is more abstract. This is clear also in Greek. Classical Greek affords examples of prepositions of opposite concrete spatial sense having the same meaning in non-local expressions, even when governing the same case: I and ŒÆ (þ accusative), despite their opposite spatial meaning (“up” and “down”, respectively), can express, basically, the same notion of distribution according to a standard of measure:

On the meaning of prepositions (2.6)

a Å Æ Ia ŒÆ ‘stood in [lit. up] bodies of one hundred’ b ŒÆa ŒÆ æÅ ŒŒ Å Å ‘arrayed in [lit. down] eleven parts’

41

(Xen.An. 5.4.12) (Pl.Phdr. 247a)

However, I and ŒÆ (þaccusative) would never have identical meaning in spatial expressions. The contextual synonymity of I and ŒÆ above does not just validate the generativist point of view that underlying case relations can be mapped onto various prepositions (Nielsen 1972: 19); it shows that in the expression of non-spatial concepts, different local meanings can be used as the starting point of metaphors expressing the same fact, just as the same local meaning can have metaphorical semantic shifts in multiple directions.6 Consider the antinomy and yet synonymy of these phrases (cf. pp. 77–8): English

different from different to

French

le livre de Jean le livre a` Jean

‘different than’ ‘different than’ ‘John’s book’ (lit. ‘of John’, originally ‘off John’) ‘John’s book’ (lit. ‘to John’).

So it appears that the choice of a given preposition for a non-spatial meaning is less predictable than for a spatial meaning. The abstract meaning expressed by a preposition may be related to its spatial meaning, but not in a univocal fashion. This is the problem of polysemy, to which we now must turn. We will be able to return later to the issue of different metaphorizations of the same meaning (pp. 75–8).

2.3 The polysemy of cases and prepositions Linguists who accepted that prepositions can have a rich semantic content never fail to point out their “notorious ﬂuidity of meaning which is perhaps greater there than with any other part of speech” (Van Oosten 1977: 454). Even those who offered a principled account of prepositional meaning, such as Taylor (1989: 109), note that prepositions are, across languages, “[a]mongst the most polysemous words” and that their polysemy “verges on the chaotic”. Prepositions are described as semantically poor, but very dense (Colombo and Flores D’Arcais 1984: 52)—a way of saying that their meaning is illdeﬁned but its nuances are manifold: not only is the basic sense (if any) 6 I take the term metaphor in the very broad sense of “understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 5).

42

Background to Greek prepositions

unclear, but the semantic ground covered can be vast and cannot easily be predicted. For instance, the Italian preposition da can correspond to at least eight French prepositions (Cervoni 1980: 230), which shows strikingly different usage even in closely related languages: elle va chez le dentiste il vient de Paris je passe par Nice depuis l’antiquite´ habille´ comme une femme comprendre a` son regard se comporter en traØ^tre

> > > > >

va dal dentista viene da Parigi passo da Nizza dall’ antichita´ vestito da donna

‘she goes to the dentist’ ‘he comes from Paris’ ‘go through/via Nice’ ‘since antiquity’ ‘dressed as a woman’

> capire dal suo sguardo ‘understand from his glance’

> comportarsi da traditore assez beˆte pour le dire > cosı´ scemo da dirlo elle va au coiffeur > va dal parrucchiere

‘behave like a traitor’ ‘so stupid as to say it’ ‘she goes to the hairdresser’

A preposition (or a case) may have different, even incompatible meanings synchronically, or may develop them diachronically. How are we to classify the various meanings of a preposition? Are they truly separate meanings, or variations on a basic single one? This is, in essence, the distinction that lexicographers make between homonymy and polysemy. Most linguists appear to endorse a conception of prepositional meaning as a combination of an inherent meaning with a speciﬁcation supplied by the context; in the terminology diffused by Jakobson (1936: 240ff.): different Sonderbedeutungen in each particular context, but related through an overall Gesamtbedeutung in abstract, or an underlying Grundbedeutung at the origin. Others do not seem to think that the different meanings of a preposition share a connection: Colombo and Flores D’Arcais (1984: 54, 81) carried out experiments to identify the synchronically primary or most salient meaning of Dutch prepositions. It turned out, almost invariably, to be spatial (cf. also Brown and Miller 1982: 184). For example, the hierarchy of the meanings of voor was basically as shown in Figure 2.1. They noted that some meanings are perceived by speakers as immediately connected, sharing a relational content, while others are not. However, whether all meanings could be related at a deeper level, or diachronically, was not taken into account. In their view, for example, the comitative and the instrumental meanings of Dutch met (“together with” and “using”), or the perlative and the agentive meanings of door (“through” and “by”) are “completely different. It is not

On the meaning of prepositions

43

BEFORE IN SPACE BEFORE IN TIME

VOOR

FOR = EQUIVALENT TO FOR = AIMING AT FOR = IN FAVOUR OF

FIGURE 2.1 Source: Adapted from Colombo and Flores D’Arcais 1984: 85.

easy to ﬁnd a relation common to the two uses” (Colombo and Flores D’Arcais 1984: 54). In what way could they have been linked? Although the local meaning of the prepositions examined turned out to be the main one, the investigators did not see it as the origin of the other senses. Crisari (1971: 100) had concluded that at the semantic core of a preposition there is indeed a single meaning, but posited that it would be “assolutamente astratto”; Jackendoff (1978: 218) had a more proﬁcuous suggestion: the different meanings of a preposition are arrived at by reapplying the semantic structure of its basic meaning to new semantic ﬁelds, making a “cross-ﬁeld generalization” of its relational meaning on the basis of the context. Wege (1991: 278ff.) went further, presuming an inherent speciﬁcally local sense, mixed with relational features that depend on the context. The fact that cases and prepositions become less predictable and often less “meaningful” when their sense is not spatial (cf. p. 40) ﬁts well with the conjecture that the basic meaning is spatial and that other meanings are metaphors.

2.4 Contiguity of meanings Polysemy, the synchronic co-occurrence or diachronic development of multiple meanings in the same preposition or case form, is therefore perhaps not accidental. Some independent trends can be discerned, whereby pairs or groups of meanings tend to be expressed formally by the same morpheme, word, or construction. This is often due to some afﬁnity between those meanings, and rarely by chance. The overlap found in many languages, such as Russian or Sanskrit, between instrumental and agentive case markers is arguably due to a semantic contiguity (Lyons 1968: 298) rather than morphological or phonological accident. Less often noticed is the relationship between locative and comitative cases and adpositions. Although the comitative is not usually cited as a local case, its logical spatial basis has long been clear to philosophy: Leibniz (1765: 3,}1) noted that “un corps est

44

Background to Greek prepositions

avec un autre lorsqu’ils sont dans un meˆme lieu”, and we do not need to look too far for philological evidence: the Modern English comitative preposition with in Old English was a locative, essentially adessive (ad-esse “be close”) preposition, indicating proximity, while comitative and instrumental meanings were expressed by the preposition mid. The cognate of English with in Old Norse had the same adessive sense, and that local sense is fully preserved to this day in Scandinavian languages: Icelandic Swedish Danish

hann stoð við eldinn de satt vid bordet lærer ved universitet

‘he stood by the ﬁre’ ‘they sat at the table’ ‘lecturer at university’

In Sumerian too, the comitative marker -da/-da5 (-de`) comes from a locational noun meaning “side” (Thomsen 1984: 99). The semantic closeness of comitative and locative is also evident in Ancient Greek: there, by a reverse process, the old instrumental-comitative had been ousted by the locative (Kuryłowicz 1964: 196). By the same token, Umbrian (Rix 2002: 169–70) used as a locative the postposition -co(m), cognate of the Latin comitative preposition cum “with” (also attested in Latin as a postpositional sufﬁx in forms like vobis-cum “with you”): Umbrian

termnu-co ueris-co uocu-com

‘at the boundary’ ‘at the gate’ ‘at the grave’

The Hebrew comitative preposition DO S /imma:d/ is related to Arabic /inda/ “beside”; the comitative Catalan preposition amb may also ﬁt this pattern, as it probably derives from the locational Latin preposition apud “at, near”. In Modern English the meaning of the (once adessive now comitative) preposition with has been extended to abstract notions such as cause (Clark and Carpenter 1989: 4): be at home with the ﬂu, tremble with fear, in a semantic chain believed to have started from the local sense (cf. Brown and Miller 1982: 184). Similarly, in the Fijian preposition e (see data in Geraghty 1976: 508ff.) the locative sense appears to have spawned a comitative meaning, from which an instrumental sense was derived:7 locative <

temporal comitative <

possessive instrumental

7 As the schema shows, Fijian also developed a possessive sense from the comitative; we shall look at the link comitation–possession later (pp. 62–4).

On the meaning of prepositions

45

Here let us home in on the link between comitative and instrumental. In Catalan the comitative meaning of amb is also extended to the instrumental sense; across languages, the two senses frequently coincide synchronically and merge diachronically. In European languages, we ﬁnd both senses in the unrelated Modern Greek , Romanian cu, French avec, Estonian -ga, Hungarian -val/-vel, German mit, and English with. Yet this is not an inevitable overlap: several languages do have distinct comitative and instrumental markers: Hebrew: Korean: Japanese: Tamil: Basque: Finnish:

instrumental preposition d /b‰/ vs. comitative NS /im/ instrumental postposition /ro/ vs. comitative /wa/ instrumental postposition /de/ vs. comitative /to/ instrumental case ending -a¯l vs. comitative -o-t: u instrumental case ending -(e)z vs. comitative -(e)kin instrumental (adessive) case ending -lla vs. comitative -ne

Indeed, a conceptual difference must exist, because a comitative complement, unlike the instrumental, can swap position with the subject in copular sentences without altering the truth-value of the proposition: x is with y and y is with x are cognitively synonymous statements. Nevertheless, an experiment carried out (Schlesinger 1979: 308) to ascertain whether the instrumental and the comitative are really only two extreme points of a conceptual continuum or two independent categories in our cognition, showed that a instrumental– comitative continuum (which languages can segment differently) is part of our universal cognitive structures. Schlesinger (1979: 317ff.) posited a multidimensional continuum, to account for other uses, such as possession (“with brown hair”) or material (“food with proteins”), etc. Another pair of psychologically close notions are instrument and manner. The relation of manner or mode is realized in the same way as the instrumental by several languages. In Basque (Saltarelli 1988: 158ff.), the expression of instrumental meaning, although distinct from the comitative, coincides with that of manner in one case form: -(e)z. Likewise, in West Greenlandic (“Eskimo”), the expression of an instrumental meaning differs from that of comitative but coincides with that of manner (Fortescue 1984: 215–17). Finnish too has a comitative case distinct from the expression of instrument, which is rendered either by the adessive case, or by the rare instructive case, whose instrumental meaning is also often of manner (Uotila Arcelli 1975: 63, 96–7): Comitative: >

la¨hdin perheineni maalle

‘I went to the country with my family’ (company)

46

Background to Greek prepositions

Instructive: > > Adessive: > >

na¨in sen omin silmin paljain pa¨in kirja on po¨yda¨lla¨ syo¨n lusikalla

‘I saw it with my eyes’ (instrument) ‘with uncovered head’ (manner) ‘the book is on the table’ (location) ‘I eat with a spoon’ (instrument)

The Finnish adessive (i.e. locative) case has therefore instrumental meaning. We saw earlier (p. 43–5) that the expression of locative meaning in many languages has become comitative, and that the expression of comitative meaning has often become instrumental. The shift from comitative to instrumental, furthermore, has been found to be unidirectional (Heine and Kuteva 2005: 200). We can then note, in post-Classical Greek as in languages across the world, frequent instances of coincidence of (the case or) adposition employed for the marking of motionless position (locative) and approaching movement (allative): (2.7)

Modern Greek: a stative location æ ŒÆØ c ºÅ ‘(s)he is in town’

b goal motion Ø c ºÅ ‘(s)he goes to town’

Thus the same preposition marks both result locations (with verbs of inherently directed motion) or simple locations (with verbs that do not denote directed movement, including static verbs). Examples are rife: the distinction locative/allative in many languages appears to be synchronically lacking or diachronically lost: both English both English both English

at and to in and into on and onto

correspond to French a` correspond to Italian in correspond to German auf

French a` comes from the Latin ad “to”, while the descendant of Latin in “in/ at”, French en, is becoming obsolete. In Lithuanian, on the contrary, in (>i˛) has lost any locative sense and only has allative/illative meaning: “(in)to”. An instance of directionalþlocative merger (“directive”þ“dative-locative”) also occurred in Hittite (cf. Luraghi 1991: 64ff.); Japanese too expresses both meanings with the postposition ni. Some theoreticians (e.g. Fillmore 1968: 25) thought that there is only a surface difference between locative and directional, determined by constituent structure or by the verb. We can take these observations a step further by noticing that very many languages mark the recipients of “verbs of giving” in the same way as allatives (and that the allative sense, historically, usually came ﬁrst): (2.8)

Ancient Greek: a goal motion ø ﬁ

‘fell to the ground’

(Il. 5.82)

On the meaning of prepositions b indirect object ø Ø ÆPﬁH . . . Ø Ł ‘he gives to him . . . fee’

47

(Xen. An. 1.1.10)

The same double use is found in the Modern Greek preposition , in the Swedish till, in the Turkish dative, or in the Finnish allative case. Finally, we can note that the allative marking used with verbs of giving, in a number of languages, has also been extended to direct objects: (2.9)

Spanish: a goal motion Voy a Madrid ‘I go to Madrid’

b indirect object Le di un regalo a Juan ‘I give a present to John’

c other object He visto a Juan ‘I saw John’ Thus, as Blansitt (1988: 177–8) points out, we ﬁnd a continuum along which function markers extend their meaning: static location—motion-to—indirect object—direct object Any two (or more) of the functions above can be expressed by the same preposition in transitive clauses only if they are contiguous in the order schema. What is commonly called “indirect object” or “dative” is usually only an allative linked with an experiencer; the distinction between direct and indirect objects have been shown to be undeﬁnable if not unfeasible (cf. Jespersen 1924: 174, S.R. Anderson 1988). All these phenomena suggests that various non-spatial senses of cases or adpositions can be interconnected, perhaps in a chain of semantic developments, and that they are related to a spatial meaning.

2.5 The role of spatial meanings The possible connection between the different meanings of a preposition raises the question of whether one (type of) meaning is synchronically more basic or salient than the others, and of whether one (type of) meaning is diachronically the starting point of the others. For a long time the guess has been occasionally ventured by scholars that spatial expressions in language, regardless of cultural differences, may be, semantically and grammatically, somehow more fundamental than non-spatial ones, and may, in fact, be the basis from which the latter are derived. This conjecture, which has come to be called the “localistic hypothesis”, in its most radical form suggests that locative

48

Background to Greek prepositions

expressions are the foundation of all semantics. As such, a localistic conception may have implications that go far beyond linguistics: In its strongest versions the locative hypothesis constitutes a profound conjecture about the fundamental nature of human language and, by extension, human cognition. (Gee and Kegl 1982: 335)

The concerns of theoretical linguists now largely overlap with those of philosophers, to the point that keeping the two disciplines and, above all, their insights separate “would be folly” (Chomsky 2006: 143). The term “localism” can, however, be understood in different ways; it can, for instance, refer to: (i) psychological processing (ii) language acquisition (iii) language history Nevertheless, the basic localistic idea is usually formulated in very general terms (cf. Lyons 1977: 718; Miller 2001: 19–21). The focus of localistic speculations, both in classical philology and modern linguistics, has primarily been the semantics of cases, for which theories have been developed within different frameworks (cf. Miller 1984: 246, 1985: 121). In the nineteenth century, the idea was well known to (and extensively discussed by) even those who did not share it: Die localistische Casustheorie schreibt allen Casibus obliquis eine ra¨umliche Grundbedeutung zu; die Casus sollen urspru¨nglich nur locale Beziehungen bezeichnet haben; erst spa¨ter seien sie durch Uebertragung localer Beziehungen auf geistige zur Bezeichnung (temporaler und) logischer Beziehungen verwendet worden. The localistic theory of case ascribes a spatial basic meaning to all oblique cases. The cases are supposed to have indicated originally just local relations, and only later to have come to be used for the expression of (temporal and) abstract relations, through the extension of local relations to ﬁguratives ones. (Holzweissig 1877: 6)

Localistic theories of cases are only tangentially relevant to our concern, which is the diachrony of Greek prepositions; it is nonetheless curious to note that their start has been traced back (Robins 1974: 107) to a Byzantine scholar of the thirteenth century, Maximus Planudes, who drew his observations from Greek. To say that Planudes had an general localistic conception, or even a theory, is perhaps an unwarranted exaggeration; but it is true that he is the ﬁrst scholar on record to relate the Greek cases to basic local meanings:

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49

Å Øø ‹ø ŒÆ ØÆ çı ØŒc IŒºıŁÆ Æƒ æE ÆyÆØ Kæø Ø, e Ł ŒÆd F ŒÆd ﬁB, a æE ºÆªÆ KŒºÅæ Æ Ø· e b Ł c ªØŒ, e b F c ØŒ, e b ﬁB c ÆNØÆØŒ. It is remarkable how by some natural agreement these three questions, “whence”, “where”, and “whither” receive the three oblique cases: “whence” the genitive, “where” the dative, and “whither” the accusative. (Bachman 1828: 122)

As Hjelmslev (1935: 12) remarked, “c’est la meilleure the´orie des cas grecs qui ait e´te´ faite”. The Ancient Greek cases could be renamed in a way that reﬂects more explicitly their spatial sense: genitive > dative > accusative >

ablative locative allative

case of motion-from case of rest-at case of motion-to

The idea that the earliest meaning of the Ancient Greek (and more broadly, Indo-European) cases was spatial was expressed, although rarely as little more than a hunch, by many classical philologists of the nineteenth century: Die Casus-Endungen dru¨cken die wechselseitigen vorzu¨glich und urspru¨nglich einzig ra¨umlichen von Raume auch auf Zeit und Ursache u¨bertragenen Verthaltnisse der Nomina. The case endings express the reciprocal relationships between nouns, which were principally and originally solely spatial, and were extended from space also to time and cause. (Bopp 1833: 136)

The extent to which philologists agreed with this view was very variable, so that “localists” were (and are) not a well-deﬁned category (cf. Michelsen 1843: 14). In the nineteenth century, nonetheless, the extent to which a localistic interpretation was applicable to the case inventory of the classical languages was a hot topic in philological treatises (see Hjelmslev 1935: 36–61). The hypothesis that local senses may be synchronically or diachronically primary has also been voiced (or denied) with reference to prepositions. Brndal was amongst the many scholars totally against a localistic interpretation of prepositions. His views are quite representative: Præpositioner er da ikke i nogen Henseende, selv ikke i abstracteste Forstand, lokale eller rumlige. De har i sig selv intet med Sted, og altsaa intet med Bevægelse eller Hvile, at go¨re . . . hvad Præpositionen ellers maatte betegne, er ikke bundet til Rum eller Tid (det er tværtimod ved Anvendelse af disse abstracte Relationer, at Begreberne Rum og Tid eller “Rum-Tid” bygges op) . . . det er kun Relationerne, ikke Positionerne der udtrykkes ved Præpositioner. Prepositions are in no respect—not even in the most abstract sense—local or spatial. In themselves, they have nothing to do with place, nor with motion or

50

Background to Greek prepositions

rest . . . whatever a preposition may otherwise indicate, it has no connection with space or time (it is on the contrary by using these abstract relations that the concept of space and time or “spatio-temporality” are developed). . . . it is only relations, not positions, that are expressed by prepositions. (Brndal 1928: 80)

Others dismissed the localistic idea outright (cf. Danielsen 1979: 478–9). But nowadays even syntax textbooks (Tallerman 2005: 48) concede that “perhaps the most typical role of prepositions and postpositions is to mark locative and temporal information”. Across the centuries, a number of thinkers and scholars explicitly suggested that the primary meaning of prepositions is spatial, for example: Omne corpus aut mouetur, aut quiescit. . . . Hinc eliciemus Præpositionis essentialem deﬁnitionem. . . . Natura omnis constat aut motu, aut quiete. Præpositio autem, harum rerum nota est. Every entity either moves or is still. . . . From this we draw the fundamental deﬁnition of prepositions. . . . The nature of everything consists either of motion or rest. And prepositions are the expression of these things. (Scaliger 1540: 301–2) Die Bezeichnung der Raumverha¨ltnisse. . . . macht die Grundbedeutung aller eigentlichen Pra¨positionen aus. . . . Der Gebrauch einer Pra¨position bei erga¨nzenden Beziehungen hat sehr oft seinen Grund darin, dab der zu erga¨nzende Begriff einer nicht sinnlichen Tha¨tigheit durch eine ra¨umliche Bewegung als ihr Gegenbild versinnlicht wird. The indication of spatial relations . . . constitutes the fundamental meaning of all true prepositions. . . . The use of a preposition in supplementary relations is very often due to the fact that the supplementary concept of a non-sensory action is made sensory through a spatial movement as its representation. (Becker 1841: 212)

An explicitly localistic interpretation of prepositions can also be found scattered in the history of broader philosophical discourse: Il sera bon cedependant de conside´rer cette analogie des choses sensibiles et insensibiles, qui a servi de fondement aux tropes: c’est ce qu’on entendra mieux en conside´rant un exemple fort e´tendu tel qu’est celui que fournit l’usage des pre´positions comme a`, avec, de, devant, en, hors, par, pour, sur, vers, qui sont toutes prises du lieu, de la distance, et du mouvement, et transfe´re´es depuis a` toute sorte de changemens, ordres, suites, diffe´rences . . . We should examine this analogy between concrete and abstract things, which has served as a basis for turns of phrase. It will be better understood by examining very common examples such as those afforded by the use of prepositions such as to, with, of, in front of, in, outside, through, for, on, towards, which are all taken from space, distance and movement, and then transferred to all sorts of changes, orders, sequences, differences . . . (Leibniz 1765: 3,}1)

On the meaning of prepositions

51

A close inspection of the history of scholarship reveals that in the analyses of adpositional or case systems of various languages, a number of major scholars expressed a localistic perception, although not explicity formulated. Most practical grammars and books describing individual languages also seem to be largely based on tacit localistic assumptions, especially when they deal with cases or prepositions. While a chronology or a critique of localistic (case) theories is beyond our concerns here, awareness of at least some of the main names in the history of this approach is in order. Bopp’s student Wu¨llner (1827: 8), stressing the subjective element of language, its derivation from perception, and analysing the meanings of the Greek genitive, dative, and accusative in localistic terms (ibid.: 13–120), extended his localistic assumption to prepositions: Alle wahre Pra¨positionen haben das gemein, daß sie urspru¨nglich Raumanschauungen bezeichnen. All proper prepositions have the common element that they originally denote notions of space. (Wu¨llner 1827: 7)

The linguist who discussed localism most openly, extensively, and sympathetically in the ﬁrst part of the twentieth century was Hjelmslev (1935). His main, although not his only, focus was cases; he analysed all cases in terms of variables, the most important ones of which can be summarized as follows: (i) directionality, or lack thereof, thus distinguishing, for instance, the Finnish illative from the elative; (ii) coherence, the “degre´ d’intimite´” distinguishing the Finnish “exterior cases” and “interior cases” (ulkopaikallissijat/sisa¨paikallissijat). (iii) objectivity or subjectivity, i.e. whether the choice of a given case does or does not vary according to the viewpoint of the speaker (e.g. “behind/ in front of the table” is subjective unlike “under/above the table”) Hjelmslev’s most daring suggestion was that all cases—even the cases not commonly regarded as local (or as having a semantic, rather than grammatical, content), such as nominative or accusative—could be analysed in essentially the same terms, treating grammatical relations as derivative in respect to semantic relations.8 Also relevant to our present interest was Hjelmslev’s idea, shared by several others, that case functions (as opposed to forms) are also expressed by prepositions, postpositions, word order, or verbal endings (Janse 1990: 79). 8 On the problems posed by that traditional distinction between local and grammatical cases in ancient Greek, see Bortone (2002).

52

Background to Greek prepositions

After Hjelmslev, a few more linguists have propounded a synchronic localistic interpretation of all semantic relations; amongst them, J. M. Anderson elaborated a localistic theory of case in full, combined with a generative approach. His main work appeared in the late 1970s (Anderson 1977) and he revised it at different stages (cf. Anderson 1997: 169ff. and Anderson 2006: 115–48, 178–219). His starting point is not unlike Planudes’, and his scope encompasses Hjelmslev’s: A localist theory holds that the members of the category of case are opposed to each other in terms of (combinations of) the directional notion “source”, “goal”, and “resting point”. So that not only are the “concrete” uses of case markers to be so interpreted, but also the “abstract”; and indeed even those markers (like the nominative in many languages) which are entirely or almost entirely “abstract” or “grammatical”. (Anderson 1977: 111)

In the belief that non-local relations are synchronically just a product of the nouns and verbs involved, Anderson started by suggesting that there are only four case relations (attributing them to adpositions as much as to cases), resulting from the combination of two binary features: Absolute Locative

Ergative Ablative

——

place

——

place

——

——

source

source

Anderson’s theory of cases aroused much interest, and he is to be credited with having made the localistic hypothesis the object of discussion amongst linguists, philologists, and scholars of other ﬁelds, with a variety of responses. Some acknowledged its force—Fillmore (1977c: 90) described Anderson’s theory as “the one that hit hardest” the approach that he had advocated. While the suggestion that all cases could be analysed synchronically on a local basis bafﬂed many traditionalists, the suggestion that the meaning of cases and adpositions might be historically spatial, and that local senses may be diachronically primary, was always met with less resistance: The so-called “localist” theory of cases may be justiﬁed from the diachronic point of view. From the synchronic one the expression of spatial relation generally represents one only of the possible functions of a given case-form. (Kuryłowicz 1964: 202)

Some more recent theoreticians appear to take a similar view (cf. Vandeloise 2006: 153). We shall focus on the diachronic validity of the suggestion that local meanings are the starting point of non-local ones, when tracing the diachrony of Greek prepositions. But it is interesting to note that the synchronic validity

On the meaning of prepositions

53

of the localistic hypothesis, albeit not at the core of this study, is also supported by many sources: for example, as we shall see next, psychological studies have provided interesting data on language acquisition, emphasizing the centrality of spatial organization in human cognition, thus shedding light on the age-old enigma of polysemy.

2.6 Language acquisition and development Space has long been recognized as central in the speech of little children (cf. Bowerman 1996: 385). Grimm (1975: 100) after studying children’s acquisition and use of (German) prepositions, reported that the ﬁrst prepositions used expressed “simple topological relation”. Clark (1973: 28) argued that children acquire linguistic expressions for space and time because they have some prior knowledge of space and time. The child’s acquisition of spatial (and temporal) terminology rests on preliminary sensory knowledge; this knowledge, in other words, derives from the intrinsic nature of a child as a being that lives on this planet, has a certain perceptual apparatus, and moves about in a certain manner. In this sense, Clark argued, one can say that there is a body of knowledge that is somehow innate. As Jackendoff (1983: 210) observed, in human evolution, spatial organization must have existed long before language; pre-linguistic conceptual representation (cf. Mandler 1996: 365ff.) is spatial. The idea that mental concepts must be originally derived from sensory sources (from the visual or tactile perception of the space around us and of what it contains, and from the fact that we are ourselves a body), has been accepted by a number of developmental psychologists (starting from Piaget 1948: 57ff.), but is much older, and can be found, mutatis mutandis, in the work of many philosophers. Kant, in the “Trascendental Aesthetics” in his Critique of Pure Reason (1787: I: }} 1,2,4), wrote: (}1) . . . Alles Denken aber muß sich, es sei geradezu (directe) oder im Umschweife (indirecte), vermittelst gewisser Merkmale zuletzt auf Anschauungen, mithin bei uns auf Sinnlichkeit beziehen, weil uns auf andere Weise kein Gegenstand gegeben werden kann. Die Wirkung eines Gegenstandes auf die Vorstellungsfa¨higkeit, sofern wir von demselben afﬁziert werden, ist Empﬁndung. (}2) . . . Vermittelst des a¨ußeren Sinnes, (einer Eigenschaft unsers Gemu¨ts), stellen wir uns Gegensta¨nde als außer uns und diese insgesamt im Raume vor. . . . Der Raum . . . allen a¨ußeren Anschauungen zum Grunde liegt. ¨ ußeres . . . Es gibt aber auch außer dem Raum keine andere subjektive und auf etwas A ¨ bezogene Vorstellung, die a priori objektiv heißen konnte. Denn man kann von der Anschauung im Raume herleiten. (}2)

54

Background to Greek prepositions

. . . Wir ko¨nnen demnach nur aus dem Standpunkte eines Menschen von Raum, von ausgedehnten Wesen usw. reden. (}2) (}1) . . . all thought must, through certain signs, relate ultimately to perceptions—in a straight (direct), or roundabout (indirect) way; consequently, in us, it must relate to sense, because an object cannot be given to us in any other way. The effect of an object upon the faculty of representation, inasmuch as we are affected by the object, is sensation. (}2) . . . By means of the external sense (a property of our mind) we represent to ourselves objects as outside us, and these as a whole in space. . . . Space . . . is the basis of all external perceptions. (}4) . . . There is not, outside space, any representation subjective and referring to something external (to us), which could be called objective a priori. We derive those from perception in space. . . . We can therefore speak of space, extended objects, etc. only from the human viewpoint. (Kant 1787: I: }}1,2,4)

There is a growing body of evidence supporting an interpretation of human language (and human cognition in general) as based on the human experience of the world, and as developed through the use of metaphors—the starting point being concrete sensorial perceptions. This has wide philosophical implications, although the idea is far from new.9 The Ancient Greeks often noted that ¼Łæø . . . ø rÆØ æ “man is the measure of everything” (Arist. Metaph. 1053a36; cf. also Plato Tht. 152a, 183c). As emphasized by Danesi (1987: 157–64), Nietzsche too saw language in particular as anthropomorphic, and saw cognition as making use of metaphorized images; Vico preceded him in emphasizing the all-pervasive nature of metaphor, and the way in which humans interpret reality through sensorial analogies. Our concrete experience of the world supplies us with schemata such as container–contained, part– whole, centre–periphery, and source–path–goal. There is, therefore, a strong argument for positing theoretical semantic structures that reﬂect all this (cf. Miller 1984: 244).10 We now have plentiful evidence that natural languages capture the location of an object and its spatial attributes by making reference to the properties of the human body. The habitat and location of our body, its spatial characteristics (shape and size), its ways of moving11 and, in particular, the position 9 On the signiﬁcance of this in the history of philosophy see Johnson (1987). On the Piaget– Chomsky debate on cognitive structures existing a priori or formed by experience, see PiattelliPalmarini (1980). 10 The interpretation of case government after prepositions through image schemata rather than features has proved proﬁtable in other languages, such as Russian (cf. Nesset 2004: 291). 11 Some empirical evidence (Radden 1988: 381) suggests that the perception of motion is more fundamental than that of shape.

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and the characteristics of our organs of perception are all reﬂected in human languages. Heine et al. (1991a: 157) even suggested that the ﬁrst conceptualized notion is one’s person, with space being an external reality that is conceptualized as an object. It is also clear that adpositions reﬂect the quantity of detail visually perceived by a human being. On the vertical axis, a distinction of [þcontact]/[contact] is often made between on and above; this is not done for under, and “le fait est universel” (Hjelmslev 1935: 132). Front and back usually make no [contact] distinction, and if the distinction is made, it is only in the front area. We must be aware, however, that all this may apply less or more to particular languages; the observation that language is anthropomorphic and ego-centric relies mainly on western languages and indeed on the western discourse on cognition (Levinson 2003: 9–13). The evidence that our characteristics as human beings affect the structure of the language(s) we speak has sparked off some (largely anti-generative) linguistic theories. The main school moving in this direction is that of Cognitive Linguistics, which sees our use of language as seated in our general cognitive apparatus (deixis being the basis) rather than as a separate faculty, as maintained by the Chomskyan school, which follows a modular conception of cognition (see Lakoff 1987: 58, Jackendoff 1978: 202, Sweetser 1990: 1). It also emphasizes that the impression that the outside world makes on our senses causes us to develop language in a particular way; the generative school, on the other hand, claims that language is a genetically-given faculty, and that language is clearly a biological organ (Chomsky 2000: 1–7), whose main characteristics are not due to external stimuli. In Cognitive Linguistics, the emphasis is shifted onto the “humanness”, or “human embodiment of understanding” (Johnson 1987: x), concluding that “Thought is embodied, that is, the structures used to put together our conceptual systems grow out of bodily experience and make sense in terms of it” (Lakoff 1987: xiv). The whole of our cognition, in the cognitivist view (cf. Varela et al. 1991: 147, Zelinski-Wibbelt 1993: 12ff.), is embodied. It is affected by our bodies, metaphorized from bodily experience; this means that our conception of the world is sensorial, not scientiﬁc (cf. Svorou 1994: 1; Evans and Green 2006: 46ff.), contrary to the traditional “objectivistic” view that semantic representation is propositional and truth-conditional.12 While we have no reason to 12 An example of the difﬁculties presented by the objective view is that different meanings of a polysemous word thus remain unaccountable for (Sweetser 1990: 4ff.), as they do not necessarily share objective truth conditions:

Œ ø ŒÆØ æ ø lit. ‘I cut and sew’ > ENTAILMENT “I know how to sew” Œ ø ŒÆØ æ ø idiom. ‘I rabbit on’ > * ENTAILMENT “I know how to sew”.

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Background to Greek prepositions

assume that this is true of all languages, it is clearly true of English and Greek. There are ill-deﬁned spatial characterizations in many languages that cannot be understood in objective terms but only through “common sense” (Varela et al. 1991: 147ff.), taking the non-objective nature of a human viewpoint into account. One instance is the concept of “region”, which will prove useful in the analysis of Modern Greek prepositions (p. 273–4). Its objective limits are practically undeﬁnable, and depend not only on the physical, but also on the functional, interactional, and perceptive characteristics of the entities involved (Svorou 1994: 15). Cognitive Linguistics attributes a key role to metaphor, both synchronically and diachronically. Langacker (1987: 1) set the tone by claiming that “if ﬁgurative language were systematically eliminated from our database, little if any data would remain”; Johnson (1987: xiii) concurred that “embodied and imaginative structures” must receive a central place in any adequate account of meaning and rationality. Since the beginning of the 1980s, there has been a large amount of work on the pervasiveness of metaphors in our perception and conception of the world, essentially denying a reality beyond the subjective (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 159), in line with broader postmodern discourse. A number of recent studies have examined and emphasized the central role played by metaphor in our cognition (see, e.g., Ko¨vecses 2002), in our interpretation of reality, and in the way we express it linguistically. Reference is made to abstract structures of images (Gestalt structures, image schemata) involving bodily motions, perceptions, manipulations of and interactions with external entities. These have patterns, by which we give order to our experience of the world: language is based on this process. All this is relevant also to historical linguistics, because Cognitive Linguistics points out that metaphor is the key mechanism in language change (Croft and Cruse 2004: 193–211). Prescriptivists objecting to language change realized this instinctively: George Orwell’s rule against the decline of language was never to use a metaphor or a simile (Edwards 1995: 150). It is not surprising, although it is an oversimpliﬁcation, that the basic approach of Cognitive Linguistics has been dubbed “generalized neo-localism” (Rastier 2006: 93); localists such as Anderson (1992: 71) indeed had argued that “abstract situations are conceptualized in these spatial terms. . . . Abstract domains are structured linguistically by space-based metaphor, including its ego-centric orientation”. Localists had preceded Cognitive Linguists also in interpreting transitivity (in line with the etymology of the term) as a ﬂow of the energy or action (cf. Cienki 1995: 151–4). Cognitive Linguistics,

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57

in turn, has built upon localistic scholarship, exploring extensively the pervasiveness of metaphorization, noticing the role played by other elements of our perceptual world besides location, such as animacy, and drawing upon the idea of meanings being structured around a prototype, a theory which was explored in the 1970s (cf. Dahl 1979: 18).

2.7 Temporal and other meanings In the synchronic or diachronic development of meanings, where do temporal senses stand? Should they be classiﬁed together with spatial meanings? Traditional grammar groups both spatial and temporal meanings under the cover term “concrete”, or even “local” (e.g. Lyons 1979a: 298). Linguists who were determined to see language as a mirror of objective reality rather than as a reﬂection of human experience took the fact that physics could not distinguish space and time as proof that spatial and temporal notions must coincide in language too. Brndal (1940: 24) rejected the distinction between the two, making direct reference to Einstein’s theory of relativity. The fact that language had also often been described in terms speciﬁc to natural sciences may have contributed to this attitude. Some (e.g. Klein 1994: 1ff.) reiterated that time and space are equally fundamental to cognition, and indeed that time is more basic in the structural organization of language. Language is not physics, however. And as Piaget (1946: 2) had noted, space and time may be objectively “un tout indissociable”, but whereas space can be conceived regardless of time, the conceptualization of time depends on that of space. In language acquisition (cf. Adams 1885: 2; Mandler 1996: 374) the experience of space is not conceptualized at the same age as that of time. Jespersen (1922: 138) thought that children are confused by the fact that prepositions can be used either spatially or temporally, and cites a very young girl who, when told that she would be washed “in a moment”, replied that she needed to be washed “in the bath”; this, if it is not an exceptionally sophisticated word-play for a little child, attests a stage at which spatial meanings are used but temporal ones are not yet understood. Over a century ago, the classical study by Stern and Stern (1907: 231) stated that “Ortsadverbien viel fru¨her auftreten als die Zeitadverbien”, and expressed amazement at the fact that this had not been pointed out before. Studies in the 1970s (Clark 1973: 61; Grimm 1975: 110) conﬁrmed that spatial terms are used spontaneously by children before temporal ones. Grimm (ibid.) reported that in her corpus of children’s use of (German) prepositions, (i) temporal Ps were fewer than local ones; (ii) all temporal Ps were also used as local ones (and the most used temporal Ps were also the most used local ones).

58

Background to Greek prepositions

As Stern and Stern (1907: 233) observed, expressions of time are in fact often transparently a metaphor of spatial images (in English as in their German examples): point in time, stretch of time, passing of time, long/short time, and as indeed the use of the prepositions before and after show (cf. also Lyons 1977: 718). Time is linguistically a “pseudospace” (Jackendoff 1983: 189, cf. also Anderson 1973a: 14), and it has been shown that languages commonly use originally spatial adpositions and cases to express time relations (Haspelmath 1997: 140). Finnish provides particularly transparent examples of this. The Finnish cases also have temporal meanings (Karlsson 1978: 119ff.). Their correspondences between spatial image and time reference intuitively make perfect sense: Inessive (inside) Elative (out of) Illative (into) Adessive (at) Essive (as) Ablative (from) Translative (becoming)

> within a given time: > time since when: > extension of time-span: > time at which: > also time at which: > going back to time: > time prearranged:

e.g. e.g. e.g. e.g. e.g. e.g. e.g.

‘ﬁnished within an hour’ ‘since 1966’ ‘(from day) to day’ ‘by day’, ‘next week’ ‘at Easter’ ‘next summer’ ‘dating from the ﬁfth century’ ‘plans for the weekend’

The development from a local sense to a temporal one is sometimes a ﬁrst step towards the creation of subordinating particles or mood markers. Spatial cases and prepositions are often used also with verbal forms. In Kannada (Madhta 1976: 141), the locative case, initially indicating a point in space and then a point in time, comes to be used to indicate temporal occurrence during the action indicated by the verb, on which it gets sufﬁxed: mo¯hana mayda¯ninalli bidda lit. ‘Mohan in the playground fell’ avanu a¯duva samayadalli bidda lit. ‘he while playing fell’ _ In Hebrew too, the locative preposition d /b‰/ is used with a temporal meaning, preﬁxed to the “construct inﬁnitive”. This use is often echoed in Biblical Greek, although “quamvis enim phrasis K ﬁH cum inﬁnitivo sit omnino graeca, usus eius temporalis non est classicus sed hebraicus” (Zerwick 1949: 88). For example: (2.10)

ŒÆd Kª K ﬁH r ÆØ ÆPe K ØA ﬁ H ºø . . . ‘and it came to pass, while/when he was in one of the cities, . . .’ (Luke 5:12)

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59

The manifold “inﬁnitives” of Finnish (Karlsson 1978: 183ff.) receive case sufﬁxes in a similar way. Relative clauses can be equivalent to case-marked verbal forms: kaupungissa ¼ in town

(2.11) Kun ha¨n oli while he bePAST3ps ole-ssa-ni kaupungissa be-INESSIVE-his in town ‘while he was in town’

Notice that the temporal case ending on the verb is the same local case sufﬁx on the noun (data partly from Karlsson 1978: 188): (2.12) ha¨n on kirjasto-ssa he is library-INESSIVE ‘he is reading in the library’

lukema-ssa to read-INESSIVE

Icelandic uses “to be at” in order to say “to be doing”: (2.13)

hann er að lesa ‘he is [at] reading’

And so does Turkish (cf. also Bastuji 1976: 90): (2.14) okumak-ta-dır ‘to read-[LOC]-is’ > ‘he is reading’ Examples of how concrete spatial meanings can be extended to the temporal domain and to various grammatical domains could be multiplied endlessly; let us look at a few by way of example. Consider now prepositions and cases with a partitive sense. They may indicate not only a spatial but a temporal subsection of the referent object; for example in Polish (data partly from Wierzbicka 1983: 259–61): ja chce˛ parasol ja chce˛ parasola daj mi no´z˙ daj mi noz˙a

[ACCUSATIVE] [GENITIVE] [ACCUSATIVE] [GENITIVE]

‘I want the umbrella (for good)’ ‘I want the umbrella (for a moment)’ ‘give me the knife (for good)’ ‘give me the knife (for a moment)’

The function performed in Finnish (Karlsson 1978: 96) by the partitive case (as opposed to the accusative or the nominative) is to identify only a portion of a referent. However, the Finnish partitive has also come to be used as an aspectual (imperfective) marker, indicating a partially unfolded event. The Finnish partitive case was originally, and to a small degree still is, a local case;

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Background to Greek prepositions

its evolution shows therefore a local origin for an aspectual (or Aktionsart) distinction. Contrast the pairs below: (2.15)

(2.16)

Finnish a Ulla luki la¨ksyn ‘Ulla did her homework’ b Ulla luki la¨ksya¨ ‘Ulla was doing her homework’ Finnish a Antti rakensi talon ‘Andy built the house’ b Antti rakensi taloa ‘Andy was building the house’

(accusative case) (partitive case)

(accusative case) (partitive case)

Both spatial and aspectual uses of the Finnish partitive correspond to the Swedish use of pa˚, a preposition indicating location on a portion of an object: (2.17) Swedish a Ulla la¨ste la¨xan ‘Ulla did her homework’ b Ulla la¨ste pa˚ la¨xan ‘Ulla was doing her homework’ (2.18) Swedish a Antti byggde huset ‘Andy built the house’ b Antti byggde pa˚ huset ‘Andy was building the house’

(no adposition) (with adposition)

(no adposition) (with adposition)

Temporal concomitance is expressed, in many languages, by comitative markers, which also indicate location. Examples include the Ancient and Koine´ Greek prepositions , – Æ and “with”, Modern Greek “with”—as well as, by coincidence, the synonymous Hebrew NS /im/ (Brown et al. 1906 (1952): 768a) and Latin cum: (2.19) Ancient Greek a æÆ ﬁ (Pind.Pyth. 11.10) ‘at eve/as the evening comes’ lit. ‘with evening’ b – æÆ ﬁ ‘when it was day’ lit. ‘with day’

(Thuc. 2. 94)

On the meaning of prepositions (2.20) Koine´ Greek Œøæ . . . Ł æÆ . . . ‘by night. . . . whereas by day. . . .’

61

(Strabo 6.3.8) (cf. S¸tef 1970: 76)

(2.21) Modern Greek b c ¼ØÅ IŁÇı a ºıºØÆ ‘with [the coming of] spring, ﬂowers bloom’ On the other hand, if followed by a contradictory sentence, comitative prepositions can be used as adversatives: Modern Greek Hebrew (Ne.5.18) Turkish

‹ºÆ ÆFÆ ‘with [¼despite] all that’ EG NS F ‘and with [¼despite] that’ bununla beraber / birlikte ‘together with [¼despite] that’

In Finnish, most other case endings can also be used on verbs (Karlsson 1978: 183ff.): (2.22)

(2.23)

Translative ha¨n tuli ‘(s)he came

Oxfordiin opiskellakseen ﬁlologiaa to Oxford to study philology’

Instructive (¼comitative) lapsi tuli kotiin itkien ‘the child came home crying’

(2.24) Instructive (¼instrumental) menimme sinne ka¨vellen ‘we went there walking’ (2.25)

Adessive (¼instrumental) menimme sinne ka¨velema¨lla¨ ‘we went there walking’

(2.26) Abessive ha¨n la¨hti kertomatta meille ‘(s)he left without telling us’ (2.27)

Elative ha¨n tuli syo¨masta ‘he [has] come from having-a-meal’

(2.28)

Illative menen ulos tanssimaan ‘I go out to dance’

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Background to Greek prepositions

The last example is identical to the use of English to and of Hebrew M/l‰/, employed as: (i) allative/dative preposition (ii) ﬁnal clause complementizer (iii) general inﬁnitive marker Langacker (1992: 304ff.) argued that the English inﬁnitival to has no goaldirected or spatial sense, and that there is no reason to identify it with the preposition to. This may be plausible synchronically, but does not weaken the argument that concrete spatial imagery is the origin of these grammatical structures. Lichtenberk (1991: 40) reports that in To’aba’ita (Austronesian) the ablative case marker has developed into a negative ﬁnal complementizer (“in order not to”). In Bodic languages (Tibeto-Burmese) the evolution of local postpositions into subordinating conjunctions is also clearly attested (adapted from Genetti 1986: 387ff., 1991: 229): (2.29) Locative sense > ‘at’

temporal location > hypothetical/contrastive ‘when/while’ ‘if/although’

(2.30) Ablative sense > ‘from’

temporal sequence > cause ‘after/since’ ‘because’

(2.31)

Allative sense > ‘towards’

temporal extension > ﬁnal ‘until’ ‘in order to’

Very common abstract concepts are thus expressed by prepositional (or case) constructions, and can be proﬁtably interpreted in (diachronic) localistic terms.13 Let us consider two examples amply represented also in Greek prepositional usage.

2.8 Examples of spatial metaphors The notion of possession can be seen as a locative image; it is so described by a number of theoreticians (cf. e.g. Fillmore 1969: 16); the (traditionally termed) subject of English possession verbs has been analysed as dative (Anderson 1984: 242), and the subject of sentences like Harry kept my CD as locative (Allan 2001: 392). Furthermore, possession is transparently expressed

13 In many abstract phrases the original local sense is still transparent, or is still in use in other contexts; the border synchrony/diachrony is again blurred (cf. Miller 1984: 259).

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63

as location in several languages. “De fait avoir comme lexe`me est, dans le monde, une rarete´; la plupart des langues ne le connaissent pas. Au sein meˆme des langues indo-europe´ennes, c’est une acquisition tardive” (Benveniste, 1960: 194ff.). Indeed, Greek and Latin adessive prepositions (also when used as preverbs) did have this possessive meaning: (2.32)

åÅ b PŒ k paqa art indeed (is)not being near you ‘what you have is not an art’

(2.33) x F c p›q- Ø to whom mind not near-is ‘who have no mind’ (2.34)

c peqd ºØ the about Philip ‘Philip’s tyranny’

(Pl. Ion 533D)

(Pl. Ion 534D)

(Xen. Hell. 5.4.2)

ıæÆÆ tyranny

(2.35) diuitiae apud illos sunt riches at them are ‘they have riches’

(Sall.Cat. 20.8)

The plain dative case of Latin and Classical Greek had this possessive sense on its own. So, “I have a book” was expressed as “to me is a book”: Classical Greek Latin Russian

K Ø º ¼ mihi est liber ¼ y vtyz tcnm rybuf ¼

º Øa åø librum habeo (z bvt˛ rybuy)

In many languages this spatial image is the only way to indicate possession, and there is no verb “to have”: Latvian

man ir gra¯mata ¼ ‘to-me is book’

*. . . . gra¯mata * ‘I have book’

An adposition with dative (¼ allative) sense is also used to indicate possession in languages of other families: Arabic Hebrew14

YUR JM J

‘exists to me book’

(allative P)

‘exists to me book’

(allative P)

14 In Modern Hebrew this construction is changing to YUR E Ð‘A JM J (est mihi librum with the Ð subject marked as object), probably under the inﬂuence of European languages (i.e. Yiddish). See Ziv (1976).

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Background to Greek prepositions

It could be argued that the possessive sense of such allative expressions perhaps was arrived at through the sense of indirect object, such as “exists a book given to me” (although that meaning too is derived from an allative meaning), or through a beneﬁciary phrase like “exists a book for me” (although this too, ultimately, is of spatial origin). However, many other languages have other spatial expressions (not dative but locative, or comitative, or adessive) indicating ownership by proximity. Besides Greek and Latin prepositional phrases with Ææ and apud above, note also: Finnish South Welsh Swahili

minulla on kirja mae llyfr gyda ﬁ nina kitabu

‘at me is book’ ‘with me book is’ ‘with me book’

(adessive case) (comitative P) (comitative P)15

Sometimes, within one language, different spatial constructions indicate possession with different features, such as duration, inalienability,16 or the like: Scots Gaelic tha leabhar leam

‘I have a book (borrowed/ (comitative P) momentarily)’ Scots Gaelic tha leabhar agam ‘I have a book (mine/for (adessive P) ever)’ We saw that Greek and other languages conceptualize possession (or rather, belonging) as a motion-to; but possession can also be expressed with an image of motion-from: a partitive expression. The conceptualization of possession as an image of partition or departure-from is seen in the prepositional use of Modern Greek and other European languages: English Spanish Dutch Modern Greek

of de van I

(compare off with full ablative meaning) (still used also in ablative sense—cf. Latin de) (still used also in ablative sense) (still used chieﬂy as ablative preposition)

The Modern Greek use of I as a possessive (instead of the genitive, as in the classical language) is still limited. In standard Modern Greek it only appears with inanimate objects, and with plural animals. Thus “the eggs of the chickens” is: Stand. Modern Greek a ÆPªa Ie d Œ Classical Greek a ﬁTa H OæŁø

(* a ÆPªa H ŒH) (* a Ie H OæŁø ﬁT)

15 Thus the same possessive construction rendered in South Welsh and in Swahili by a comitative adposition (Perrot 1950: 79) corresponds to adessive (or dative) adpositions or cases in other languages—perhaps further evidence of the afﬁnity between locative and comitative notions. 16 On alienable and inalienable possession, see Lichtenberg (2005: 339ff.).

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65

In dialects, however, it has already spread to human possessors (in the standard language marked with the genitive). Thus “the father of the child” is: Stand. Mod. Greek › Æ æÆ F ÆØØF Thessalian dialect › Æ æÆ I f

(* › Æ æÆ Ie e ÆØ) (Amantos 1964: 215)

Since the Classical genitive was originally also ablative, the replacement of the genitive today by I indicates a cycle, whereby the same spatial image (possession conceptualized as a source) was adopted and, once lost, recreated.17 In English too, one can discern ablative possessive expressions (Miller 1985: 107): the insults of the crowd ¼ the insults (coming) from the crowd. In the speech of little children we hear constructions such as a ﬁnger from him or a mum from two babies (Clark and Carpenter 1989: 8). Even the verb “to have” itself is, in many languages that have one, transparently spatial: cf. Latin habeo and Spanish tengo “I hold > I have”. In Eastern Cushitic languages too (Heine et al. 1991a: 154) “to have” is “to seize”, and in Ewe (Benveniste 1960: 195) “to have” is expressed as “there is in somebody’s hands”: (2.36)

ga le asi-nye money is in-hands-my “I have money”

Given the locative basis of the concept of possession, the subject of “to have” could be regarded as an experiencer, rather than as an agent. The Latin habere and the Greek verb åø “to have” conﬁrms this clearly. They can both be stative verbs: they are used intransitively to indicate that the subject feels or ﬁnds itself in a condition or place: Ancient Greek

H åØ; ‘how are [lit. have] you ?’

Latin

bene habet ‘that is [lit. has] ﬁne’

(Ar.Eq. 7) (Livy 6.35.8)

Late Latin and post-Classical Greek also attests “have” used for “being somewhere”: (2.37) O IÅ F yæ ÆPe

ÆæÆ æÆ XÅ åÆ K ﬁH Å ø ﬁ (John 11:17) ‘Jesus found him that had been [lit. had] in the grave already for four days’

17 Common Koine´ phrases expressing with an ablative construction ( Ææa F KØ º “your letter”) what would otherwise be rendered by the genitive also have a semantically justiﬁed origin: “the letter that came from you” (earlier meaning of Ææ þ ablative genitive) and “the letter written by you”, agentive (also common meaning of Ææ þ genitive, arguably derived from the ablative sense).

66 (2.39)

Background to Greek prepositions Siracusis habet ‘he lives [lit. has] in Siracusa’

(Arr.Menan.69)

The locative sense of “to have” is equally evident in Chinese. An ordinary locative phrase like “there is x at y” necessarily entails the use of “to have”: (2.40)

上有人 ‘there are people in the street’

which is parallel to Modern Greek: (2.41) f æ ı åØ in the streets has ‘there is trafﬁc in the streets’

ŒÅ Å trafﬁc

Note also the difference between the last sentence and: (2.42)

ƒ æ Ø åı ŒÅ Å (literal) ‘the streets have trafﬁc’

When “the streets” are really the subject of the sentence (as in the latter example), there is a different number-agreement on the verb. When the verb åø is overtly existential/locative, it appears in the third person singular (cf. French il y a “there is” lit. “it there has”). It is, therefore, semantically equivalent to other existential verbs (although the noun is then the subject, not the object): (2.43)

f æ ı åØ ŒÅ Å ¼ f æ ı æåØ ŒÅ Å ‘in the streets there is trafﬁc’

Indeed, åØ has an even stronger, more speciﬁc spatial sense than PæåØ; while one can say indifferently (example from Kazazis 1968: 84): (2.44) a åØ çÆ ÆÆ c ˇPÆºÆ; ‘are there ghosts in Wales?’ b æåı çÆ ÆÆ c ˇPÆºÆ; ‘are there ghosts in Wales?’ in a sentence of a more general kind, where location is not speciﬁed, and the meaning is more existential and less overtly locative, åØ would be incorrect: (2.45) a åØ çÆ ÆÆ; ‘do ghosts exist?’ b æåı çÆ ÆÆ; ‘do ghosts exist?’

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67

There is more. Traces of the locative/existential sense of “to have” can still be discernible even when “to have” is used as a perfect auxiliary: “le parfait est bien, notamment dans les langues indoeurope´ennes, une forme d’e´tat e´nonc¸ant possession” (Benveniste 1960: 201). This is conspicuous in all the languages that form the perfect with “to have” þ a passive participle. Note the close relation between the two sentences (2.46) a I have parked my car there b I have my car parked there In (2.46a), parked is a “perfect-formant”, and in (2.46b) it is an apposition (¼ part) of the object of the verb of possession. The same occurs in Italian and Modern Greek: (2.47) a Ho parcheggiato la macchina lı´ b Ho la macchina parcheggiata lı´ åø ÆæŒÆæØ e I Ø KŒE åø e I Ø ÆæŒÆæØ KŒE Italian and Modern Greek even have a construction that has both meanings: (2.48) la macchina l’ ho parcheggiata lı´ e I Ø Zåø ÆæŒÆæØ KŒE Note that the “perfect-formant” in the last two examples needs to agree in gender with the noun, which proves that it is (an apposition of) the object of the verb. All this is pertinent to our investigation of prepositions, because some languages in which possession is expressed with a locative prepositional construction (rather than with a verb “to have”), use the same possessivelocative construction even in sentences that correspond to the use of the English “to have”, not as a possessive verb, but as a mere auxiliary for the ´ Cro´inı´n 1961: 39): perfect. For instance, in Irish (cf. also Dillon and O Irish

Ta´ leabhar agam Ta´ se´ agam Ta´ se´ de´anta agam

‘I have a book’ (lit. ‘is book with-me’) ‘I have it’ (lit. ‘is it with-me’) ‘I have done it’ (lit. ‘is it done with-me’)

A perfect tense entails a locative predication, which means that a local notion is the origin of an expression of tense. This can also be seen in Latin. The following phrase may have possessive or agentive meaning: Tibi est liber scriptus

lit. ‘to you is a book written’ # ‘you own a written book’ ‘a book has been written by you’

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Background to Greek prepositions

In Portuguese, tenho “hold” replaced the derivative of Latin habere as a possession verb, but it has also come to be used as a new perfect auxiliary. In Armenian, there is also a “possessive” way to construct perfect tenses that does not even involve the use of the verb “to have”. Completed action by a transitive verb, in Armenian, can be expressed by an impersonal periphrasis consisting of a past (aorist) participle and an auxiliary verb—not “to have” but “to be”, although “to have” is used in other constructions. In this construction with “to be”, which looks in every way like a standard possessive construction, the logical subject appears in the genitive case. Benveniste (1960: 201) pointed out that this idiosyncratic genitive can be simply explained as marking the possessor, and pointed out that a further parallel between this construction with “to be” and compound perfect tenses based on the verb “to have” (familiar to us from English or Greek) is that both “to have” and “to be” (in Greek and in some other languages) can be also used as verba existentiae. The link possession-existence goes further. Let us start by noting another kind of possessive construction. Many languages (again, having no verb “to have”) render “I have a book” by an existential expression with a possessive marker: Sanskrit Hungarian Turkish

mama pustakam asti van egy ko¨nyvem kitabım var

‘of me book is’ ‘is one book-my’ ‘book-my existing’

So, instead of saying that “a book is to/at/near me” they say that “my book exists”. This fact introduces the second type of spatially-based constructions that we can fruitfully analyse here: expressions of existence. The crucial point (also shown by Greek) is that any existential construction can be seen as spatial in origin, as it expresses subsistance in a deictically neutral location: (2.49) ØÅØŒc ªaæ pou´ Kstim poetics in fact somewhere is e ‹º in general ‘An (art of) poetry in general exists’

(Pl. Ion 532C)

Johnson (1987: 39) asserts that “to hold a proposition is to be located in a deﬁnite bounded space”; again, nihil sub sole novum. Plato had said:

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69

e B åæÆ . . . IÆªŒÆE r Æ ı e k –Æ ØØ ø ﬁ ŒÆd ŒÆ å åæÆ Ø, e b K ªﬁ B ı ŒÆ PæÆe Pb r ÆØ. Space . . . everything that exists is necessarily somewhere, in some place and occupying some space; what is neither on earth nor somewhere in the sky is nothing. (Pl. Ti. 52b)

Aristotle’s view was not different from Plato’s: ! ªaæ ZÆ ºÆ ı Ø r Æ ı . . . e ªaæ c k PÆ F r ÆØ. Everybody assumes that the things that exist are somewhere . . . what does not exist is nowhere. (Arist. Ph. IV, 208 a 29)

In rabbinic writings, the Hebrew word NF XO /ma:qom/ “place” has been, since very early (cf. Urbach 1987: 66–75), used as a name of God, notably in the Mishnah and the Talmud. The conception of God implied by this name is explained by the rabbis: wOmwOqm; wOmlfwO( Ny)'w: wOmlfwO( l#$e wOmwOqm; )w%h#$e MwOqmf wOtwO) Ny)ir:wOqw: ... wOmwOqm; wOmlfwO( Ny)'w: wOmlfwO( MwOqmf )w%h K7w%rb%f #wOdq%FhF ... wOnwO(m; wOmlfwO( Ny)'w: wOmlfwO( l#$e wOnwO(m; )w%h K7w%rb%f #wOdq%FhF

We call him “Place” because he is the place of his universe, and his universe is not his place . . . the Holy One, blessed be he . . . is the place of the universe, and his universe is not his place . . . the Holy One, blessed be he . . . is the abode of the universe and his universe is not his abode. (Bereshit Rabba 68:11)

The epithet NF XO /ma:qom/ describes God not so much as contained and present everywhere (as in the Christian tradition) but as the container of everything; thus everything existing or conceivable is located in space, in (as God is called) “the Place”.18 Philo (Som. 1.63), a Greek-speaking Jew, conﬁrmed: “this God is called Place because he contains everything” (ÆPe › Łe ŒÆºEÆØ ﬁH æØ åØ b a ‹ºÆ); but perhaps he had antecedents in Greek philosophy: Aristotle (Physics 3.4.203) says that Anaximander and the physicists had stated that the divine “appears to contain everything” (ŒE ŒÆd æØ åØ –ÆÆ). And, as noted in an unrelated argument by Piaget: mais l’espace lui-meˆme n’est pas un simple “contenant”. Il est l’ensemble des rapports ´etablis entre les corps que nous percevons ou concevons, ou, pour mieux dire, l’ensemble des relations dont nous nous servons pour structurer ces corps. but space in itself is not just a container. It is the whole of the relations between the bodies that we perceive or conceive of—or, to put it better, the whole of the relations that we use in order to structure those bodies. (Piaget 1946: 1) 18 The Hebrew term for “universe”, NM F S /ola:m/, word of obscure etymology, also means /ma:qom/(God/ “eternity”. Since NM FS /ola:m/ (universe/eternity) is said to be contained in NF XO space), one implication could be that all time is contained in space (cf. pp. 57–8).

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Background to Greek prepositions

The idea that all that exists is located somewhere is patent in the English there is (not) which means both “it is (not) in that place” and “it (does not) exist(s)”. Likewise: Standard Turkish Modern Arabic Colloquial Arabic

var ‘being there’ > ‘existing’ /huna:ka/ ‘there’ > ‘it exists’ /ﬁ:/ ‘in’ > ‘there is’ (Shehadi 1969: 123)

In Swahili too, existential (and possessive) constructions are locative (Christie 1970: 170ff.). In Chadic languages, the evolution of prepositions into copula has been proven (Frajzyngier 1986: 371ff.). Some semantic analyses of English (Allan 2001: 400) accept that the use of to be to indicate a quality or status should be classiﬁed as locative; Finnish has a distinct essive case for that (la¨a¨ka¨ri-na¨ “as a doctor”) which has indeed local origin, and still has locative uses. Empiricist philosophers of the twentieth century (Lyons 1967: 391) have described existential statements as deictic—logically tantamount to a pointing gesture; in the evolution of language, Corballis suggested (2002:175) that “in the beginning was the gesture”, not the word, which came later, and he highlighted (2003: 207–10) how iconic gesticulation is still an important, elaborate supplement to speech, even when we cannot be seen, for instance on the phone, and gestures replace speech very efﬁciently when we cannot be heard. Languages that are more manifestly iconic, like sign languages, show that the local basis goes much further. In American Sign Language, locative or directional verbs are the basis of the entire grammatical system of the language (Gee and Kegl 1982: 336). There are plenty of other “abstract” meanings that can be brought within the scope of localism. In some instances the spatial image underlying an abstract concept is in fact transparent enough not to require further analysis: source-movements can be the expression of causes, as these are the origins of their effect, in Greenlandic (Fortescue 1984: 218) as in Greek, as in Arabic; expressions of means or manner can be conceived as perlative movements: cf. English the way, through, via, and so forth. Events are described as taking up space: many European languages, including English, express the concept of “happening” as taking place (Modern Greek ºÆ Ø åæÆ, Italian aver luogo, Swedish a¨ga rum, etc.). Localistic analyses have been taken far beyond prepositions: comparatives and inﬁnitives are said to have been easily brought into line (Miller 1985: 120) and demonstratives (cf. e.g. De Mulder 1992), not unlike tense (see Lyons 1977: 718ff., Anderson 1973b: 33ff.) and aspect (see Comrie 1976:

On the meaning of prepositions

71

98ff., 129ff., Anderson 1973a, 1994: 2280b), epistemic modality (Lyons 1979: 112ff.).

2.9 Explaining polysemy The question of polysemy is central to the problem of identifying (if it exists) a type of meaning that is psychologically primary. In synchronic terms, the expression of spatial relations usually constitutes only one of the functions of a given preposition or case form. In grammar books, in the teaching of foreign languages, and in traditional linguistics, as Taylor (1989: 109) pointed out, prepositional polysemy was reduced to homonymy. One was given the impression that word meaning is a collection of unrelated (in fact, equidistant) meanings that just happen to be expressed by the same form. But if we postulate that prepositions do have intrinsic meaning (rather than being empty markers receiving some semantic value from the context), we are bound to doubt that multiplicity of senses is random and accidental. Earlier philologists (e.g. Harrison 1858: 6), instinctively felt that it was unsatisfactory “to cut the knot” by saying that a preposition can have unrelated and even opposite meaning in itself. Can polysemy literally be polysemy? The Ancient Greek answer, it seems, would be negative: (2.50) e ªaæ c <Ø> Å ÆØ PŁb Å ÆØ K (Arist. Metaph.III, 4, 1006b) ‘for not to mean one thing alone is to mean nothing’ Polysemy is so pervasive that it does not surprise us, but it is perfectly legitimate for us to ask why it should occur at all. If it really is unmotivated and haphazard, it is also anti-economical. So, is there a reason for a language to use the same term for different items—for instance, to express different relations with the same prepositions? The most plausible answer is that if a language tends to ﬁle under the same lexical label different entities (objects, situations, etc.), it is because there is a similarity among them. This is also the starting point of a localistic interpretation: localists . . . interpret contrasts in syntax and/or morphology as signalling contrasts in meaning. A lack of syntactic or morphological contrast is taken as indicating a basic meaning underlying all the uses of a particular syntactic or morphological construction. (Miller 2001: 21, cf. Anderson 2006: 116)

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Background to Greek prepositions

The key to comprehending polysemy is our tendency to re-apply images to new concepts, to graft the structure of one semantic ﬁeld onto other (especially abstract) domains—what Jackendoff (1978: 218) had called “cross-ﬁeld generalizations”, already well described by Becker (1841: 212). Polysemy is a semantic extension, possibly starting from a spatial image, “by devices of the human imagination” (Johnson 1987: xii; cf. also Lakoff 1987: xiv). It is based on the ability and the tendency of our cognition to perceive an overall analogy—“das Gemeinsame sehen”, as Wittgenstein (1958: }72) put it; in other words, to categorize. This is a central function of language, since “if linguistics can be said to be any one thing, it is the study of categories” (Labov 1973: 342). The traditional view was that the world is a continuum, and that divisions and categorizations are just something that our language teaches us to do, arbitrarily. The stock example regularly quoted as proof of this (from Bloomﬁeld 1933: 140 to Lyons 1977: 253) was the lexical partition of the spectrum of colours. Colours are indeed a continuum—the human eye can distinguish up to 7.5 million gradations, and languages differ greatly in the way they apportion segments of the range, and classify them as one colour. A famous and crucial blow to this example of linguistic relativity, however, was dealt by a study that demonstrated that although the boundaries of colours (as labelled by languages) may vary, the foci of colour categories do not waver across languages any more than they do across idiolects of one language (Berlin and Kay 1969: 5ff.): languages may disagree as to whether a particular tinge should be classiﬁed as a given colour or another, but agree as to what is “the best, most typical example of x” (ibid: 7)—in other words, its prototype. Basic colours do exist: they are identiﬁed more readily in psychological tests, have morphologically simpler names, cannot be subsumed under other names of colours, have wider application, and appear in all idiolects of a given language (ibid: 5). Even children, or speakers of languages that have no names for focal colours, pick them out most easily (see Lakoff 1987: 24ff.). This means that, linguistically, a word may designate several things, but one is the primary specimen. The Berlin and Kay view of focal colours as psychologically more salient is controversal to this day (cf., e.g., Saunders and van Brakel 2001) but it has inﬂuenced linguistic theories ever since it was ﬁrst launched (cf. Evans and Green 2006: 97). Labov’s celebrated experiment (Labov 1973: 348), in which he asked participants to classify pictures of various drinking containers, showed the lack of steady boundaries between categories, but conﬁrmed the existence of ideal examples, of prototypes. Categories coalesce at their borders—like the Begriff mit verschwommenen Ra¨ndern of Wittgenstein (1958: } 71), but their foci are kept maximally distinct. If we assume that language is organized in the same way as our cognition, it becomes clear why a word,

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amongst its diverse range of meanings, can be said to have a core one. Linguistically, there is a ‘basic level of categorization’ (Taylor 1989: 48), the lexical description by a term both sufﬁciently speciﬁc and sufﬁciently simple: not as vague as artefact, not as particular as kitchen chair, but prototypically, chair. Such terms are learnt earlier, and are morphologically simpler. Linguistic evidence does indicate the existence of concepts with blurred edges, degrees across continua, and contextual inﬂuences; this is radically against the classical view of categories as “discrete, absolute and pristine” (Givo´n 1986: 77) found in Plato, Descartes or, mutatis mutandis, Chomsky, and against their emphasis on a priori, pre-sensorial knowledge.19 The classical view is that either something belongs to a category or it does not: PŒ ÆØ r ÆØ ŒÆd c r ÆØ e ÆP . . . Pb Æf IØç ø K åÆØ r ÆØ PŁ , Iºº IªŒÅ j çÆØ j IçÆØ It is not possible to be and not to be the same thing . . . nor is it possible that there be anything between contradictory (predicates), but one (must) necessarily either assert or deny. (Arist. Metaph. III, 4, 1006b and III, 7, 1011b)

According to this conception, belonging to a category means to share given traits. A compromise view—that members of a category are indeed all related but not through sharing a common element—is Prototype Theory, advocated by cognitive linguists such as Givo´n and Lakoff, as well as by cognitive psychologists such as Rosch, and anthropologists like Berlin and Kay. Fillmore too, perhaps more surprisingly, became increasingly sympathetic to a prototype-based approach to meaning (Fillmore 1977b: 80ff., 1977d: 104ff.), rather than the traditional one based on sets of propositions, resembling a checklist. A localistic view of the semantic development of prepositions would posit a Grundbedeutung, as termed by Jakobson (1936: 240ff.), with various possible abstract reﬂexes, also making room for contextual semantic inﬂuences that create combinatory variants (Jakobson’s Sonderbedeutungen). A localistic view would not assign a global meaning to all uses of a preposition, a Gesamtbedeutung (which Jakobson favoured), because that could not be clearly spatial. In the cognitive view (cf. also Croft and Cruse 2004: 76–96), meaning is a radially-structured network: there is a core item from which other ones are spawned (cf. also Dirven 1993). The relation of the derived members to the prototypical element becomes less obvious as the chain expands: outer items (Lakoff 1987: 84) cannot be predicted, and have to be learnt. Cognitivists accuse the traditional approach of giving only an isolated view of categories, so that “one literally cannot see the forest for the trees” (Janda 1993: 6). The intuition that concepts can issue from one another in a 19

On Cognitive Grammar in opposition to Generative Grammar, see also Langacker (1987: 4ff.).

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Background to Greek prepositions

M1

M2

M3

M4

T FIGURE 2.2

sort of chain, so that their relatedness may be obscured, ﬁrst appears in Wittgenstein (1958: I: }66ff.); searching for a comprehensive deﬁnition of “game” (note that the German noun “Spiel” has a wider sense than the English “game”), Wittgenstein came to explain the relation between various senses of “game” comparing it to genetic chains: the “family resemblance” found among blood relations, whose “Verwandtschaft ist dann ebenso unleugbar wie die Verschiedenheit” (ibid.: }76). If semantic evolution is seen as a chain, after the “family relations” model, we can explain why new meanings co-exist with old ones and, above all, why distant relatives may seem to have nothing in common (Figure 2.2). Along these lines we could explain how prepositions gradually develop a bewilderingly varied array of meanings, some of which seem to have no direct relation between them. Traditionally, the lack of common traits between two uses of the same word has been taken as proof of homonymity, rather than polysemy.20 With the interpretation of polysemy as a network of family-like relation, the alleged meaninglessness of prepositions and case forms, which we considered earlier, becomes all the more untenable: “that prepositions are meaningful even as ‘purely grammatical’ elements follows directly from basic tenets of the theory . . . [of] cognitive grammar” (Langacker 1992: 287). Thus, for instance, while Chomsky (1986a: 87) says that of is “semantically empty” and can be used as an inherent case marker—an idea accepted by most generativists and other linguists (cf. Vincent 1999: 1114)—Langacker argues (1992: 296) that “of has a discernible meaning even in its periphrastic use, and that its grammatical function reﬂects and exploits its semantic value”.

20

This is not to say that homonymy does not exist; there are numerous documented instances of morphological differences being obliterated by phonological changes, resulting in different meanings being expressed by what came to look like the “same” word. Just to quote a example that is remarkable in that it involves antonyms, the Old English verbs lætan “to allow, permit, release” and lettan “to hinder, impede, obstruct” both developed into Modern let; the ﬁrst meaning prevailed, but remnants of its opposite survive in formal language (e.g. “without let or hindrance”, meaning “obstruction”), and in pre-modern usage (e.g. “I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me” in Hamlet 1.4, meaning “I’ll kill who tries to hinder me”).

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Studies on the prepositions of other languages, such as French (Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot and Kemmer 1995: 220) have, similarly, concluded that there are no semantically “empty” prepositions, as normally claimed, and that even the stock examples of French de and a` þ inﬁnitive are semantically motivated.

2.10 Parallel and different metaphorizations Often, the same metaphor can be found cross-linguistically, and this is frequent in prepositional usage. Many spatial images have been used by speakers of unrelated languages to express the same non-spatial concept. Consider, in various languages, the non-spatial sense of adpositions indicating a position below or under an object: English Swedish Hungarian Mod.Greek

the road is under construction va¨gen a¨r under ombyggnad az u´t ´epı´te´s alatt van › æ r ÆØ u“pe ŒÆÆ Œı

English Swedish Hungarian Mod.Greek Albanian Romanian Italian

they lived under oppression for four centuries De levde under fo¨rtryck i fyra a˚rhundraden elnyoma´s alatt e´ltek na´gy ´ev sza´zadig (Keresztes, ibid.) Ç Æ u“pe [or j›ty Ipe] ŒÆÆ Å ªØa

æØ ÆNH ata jetuan ne¨n shtypje pe¨r kate¨r shekuj ei au tra˘it sub opresiune timp de patru sute de ani Vissero sotto oppressione per quattro secoli

(Keresztes 1975: 24)

If we view language as developed from non-language-speciﬁc human experience, we can see why many metaphors are extremely common across languages. Certain images (i.e. metaphors) are perceived by humans as capturing certain concepts particularly well, and seem to “make sense” more readily. Speakers across time and space have conceptualized a number of notions quite consistently. The images of motion thither to express purpose, for instance, is found in countless languages, and the image of motion thence with reference to causes is equally common. A causal/agentive meaning is expressed in Modern Greek by I (in Ancient Greek occasionally by KŒ), and with prepositions meaning “from” in countless languages (see p. 70). Standard English indicates causation and agency with by, but children between two and four instinctively express it with prepositional metaphors of source. Clark and Carpenter (1989: 1ff.) report phrases such as

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Background to Greek prepositions

I’m tired from her (¼of) He’s really scared from Tommy (¼by/of) I was caught from you (¼by) Arrested from the soldiers (¼by) I cried a bit from you go (¼because you left) Children at this stage do use the preposition by, but only in its spatial sense; the use of from is also initially only local (Clark and Carpenter 1989: 10), and temporal senses appear much later. In Black vernacular (Sommer 1991: 195) we ﬁnd analogous constructions: (2.51)

I hit a teacher from pushing around my sister i.e. ‘I hit a teacher because (of his) pushing around my sister’

So it would seem that there is some rationale and common sense in adpositional and case meaning. The only seeming snag, as we saw (pp. 36–7), is that a given meaning is at times expressed by different adpositions across languages (or dialects), and by different adpositions at various stages in the history of the same language. Different spatial metaphors ultimately expressing the same sense may even co-exist within one language at the same time. This is because “[w]hile two words may be distributionally and referentially equivalent, they may nevertheless be associated with distinct prototypes” (Taylor 1989: 56). For example, the notion of change is regularly expressed by an image of motion. The Ancient Greek ŒÅ Ø “movement” also meant “change” ( Æ º) whereas Mæ Æ “stillness” was equal to I Æ ºÅ Æ “immutability”, and (2.52)

A Æ Æ º K Ø Œ Ø Y Ø (Arist. Ph. 225a1) ‘every change is out of something into something’

However, in the genesis of expressions of change, the point of deixis may vary. So in English one says both become mad and go mad, and in Italian one can say both divenire pazzo or andar fuori pazzo. The intransitive meaning “to happen” is an even more common development for both the verbs “to go” and “to come” (sometimes with a preﬁx). Examples of the former are Greek ı Æø, Lithuanian (i˛)vykti, German vorgehen. Examples of the latter are English come (about), Turkish gelmek, Hebrew Ad /ba:/, Italian avvenire, German vorkommen. The verbs “to come” and “to go” are also used to indicate future tense in a number of languages (see Bybee et al. 1991: 59), including English. This is a clear instance of spatial images being the basis of tense distinctions, and the fact that both directions (coming and going) can be used in this way is because divergent metaphorizations of time are possible (see Clark 1973: 51):

On the meaning of prepositions (i) work hard in the days ahead [of now] (ii) work hard in the days ahead of Christmas

77

¼ after ¼ future ¼ before ¼ past

Of the two opposite spatial metaphors, one imagines us moving towards the future, one imagines time moving towards us (cf. also Haspelmath 1997: 21; Evans and Green 2006: 84–7). The image of time as a vertical line is also used (Traugott 1974: 290), again, with motion in both directions being possible: with the future higher or lower than the present: (iii) from antiquity right down to the eighteenth century (iv) from last month up to the end of the year In prepositional usage, therefore, synonymous constructions based on opposite spatial images are not an indication of randomness or arbitrariness: they simply indicate a divergent structuring of meaning chains. Meaning, as we saw, is a conceptualization (Langacker 1992: 287) and the spatial image chosen to express a concept may vary (cf. also Zelinski-Wibbelt 1993: 3ff.). For example, both the Turkish words neye and neden correspond to English “why”. The former is the dative/allative of the inanimate interrogative pronoun, the latter the ablative. Thus they start from two opposite images: ne-ye ‘to what’ ¼ ne-den ‘from what’ ¼

‘to what purpose’ ¼ ‘from what cause’ ¼

why? why?

The former is parallel to Hebrew EOM /lama/ “to what > why”, the latter to Romanian de ce “from what > why”. The notion of “why” can also be expressed by other spatial images: a perlative motion can express reason, and through this metaphor we get the Greek ØÆ and the French pourquoi, not unlike the Romanian pentru ca˘ (from Latin *per intra que). Romanian, in fact, has other “identical-yet-opposite” constructions, such as the following two sentences, both meaning “the child is the offspring of the man”: este (2.53) a Copilul child-the is

pui de om offsp. from man

b Copilul este pui child-the is offsp.

al omului to man-the

Observe also the two synonymous prepositional constructions that Hebrew uses with superlatives: “the greatest of ” can be rendered as O MD e E Ð d MD e E Ð

/hagga:ðo:l m‰/ /hagga:ðo:l b‰/

lit. ‘the great(est) from . . .’ lit. ‘the great(est) in . . .’

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These two originally opposite but eventually equivalent phrases also exist in English: “the greatest of ” really means “the greatest out of ” (ablative), and is synonymous with “the greatest among” (locative). Conversely, the same spatial expression can describe opposite events, through different semantic routes: Lee (2001: 33) noted that “the sun is out” means “burning bright” while “the ﬁre is out” means it is extinguished, but that this depends on whether the viewpoint is inside or outside the referent area, so the sun is coming into view, and the ﬁre is going out of sight. The interpretation advocated by Cognitive Linguistics is said to be able to identify motivations behind metaphors but to be very weak in predictive power (Janda 1993: 5). This is essentially true: semantic developments are not safely predictable, because “Anything can, in principle, be like anything else” (Taylor 1989: 90); semantic change is based on metaphor, and is therefore principled and motivated (cf. Lakoff and Brugman 1986; Bernd 1997: 3), even in idioms (Lakoff 1987: 448), but it is not automatic. In sum, it is opaque if the history of a word is not known. In this sense, polysemy (the co-existence of mutually exclusive meanings in the same word) becomes homonymy (the existence of two homophonous and homographous but distinct words of mutually exclusive meanings). The distinction between polysemy and homonymy is therefore unsatisfactory, because it is based on diachronic information alone—or the whims of the lexicographer. As Taylor (1989: 104) notes, with the exception of known cases of different etymologies, there are no readily available tests for distinguishing homonymy from polysemy; and the average speaker is usually not aware of the diachrony of a word. Jackendoff (2002: 340) maintained that, since semantic developments in a chain are such that one cannot trace the connection betweeen two attested meanings without knowing the intervening steps, a (historically) single polysemous word like bank in river bank and savings bank represents separate homonymous concepts listed separately in the lexicon.

2.11 Additional factors affecting prepositional meaning In the expression of a concrete spatial relation, the choice of adposition (or case or of a combination thereof) is linked to certain characteristics of the referent object, such as relative position, direction, and dimensions. Other physical aspects can be inﬂuential, and these may include: orientation, namely horizontal or vertical direction, which in Ancient Greek could determine the choice between K and I; contact (or lack thereof) as in the contrast between English on and above and Modern Greek Kø and Kø I; singularity–duality–plurality, which distinguish between and

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among(st); part/whole (even when the whole is a collective) opposing Ancient Greek accusative and genitive (including with prepositions), or partitive and accusative case in Finnish; animacy, which decides, for instance, whether Modern Greek prepositions like Kø, ºÆ, Œø can or cannot take a referent in the form of a weak genitive pronoun (p. 259); deﬁniteness, as we saw (p. 13–14) in the use of Spanish a and of the Turkish “accusative”. But there is another kind of determinant that we need to bear in mind about adpositional meaning. It is unrealistic to presuppose that in a prepositional phrase of local sense the factors dictating the choice of preposition are just location, physical characteristics, and, at a stretch, the position of the observer. There are also contextual factors of a more subjective or pragmatic nature that may decide which preposition is selected (cf. Wege 1991: 276ff.). These include the way speakers conceptualize the object at the moment of speaking. For instance, in Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian, location on islands is indicated with the preposition pa˚. Location in a country or state, on the other hand, is expressed by the preposition i. Thus in Swedish one says: (2.54)

de bor i Sverige/i Danmark ‘they live in Sweden/in Denmark’ ˚ land (2.55) de bor pa˚ Mallorca/pa˚ A ‘they live in Mallorca/in A˚land’

the difference being that the latter pair are isles—and they belong to larger political units. By the same token, it had always been customary to say (2.56)

de bor pa˚ Island ‘they live in Iceland’

because Iceland is an island. Since Iceland gained independence, however, the choice of the preposition has become a touchy subject; continental Scandinavians still tend to say ‘pa˚ Island’, but the Icelanders object: the politically correct construction is now “i Island”. Obviously the referent noun, Iceland, and its dimension, shape, and location are unaltered: only its conceptualization has changed—or, at least, it is supposed to have. Everyday English is full of instances of prepositional selection unpredictable from the object’s concrete characteristics. Let us see some examples— mostly from Herskovits (1981: 303ff.) and from Miller and Johnson-Laird (1976: 383): “the train is in the station” and “the train is at the station” refer to the same objects in the same spatial positions, but conceived differently;

80

Background to Greek prepositions “he is at the hospital”, is likewise different (but not spatially) from “he is in the hospital”; similarly, it is the conception of the dimensions, but not the dimensions in themselves that changes in “in the water/under the water”; in pairs like “the crack in the bowl”/“the milk in the bowl” the exact location within the second object is identiﬁed according to the nature of the ﬁrst object (Figure 2.3); about a light on the ceiling we say “a bulb in the socket” and not “under” it, solely for reasons of relevance; a book on top of a pile placed on a table is said to be “on” the table, although not in contact with it (Figure 2.3); in some cases we even say the opposite of the truth: with reference to a pile of books in an open box, those well above its limits are still said to be in it, although they are outside it (Figure 2.3).

The milk and the crack “in the bowl”

The book not on the table and yet “on the table”

The books out of the box nonetheless “in the box”

FIGURE 2.3

Herskovits thus highlights that prepositional usage to indicate location can always be rather arbitrary: any deﬁnition of the “core meaning” of in could never predict its use to describe a location outside the reference object, as for our box of books. Knowledge of the world and pragmatic factors add to the lexical meaning of the preposition. In the same way, prepositions indicating the position of an object by its location on one of the orientational axes of another object, such as in front of, termed “projective” by Herskovits (1981: 321), as opposed to “topological” prepositions like on, can have their zero point set in either of two locations: the body of the observer or the reference object (cf. also Zelinski-Wibbelt 1993: 6ff.), ascribing to the reference object anthropomorphic characteristics (Figure 2.4). This further conﬁrms that any description of location is modelled on the human body and its subjective perception. The choice of the zero points depends on whether the object has characteristics that lend themselves easily to metaphors of the human body. If it has, the ﬁrst interpretation given is non-deictical—that is, a phrase like the man is in front of the house is preferentially processed taking the object as point of view (Cuyckens 1984:

On the meaning of prepositions

The man in front of the house (zero point: the observer's body)

81

The man in front of the house (zero point: the reference object)

FIGURE 2.4

192), although the other option is also available; if the reference object does not have a canonical orientation (a mountain, a ball) the deictic interpretation will automatically be selected.

2.12 The ex silentio argument for spatial primacy To appreciate the spatial basis of the meaning of cases and adpositions, another simple fact can be considered. It is a fact that has always been under our eyes. Many non-spatial notions—including highly consequential ones—do not seem to have autonomous expression. They are rendered only through constructions (such as adpositions) that also have spatial sense. Thus, for example, agency is usually expressed by adpositions or cases indicating source (Modern Greek I, German von, Italian da, Romanian de, Latin ab, Hebrew PJO ) or, less commonly, path movement (English by, French par, Dutch door, Spanish por). As de Boer (1983: 911) casually observed: “Although . . . common in the world’s languages, there does not seem to be any specialized preposition for it in any language.” That such a common and basic notion should not have its own adposition or case (discounting rare languages in which an erstwhile spatial expression may have come to be used exclusively as an agency marker) can easily be explained localistically: the primary sense is spatial (while agency is a syntactic notion) and agency therefore cannot be the ﬁrst meaning of a case or adposition. There is a further point to be noted here, which leads us into the next chapter. In the particular instance of Modern Greek I, we also happen to have historical data corroborating this hypothesis: the local use of I is very ancient and the agentive sense is a more recent development barely attested in antiquity. This, nonetheless, does not prove that the same is true of prepositions for which we have no suitable diachronic documentation.

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Background to Greek prepositions

Another key point is that, even if one doubts that diachronic evidence of a local ﬁrst meaning is proof of the synchronic primacy of local meanings, one must admit that it ﬁts with that conjecture. Our focus here is historical, but it will become increasingly obvious that diachronic evidence for localism makes synchronic localism appear more plausible.21 After all, a semantic change in the diachrony of a language occurs because, at some point, there has been a shift within the synchrony. Some believe that there is another principle, by which the spatial sense of adpositions and cases endowed with both concrete and non-concrete meanings should be regarded as primary: “whereas non-spatial meanings can easily be derived (synchronically) from spatial ones, it is difﬁcult to see how the latter could be derived from the former” (Miller 1985: 123). According to this view, for example, for Modern Greek I “from; (inter alia) by an agent”, we should a priori regard the spatial meaning of motion-from as the basic one, and the agentive sense as derivative, because it would be much harder to explain the opposite semantic development, with spatial meanings being the derivative ones. However, the idea that diachronic change is unidirectional is supported by copious but not quite all evidence, as we see next.

2.13 The direction of semantic change A study in the semantic history of prepositions from late Old English to Middle English (Lundskær-Nielsen 1993: 185, 81) found that abstract meanings develop and increase in frequency with the passing of time. The direction of historical development is usually the same in all systems of communication: from iconic to symbolic; as Vincent (1980: 55–8) observed, this applies also to pictographic scripts and to the development of sign languages; the direction of the development means that we usually get grammaticalization, not de-grammaticalization. It is extremely rare for grammatical items to get lexicalized and, as Miller (1985: 124) noted, it is virtually unknown for spatial meanings to be acquired by prepositions or case inﬂections with an original non-spatial meaning. But a little caution is required. There are, in fact, reported instances of prepositions becoming (or re-becoming) adverbs: they are documented in Icelandic (Blaisdell 1959: 44) and in Latin (e.g. ultra, subter, secus, intra); there also attested instances of afﬁxes becoming clitic words (cf. Joseph 2003: 485). All this raises questions about the status of grammaticalization as an 21 It is possible to be more daring (Miller 1985: 94, 118) and to accept a diachronic local-to-abstract development as ground for positing a synchronic localistic interpretation.

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independent force in language change, something that has been conceded even by the main proponents of grammaticalization (Traugott 2001: 1–4). There is, in fact, an ongoing debate as to whether grammaticalization exists as a comprehensive teleological mechanism, in which “les principes sont toujours les meˆmes” (Meillet 1912: 131). Greek is quoted in many textbooks as providing many examples of grammaticalization (the demonstrative becoming the article; the verb have becoming an auxiliary forming the perfect tense; the numeral one becoming an indeﬁnite pronoun; the verb want becoming the future marker). A few scholars, notably Newmeyer (1998: 226–95) and, with more relevance to Greek, Joseph (2001), have argued against this idea, indicating that grammaticalization is little more than a summarizing label for a combination of long-known independent changes: an abstraction, a tautology, a reiﬁcation with little explanatory power.22 The idea of unidirectionality, which is usually assumed by grammaticalization has another implication relevant to our analysis of the history of Greek prepositions. It is usually taken to presume that the development of languages has to be cyclical (cf. also Lundskær-Nielsen 1993: 187). This idea has a long history: the notion of linguistic renewal, at the core of the discourse of grammaticalization, was already current in German philological works of the nineteenth century (cf. Hopper and Traugott 1993: 20). To see an example closer to our main concern here, let us begin by considering case usage in Finnish. Finnish has developed a partitive case; this has, however, come to perform a number of “syntactic” functions, while its older concrete sense of motion-away-from has weakened. The original spatial (ablative) sense is still clear in certain constructions and in set forms (now regarded as adverbs) like kaukaa “from afar”. Phrases requiring an explicit concrete partitive meaning are now expressed, with an even clearer spatial metaphor (arguably, a clearer partitive sense) by the elative case: yksi heista¨ “one of them”. The Finnish elative case (like the ablative) is a later creation than the partitive; with its strong spatial sense, it has come to replace the partitive case once the partitive had come to express more abstract or grammatical meanings. In Romance linguistics we see a similar process. The partitive sense of genitive phrases like “few of us”, in Colloquial Latin came to be “renewed” by a construction with a preposition and the ablative: Classical Literary Latin Spoken Latin Modern Roman Italian

pauci nostrorum pauci de nostris pochi de’ nostri

(Caes. B. Gall. 1.15.2)

22 For more examples and a good account of the issues involved in the debate, see the various articles in Love (2001).

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Background to Greek prepositions

We shall see a similar process in Greek, with the ancient ablative becoming what classical grammars call the genitive, and now being replaced by I. A parallel development can also be seen in the history of English, with the partitive genitive of Old English changing to of. The restoration of the original concrete sense of an adposition can go as far back as renewing its primaeval body-part meaning: in Melanesian Pidgin English (where many English simplex prepositions are turned into compounds, e.g. behind >bihain long), the etymology of the English “in front of ” (Latin *inþfronte “at the forehead of ”) is of course opaque, and a new compound preposition meaning “in front of ” has been created (Hall 1943: 33): fored long. In sum, there is an overwhelming tendency for the diachronic development of languages to go in one direction (Croft 1990: 230, Heine et. al. 1991b: 4, Hurford 2003: 52, Evans and Green 2006: 708) and to be mostly cyclical, although more (albeit rare) possible scenarios should be envisaged. The notion of a cline (of a unidirectional pull) has been questioned (cf Lass 1997: 292ff., Lehmann 1995: 16, Newmeyer 1998: 223–78). In principle, losses of linguistic elements can be either deﬁnitive or not— and if not, they may entail either reversal of the change, or replacement with an analogous element. Thus there can be linguistic loss (Figure 2.5). LINGUISTIC LOSS

cyclical linear

pendular: original restored recursive: original replaced final: permanent loss

FIGURE 2.5 Source: Adapted from Bichakjian (1990: 37ff.).

Let us note also that the idea of constant renewal implies a diachronically steady degree of complexity, and this has also been questioned. Comrie (1992: 194–5) says that some languages are less complex, and talks of an “historical accumulation of linguistic complexity”, concluding (ibid.: 209) that, in inﬂectional languages, fusional morphology once did not exist. Heine and Kuteva (2002: 390–4) suggest that languages, in a distant past, may have been intrinsically different from those now attested; they would have started with only concrete lexical items before developing abstract morphosyntactic forms, and they would have had a primaeval stage with no inﬂection; indeed (Hurford 2003: 53) with no prepositions, no metaphor, no polysemy, no abstract nouns.

2.14 Does diachrony corroborate the localistic hypothesis? The anecdotal examples of “localistic” diachronic developments that we have seen earlier in this chapter have some weight by virtue of their number—one of

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the reasons why we have decided to gather and list here several of them, even if they are not all immediately related to prepositional usage or to Greek. But in order to assess more conclusively to what extent the localistic interpretation of prepositions is diachronically justiﬁed, we would need to ﬁnd the theory vindicated or belied somewhere systematically. The problem is that we would need to be able to observe the very birth of the prepositional system of a language, so as to check the extent—if any—of spatial and non-spatial use. The philologists who instinctively supported a localistic hypothesis, knew that Classical languages are not documented far enough back in time to give an adequate picture of the birth of a prepositional system. This is true even of Greek, which is attested from about 1200 BC. What reconstructions of prehistoric stages tell us is hazy, fragmentary, and questionable. Those against a localistic interpretation claimed this (not altogether wrongly) as the winning factor: Iflge den historiske Thesis skal altsaa en Præpositions oprindelige eller ældste Betydning være rumlig. Men hvad skal der her forstaas ved oprindelig? Maaske det ældste Trin vi kan naa ved vore Tilbageslutninger? Men disse maa ndvendigvis blive desto usikrere jo længere vi sger tilbage. According to the historical thesis, a preposition’s original or oldest meaning should therefore be spatial. But what are we to take “original” to mean? Perhaps the oldest stage we can reach with our reconstructions? But these must inevitably get more uncertain the further back we search. (Brndal 1940: 23)

Vandeloise starts from a similar premise, but takes it in a different and more promising direction: Most words describing space are considered highly polysemic. . . . However, from a diachronic point of view, one may surmise that in the history of language, as well as in the acquisition, the birth of each word begins with a single connection between its form and one corresponding meaning. . . . This ideal state might be found through etymology, but the origins of language are too uncertain to provide much evidence. (Vandeloise 2006: 151)

And at this point he adds in a footnote: “the example of neologisms extending their ﬁrst meaning to different uses might be more revealing” (ibid.). This is precisely what we ﬁnd in Greek. Greek is an exceptional and invaluable case, as it provides data across 3200 years, two millennia of which are (with few gaps) documented; the fascinating history of Greek prepositions, if ﬁnally observed in its whole span, proves to be long enough to show not the birth of the Ancient Greek prepositional system but its death and renewal, and has therefore—besides its intrinsic philological interest— many things to reveal.

3 On the development of prepositions "ªŒÅ ªaæ e æH KÅ Æ ŒÆŁ’ ŒÆ çŁªª º ŁÆØ Because it is necessary, ﬁrst of all, for the meaning of each word to be looked at (Epicurus Ep. Hdt. 2.38)

3.1 Cases from adpositions We noted that cases and adpositions perform similar functions (pp. 6–15); but besides having synchronic afﬁnities, they are also historically related: cases develop from postpositions. In Estonian we can see this process in ﬁeri. Consider the use of the Estonian comitative case. On the one hand, the comitative ending can appear used in this way (hyphenation added): (3.1)

la¨ken ‘I walk

isa-ga ja ema-ga dad-with and mum-with’

but this can also appear as: (3.2) la¨ken isa ja ema-ga ‘I walk dad and mum-with’ where the case ending seems to “govern” synchronically more than one noun, the way postpositions and prepositions do. This surely must be interpreted as: (3.3) la¨ken

[isa ja ema]ga

and can be taken as evidence of the origin of the case form as a postposition. The Estonian sufﬁx -ga is cognate to the Finnish and Karelian postposition kannsa (Oinas 1961: 12ff.), which probably derived from an inessive case form, related to the noun kansa “folk”. The Estonian comitative is one of the many Estonian cases (cf. p. 8) that is added to a genitive base; so -ga is what remains of a postposition that governed the genitive.

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Case forms tend to develop from postpositions because in many languages there are no other elements of the NP that come in between the noun and the postposition: all determiners and modiﬁers precede the noun. There does not appear to exist any language in which the reverse occurs—that is, in which other elements cannot occur between preposition and noun, and all always follow them. This explains the rarity of preposed case preﬁxes (p. 3, note 1). There are other Estonian cases, such as the essive and the translative, which can be sufﬁxed to a noun but not to its attributive adjectives. The adjective appears in the genitive (data from Haman 1962: 142). If we bear in mind that the Estonian translative and essive case sufﬁxes are attached onto a genitive base of the noun, their (ex-)postpositional nature becomes obvious: (3.4) Me peame ootama ja¨rgmise suveni ‘we must wait (till) next[GEN] summer[[GEN]TRANSL]’ (3.5)

Ta tuli Ameerikast tagasi rikka mehena ‘he returned from America (a) rich[GEN] man[[GEN]ESSIVE]’

According to Kilby (1981: 114), Karelian and Vepsian (other Balto-Fennic languages) have also grammaticalized old postpositions into case markers, which still do not show agreement of the attributive adjective. Amongst IndoEuropean languages, a language that exhibits the same phenomenon of gruppenﬂexion is Tocharian (Krause and Thomas 1960: 1: 91ff.). In Tocharian, prepositions are a receding option, older and fewer than postpositions (Penney 1989: 56), and there are two types of case inﬂections: primary (for nominative, genitive, and oblique), and secondary (innovative ones, built on the oblique stem). That the latter group is a comparatively recent grammaticalization of postpositions is made obvious both by their invariability as to number, and by their use only after the last of a sequence of nouns: (3.6) koklem ˙

NOUN OBL

onkolmamnpa ˙ ˙

NOUN OBL COMIT

‘with chariots (and) elephants’ Oscan attests the development of a case ending from the Indo-European form *en (a reﬂex of which can be found in most Indo-European languages, including Greek K, Latin in, and English in). In Latin, it existed as a preposition, placed before the inﬂected noun and adjective—for example: Classical Latin

in horto cereali

‘in the garden of Ceres’

In Oscan the adposition had been used postpositionally, and coalesced with the case ending and formed a new ending (Kahr 1976: 117):

88

Background to Greek prepositions hu´rtı´n kerrı´iı´n

Oscan

where the ending -ı´n (¼e¯n), on both nouns, is from the locative case -ej and the postposition en. A postposition in the process of becoming a case ending can also be seen today in Turkish, although standard descriptions of Turkish (including Lewis 2000: 21, 33, 84) do not list it as a case—perhaps in deference to the tradition, or to the model of the Latin and Greek case inventories. All Turkish grammars note that the comitative postposition ile, in every register, can also be sufﬁxed (as -le), but do not give it the status of a case. It is true that it does not carry the stress that case forms usually have, but it does conform to the requirements of vowel harmony of the word it is attached to (-le/-la): ‘by train’ ‘by plane’

tren ile uc¸ak ile

> tren-le > uc¸ak-la

and vowel harmony is usually quoted as a distinguishing trait between inﬂections and postpositions (Korponay 1986a: 102). In standard Turkish, most pronouns (unlike nouns), when governed by the postposition ile, or sufﬁxed with -le, appear in the genitive (hyphenation added): (3.7) Standard a sen-in ile > sen-in-le ‘with you’ 2PN.-GEN with b on-un ile > on-un-la ‘with him/her’ 3PN.-GEN with In colloquial Turkish, however, -le/-la is applied onto pronouns omitting the genitive sufﬁx, which shows -le/-la becoming a case sufﬁx in its own right: (3.8) Colloquial a sen-le ‘with you’ b on-la ‘with him/her’ The key factor in the history of case forms—besides their analogical spread within a language—is therefore their grammaticalization, “le passage d’un mot autonome au roˆle d’e´le´ment grammatical” (Meillet 1912: 131). The tendency, discussed earlier (p. 15), for adpositions to express local meanings and for cases to express grammatical ones perhaps ﬁnds its explanation here: adpositions are more recently created than cases (including in Greek); their meaning reﬂects their lower degree of grammaticalization, and suggests that the earliest meanings are spatial, with the youngest set of K markers in a language

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expressing local meanings, while older elements such as inﬂections have developed abstract meanings.

3.2 Sources for prepositions We saw that case forms derive from adpositions; but where do adpositions come from? An answer to this question might also help us identify the original meaning of adpositions. The diachronic processes leading to the formation of new adpositions have only recently started to attract the attention of scholars: Fries (1991: 56) complained that they had “scarcely been investigated”. Adpositions come from various sources, but not with equal frequency. For instance, verbs are a major sources of prepositional forms, although this fact receives limited coverage because it is seldom instantiated in western languages. Svorou (1994: 207) indicates two routes leading from verbs to local adpositions: co-verbs and participles. The latter route is familiar from Indo-European languages; co-verbs are something attested in Thai, where prepositions come mainly from verbs (Blake 1994: 163ff.): ca`ak maa

‘to leave’ ‘to come’

but, after verb of motion, ‘from’ but, after verb of motion, ‘to’

And not only in Thai; the prepositions of both classical and modern Chinese are said to be verbal in origin (Norman 1988: 92), and indeed still to occur as verbs as well. Chinese grammars even disagree as to whether the co-verbs are synchronically prepositions that happen to derive historically from verbs or verbs that may also act as prepositions (see Cartier 1970: 91); the distinction between prepositions and verbs in Chinese is a complex issue extensively debated in Chinese studies (Hage`ge 1975: 45–59), and Chinese also has prepositions without corresponding verbs. Examples of Chinese co-verbs (see Hopper and Traugott 1993: 26, Blake 1994: 166) include: ba˘ ge˘i za`i da`o ge¯n yo`ng

‘to grasp’ ‘to give’ ‘to be near’ ‘to arrive’ ‘to follow’ ‘to use’

also used as ACCUSATIVE marker also used as DATIVE/BENEFACTIVE marker also used as LOCATIVE marker also used as ALLATIVE marker also used as COMITATIVE marker also used as INSTRUMENTAL marker

Thus all sorts of meanings can be expressed by a verb used as a preposition: anything from spatial position (not just direction, cf. Svorou 1994: 111)

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Background to Greek prepositions

to abstract or even grammatical meanings. Korean too has verbal prepositions of the same kind (Kahr 1975: 39): teˆbireˆ putheˆ wihaja

‘with’ ‘from’ ‘for(purpose)’

< teˆbıˆlda < putta < wihada

‘to embrace’ ‘to pass by’ ‘to beneﬁt’

Co-verbs are also found in Niger-Congo languages such as Yoruba, Igbo, and Ewe, as well as in Vietnamese; in Fijian too, there are prepositions derived from transitive verbs (Geraghty 1976: 512); To’aba’ita (an Austronesian language spoken on the southeastern Solomon island of Malaita) has many prepositions that comparative work indicates as being derived from verbs (Lichtenberk 1991: 47–60): fasi bii

‘(away) from’ ‘(together)with’

—cf. cognate Kwara’ae verb fa’asi ‘to leave’ —cf. cognate Arosi verb bei ‘to be an ally’

Indeed, in To’aba’ita these prepositions still index their complements the way transitive verbs index their object. To’aba’ita also has noun-like prepositions, which index their complement by the same markers used as genitival sufﬁxes, and even verb-like prepositions that have come to be used as noun-like prepositions, showing that the two origins became confused. Across the world, according to Blake (1994: 163), when it comes to sources for prepositions, verbal forms are “probably the most fruitful”. Svorou (1994: 70), on the other hand, found that in her database—sizeable and quite wideranging—nouns were by far the most common source of “spatial grams”. In European languages, the most productive verbal forms for prepositions have been participles: Swedish French Spanish Italian German Dutch Portuguese Latin

anga˚ende durant mediante radente betreffend niettegenstaande exceto trans

‘concerning’ ‘during’ ‘through’ ‘along’ ‘regarding’ ‘despite’ ‘except’ ‘across’

English is no exception, with regarding, considering, including, barring, and counting, among others. English has also participial constructions in which the original subject has come to be seen as the object of a “prepositional” participle, such as pending, notwithstanding, or during. Ko¨nig and Kortmann (1991: 116, see also Svenonius 2004: 7) distinguish:

On the development of prepositions considering the difﬁculties, he decided against it considering the difﬁculties, he performed adequately

91

(participle) (preposition)

When such participles become prepositions, the range of places within the sentence where they may occur gets restricted. The external argument of the verb becomes the internal argument of the “preposition”: Latin [illa¯ vita¯] durante >

Italian durante [la vita]

‘during life’

The afﬁnity between participles and prepositions (or adverbs) is clear semantically: (3.9)

a she opened the letter with a kitchen knife b she opened the letter using a kitchen knife

(3.10) a there was a reception following the performance b there was a reception after the performance In Turkish we ﬁnd a few gerunds, such as that of kalmak “to remain”, used in postpositional fashion that shows how the transition occurs: (3.11)

gelme–sin-e u¨¸c gu¨n kal-a coming-his-to three day remain-ing ‘three days before his arrival’

In Greek, verbs have not been a fruitful source of prepositions. Prepositional use of participles was difﬁcult for Classical Greek participles because they were inﬂected—unlike Chinese verbal forms. When inﬂected languages (in which a verb normally receives marking for person, number, tense, or aspect) do use verbs as adpositions, they often stop adding onto them the markers that are customary for verbal forms. In Latin, a participle like trans was able to become a preposition once the verb *trare fell out of use; the form versus (a common past participle in Classical Latin, from verto “to turn”) became invariable in form in Romance (e.g. Italian verso “towards”). Another verbal mood that provides a few prepositions is the imperative (or subjunctive): English Italian

bar/save (¼without) come (¼with the beginning of) tranne ‘except’ (< trai-ne ‘remove therefrom’)

But prepositions in Indo-European languages come from all major lexical classes. So, adjectives are occasionally a source:

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Background to Greek prepositions

English Spanish Italian

near salvo ‘except’ lungo ‘along’

and more are used colloquially—for example, the American adjacent (Kahr 1975: 41).1 Rarely, we ﬁnd more complex sources, such as instances of univerbation (condensing a phrase into a single word). A clear example can be seen in late Classical and Modern Hebrew: MZ /Sl/ “of ” from Z þ M corresponding to MA YA

/?ÆSR ?l/ “which (is or belongs) to”. In English too, older prepositional phrases have univerbated into prepositions: Old English Old English Old English Middle English

on middan on (ge)mang be sidan in stede of

‘in middle-DAT’ ‘in (collective) multitude’ ‘by side-DAT’ ‘in place of ’

> amid > among > beside > instead of

Brndal (1928: 80) explicitly denies prepositional status to ex-adjectives, erstwhile prepositional phrases, and verbal derivatives like participles. But others took the opposite view: En ge´ne´ral, tout mot, de`s qu’il exprime une relation fonctionnelle entre deux unite´s de langue, tend a` perdre son sens propre, et sa valeur grammaticale originelle pour entrer dans l’espe`ce pre´positive. (Galichet 1947: 49)

Borrowing of adpositions also occurs. Latin, for instance, has borrowed a number of prepositions from Greek at different times (see Szantyr 1965: 227b, 254ff., Leumann 1977: 562): endo (Classical Latin) ana (Biblical Latin) in gyro (post-Classical Latin) cata (Biblical Latin and Romance)

from Classical Greek from Classical Greek I from post-Classical Greek ªæø ﬁ from Classical Greek ŒÆ

Turkish has very many postpositions from Arabic, including kadar “as far as”, rag˘men “despite”, nazaran “in view of ”, dair “regarding”, itibaren “with effect from”, evvel “before”. Even Spanish has borrowed from Arabic, adopting hatta ˙˙ as hasta “until”. Some English prepositions too are loans: till, from 1 That nouns and verbs should serve more commonly than adjectives as sources for the development of new prepositions also makes sense in terms of the feature-based classiﬁcation of word classes that was developed in generative grammar. In those terms, Nouns, Verbs, Prepositions, and Adjectives are seen in terms of the two features [N] and [V]: P ¼ –N–V; N ¼ þN–V; V¼ –N þ V; ADJ ¼ þN þV. So Nouns and Verbs are, so to speak, only “one feature away” from prepositions, whereas Adjectives need to change two features to become Prepositions—possible but less likely.

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93

Scandinavian; vis-a`-vis, a` la, and sans from French; and many from Latin: circa, pace, per, pro, qua, versus, cum.

3.3 Nouns as a source for adpositions The suggestion that nouns and prepositions should be classiﬁed synchronically as the same syntactic category has (with good reason) almost never appeared in the literature – a notable exception being Fillmore (1969: 14ff.). The categories N and P synchronically cannot be collapsed into one because they are distributionally different. Nouns do, however, have much in common with prepositions. A clear instance of this are the phrasal prepositions like in front of, which are described by some (e.g. DeLancey 2005: 190) as the borderline between adpositions and nouns. Urdu postpositions show the link between the two morphologically; nouns are in the oblique case when governed by a postposition: ‘goat’

‘from (the) goat’ ‘of (the) goat’

b#kra¯ # b#kre b#kre se b#kre ke/ka/ki

direct case oblique case, for instance:

The possessive postposition (the last example) appears in multiple forms, because it changes form according to the gender, number, and case of the noun that follows it: b#kre ka kamra¯ [noun in þ postpos. of þ noun] oblique

¼ the room of the goat

b#kre ke ka¯n ¼ the ears of the goat [noun in þ postpos. of þ noun] oblique This is noteworthy here because Urdu also has a large class of secondary postpositions, which seem to be constructed in the same way as nouns: they follow the “of ” postposition that comes after the noun in the oblique: b#kre ke sa¯th [oblique þ postpos. of þ secondary postpos. with] b#kre kıˆ taraf [oblique þ postpos. of þ secondary postpos. towards]

¼ with the goat ¼ towards the goat

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Background to Greek prepositions

As the change in form of the possessive postposition (ka/ke/ki) suggests, the ‘secondary postpositions’ are nouns. In fact, taraf is originally an Arabic noun /taraf/ meaning “side, part, direction”. The origin of these forms in ˙ Urdu is classiﬁed as locative by Grahame Bailey et al. (1956: 88): if this is correct, the last example “towards the goat” should be glossed literally as: (3.12) b#kr-e kıˆ NOUN-OBL PREP goatof

taraf NOUN-LOC direction-in

The origin of this construction becomes clear if we read the gloss above from right to left: ‘in-[the]-direction-of þ (obl)NOUN’. Note, again, how “secondary postpositions” indicate more precise spatial relations than the plain case. In Estonian, postpositions are often clearly nouns, and the meaning of a postpositional phrase is often synonymous with that of an inﬂected form of the noun: the postposition is a more recent device, expressing more clearly or emphatically a meaning also carried by inﬂection alone (all hyphenation is added): katus (noun) ‘roof ’ pea (noun) ‘head’

-e (genitive sufﬁx) -le (allative sufﬁx) -lt (ablative sufﬁx)

These can combine thus: (3.13)

katus-e pea-le NOUN-GEN NOUN-ALLAT roof-OF head-TO ‘onto the roof ’

(3.14) katus-e pea-lt NOUN-GEN NOUN-ABLAT roof-OF head-FROM ‘from the roof ’ The same concepts can also be expressed by case sufﬁxation alone: katuse-le katuse-lt

‘onto the roof’ ‘from the roof ’

Basque postpositions too are transparently inﬂected nouns (Saltarelli 1988: 251); Akkadian prepositions too come from nouns (especially

On the development of prepositions

95

body parts) inﬂected for case or simply in the construct state (Lancellotti 1962: 159ff.): from s:e¯r ‘shoulders/back’ > ina s:e¯r ‘on’ According to Gesenius et al. (1910: 297) all Hebrew prepositions are derived from nouns. Similarly, Coptic monolectic prepositions are ex-nouns; and Coptic “compound” prepositions are [prepositionþnoun] sequences, in which the noun is usually a part of the body (hand, heart, head, face, back, bosom, foot). Their use is both spatial and non-spatial. Again, the compound prepositions were introduced into the language “in order to accent” the meaning of a simplex preposition (Houghton 1959: 211). In Persian (Lambton 1966: 110ff.) we ﬁnd, broadly speaking, two sets of prepositions. There is one set of (mainly) short, older forms, with no transparent nominal referent; and a second set made of nouns and adverbs (¼ exnouns), that are now used as prepositions. Prepositions of the second type have the eza¯fe—a sufﬁx marking an object as “possessed” (as opposed to the genitive, that does not mark the possessum but the possessor)—which is typical of nominal morphology. Latin prepositions too are said to be mostly case forms of nouns (Szantyr 1965: 214). The cases are mainly accusative and ablative. The prepositions of Arabic (Haywood and Nahmad 1965: 421)—and other Semitic languages (Lipin´ski 1997: 460ff.)—are also often nouns, usually in the accusative. Their nominal origin is further shown by the fact that they even have diminutives (Wright 1896: I: 167). Most Finnish adpositions are transparently, synchronically, inﬂected nouns, and they take the personal endings characteristic of nominal inﬂection: (3.15) auto – n pera¨ – ssa¨ NOUN–GEN NOUN–INESSIVE car–OF rear–IN/AT ‘behind the car’ (3.16) pera¨ – ssa¨ – mme NOUN–INESSIVE–1 PL.POSS rear–IN/AT – our ‘behind us’ And, as we saw earlier (pp. 86–8), postpostions can then become cases: few of the (notoriously numerous) Finnish cases are from Proto-Finnic, and many can be identiﬁed as postpositions (Oinas 1961: 8ff.) by looking either at earlier stages of the language or at sister languages.

96

Background to Greek prepositions

Turkish postpositions are also transparently nominal in origin. The noun is often still in use as such. For instance, o¨n “front”, is used adpositionally thus: (3.17)

araba – nın NOUN–GEN

o¨n – un – de NOUN-3 SG.POSS–LOC

car–OF front-OF IT–AT ‘in-front-of the car’ (this being the only possible way to say ‘in front of ’) In Tajik (where there are no case inﬂections) many prepositions are morphologically identical to nouns, and receive the same izafet sufﬁx (Rastorgueva 1963): darun darun-i xona

‘interior’ ‘in [the] house’

although Tajik also has monosyllabic prepositions without identiﬁable nominal origin, such as dar (at) or ba (to). For some African languages, the overall distinction between nouns and adpositions is at times controversial (Heine 1989: 79): the same Hausa words are classiﬁed as prepositions in some grammars and as nouns in others. Robert (2005: 125) says that the word ginnaaw in Wolof is synchronically “transcategorial”, as it is a noun for a body part (“back”), a preposition (“behind; after; except”), and a subordinating conjunction (“given that”). Miller (1985: 85) cites expressions such as middle next week as example of nouns currently becoming prepositions, and he labels them “telegraphese”. They are, indeed, the rule in some English dialects: in Cambridgeshire, of is omitted after nouns indicating areas of objects, such as top, end, side, middle (Ojanen 1985: 183). Ancient Greek prepositions are often attested with an ending believed to be a nominal case marker: K /K æ /æ ŒÆ /ŒÆÆ æ

‘in’ ‘towards’ ‘down’ ‘around’

There are also prepositions occurring with local sufﬁxes usually found on place names and nouns denoting location; one example is the ablative sufﬁx -Ł: Nouns:

YŒŁ I ºØŁ PæÆŁ

‘from home’ ‘from Troy’ ‘from the sky’

< YŒ < ”ºØ < PæÆ

‘home’ ‘Troy’ ‘sky’

On the development of prepositions Prepositions:

æ Ł oæŁ Ł

‘from near’ ‘from above’ ‘from inside’

< æ < æ < K

97

‘towards’ ‘up’ ‘in’

Adverbs are often described as invariable, but in many languages they show variable case endings (as nouns do): Turkish

bura-ya bura-da bura-dan

base þ dative sufﬁx base þ locative sufﬁx base þ ablative sufﬁx

¼ to here (hither) ¼ here ¼ from here (hence)

In Finnish, pre- and postpositions mainly take a partitive or a genitive that is regarded as adnominal. Most inﬂected nouns employed as prepositions are associated with a case-inﬂected noun or with another adposition that has partitive, ablative, or possessive meaning. In Greek we can see this construction developing time and again in the history of the language: an inﬂected noun comes to be used as a preposition, and the dependent noun in a genitive case comes to be seen as governed by it; later, the Greek partitive genitive is replaced by a preposition: Classical Late/Koine´ Today

æ-d F Œı ŒŒº-ø ﬁ F Œı ªæ-ø ﬁ Ie e ŒB

‘around the garden’ ‘around the garden’ ‘around the garden’

When an adposition starts its life as a noun, the case inﬂection on the nouns which it precedes or follows is not a marker of their “governee” status, but has full independent semantic value. Once a noun becomes an adposition, the dependent noun becomes a governed adnominal complement, and the (mostly genitive) case on it becomes a marker of government. We saw that nouns used in adpositional fashion can be found in many unrelated languages. Linguists who opposed the idea of prepositions having “full” meaning, like Brndal, claimed that nouns so used were not prepositions: Af de talrige Ord, der i Grammatikerne opfres som Præpositioner, bærer mange ikke med Rette dette Navn: at f. Ex. nominale eller verbale Udtryk analogt med Præpositioner styrer en Casus, er ikke nok til at gre dem til Præpositioner. Of the numerous words which are listed in the Grammars as prepositions, many carry that name with no right: the fact that, for example, nominal or verbal expressions govern a case the way prepositions do is not enough to make them prepositions. (Brndal 1928: 80)

Brndal (1928: 79), in fact, speciﬁed that the adpositions (as we would see them) of Basque, Turkish, or Ugro-Finnic languages do not belong with prepositions.

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Background to Greek prepositions

How does a noun become an adposition? The change must be very gradual: From the point of view of change, forms do not shift abruptly from one category to another, but go through a series of gradual transitions, transitions that tend to be similar in type across languages. (Hopper and Traugott 1993: 6)

First, the noun must take on adverbial functions; according to Kuryłowicz (1949: 138), the primary function of nouns inﬂected for a case that expresses a “concrete” meaning (locative, ablative, etc.) is adverbial, although they are distinguished from adverbs by the very fact that their case inﬂection may also have a secondary, purely syntactical function: ‘comme classe syntaxique les cas concrets, occupant une place interme´diaire entre le cas grammatical et les adverbes’ (Kuryłowicz 1949: 143). The link between inﬂected nouns and adverbs is clear in Ancient Greek: all cases, including the rare or obsolete ones, are also used as adverbs (Palmer 1980: 283): Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative Ablative Instrumental Locative

PŁ ŒÅ æØŒ ŒØﬁB ø ºŁæÆ æı Ø

‘immediately’ ‘rightly’ ‘freely’ (Homeric) ‘in common’ ‘outside’ ‘stealthily’ ‘last year’

Now let us see how the inﬂection of a noun can turn it into an adverb: Swedish

ett hem hem hemma hemifra˚n

¼ ‘a home’ ¼ ‘homewards’ ¼ ‘at home’ ¼ ‘away from home’

These Swedish adverbs are not used as prepositions, but it is not hard to envisage a development in that direction. We ﬁnd it in Romance languages: Late Latin # Old Italian/French

# French

casa casa¯

‘home’ ‘at home’

casa þ oblique case (unmarked case also used as genitive)

‘at home (of)’

chez

‘at the home of ’ (cf. also Harrison and Ashby 2003).

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99

In Swedish too, the preposition hos (the semantic equivalent of French chez) is related to the noun hus “house”. Some modern English grammars (e.g. Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 614) classify the English word home as an (obligatorily intransitive) preposition. An even more complete diachronic picture, with nouns developing into adpositions and then into case endings, can be gleaned from Hungarian. Let us start by noting that Hungarian has a triad of case sufﬁxes that indicate position-at, motion-to, and motion-from a location in the proximity of the referent object: ending ending ending

-na´l -hoz -to˝l

‘by’ ‘to by’ ‘from by’

Hungarian, however, has also developed adpositional uses of the word mell “breast/chest” (Ka´roly 1972: 107). We do not need to conjecture that mell is a noun: it is still in current use as such. Its inﬂected forms have come to be employed as postpositions, but the postpositions derived from it are synchronically perceived as unrelated to it, probably because their case endings are now obsolete: postposition postposition postposition

mellett melle´ mello˝l

old locative of the noun mell > ‘by’ old lative of the noun mell > ‘to by’ old ablative of the noun mell > ‘from by’

Inﬂected nouns that come to be used as adpositions often preserve case forms otherwise disused. This also happened in Greek: I ç preserves the old instrumental (Indo-European -*bhi) and K preserves the old ablative ending (cf. also Latin intus). The use of these Hungarian adpositions is often synonymous with that of the (productive) case endings further above. But when the postposition is used, no case marking on the noun is required. So the noun fa “tree” can be used like this: (3.18)

a a kocsi a fa´na´l a´ll the car the tree-by stands b a kocsi a fa mellett a´ll the car the tree chest-by stands

So we can clearly see an adposition, mellet (originating from the form mell) is used with the noun fa, instead of a case ending -na´l. Other Hungarian postpositions are often transparently and synchronically nouns: Hungarian has, according to Korponay (1986b: 9), a high quota of

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Background to Greek prepositions

postpositions with clear nominal origin: 78.1 per cent—the development was favoured by the syntax, for in Proto-FinnoUgric the genitive preceded the noun and was uninﬂected. Hungarian attests one more thing. The word be´l “entrails, intestines” (synchronically used and inﬂected as a noun) is also used as a case sufﬁx (Oinas 1961: 9, Kahr 1976: 119ff.): -bo˝l/bo´l -ba/be -ban/ben

elative illative inessive

ha´z ‘house’ >

ha´zbo´l ha´zba ha´zban

‘from [the] house’ ‘into [the] house’ ‘in [the] house’

The kind of evolution seen here matches the “cline” posited by Hopper and Traugott: lexical noun > relational phrase > adverb > adposition > case afﬁx from a historical perspective, a cline is a natural pathway along which forms evolve . . . synchronically, a cline can be thought of as a “continuum” . . . The precise cluster point on the cline (i.e. the label preposition, afﬁx, etc.) are to a certain extent arbitrary. (Hopper and Traugott 1993: 6–7)2

Studies exploring the origin of certain prepositions, such as Lichtenberk’s (1991: 60) work on Austronesian languages, stress the gradualness of changes in grammatical category status. The boundaries between categories are not only historically shifting: they are also synchronically somewhat blurred. In fact, they would need to be diachronically immutable, in order to be always synchronically clear. Heine (1989: 112) describes the grammaticalization of nouns into adpositions as an ongoing chain which “eludes the usual distinction between diachrony and synchrony” and is, in his view, panchronic. Studying grammaticalization we can see that, by focusing only on synchrony, and discarding diachrony as an explanatory factor, one misses out on important insights. A synchronic view usually presupposes membership of single and distinct grammatical categories, and grammaticalization casts doubts on this. Sapir had pointed out that

We noted earlier (pp. 83–4) that grammaticalization from full lexical items to grammatical morphemes is said to be cyclical—a reiterated renewal of expressions, “ainsi sans ﬁn” as Meillet (1912: 140) put it. 2

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101

our conventional classiﬁcation of words into parts of speech is only a vague, wavering approximation . . . they not merely grade into each other but are to an astonishing degree actually convertible into each other. (Sapir 1921: 117–18)

The importance of grammaticalization lies precisely in that it shows “the interdependence of langue and parole, of the categorial and less categorial, of the ﬁxed and less ﬁxed in language”. (Traugott and Heine 1991: i: 1)

3.4 Types of nouns that become adpositions A study carried out by Svorou (1986: 523) on the type of nouns from which adpositions develop reported that three major classes of nouns can turn into expressions of spatial relations: body parts, environmental parts, and object parts. Let us ﬁnd some examples. 3.4.1 Parts of the body The largest class comprises parts of the (usually human) body: face, stomach, etc. No languages show this most clearly—and charmingly—than languages with pictorial scripts. In Egyptian we ﬁnd (cf. Gardiner 1927: 130): tp

‘upon’ originally the word for ‘head’

The word for ‘head’ used as an adposition meaning “on” is one of the most common noun-to-adposition metaphors. We saw its use in Finnic languages: Finnish Estonian

pa¨a¨lla peale

‘on top of ’ ‘on top of ’

< pa¨a¨ < pea

‘head’ ‘head’

Indo-European languages show similar developments: English Welsh Latin Persian

ahead of ar ben coram ‫ﺑﺮ ﺳﺮ‬ /bar sar[e]/

‘in front of ’ ‘on top of ’ ‘in front of ’ ‘on top of ’

< ‘head’ < pen ‘head’ (cf. Kahr 1975: 45) < or- ‘mouth’ (cf. Sihler 1995: 439) < ‫‘ ﺳﺭ‬head’ and ‫‘ ﺑﺮ‬breast’ /sar/ /bar/

Body-based prepositions are also common in Semitic languages: Akkadian

paˆn

‘before’

lit. ‘face (of)’

Hebrew

JQJSM /l einei/ JQUM /lifnei/

‘before’

lit. ‘to eyes (of)’

‘before’

lit. ‘to face (of)’

< paˆnu ‘face’ (Dhorme 1923: 66) < NJ Q JS ‘eyes’ /einajim/ < NJQt ‘face’ /pa:nim/

e

102

Background to Greek prepositions

Similarly, Slavic pod “under” comes from the root for “foot”, and English in front of is derived from the Latin noun frons, meaning “forehead”.3 All this shows how our perception and description of reality is based on our human experience (cf. pp. 54–6). A conﬁrmation of this comes from the fact that adpositions indicating motion towards an object, for example, if developed from nouns denoting a part of the body, normally derive from a word for a face, chest, or eyes rather than back; this is obviously due to the fact that we mainly move forward (Svorou 1994: 208), as our organs of perception are turned in that direction. The semantic history of adpositions also reﬂects human perception of external beings, such as animals; in some pastoral societies—for instance in East Africa (Heine 1989: 90; cf. Allan 2001: 292)— the parts of the body from which adpositions are created are sometimes those of animals. In that case, the metaphors are as shown in Figure 3.1. “back” = “upon/above” “head” = “in front (of)” “buttock” = “behind”

FIGURE 3.1

Some examples of adpositional phrases modelled on the image of our interaction with animals’ bodies also survive in European languages: Italian

a cavallo di due culture

‘straddling [lit. on horse(back) of] two cultures’

Nonetheless, while there are many languages whose terms of spatial orientation are exclusively derived from words denoting parts of the human body, no language has been found which makes reference only to animals (Heine 1989). 3.4.2 Environmental terms Less frequently, words for enviromental entities are used: sky, earth, river, etc. These have received less attention, but they also occur in Indo-European 3 The non-spatial use of clearly body-based prepositional phrases has often, initially, incurred the wrath of purists. In French, the use of vis-a`-vis not referring to persons, although common since the seventeenth century, has been condemned by many—including Voltaire (see Robert and Rey 1985: IX: 765, Guilbert et al. 1978: 7: 6498).

On the development of prepositions

103

languages—appearing either as inﬂected nouns or inside prepositional constructions: Catalan

damunt davall

‘on’ ‘under’

< *deþabþmonte ‘mountain’ < *deþabþvalle ‘valley’ (Cremades 1994: 15) Lithuanian lauke ‘outside’ < loc. of laukas ‘ﬁeld’ Swiss Italian in faccia a ‘opposite’ < PP of faccia ‘face’ Mid.Welsh yn llwrw ‘after(loc)’ < PP of llwrw ‘track’ y maes o ‘outside’ < PP of maes ‘ﬁeld’ (Evans 1964: 218) Note that metaphorical meanings soon develop: Welsh y maes o started being used in phrases like (3.19) y maes o’e wassanaeth dylyedus ‘outside its proper functions’

(Evans 1964: 201)

The enviromental terms used to express spatial relations can also be man-made ones. We saw above the evolution of Latin casa “home” into French chez. In Persian (Lambton 1966: 14), the noun /dar/ “door” is also employed as an adposition meaning “in”. The Middle Welsh (Evans 1964: 188) preposition ar ddrws “in front of” also comes from drws “door” (ar ¼ upon). In Classical Greek too, the noun ŁæÆ “door” develops terms indicating spatial relations: concrete noun used literally: ‹

Å łæçØ huqg ´ ŁÆº Ø ‘as wide as the door of a high-roofed hall’ (Il. 24. 317) # adverb, literal spatial sense: YŒØ º ø S pº huqafe ´ ‘like a lion he lept out [of the door of] the house (Il. 24. 572) adverb, wider spatial sense: ºŒ . . . ‰ . . . NåŁf KŒ Ø huqafe ´ ‘dragged [him] like ﬁsh out of the sea’ (Il. 16. 408) # preposition, abstract sense: huqafe ´ H ø ‘outside the law’ (Eur.Bacch. 331) Thus we can see (besides the chain noun>adverb>preposition) how a concrete location term becomes a metaphor for general spatial relations, and eventually enters abstract usage.

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Background to Greek prepositions

3.4.3 Object parts Another group of linguistic elements that are (albeit very rarely) the origin of adpositions are object portions, with no distinct physical contour: top, middle, centre, etc. They are termed axial parts by Svenonius (2006), who argues that they are a syntactic category separate from prepositions, and from nouns, from which, however, they derive. Nouns giving rise to this group might seem to be non-concrete. However, in a large study of the small minority of adpositions of African languages that seem purely conceptual, Heine (1989: 88) found that wherever and whenever sufﬁcient historical data were obtainable, they turned out to derive from terms of the preceding two kinds (body parts, or enviromental terms). They are, therefore, ultimately of concrete original sense: Swahili chini ‘down < bottom’ < Proto-Bantu * cı´ ‘soil’ þ locative sufﬁx -ni Expressions like Modern Greek ªæø ﬁ “around; concerning” may not refer to a speciﬁc object the way adpositions derived from the words for body parts do, but do nonetheless come from words indicating the concrete shape (as we perceive it) of objects: Modern Greek ªæø ﬁ (þ /I þ NP) ¼ ‘concerning’ < ‘around(spatially)’ < lit. ‘in circle’ — <noun ªæ ‘circle’ Middle Welsh yg kylch (Evans 1964: 216) ¼ ‘concerning’ < ‘around(spatially)’ < lit. ‘in circle’ — < noun kylch ‘circle’. Several linguists insist that even in the most familiar languages (say, French) we can ﬁnd adpositions with no spatial/concrete reference, like sans “without”—Brndal’s (1940: 25) own example. They maintain that the postulation of a primary spatial meaning for prepositions is ﬂawed because those prepositions have no spatial sense and cannot be interpreted the same way as those that have one. A number of linguists agree: Il n’est jamais venu a` l’esprit de personne de mettre sur le meˆme pied des pre´positions comme sans, selon et de, a`, en nobody has ever dreamt of putting prepositions like without or according-to on the same footing as of, at or in (Spang-Hanssen 1963: 13).

Although such words do not represent a tangible object, the fact remains that sans “without” does come from a spatial image. Its etymology is the Latin absentia¯, which literally indicates being physically away from a given place: ab-esse, as opposed to prae-esse. The English translation “without” is a preposition that also has the original sense of being outside (the perceptual

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105

ﬁeld), just like the corresponding Romanian fa˘ra˘ “without” is originally the Latin foras “outside”, and the Hungarian ne´lku¨l “without” (Korponay 1986a: 106–7.) is based on ku¨l, still found in ku¨lso˝ “outside”. The abessive case of languages like Finnish, originally indicating absence from a place, has also come to mean simply “without”. The equivalent Greek preposition åøæ “without” is related to the verb åøæÇø, “to separate” and, ultimately, to åHæ “space”. Its origin, therefore, is a spatial image of motion-away-from. In fact, Greek has also used the ablative preposition I in this privative sense (Amantos 1964: 205). In the Classical language we ﬁnd: (3.20) ºª f `ŁÅÆı ÆPºÇ ŁÆØ Ipe H ‹ºø K ﬁB ºØ (Thuc. 6.64) ‘he said that the Athenians were encamped, without arms, in the city’ The very same development had occurred in Hebrew: the ablative sense of the preposition PO or O mi(n)/me “from” had also become “without” (Molin 1893: 55): (3.21)

J M PLM (Mic. 3.6) O NL M EM NR vO NLM ELHF PFG H ‘for you there shall be night without sight, and darkness without divination’

As a result, in the (Biblical) Greek translation, KŒ is also used for “without”: (3.22)

f E ÆØ K ›æ ø, ŒÆd ŒÆ E ÆØ KŒ ÆÆ

But there are parallel constructions in Byzantine Greek (Sofroniou 1989: 124): (3.23) › Ie O ø ‘the one without eyes(ight)’ [lit. ‘the from eyes’] Swedish idioms like vara ifra˚n fo¨rsta˚ndet, literally “be from understanding > without understanding”, have the same history (Molin 1893). Some adpositions therefore derive from nouns that indicate a concrete event or point in space conceptualized in abstract terms. Semitic languages provide a number of examples: /zula:t/ Hebrew ‘M FG ‘removal; departure’ > ‘except’ JMB /blij/ ‘destruction’ > ‘without’ also with JMB d /bi-vlij/ lit. PJ d /bajin/ Arabic

/bajn-a/

‘in destruction of’ ‘gap’

prepositions: > ‘without’ > PJB /bejn/ ‘between’

‘division[ACC]’

> ‘between’

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The history of Greek prepositions

(4.7)

[ þACC] a c F e åæ ‘after that time’

(Pl.Resp. 537b8)

In the light of this (we noted at pp. 20–5 that such prepositions can be described as discontinuous morphs), only a list of [Pþcase] syntagms is meaningful. The Classical Greek prepositional inventory is traditionally divided into two groups. The ﬁrst comprises the prepositions that also occur as preﬁxes, for example: I çd Æ F I çØ ººø I çØ ºÆ I ç º I çØ ºø

preposition verb preﬁx noun preﬁx adjective preﬁx adverb preﬁx

‘on both sides of the river’ ‘throw around; embrace’ ‘attack on both sides; doubt’ ‘thrown around; ambiguous’ ‘in an equivocal manner’

The prepositions of this type are conventionally termed “proper” ones. Some of the commonest meanings of the “proper” prepositional syntagms are indicated in Table 4.1. The list, of course, is meant to be representative but not comprehensive.20 Most treatises, grammar books, primers, and dictionaries of Greek (to name just the ones that we most commonly use in Britain: Abbott and Mansﬁeld 1897: 176; Goodwin 1894: 254; Smyth 1956: 372) describe the meanings of each Greek preposition starting from the spatial one, and list the other senses as in a chain. Many of the main Greek philologists (e.g. Schwyzer and Debrunner 1950: II: 421ff.; Wackernagel 1928: II: 165ff.; Ku¨hner and Gerth 1898: II: I: 449ff., 526ff.; Becker 1841: 212; Cooper 1998: II: 1134)21 stated explicitly that they assumed local meanings to be primary—although often without clarifying what they meant by this, and without citing evidence that would justify their choice.22 One nineteenth-century scholar, writing on Classical Greek preﬁxes, simply stated: “whatever theory we adopt of the origin of

20

The traditional and ubiquitous classiﬁcation of Greek proper prepositions is in three subgroups, according to the number of cases (one, two, or three) that prepositions could be conjoined with. Such a grouping system is, in my view, rather unenlightening—pace Hjelmslev (1932: 14) who sees it as a natural division—and is here abandoned. 21 This has been done not only by Indo-European philologists, but by philologists of languages of other families. For example, Arabic; cf. Wright (1898: II: 129). 22 This is true also of many scholars who discussed prepositions as a general category, not only in reference to Greek (p. 50).

Part II The history of Greek prepositions

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4 Prepositions and cases in Ancient Greek K Æ Å B K ºØÅ F ı Æ H æŁ

ø

c ƒ æÆ B ººÅØŒB IÆØE NØÆæÅ æıÆ the study of the evolution of the prepositional system across the history of Greek demands special research (Setatos 1994: 886)

4.1 Greek in this study We noted at the outset that Greek has an exceptionally long documented history, like no other Indo-European language (Morpurgo Davies 1985: 75), which makes it the best choice for research in historical linguistics. Starting with this chapter, we shall survey prepositional use across the history of Greek by investigating the e´tat de langue in the Greek of different ages: Ancient,1 Hellenistic, Medieval, and Modern. On the basis of synchronic snapshots, we shall identify the main diachronic trends, bearing in mind that the history of Greek and, above all, the texts we have do not always constitute a single linear development. Prepositions are a particularly enlightening subject of study because, as philologists have long been pointing out (cf. e.g. Jannaris 1897: 365), if any particular section of Greek grammar is to be taken as a specimen to illustrate the historical evolution of the Greek language as a whole, no better representative could be selected than particles such as prepositions. Attic-Ionic Greek (Horrocks 1997a: 21ff.), the ‘Classical’ Greek par excellence,2 is our starting point. This is because it is the earliest Greek for which we 1

I employ the term “ancient” when referring to Greek usage before the Middle Ages including the pre-classical period (and therefore Homer), reserving the denomination of “Classical” for the Greek of Classical times (sixth–fourth centuries BC) and of the Classical varieties (Attic-Ionic dialects). 2 The deﬁnition as “Classical” is, of course, only the view of modern scholarship, and is due to the eminence and plentifulness of Attic-Ionic literature; to the Greeks of the time, Attic was a dialect on a

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The history of Greek prepositions

have very extensive evidence, and because it is the variety from which later (attested) Greek developed—although in Ancient Greek there were several dialects, and no single standard form. In this chapter we will also examine some revealing peculiarities of the pre-Classical dialect of Homer.

4.2 The Classical Greek case system When studying Greek prepositions of pre-modern times, we need to look at cases too.3 This is not only because (as we saw earlier, pp. 6–15) there are intimate similarities between prepositions and cases in general, but because Ancient Greek prepositions were linked to nouns inﬂected for case.4 A Greek preposition often governed various cases with different semantic results. In order to assess Greek prepositional usage in antiquity, it is therefore necessary to have a basic idea of Greek case usage. Grammars of Classical Greek always distinguish ﬁve possible case forms in their paradigms (although the order in which they are listed varies), for example: Nominative Vocative Accusative Genitive Dative

e.g. e.g. e.g. e.g. e.g.

rŒ- rŒ- rŒ- YŒ-ı YŒ-ø ﬁ

This classiﬁcation (not without its didactic merits) overlooks two issues relevant to our study of prepositions. First, not all these ﬁve “case” endings qualify for the status of “case”. The vocative is not a case in any syntactic sense5 and semantically it has no spatial or adverbial meanings. The status of par with the others (see Morpurgo Davies 1987: 9ff.). We can overlook the slight differences between Attic and Ionic (cf. Meillet 1965: 229ff.) as inconsequential to our discussion. 3 More detailed expositions can be found in most comprehensive grammars (e.g. Ku¨hner and Gerth 1898: II: I: 290ff.; Schwyzer and Debrunner 1950: II: 52ff.) and in accounts of Greek syntax (e.g. Humbert 1960: 250ff.; Cooper 1998: I: 98–334). 4 The notion of case government, recognized in variant formulations by classical philology, structural linguistics, and Chomskyian generative grammar, is simply taken here in the broad sense of syntactic conﬁgurations in which “a word dictates the form of another” (Aronoff and Fudeman 2005: 156), so that “certain lexical heads have the power to determine the Case (and in some languages the case) of NPs that are their complements” (Horrocks 1987: 103). 5 Attempts have been made (e.g. Zdrenghea 1960: 800) to defend the classiﬁcation of the vocative as a case by claiming that it marks the subject of imperatives—but this is marginal and questionable. The classiﬁcation of the vocative as a case is purely structural: it is a word-ﬁnal morph like case endings. Morphological marking of nouns used vocatively also occurs in languages without case inﬂections, like some Austronesian languages (Blake 1994: 9). Indian grammarians (Hjelmslev 1935: 4) did not list the vocative as a case, and the Greeks did not include the vocative in their inventory of cases until Dionysus Thrax (ca. 100 BC).

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111

the nominative as a “case” like genitive, dative, and accusative is also questionable (cf. Bortone 2003: 325–7). On the other hand—as we shall see—forms of other case distinctions inherited from Indo-European were in use in Greek, albeit rarely and no longer productively (including after prepositions, unlike ofﬁcial “cases” such as nominative and vocative). In fact, we also ﬁnd other endings that had local meaning but never received the label of “cases” at all. Secondly, the traditional classiﬁcation of cases, being based on purely morpho-syntactic criteria,6 does not acknowledge that each case form had a multiplicity of semantic functions (cf. Bortone 2002: 70–5)—due either to internal semantic developments or to formal mergers of once separate case forms. The label traditionally given to a case form must be taken cum grano salis. Greek nouns and adjectives (and, to a large extent, pronouns) carry an overt or covert inﬂectional ending that marks them for number, gender, and case; since the ﬁrst two categories appeared to traditional grammarians to be identiﬁable semantically, a similar approach was used for case too (Lyons 1968: 289). Each case was labelled with one of its semantic functions such as, for instance, ØŒ dativus for the case used for the recipient of verbs of giving. The Classical Greek dative, however, has also, inter alia, instrumental meaning; and this is not inherent in any dative case: Latin expresses instrumental meanings by means of its (socalled) ablative case, and Sanskrit has a separate case for it, indeed called instrumental.7 In the brief outline of case usage that follows, we shall take all these factors into account. The Greek nominative is described as the case of the subject and its predicates (cf. Ku¨hner and Gerth 1898: II: I: 31ff.) and it therefore has both essive and translative sense, although it is often said not to be a case at all, and it is used metalinguistically as the naming case. Its use is extremely frequent but its range of functions limited. It plays no role in prepositional phrases— and therefore a very limited one in this study. Nonetheless, let us note that there are reasons for speculating that even the meaning of the nominative may have been spatial in origin (Bortone 2003: 328–30).

6 Touratier (1994: 256) had a point when he argued that we can talk of the Greek case “system” only if by “system” we mean a morphological ensemble; individual case forms, however, are identiﬁed by function, not by form: e.g. “genitive” in ˜Ø- and Ł-oF: “rien de plus trouble que l’ensemble incohe´rent des formes casuelles” (Meillet 1948: 157). More on the morphology of Greek cases can be found in the classic account by Chantraine (1961: 35ff.). On the origin of the forms, see Rix (1992: 115ff.) or Szemere´nyi (1990: 166ff.). 7 Traditional accounts are often conservative not only in the labels they give to case forms, but even in their claims as to what cases a language has. They may follow diachronically-based assumptions on how a language ought to be rather than seeking to establish what distinctions are actually made synchronically; cf. Comrie (1986: 86ff.) on Russian and Latvian.

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The history of Greek prepositions

The Greek accusative, in Classical times, was already the most common case (Delaunois 1988: 37). Besides the syntactic function of marking direct objects and elements coreferential to it, the accusative had other meanings (Smyth 1956: 357ff.): spatial extension: ¼ªØ . . . a . . . › (Xen.Cyr. 1.6.43) “lead over narrow streets”;8 temporal extension: Ø æÆ (Xen.An. 1.2.6) “he remained for seven days”; limitation: e Œıº IºªE (Pl.Resp. 462d) “hurts in his ﬁnger”; quantity or mode: æ Ø “in some way”; many forms classiﬁed as adverbs are originally nouns in the accusative: ŒÅ “justly”, “a bit”— as in Latin (Hewson and Bubenik 2006: 46), e.g. statim “steadily, on the spot”, passim “here and there”. The Greek genitive case had a vast range of meanings. To understand its (Classical) synchronic spatial senses, it helps to bear in mind that, historically, the Classical Greek “genitive” (like the Slavonic one) continues two different Indo-European cases: the genitive and the ablative (cf. Schwyzer and Debrunner 1939: I: 546).9 In the so-called “genitive proper” the sense is partitive10 (Chantraine 1948: I: 58; Luraghi 1996: 39). This expresses (Humbert 1960: 300) spatial limitation—the singling out of a portion of the referent—as opposed to the spatial extension and total affectedness indicated by the accusative case: (4.1) B b IøÆ ŒÆd ¼ººŁØ ººÆåF ÆN åæe Ø ÆØ (Pl.Symp. 182b) ‘in Ionia and elsewhere in many places it is considered opprobrious’ The genitive as a continuation of the disused ablative is also discernible: (4.2)

ªaæ "ØŒc æe Œ ÆØ ººe B ¸ ı (Hdt. 6.139) ‘Attica, south(wards), lies a long (distance) from Lemnos’

Other meanings traditionally attributed to the genitive include (Smyth 1956: 314ff.): 8 Old grammarians denied altogether the existence of a directional accusative as such, postulating the ellipsis of a preposition. According to Sanctius Brocensis (1587: 209), those who see any difference between eo Romam and eo ad Romam “absurdius delirant”. 9 The causes of case syncretism in Greek have been variously interpreted and it has been argued that different dialects syncretized case differently. The decipherment of Mycenaean has complicated rather than clariﬁed the issue; for a summary of the problems see Morpurgo Davies (1985: 98ff.) and Hajnal (1995). 10 Some languages (e.g. Finnish) have a partitive case distinct from the genitive and the ablative— but the Finnish partitive case was originally an ablative (see Hakulinen 1961: 70).

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113

possession: c NŒÆ c ø (Lys. 3.32) “Simon’s house”; reference: ç . . . H . . . ¯ƒºø (Thuc. 3.54) “fear about the Eilotes”; material: øæf ı (Xen.Hell. 4.4.12) “heaps of corn”; individuation: f IŒı H IŁæø (Dem. 27.68) “the unjust amongst men”; quality: KÆ . . . æı . . . ıåı (Hdt. 1.107) “being of quiet disposition”; comparison: ŁÆı Æ Øæ KŒı (Pl.Symp. 215b) “more wonderful than him”.

The Greek dative had an even wider range of meanings. This was partly due to the fact that it continued (semantically and morphologically)11 many IndoEuropean cases, having arisen from the merger of the old dative, locative, and instrumental12 (cf. Schwyzer and Debrunner 1939: I: 546; Ku¨hner and Gerth 1898: II: I: 404). Its main function was that of marking indirect objects: (4.3) ø Ø ÆPø ﬁ Ð . . . Ø Ł ‘he gives him wages’13

(Xen.An. 1.1.10)

But the Classical dative also expressed (Smyth 1956: 337):14 motion towards:15 ŁÅæØ ºÇØ (Xen.Cyr. 1.4.7) “approach wild beasts”; location at (in poetic style): ÆØ Zæ Ø (Soph.O.T. 1451) “live on the mountains”; 11 The Ancient Greek endings of the “dative plural” of the second declension (-Ø and -Ø Ø) are those of the old instrumental and locative respectively. The Indo-European dative (Kuryłowicz 1964: 190) is an offshoot of the locative forms. Locative and allative senses came to coincide again in postClassical Greek, with N also being used instead of K. 12 In Sanskrit, instrumental, locative, and dative case forms are morphologically distinct. Classical Greek probably increased its use of prepositions to separate the senses. 13 The original sense of the dative may also explain why it is required by certain by verbs. The verb ÅŁH “succour, help”, for instance, which governs the dative, is thought (Chantraine 1999: 183) to be a compound of “a scream” and ŁH “to rush”, and to mean originally “to hasten towards (i.e. to the aid of) somebody screaming” (cf. English succour < Lat. sub-curro, like sub-venio, all by the same meaning). 14 We must note that the old instrumental case also had comitative sense—association and means are meanings that tend to co-exist in the same case or preposition (see p. 45), exemplifying the common “an instrument is a companion” metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 134). In Ancient Greek both those meanings of the old “instrumental” were incorporated into what we call “dative”. 15 Stefan´ski (1983: 139) argued that, as there is a link between genitive and ablative, so there is between dative and accusative. Their contrastive use with prepositions seems to suggest that dative emphasizes more the (contact with) the goal, while the accusative highlights the movement itself more. But there is clearly an allative sense in both, as Sanskrit also attests (Speijer 1886: 58). In their abstract use too, direct and indirect objects are often crosslinguistically interchangeable—see, e.g., accusative pronoun with English teach, Greek Ø Œø, Hebrew D OM, German lehren, but dative case/preposition with Italian insegnare, Turkish o¨g˘retmek, Russian yxbnm, Finnish opettaa. The northern Modern Greek accusative b ø corresponds to the Ancient dative d ø Ø “I give you”, and dative forms often become accusative ones; cf. German dative dem “to the”, ihm “to him” (vs. accusative den, ihn) developing in Yiddish as NSD /dem/ and NJA /im/ for both dative and accusative. The English accusative him (Lehmann 1995: 110) is also an ex-dative, replacing Old English hine. At a more theoretical level, the distinction between direct and indirect objects has been demolished by S.R. Anderson (1988).

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The history of Greek prepositions

location in time: ﬁB b æÆÆﬁ [ æÆﬁ] (Xen.Hell. 1.14) “the day after”; means: Æºº ºŁØ (Lys. 3.8) “he hit me with stones”; interest: A Icæ ÆﬁH E (Soph.Aj. 1366) “every man toils for himself”; possession: q Æ . . . ﬁH ˚æ ø ﬁ ÆE (Hdt. 1.34) “Croesus had two sons”; association: qºŁ . . . ºŁØ PŒ Oºªø ﬁ (Thuc. 1.102) “they came with no small crowd”; agency: ŁæÆEÆØ . . . NÆæE oæÅÆØ (Isoc. 8.39) “cures have been found by doctors”; cause: ø ﬁ . . . IŁÆÆ (Thuc. 8.84) “died of illness”.

Having looked at the genitive, accusative, and dative, we have not quite completely exhausted the oblique cases of Attic. For a start, Classical Greek has remnants of other Indo-European case forms. Most notably, the original locative case is at times used (Schwyzer and Debrunner 1939: I: 549ff.):16 (4.4)

a YŒØ ‘at home’

(Xen.Hell. 1.6.5)

b %ªÆæE ‘at Megara’

(Ar.Ach. 758)

Its use was restricted to few nouns. Normally, a less archaic case was used: the dative, whose local sense was clariﬁed by an inessive preposition, K: (4.5)

ﬁ a K YŒø ‘at home’

(Xen.Cyr. 1.6.12)

b K %ªæØ ‘at Megara’

(Th. 2.31.1)

By the Classical Age, locative endings, although morphologically different from the dative, were semantically perceived and syntactically treated as forms of the dative (which had become the standard case to indicate location). This is proven by their combined use in coordination (see p. 11). A few other endings with case-like meanings—but not continuing IndoEuropean cases—were occasionally used (cf. also Chantraine 1961: 123ff.)— and these endings too had far commoner prepositional synonyms: -Ł[] semantically ablative (see Lejeune 1939): YŒŁ “from home” (e.g. Th. 4.90.3) corresponding to K YŒı (e.g. Xen.Cyr. 5.4.29) 16 Cf. Latin dom-i “at home”, Rhod-i “in Rhodes”, or Oscan vı´a-ı´ “in the street”, all relic locatives. Endings of the other obsolete cases occur only (and very rarely) in non-classical texts—e.g. the dialectal (Delphic) ablative YŒø and the Homeric old instrumental -çØ (cf. pp. 130–1).

Prepositions in Ancient Greek

115

%ªÆæŁ “from Megara” (e.g. Ar.Vesp. 57) corresponding to KŒ %ªæø (e.g. Thuc. 6.4.2) -

semantically allative (but used only on accusative stems): YŒÆ “homewards” (e.g. Thuc. 2.68.3) corresponding to N rŒ (e.g. Xen.An. 2.4.8)17 %ªæÆ “to Megara” (e.g. Ar.Ach. 524) corresponding to N %ªæÆ (e.g. Xen.Hell. 5.4.41)

-ŁØ

semantically locative: YŒŁØ “at home” is only pre-classical (Il. 8.513, Od. 3.303, 21.398) corresponding to K YŒø ﬁ (e.g. Xen.Cyr. 1.6.12) ¼ººŁØ “in another (place)” (e.g. Xen.Ath.Pol. 2.7.5) corresponding to K ¼ººø ﬁ (e.g. Xen.Mem. 2.1.20)

-

semantically lative: ººÆå “to many places” (Thuc. 2.47.3) corresponding to N ººf ı (Arist.Part.an. 655a) ¼ºº “to another (place)” (e.g. Thuc. 7.51.1) corresponding to N ¼ºº (Pl.Ap. 40e)

The use of these sufﬁxes was short-lived, and they receive little space in Greek primers. They were, nonetheless, marking local “case–like” distinctions.

4.3 The prepositional syntagms of Classical Greek Greek prepositions18 could differ in their meaning according to the case marking of the noun they had as their object.19 For instance: (4.6) [ þGEN] åæ a H ŁH Øªı Æ ‘spending time with the gods’

(Pl.Phd. 81a)

17 The form rŒ is indeed attested, but earlier, in Homer (18 times) and Hesiod (3). The base YŒÆ (on which - is sufﬁxed) is equivalent to rŒ—being either an accusative neuter plural (Wackernagel 1928: II: 205, Larsson 2007: 104–6) or—far more likely—the accusative singular from *r rather than rŒ. 18 Prepositions are quoted here in their most common form (such as ŒÆ rather than ¥ŒÆ, oŒÆ, oŒ, Œ, Œ) but variants of all items are to be understood as included. On such variation, see Krebs (1884: 6ff.). 19 We include in this section the occasional postposition, so that the broader title “adpositions” would therefore be more precise (cf. pp. 4–6).

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The history of Greek prepositions

(4.7)

[ þACC] a c F e åæ ‘after that time’

(Pl.Resp. 537b8)

In the light of this (we noted at pp. 20–5 that such prepositions can be described as discontinuous morphs), only a list of [Pþcase] syntagms is meaningful. The Classical Greek prepositional inventory is traditionally divided into two groups. The ﬁrst comprises the prepositions that also occur as preﬁxes, for example: I çd Æ F I çØ ººø I çØ ºÆ I ç º I çØ ºø

preposition verb preﬁx noun preﬁx adjective preﬁx adverb preﬁx

‘on both sides of the river’ ‘throw around; embrace’ ‘attack on both sides; doubt’ ‘thrown around; ambiguous’ ‘in an equivocal manner’

The prepositions of this type are conventionally termed “proper” ones. Some of the commonest meanings of the “proper” prepositional syntagms are indicated in Table 4.1. The list, of course, is meant to be representative but not comprehensive.20 Most treatises, grammar books, primers, and dictionaries of Greek (to name just the ones that we most commonly use in Britain: Abbott and Mansﬁeld 1897: 176; Goodwin 1894: 254; Smyth 1956: 372) describe the meanings of each Greek preposition starting from the spatial one, and list the other senses as in a chain. Many of the main Greek philologists (e.g. Schwyzer and Debrunner 1950: II: 421ff.; Wackernagel 1928: II: 165ff.; Ku¨hner and Gerth 1898: II: I: 449ff., 526ff.; Becker 1841: 212; Cooper 1998: II: 1134)21 stated explicitly that they assumed local meanings to be primary—although often without clarifying what they meant by this, and without citing evidence that would justify their choice.22 One nineteenth-century scholar, writing on Classical Greek preﬁxes, simply stated: “whatever theory we adopt of the origin of

20

The traditional and ubiquitous classiﬁcation of Greek proper prepositions is in three subgroups, according to the number of cases (one, two, or three) that prepositions could be conjoined with. Such a grouping system is, in my view, rather unenlightening—pace Hjelmslev (1932: 14) who sees it as a natural division—and is here abandoned. 21 This has been done not only by Indo-European philologists, but by philologists of languages of other families. For example, Arabic; cf. Wright (1898: II: 129). 22 This is true also of many scholars who discussed prepositions as a general category, not only in reference to Greek (p. 50).

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TABLE 4.1 ‘Proper’ prepositions I çþaccusative I çþgenitive Iþaccusative Iþgenitive Iþgenitive Øþaccusative Øþgenitive Nþaccusative KŒþgenitive Kþdative Kþaccusative Kþgenitive Kþdative ŒÆþaccusative ŒÆþgenitive þaccusative þgenitive Ææþaccusative Ææþgenitive Ææþdative æþaccusative æþgenitive æþdative æþgenitive æþaccusative æþgenitive æþdative

/þdative æþaccusative æþgenitive þaccusative þgenitive þdative ‰þaccusative a

Commonest meanings on both sides; around; about the time of on both sides; around; concerning; for the sake of up (along); all over; in groups of instead of away from; from a time; due to all over; on account of crossing; through (space/time/person/tool); each (time); after (in)to a place; towards a time; up to a number; for a purpose out of; after; on the . . . hand side; since; because of in a place; at/in a time; amongst going onto/over; against; for(time); in quest of; depending on staying onto (part of)/upon; in charge of; at the time of staying on; feeling about; on condition; up to/in the power downwards; sparsely in; in pursuit of; according to; in down from; down on(to)/in(to); against; concerning after (a time) together with; in accordance with; in a manner to the side/to the presence of; beyond from the side/from the presence of; by an agent at the side/next to/chez all round/all over; pertaining; approximately about a topic; being worth; concerning placed around; for the sake of in front of; before a timea; in defence of going facing/towards; towards a time; with a view to placed facing/towards; from (the direction of); (swear) by being facing/near; in addition to with; with the help of b going above/over/beyond; (also metaphorically); all over above; in favour/defence of; replacing to under; near the time of under; by (cause or agent) (at) under; through the power of up to a person

Greek visualizes time with the past being in front—i.e. æ—and the future behind—i.e. the “improper” preposition › [ ]ø. Dunkel (1982–3: 82ff.) therefore relates etymologically O ø to I and not K as is traditional (cf. Ruijgh 1994: 141). b On the relationship between the two forms, see Dunkel (1982–3: 55ff.).

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The history of Greek prepositions

language, it is agreed by all scholars that its words are derived largely from notion of things in space” (Adams 1885: iii).23 The second group comprises prepositions which could not also be used as preﬁxes—and are, as a consequence, described as profoundly different (cf. Regard 1918: 63; Humbert 1960: 299; Schwyzer and Debrunner 1950: II: 533ff.; Cooper 1998: II: 1134). Greek grammars list them separately, and always classify them as “untrue”, “improper”, or “misused” (unechte Pra¨positionen, pre´positions non proprement dites, ŒÆÆåæÅ ØŒÆd æŁ

Ø).24 This is worse than a ‘terme . . . pas tre`s heureux’ (Humbert 1960: 299): it is a classiﬁcation that does not recognize as prepositions words which are purely prepositions, on the grounds that they are not also something else. The absurdity of this has not prevented such labels from being adopted in Greek primers all over the world. Most studies of Greek prepositions ignore the “improper” ones altogether (e.g. Sobolewski 1890; Haggett 1902; Bonfante 1950; Horrocks 1981, to quote but a few).25 The commonest ones, with some of their commonest meanings, are shown in Table 4.2.26 The “improper” items usually governed only one case.27 They also tended to be polysyllabic (or indeed polymorphemic), to be less rarely intransitive, and perhaps more stressed. All this is to be expected in less grammatical(ized) lexemes, and it has parallels in other languages (cf. Yadroff and Franks (2001: 70–5) for Russian). As Hewson and Bubenik (2006: 48) noted, in all adpositional inventories there is a grammatical–lexical continuum, with the most grammatical(ized) items being seen as the proper prepositions, and the other end of the spectrum shading off into the lexicon. In the “proper” prepositions, the acute/ grave accent written on the second syllable of disyllabic items is thought to be a conventional way of indicating lack of accent, and when the preposition occurs

23

Despite the promising title “The Greek prepositions studied from their original meanings of designations of space”, Adams (1885) never discusses the origin of the words and had no interest in diachronic semantics; it is a book aimed at students; its approach is “psychological, not etymological” (Adams 1885: v–vi), and, above all, focused on what we commonly term preﬁxes. 24 This means that items that function unquestionably as prepositions (for instance, – Æ has the same meaning and the same syntax as ) are denied that label. 25 Brndal (1940: 13), predictably, stated that ¼ø, ø, or KŒ are not prepositions at all. 26 A few other adverbial expressions were very occasionally used “prepositionum interdum loco usurpata” (Rosberg 1868: note 2), but are here excluded owing to the minimal role they played in the history of the language. 27 Except for æØ which, like the “proper” æ, takes all three cases, the comitative “improper” prepositions – Æ and › F (and the extremely rare KÆø) take the dative; the accusative is used with the allative preposition ‰; all others require the genitive. The requirement of the genitive by all these forms is parallelled in the syntax of the improper prepositions of Latin, Old Slavonic, and OscoUmbrian, and agrees with the hypothesis—but is by no means proof—that these were originally nominal forms.

Prepositions in Ancient Greek

119

TABLE 4.2 “Improper” prepositions

Commonest meaning

– Æþdative IØŒæ þ genitive Kªª þ genitive KŒ þ genitive æ Ł þ genitive KÆ þ genitive ŒÆ þ genitive K / Y ø / þ genitive KØ þ genitive ø þ genitive (K)ø þ genitive ø þ genitive ŒÆØ þ genitive ÆŒæ þ genitive Æ þ genitive åæØ / ¼åæØ / ‰ / ø þ genitive O -ø/ -Ł þ genitive æÆ() þ genitive æØ þ acc./gen./dat. º þ genitive ºÅ þ genitive ææø þ genitive æ þ genitive æ Ł þ genitive Œø þ genitive åæØ þ genitive åøæ/¼ı þ genitive

with opposite close to outside in front of opposite; against because of within facing outside above as far as following far from between as far as; until behind beyond, across all round except near far inside before before below for the sake of away from, without

after its noun, the original accent reappears, but on the ﬁrst syllable (see Probert 2003: 137–41). The “proper” prepositions had a paroxytone accentuation, which was lost in the process of grammaticalization by phonological reduction; in this sense too, therefore, they are essentially an older equivalent of the “improper” prepositions. The two generations of prepositions differed in their non-prepositional usage, since the former cannot be preﬁxes; but as prepositions, they could be functionally and semantically equivalent. The semantic relationship between the two types—the extent to which their meanings overlapped—will occupy us at length.

4.4 The differences from preﬁxes The fact that it is customary to label as “proper” or “true” prepositions only those that can be preﬁxed (cf. e.g. Schwyzer and Debrunner 1950: II: 533;

120

The history of Greek prepositions

Smyth 1956: 366), highlights that Greek prepositions are traditionally thought to be the same category as preﬁxes. This is also unwarranted—and preﬁxes are not included in this study. Let us brieﬂy see why. The main argument for a single category preposition/preﬁx is morphological: in most instances a preposition has an identical-looking counterpart amongst the preﬁxes. The identity is even clearer if one considers that writing a preﬁx and the following item as one word—instead of as two, as is done with prepositions—is only a matter of convention: N Æø verbal sufﬁx Æø N preposition Y Æ Ø nominal sufﬁx Ø N preposition However, just as there are “improper” prepositions that cannot be preﬁxes, there are some forms that only exist as preﬁxes: in Classical Greek there is no prepositional use of the preﬁxes ı - or Ø- (or, in Latin, of re-, ce-, dis-, or intro-). More importantly, the semantics of the “same form” used as a preﬁx may differ. For instance, in Classical Greek IÆ-, whose basic prepositional meaning is “up”, has the following meanings as a preﬁx which it could never have as a preposition: IÆ-Œø IÆ-Øæø IÆ- ÆØ IÆ-ªø IÆ-ıæ ø IÆ-Œæ Œ ÆØ IÆ-ŒÆºø IÆ-ÇøªæÆç ø IÆ-Œæø IÆ-Ø Œø

‘gulp down’ ‘bore through’ ‘shrink back’ ‘beget anew’ ‘have fever recurrently’ ‘begin to play’ ‘un-cover’ ‘paint completely’ ‘examine closely’ ‘teach otherwise’

So (cf. Lehmann 1983: 160) there is no necessary semantic equivalence [x pref-VERB y] and

[x VERB prep-y]28

It is interesting to note also that later Greek and other languages show that, after a form had developed into an adposition and a preﬁx, not only its meanings but also its forms may diverge. So in Greek today, ªØ is the prepositions, ØÆ- the preﬁx; in Latin, cum is the preposition but con- is the preﬁx; in French pour is only a preposition, per- the preﬁx, etc. 28 On Classical Greek preverbs, semantically quite different from their prepositional twins, see Adams (1885), Pernice (1962), and Cooper (1998: II: 1243–62).

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121

In Ancient Greek there are also syntactic differences between prepositions and preﬁxes. These are clear when the preﬁxes are attached to a noun, because (unlike the seemingly identical prepositions), they cannot case-mark the noun. Contrast the Classical Greek rendering of “they were armed” with an adjectival phrase and a prepositional phrase: (4.8)

a ºØ ‘in-arms[NOM] b K ‹ºØ ‘in arms[DAT]

q Æ were’ q Æ were’

The dative in the latter example is required by the preposition. This is decisive: si les pre´positions constituent une cate´gorie particulie`re au sein du syste`me, c’est qu’elles constituent un paradigme de´ﬁni par la faculte´ de ses membres de re´gir des cas. if prepositions do constitute a distinct category within the system, it is because they constitute a set deﬁned by the capacity that its members have to govern cases. (Hjelmslev 1932: 14)

Even those who had tried to deﬁne prepositions in semantic terms, noticed that syntaktisk undermarker de sig . . . i Motsætning til andre Partikler, ved en særlig Evne . . . at optræde styrende syntactically, they are characterized—in contraposition to other particles—by a particular property: . . . to exert government (Brndal 1940: 1).

4.5 The extent of prepositional use in Classical Greek Westphal (1888: 2) counted the occurrences of prepositions in the collected works of the classical prose writer Xenophon, and Koch (1889: 35) compiled similar statistics of prepositional usage in Isocrates. Their results (individually and aggregated as much as applicable) are shown in Table 4.3. Lutz (1891: 6) compiled statistics on the use of “improper” prepositions29 in a large corpus30 of Attic prose writers31 (Table 4.4). Lutz also gives total I am not counting –Æ ºª Æ such as KæÅ Æ ﬁ þ genitive “without” (Lys. 12.98). Lutz’s corpus included: Aeschines, Andocides, Antiphon, Demosthenes, Dimarchus, Hyperides, Isaeus, Isocrates, Lycurgus, and Lysias. 31 Koch (1889) compiled statistics of Isocrates’ usage, and included in his list of counted improper prepositions some which Lutz had ignored, while leaving others out: – Æþdat. (1), Kªªþgen. (6), KŒþgen. (0), æ Łþgen. (0), KÆþgen. (1), ŒÆþgen. (52), Kþgen. (10), øþgen. (21), øþgen. (0), Æþgen. (1), åæØ/ ¼åæØþgen. (16), O [ ]-ø/-Łþgen. (0), æÆ[]þgen. (0), ºþgen. (22), ºÅ þgen. (1), ææøþgen. (15), æ Łþgen. (1), åøæ/¼ıþgen. (14). 29 30

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The history of Greek prepositions

TABLE 4.3 Preposition I çþaccusative I çþgenitive Iþaccusative Iþgenitive Iþgenitive Øþaccusative Øþgenitive Nþaccusative KŒþgenitive Kþdative Kþaccusative Kþgenitive Kþdative ŒÆþaccusative ŒÆþgenitive þaccusative þgenitive Ææþaccusative Ææþgenitive Ææþdative æþaccusative æþgenitive æþdative æþgenitive æþaccusative æþgenitive æþdative

/þdative æþaccusative æþgenitive þaccusative þgenitive þdative ‰þaccusative

Isocrates

Xenophon

Total

0 0 0 34 79 388 115 470 540 781 214 127 190 288 32 53 216 51 194 157 458 1066 1 39 748 10 91 1 4 278 5 275 36 25

145 2 37 148 651 585 333 2050 1245 2512 1051 278 605 632 25 177 268 204 343 170 353 419 13 93 1451 633 169 550 13 130 35 699 56 0

145 2 37 182 730 973 448 2520 1785 3293 1265 405 795 920 57 230 484 255 537 327 353 1485 14 132 2199 643 260 551 17 408 40 974 92 25

Sources: Westphal (1888: 2) and Koch (1889: 35).

occurrences of both proper and improper prepositions in his corpus: “proper” prepositions 26,630 and “improper” prepositions 1,054, which gives a ratio of approximately 25 to 1.

123

Prepositions in Ancient Greek TABLE 4.4 Preposition ‰ Y ø KÆø ææ ææø ø(Ł) º › F æÆ I æø/ø

Occurences Preposition Occurences Preposition 144 7 1 1 17 83 51 1 7 2

ŒÆ åæØ KØ ºÅ ææøø K åøæ Kªª æÆØ æø ZØ Ł

348 88 1 9 2 18 61 15 3 2

åæØ ¼ı – Æ Æ ¼Ł (I) KÆ (K )æ Ł ¼ø IØŒæ

Occurences 3 107 16 6 3 1 64 11 3 2

Source: Lutz (1891: 6)

4.6 Pre-Classical insights: the Greek of Homer To understand the background of Attic usage one should in theory look at Indo-European texts; this not being possible, one must take Homer as the best source—but with some strong caveats about Homeric Greek: it does not constitute an earlier stage of the same Greek as Attic. Attic was a distinct dialect which does not continue Homeric Greek; it is not an e´tat de langue of a dialect anyway: it is a literary creation, blending features of different dialects (Horrocks 1997b: 212ff.)—notably of Ionic, but not exclusively—and, to some degree, containing elements of different times. We must, nevertheless, accept Homer as the earliest form of alphabetic Greek available to us, going back to the mid–late eighth century BC, with later features. By the same token, it may be useful to make an occasional reference to Mycenaean, or Linear B, the most ancient attestation of Greek. However, we must bear in mind that Mycenaean too, besides being of quite arduous interpretation, is neither Old Attic nor an older form of the same Greek as that of Homer (see Ruijgh 1985),32 nor indeed a Proto-Greek wherefrom the various Greek dialects later sprung (Morpurgo Davies 1985: 75; Horrocks 1997a: 3ff.). 32 Mycenaean often seems less archaic than Homer, because Homer is part of a very ancient tradition: Mycenaean has traits in common with Classical Greek while Homer has traits of IndoEuropean lost to Mycenaean (cf. Horrocks 1981: 143).

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The history of Greek prepositions

What follows is an outline of the features of Homeric Greek that are most relevant to our investigation.33 The focus is on where Homeric usage is at variance with Attic.

4.7 Case usage in Homer In Homer there are some noteworthy spatial uses of accusative, genitive, and dative, which are thought to be prehistoric (cf. Fritz 1997: 25). 4.7.1 Accusative We ﬁnd many examples like the following: (4.9) Æ Æ ‘they went (to) the ships[ACC]’

(Od. 3.162)

In Homer the accusative is clearly used to mark spatial direction.34 We can see this in the use of both intransitive and transitive verbs: (4.10)

Œ ÆÆ ‹

Iª Å . . . æ H ‘all the goods I brought [to] my home’

(4.11)

ŒŒºÆ ıº ‘were called [to] assembly’

(4.12) Kªg › ª ø ‘I shall lead the way’

(Il. 7.363) (Il. 10.195) (Od. 7.30)

The fact that the local meanings of the Greek cases are more discernible in Homer—that is, in older usage—ties in with the theory that the spatial value is original (cf. Kuryłowicz 1964: 201ff.). In Classical Greek, this use is only rarely echoed in solemn Classical literature: (4.13) ¼ ı ŒÆ E º ‘gone [to] the city of Cadmus’

(Soph. O.T. 35)

(4.14)

(Soph. El. 893)

qºŁ Ææe IæåÆE ç ‘I came [to] my father’s ancestral tomb’

33

For a succint introduction to Homeric Greek, see Horrocks (1997b). This is not an unparalleled peculiarity: in Finnish (an unrelated language) the plain accusative, in addition to marking the object, has the same meaning of spatial and temporal extension: 34

(i) olen Suomessa yhde-n vuode-n ‘I am in Finland (for) a year[ACC]’ (ii) ha¨n ka¨velee kilometri-n ‘he walks (for) a kilometre[ACC]

Prepositions in Ancient Greek

125

The accusative in Homer is also used to indicate temporal extension: (Il. 1.592)

(4.15) A w Ææ çæ Å ‘I was carried all day’ More generally, it indicates the extent to which a predicate applies: (4.16)

Æ ‰Œ ‘swift [in the] feet’

(passim)

Note that when Homer replaces this kind of accusative with prepositional constructions, allative prepositions, such as æ and N, are resorted to: (4.17) IŁÆﬁ Å Ø ŁﬁB N tÆ ØŒ (Il. 3.158) lit. ‘to the immortal goddesses to the face she was similar’35 The plain accusative of extent is rarer in Classical Greek; when it is supplemented by a preposition, it is again the directional N: (4.18) ƒ ØÆç æ . . . N Iæ ‘those who excel in virtue’

(Pl.Ap. 35a)

4.7.2 Genitive In Homer, the genitive has partitive spatial sense, indicating location within a limited space: (Od. 3.251)

(4.19)

PŒ @æª q ‘he was not within Argos’

(4.20)

ç P çÆ Å ªÆÅ P Oæ ø (Il. 17.372) ‘no cloud appeared on the whole land nor on the mountains’

In Homer, the partitive genitive (the genitive “proper”) with a verb of motion can also express movement within a limited space: (4.21) º Ø Ł ı ÆØ ‘running in a vast plain’

(Il. 4.244)

Some Greek verbs require their object in the genitive (Goodwin 1894: 232ff.). These verbs, in the main, belong to a small inventory of semantic areas, and the genitive is used to mark a partitive object: KØŁı ø Kæø Oæ ª ÆØ

‘desire’ ‘long for’ ‘to crave’

35 A number of philologists (e.g. Harrison 1858: 139ff.; Kuryłowicz 1964: 201) have been taking explicitly for granted that the accusative case denotes extension even when marking the object of a verb.

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The history of Greek prepositions

ıªåø ‘achieve’

åÇ ÆØ ‘strive for’36 This genitive is usually dismissed as adnominal: it is said to be a partitive genitive depending upon an ellipsed noun (in the accusative) which is meant to be the ‘true’ direct object. But it is difﬁcult not to suspect that the Greek choice of the genitive was, at least to begin with, semantically motivated. The verb ›æ ª ÆØ, for instance, usually means “to crave”, but originally meant “to reach for”. Its Indo-European cognates, such as Latin rego and Sanskrit rj-/ rn˜j- conﬁrm _ not _ say that the earlier meaning of “stretch out straight”. We should therefore il y a la` un phe´nome`ne de rection, laquelle prive les de´sinences relatives de leur contenu se´mantique et les identiﬁe, au point de vue de la valeur, avec la de´sinence de l’acc. du re´gime direct. we have a case of government, which empties the endings in question of their semantic content, and makes them identical, in terms of function, to the ending of the accusative of direct objects. (Kuryłowicz 1949: 138).

It is only in the course of time that the association of verb and case (just like that of preposition and case) becomes just syntactic government, semantically opaque even to the native speakers. The Ancient Greek genitive, especially in Homer, also had ablative sense: (4.22) ØŒ x Ø ‘he chased (from) his[GEN] house[GEN]’

(Od. 18.8)

(4.23)

(Il. 15.655)

H b KåæÅ Æ ‘they withdrew (from) the ships[GEN]’

In Homer, the ablative sense of the Greek genitive is particularly clear37—both when the case form is used on its own, for example: (4.24) I ı . . . ±º ‘she rose (from) the sea[GEN]’

(Il. 1.359)

and probably after prepositions: 36 This is not true only of Greek; the same happens in other languages, such as modern Russian (Wade 1992: 115), where most verbs requiring a genitive grosso modo coincide semantically with the Greek ones:

KØŁı ø ıªåø Kæø

åÇ ÆØ

‘desire’ ‘achieve’ ‘long for’ ‘strive for’

¼ :tkfnm ¼ ljcnbufnm ¼ :f:lfnm ¼ lj,bdfnmcz

The inventory of verbs requiring the genitive in Sanskrit (Speijer 1886: 87ff.) is also semantically similar to the Greek and Russian ones above. 37 Some traditional scholars have denied this (cf. e.g. Harrison 1858: 27ff.).

Prepositions in Ancient Greek (4.25)

127

(Il. 1.44)

B b ŒÆ’ ˇPº Ø ŒÆæø ‘he came down (from) the tops[GEN] of Olympus’

Ablative genitives (plain or after prepositions) are infrequent in the literature of the Classical age; they occur primarily in the high style of tragedy or in Ionic writers: (4.26) åE Æ . . . læÆ æÆF; ‘did a storm snatch (him) (from) the army[GEN]?’ (4.27)

(Aesch.Ag. 627)

. . . A ºıåæ ı / —ıŁH IªºÆa Æ / ¨B Æ; (Soph. Oed. Tyr. 151–3) ‘(from) gold-rich[GEN] Pytho[GEN] you came to splendid Thebes?’

(4.28) YŒı Ø B ›F ‘they retreat (from) the road[GEN]’

(Hdt. 2.80)

(4.29) Kææ øıf ŒÆa F å Œø ‘they threw themselves down (from) the wall[GEN]’

(Hdt. 8.53)

Besides comparative evidence from sister languages providing parallels for the Greek partitive genitive, there is comparative evidence proving an ablatival origin for the Greek genitive; for example, Latin (in which genitive and ablative cases are still distinct) has an “ablative absolute” corresponding to the Greek “genitive absolute”. Greek also uses the genitive to mark terms of comparison; this is taken as partitive by some (e.g. Lasso de la Vega 1959: 114ff.) but corresponds to an ablative in Sanskrit, Oscan, Hittite, and Latin: (4.30) Œæ

ø ıæø ºªø ‘stronger (than) countless[GEN] words[GEN]’ (4.31) fortior ‘stronger (than)

innumerabilis countless[ABL]

(Eur.Med. 965)

verbis words[ABL]’

A further, indirect hint of the ablative force of the classical genitive of comparison comes from its renewal in Modern Greek: although there is still a distinct genitive case, terms of comparison are marked by the ablative preposition I, unless they are pronouns: ıÆæ Ie æØÆ ºªØÆ ıÆæ ı

lit. ‘stronger from countless words’38 ‘stronger than me’

38 It has been claimed (Jannaris 1897: 369) that this construction is also classical, because of Isocr. 15.205: åØŒøı . . . Ie Æ H H åH. However, the sense there is not comparative, and most codices have K, which is much more plausible in that context.

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The history of Greek prepositions

So, historically, the Classical Greek genitive continues the old ablative, and, in turn, is replaced by the ablatival preposition I in the modern language.39 4.7.3 Dative The most noteworthy fact about the Homeric dative is that it can express on its own spatial position (including comitation) or direction. These uses are more rare in Classical Greek, where prepositions were added: (4.32)

l . . . IŒæﬁ Å ŒæıçﬁB ‘sitting . . . (on) the topmost peak[DAT]’

(Il. 5.753–4)

(4.33)

ÆNŁ æØ Æø ‘who resides (in) the sky[DAT]’

(Od. 15.523)

(4.34) Iº . . . ÆæØ Ø ‘wandering (with) comrades[DAT]’ (4.35)

(Od. 11.160–1) (Il. 7.187)

Œı ﬁÅ º ‘put (into) the bonnet[DAT]’

The second most noteworthy fact is that in Homer the dative is still used very extensively, more frequently than the genitive (De Mauro 1960: 214). 4.7.4 Adverbial cases The “unacknowledged” case-like endings that we ﬁnd occasionally in Classical Greek (cf. pp. 114–15) are more frequent and widespread in Homer (see Risch 1974: 356ff.)—especially those of locative (-ŁØ) and of ablative (-Ł) sense: PæÆŁØ ‘in Heaven’ PæÆŁ I ºØŁØ ‘at Troy’ I ºØŁ MHŁØ ‘at dawn’ MHŁ

‘from Heaven’ ‘from Troy’ ‘from dawn’

Often we ﬁnd also the third form, - , with lative (Chantraine 1961: 124) sense: 39 Traditionally, a sharp distinction is made between partitive and ablative functions. This is largely due to the fact that the Greek “genitive” continues the two erstwhile distinct Indo-European genitive and ablative cases. However, partitive and ablative/elative senses are, semantically, kindred notions (the partitive separates a part), and what links them in Greek is more than an accident of historical morphology. In Modern Greek, I replaces not only classical genitives of ablative sense, but also the classical partitive genitive; thus while Class. Gr. çÆª F “I ate this” became Modern Gr. çÆªÆ ÆP (plain accusative), the Class. Gr. çÆª ı “I ate (a bit of) this” (“partitive genitive”) became Modern Gr. çÆªÆ Ie ÆP (ablative preposition). Similar developments can be seen in the Latin use of de and the Finnish elative and partitive cases (p. 83), and in the Old English use of the genitive as partitive, gradually replaced by of.

Prepositions in Ancient Greek ŒEŁØ ‘there’ ¼ººŁØ ‘elsewhere’ YŒŁØ ‘at home’

ŒEŁ ¼ººŁ YŒŁ

‘thence’ ‘from elsewhere’ ‘from home’

129

ŒE ‘thither’ ¼ºº ‘to elsewhere’ (YŒ ‘to home’ postclassical)

As the examples indicate, these endings were also added to non-nominal forms. It is therefore perhaps disputable whether and which of these endings ought to be classiﬁed as case inﬂections—rather than as adverbial derivatives.40 There is nonetheless something that suggests that they had the status of case forms, at least at some stage: their occasional use with prepositions (including in anastrophe): (4.36) Ie !æÅŁ ‘from [Troy-from]’ (4.37)

(Il. 24.492) (Il. 8.561)

I ºØŁØ æ ‘[Troy-at] in front of ’

More intriguing was the use of the allative morpheme -, because it is debatable whether it is an ending or a postposition (for use and origin, see Risch 1969: 497ff.). A clear indication of its postpositional nature (cf. also p. 115) is the fact that it only appears on accusative endings, of whatever declension: rŒ-, -, Iªæ-, –ºÆ-, ºØ-, ŒºØ Å- (passim) We might take the very fact that it never occurs as a pre-position as a possible indication of its sufﬁx status. But better evidence for its sufﬁx status is its occurrence repeated on agreeing possessives: (4.38)

‹- - ‘to his[ACCþ] house[ACCþ]’

(Od. 1.83, Il. 16.445)

What we see here is a postposition in the course of becoming a case ending— a unique sighting in the history of Greek.41 The history of - does not, 40 It is nonetheless very likely that philologists denied case status to these endings because they are not relics of lost Indo-European case endings, even if some of these forms are attested in other IndoEuropean languages, e.g. Greek -, which is already Mycenaean -de (Palmer 1980: 45) recurs in Sanskrit -da, and Old Slavonic -do. Furthermore, some adverbs with such endings also take proper case endings: the stem of ÅºŁØ “afar” / ÅºŁ “from afar” / Åº “to far” / also occurs as genitive (partitive) ÅºF “afar” and (Liddell and Scott 1940: 1788a) as old locative ÅºE (=ÅºE). 41 The birth of the recognized Ancient Greek cases long precedes our earliest documents, but speculation does not need to be KŒ F c Z: there is, as we saw (pp.86–8), evidence from sister languages, and plenty more from Finno-Ugric and other language families, that cases can develop from postpositions.

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The history of Greek prepositions

unfortunately, go on to shed further light on the diachrony of the morphology of Greek endings (nor does it tell us anything about the development of case meanings), because it ends where our records begin. The form - soon fell out of use: Classical Greek employs all these endings (-ŁØ, -Ł, - , -Ø, -) very much more rarely than Homeric Greek, and there is virtually no trace of them in the Greek of today. 4.7.5 The -çØ case In Homer we ﬁnd another (unproductive) ending not used in Classical Greek: -çØ. This is undisputably a case form, as it is the relic of the Indo-European instrumental plural *-bhis and has remnants in Latin, Osco-Umbrian, Celtic, Armenian, and Indo-Iranian. It still appears in productive use in Mycenaean as -pi, used as instrumental or locative plural of the athematic declension and of the -a declension.42 In Greek literature it is almost exclusive to Homer’s style— and even there it is an artiﬁcial device (Chantraine 1948: I: 235) usually resorted to metri causa. Its use in instrumental and comitative senses is well attested: (4.39) (4.40)

INSTRUMENTAL SENSE: ÅçØ ‘by dint of force’

(Il. 4.35)

COMITATIVE SENSE:

Zå çØ ‘with chariots’ also . . . Zå çØ

(Il. 12.114) (Il. 4.297)

But -çØ in Homer has many more uses. It appears (Monro 1891: 148ff.) instead of several other cases and is even found conjoined with them. Furthermore, it is used for all numbers, it appears on both athematic and thematic nouns, and also on adjectives, participles and even adverbs. More interestingly, it appears “governed” by most available prepositions: (4.41)

DATIVE SENSE:

çææÅ çææÅçØ Iæªﬁ Å ‘a clan bears aid to a clan’ (4.42)

(Il. 2.363)

LOCATIVE SENSE: ŒºØ ÅçØ º ºØ ‘was left in the tent’ (Il. 13.168) also with: æ (Od. 5.432), I ç (Od. 16.145), K (Od. 3.353), and K conjoined with a dative: K åØæd . . . ØæﬁBçØ (Od. 15.148)

42 For more on uses and the evolution of -çØ in Mycenean and inscriptions see Nieto Herna´ndez (1987: 227ff.), Morpurgo-Davies (1969: 47ff.), Hajnal (1995: 133ff.), and Thompson (1998).

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131

ABLATIVE SENSE:

ÆFçØ Içæ ÅŁE (Il. 2.794) ‘they would rush from the ship’ also with I (Od. 14.134), Ææ (¼from, Il. 12.225), KŒ (Od. 24.83), ŒÆ (¼down from, Il. 4.452), (¼from under, Il. 23.7) (4.44)

PERLATIVE SENSE—although

only with a perlative preposition:

Øa b Ł çØ ‘through the heart’

(Il. 5.41)

The same case form -çØ appears on nouns governed by prepositions that required different cases. Such an indiscriminate use in Homer must be due to metric requirements; yet one might also say that, used with prepositions, -çØ had come to be a semantically void government marker that simply linked a preposition with its object—in a role similar to that of the accusative in Modern Greek, the dative in Yiddish, or the genitive in Arabic.

4.8 The Classical Greek prepositions in Homer 4.8.1 Inventory In Homer43 we ﬁnd, more or less, the same lexical items that constitute the prepositional inventory of Attic (Chantraine 1948: II: 82ff.). Peculiar to Homer are only some phonological doublets (I ç besides I ç, [æ] beside æ) absent in Attic Greek. 4.8.2 Government In Homer there are differences in the cases associated with adpositions. Homer makes use of a wider range of cases: three prepositions that in Attic take only either genitive or accusative (I, I ç, ), in Homeric Greek (and in deliberately elevated poetry, like Pindar’s) have, besides those two options, the ability to take the dative. Moreover, in Homer, plain cases are used in contexts where Attic would require a prepositional phrase. 4.8.3 Compounding Homer also attests the doubling of prepositions: (4.45) ÆæbŒ c B ‘past the island’

(Od. 12.276)

43 For an overview of Homeric prepositional syntagms, see Horrocks (1981: 187ff.), Luraghi (1996: 70ff.), Fritz (1997: 46ff.).

132 (4.46)

The history of Greek prepositions (Il. 15.628)

bŒ ŁÆØ ‘away from death’

(Il. 7.334)

(4.47) Iæe H ‘away from the ships’ (4.48)

(Od. 10.388)

ØbŒ ªæØ ‘out through the hall’44

Intransitive use was usually also possible, and some combinations indeed only appear as adverbs: ØÆæ, æØæ (see Ku¨hner and Gerth 1898: II: I: 528).45 These forms are also found (albeit infrequently) in Classical authors and, later, in the Septuagint. Note also prepositions like Bº, KŒ, or Œ: in Homer they occur both as a preposition and with a preposition: Simplex Bº çºø Compound Bº I[e] ÆPF

(Il. 16.539) (Il. 23. 880)

‘far (from) friends’ ‘far from it’

Simplex KŒe ŒºØ Å Compound KŒe Ie ŒºØ Å

(Il. 14.13) (Il. 10.151)

‘outside (the) hut’ ‘outside (the) hut’

Simplex Œa ºØ (Il. 5.791, 13.107) Compound Œa Ie å (Il. 18.256)

‘far (from the) city’ ‘far from (the) wall’46

Already so early in the history of Greek, therefore, combinations of an “improper” and a “proper” preposition were an alternative to a plain preposition; Modern Greek forms like ø I are therefore not an innovation. 4.8.4 Meaning What Homer shows is that the Ancient Greek prepositions, in our oldest alphabetic record, have “u¨berwiegend ra¨umliche Bedeutung” (Fritz 1997: 282). Perhaps as a result of this, the main ancient Greek dictionary (Liddell and Scott: 1940: 491a) describes the spatial senses as the “oldest” usage. This is an intriguing fact, but does not prove that the ﬁrst meaning of all ancient Greek prepositions was spatial.

It is possible (Dunkel 1982: 61) that Æ too was originally a combination of two prepositions, and [], but other theories interpret the -ı element otherwise (e.g. a locative case ending -*su). 45 For more complex structures (irrelevant to our investigation) see Basset (1994: 154ff.). 46 Later, the “improper” preposition is found after the NP: Ie B ı Œ (Hdt. 3.41) “far from the island” (cf. Modern Greek Ie e Å d ÆŒæØ). 44

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133

4.9 The syntax of Greek adpositions in Homer Many Greek prepositions did not have prepositional status in pre-Classical Greek. This is evinced by Homeric Greek, which sheds considerable light on the origin of Classical Greek prepositions as a syntactic category (cf. Horrocks 1981: 44ff.). In Modern Greek (and probably in Classical Greek) there are enough differences amongst local adverbs, prepositions, and morphologically identical preﬁxes for us to make some categorial discriminations; in the earliest records, such as Homeric Greek, there is no clear distinction between them (Schwyzer and Debrunner 1950: 419; Fritz 1997:1ff.). There were a number of words that functioned semantically as “local relators”, to use Lehmann’s term (Lehmann 1983: 146), which could occur before or after, near or far from N(oun)s and V(erb)s. Thus these items, best conceived of as adverbs (see Smyth 1920: 365ff.; Cooper 1998: II: 1134),47 were later able to become the adpositions and preverbs of Ancient Greek—with cognates in Latin (cf. Vincent 1999: 1118), and in the other daughter languages of IndoEuropean.48 Since the “relator” and the N could modify each other, either of them could precede the other—whence the possibility of developing both prepositions and postpositions. Homer has prepositions only sometimes. Hewson and Bubenik (2006: 1–3) have argued that the lack of inﬂection or any possible agreement marker on the “somewhat mobile preverb-cum-adverbial particle” is what caused the development of adpositional phrases in post-Homeric Greek, and that this is what made Greek syntax conﬁgurational, changing the typology of Greek altogether. In Mycenaean the category “prepositions” is clearly established, which shows that Homeric usage is a literary archaism. A phrase like “I go from the ship” would have developed thus (cf. also Saussure 1915: 253): Æø

47

the Greek genitive is also ablative: the phrase is semantically complete, although the meaning can be reinforced by a local particle like I (when the Greek local particles/adverbs started to be placed next to either the V or the N, initially they did so without governing case, and the case still had full semantic value).

The traditional view that “die prinzipiell altertu¨mlichste Verwendung der Pra¨positionen ist die adverbiale” (Wackernagel 1928: II: 165ff.) has been attacked by Hessinger (1978: 212ff.) who argues that “adverbial” and preverbial uses are prepositional uses with ellipsis of the noun. 48 Objections to this traditional postulation have been raised, mainly on the ground that attested languages rarely lack adpositions altogether; Pinkster (1984: 79), on this account, ﬁnds the theory “typologisch onaantrekkelijk” (unattractive). But languages with no pre- or postpositions do exist (notably several aboriginal Australian languages); and there is no doubt that most prepositions of Classical Indo-European languages did derive from adverbs.

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The history of Greek prepositions

Æø g ¼ the particle comes after the noun: postposition, which in Greek was a receding option (“anastrophe”, cf. p. 139); Æø Ie the particle comes in the slot before the noun: literally, the pre-position; I Æø the particle precedes the verb; initially it remains a separate morpheme—a fact obscured by orthography, but discernible in some Greek tenses in which other morphs come in between: I- - ÅŒÆ, I- - Å. Homer attests clearly the classical prepositions in their earlier autonomous adverbial use: (4.49)

(ZłÆØ . . . ) BÆ K , K ¼æÆ Kæ

ÆØ ÆHÆ (Il. 9.361) ‘(you shall see . . . ) my ships, and inside, men eager to row’

(4.50) ª ºÆ

b A Æ æd åŁ lit. ‘laughed then (the)entire around earth’

(Il. 19.362)

In the latter example, for instance, æ makes no sense as a preverb and cannot govern the noun in the nominative. But in Homer the use of classical prepositions was multifarious: (4.51) Km æÆ Œºı Æ Km Å Km ÆPﬁB (Od. 5.260) lit. ‘inside, braces, and sailyards, and sheets he in-tied in it’ It is frequently unclear whether they constitute intransitive, free-standing adverbial forms, or adpositions, or verbal preﬁxes. In many Homeric verses adverbial, prepositional, and preverbal roles are semantically (if not structurally) equally conceivable: ºçæø from [her] eyes away-from [her] eyes from [her] eyes

¼ away

ŒæıÆ tears tears tears

Ø (Od. 14.129) fall (adverb) fall (synsemantic with case) fall-off (preverb)

In some cases one interpretation is more plausible. Let us see some examples: (4.52)

Ie Ææd çºø ﬁ ÆØ ºØŒØÆ ŒæÅ (Il. 1.98) lit. ‘from father[DAT] dear[DAT] give shining-eyed girl[ACC]’

Here I cannot be connected to either noun (Ææd and ŒæÅ) because— besides being nonsensical in this context—it cannot govern the case of either: it only takes the genitive. So it cannot be prepositional. The status of selfstanding adverb (“away”) is also unlikely, because it would not make sense: it is the restitution of a kidnapped girl that is being discussed—handing back to

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135

someone, not away from him. Therefore I here must be an in ﬁeri (still detached) verbal preﬁx. Outside Homeric Greek, the compound verb Iø Ø “give back” is well attested, not only in classical Greek, but already in Mycenaean (a-pe-do-ke, a-pu-do-si). In Hesiod, whose Greek is very similar to Homer’s,49 we ﬁnd: (4.53) K d Œø Œ&ºﬁ Å e æﬁ Å ‘there is (a) cave down, under a hollow rock’

(Hes.Theog. 301)

Here the presence of Œø (which, it is worth emphasizing, in pre-Classical Greek is only an adverb, not an “improper” preposition) probably precludes adverbial status for as well; hence the translation (with its comma), that takes as a “preposition” linked with the dative phrase Œ&ºﬁ Å . . . æÅ. But even when such “adverbs” appear with an inﬂected NP, they may not constitute a prepositional phrase. According to Horrocks (1981: 19ff.), in Homer there are: (i) adverbs that can be loosely linked to a noun; (ii) adverbs loosely placed before a verb but still linked to a noun (casemodifying). Moreover, as regards verbs, Horrocks (1981: 45) noted that the extent of cohesion between particle and verb varies.50 So there are also: (iii) intimately fused particle+verb sequences (they constitute a semantic unit and the choice of preﬁx is restricted); (iv) fully-ﬂedged phrasal verbs with particles not modifying case-inﬂected nouns (nor occurring with nouns, “prepositionally”—nor on their own as adverbs); (v) compound verbs (like (iv)) but with inseparable preﬁx. In Classical Greek we see that once the preﬁx had become fused with the verb, the identical preposition is added before the noun (cf. Baldi 1979: 58): Homeric Classical

49

KŒ b 'æı Åd Åe B (Il. 1.439) KŒ BÆØ KŒ B (Th. 1.137)

‘Chryses came out of the ship’ ‘to come out of the ship’51

Usage similar to Homer’s is occasionally found in high-style Classical poetry—also as regards the spatial adverbs of ambiguous status. See, e.g., Moorhouse (1982: 93ff.) on Sophocles. 50 Note that the traditional term “tmesis” ( B Ø) means “cutting”; although it is acceptable in a purely synchronic description, it may seem to imply that the adverb in question was a bound preverb subsequently severed from the verb—precisely the opposite of what historically occurred. 51 Most Greek “prepositions” retained this peculiar capacity to function as verbal preﬁxes throughout the Classical period—but given the (historically increasing) differences between prepositions and preverbs we shall not look at preverbal use in any detail.

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The history of Greek prepositions

The ﬂuidity found in Homeric Greek is not so hard to imagine: it has a partial parallel in modern European languages such as German (see Miller 1985: 61ff.) or, better yet, Dutch. In Dutch we can see, coexisting synchronically, many a “particle” used as a preposition, adverb, or preverb. This highlights how a clear-cut distinction—at least for some languages or for a given stage in the history of one—may be more a matter of convenience than a reality of grammar. On the one hand, Dutch has a class of verbs with an inseparable preverb: for example bepraten “to discuss”: jij wilt de roman bepraten jij bepraat de roman jij hebt de roman bepraat jij schijnt de roman te bepraten

‘you want to discuss the novel’ ‘you discuss the novel’ ‘you have discussed the novel’ ‘you seem to discuss the novel’

The verb could be seen as monomorphemic, and the only reason for identifying the “inseparable preverbs” like be- as separate elements is not because they ever occur as unbound forms, but because the corresponding “unpreﬁxed” verb also exists—in this case, praten “to talk”. On the other hand, there is also another type of verbs that have preverbs, although they are regularly detached in a number of constructions. For example, opbellen “to phone”: zij kunnen haar opbellen (undivided) ‘they can phone her’ but the other forms are split: zij bellen haar op zij hebben haar op-ge-beld zij schijnen haar op te bellen

‘they phone her’ ‘they have phoned her’ ‘they seem to phone her’

Grammars of Dutch call these the “separable verbs”, and Dutch dictionaries list verbs like opbellen as a single lexeme—just like the bepraten type. Op and bellen, however, are usually separated, and they appear together only in constructions that would cause them to be in uninterrupted sequence anyway. In the example above, for instance, one has to consider that the inﬁnitive in Dutch is always clause-ﬁnal with modal verbs, and therefore it just happens to follow op. The fact that here op and bellen are spelt as a single word is therefore only an orthographical convention and not true univerbation: there is no hard evidence that this sort of verb and its particle are ever a single unit. Indeed, not only is there a simplex verb bellen, but there exists also an independent preposition op—while there is no self-standing be, as we have seen. The dividing line between preverb and adverb (preposition) is therefore blurred.

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137

Moreover, there are preﬁxed verbs whose preverb is said to behave either way: to be separable or not. The interesting point is that the two forms of the same verb (that is, same verb-base and same preﬁx, but with inseparable preverb in one case and with detachable preverb in the other) not only have this syntactic distinction, but also present a phonological opposition (stress on the stem in one case, and on the preﬁx in the other), and a semantic difference (the verb with inseparable preﬁx has a more ﬁgurative meaning). Thus a “preﬁxed verb” such as ondergaan is in fact two verbs: (i) onderga´an – inseparable, which means ‘to undergo’: Ik moet de operatie ondergaan Ik onderga de operatie Ik ben de operatie ondergaan Ik schijn de operatie te ondergaan

‘I must undergo the operation’ ‘I undergo the operation’ ‘I have undergone the operation’ ‘I seem to undergo the operation’

(ii) o´ndergaan – separable, which means ‘to go under’: de zon zal al ondergaan de zon gaat al onder de zon is al onder-ge-gaan de zon schijnt al onder te gaan

‘the sun shall already set’ ‘the sun is already setting’ ‘the sun has already set’ ‘the sun seems to be already setting’

Note that the meaning of the inseparable verb is a metaphor of the spatial meaning retained by its separable twin: as the particle loses its original local meaning, it also loses its stress, and becomes an indivisible part of the verb. The verb too loses its original spatial sense. Thus we should say that only the inseparable verb has a preverb: in the separable verb, what dictionaries classify as a preverb is a self-standing particle, akin to an adverb (an intransitive preposition). The distinction among (a) preposition, (b) adverb, and (c) preverb here is inappropriate. Indeed, not only does the independent simplex verb gaan also exist, but onder is also used as a preposition or as an adverb: in other words, it is a particle that can appear next to the verb (sometimes to the point of becoming a part of it) or next to a noun, or be an autonomous element.52 This is, broadly speaking, the e´tat de langue that we also ﬁnd in Homeric Greek. We shall see a tendency for more Greek adverbs to become prepositions in post-classical texts. And practically all the spatial adverbs of ancient Latin— which had intransitive use only, such as coram or proxime—developed prepositional functions by the late classical age (Szantyr 1965: 259, 245). According to Vincent (1999: 1121), in Latin the (pro)noun occurring in a sequence like 52

For a synchronic analysis of Dutch usage, see Koopman (2000: 204–5).

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The history of Greek prepositions

[ADV þ Acc(pro)N þ V], became reanalysed as object of the adverb instead of as object of the verb, thus turning into a prepositions: the Speciﬁer became a Head. In Greek, when these adverbs specialized in adpositional use,53 a choice was gradually made as to whether they should precede or follow the noun phrase. In most Indo-European languages, their cognates came to precede the noun phrase, but in a few languages they follow it. So, postpositions are still prevalent in our records of Tocharian and Vedic, and indeed exclusive in Hittite (cf. Luraghi 1990: 35); on the other hand, they appear to be an archaism in most languages of Indo-European descent (except Umbrian), where we ﬁnd mainly prepositions. Classical Indo-European languages gradually opted for either pre-positional or post-positional use of these particles. Thus in Latin, for instance, there are some such particles which prevailed as prepositions: Latin pro populo ‘on behalf of the people’

(> Spanish por [el] pueblo)

while in Umbrian (a sister language) the same forms were used as postpositions, and came to be used as sufﬁxes (as they fused with the original case forms): Umbrian

poplu-per (Rix 2002: 58–62; Untermann 2000: 531)

Postpositions were phased out of Latin at an early stage; the form cum, however, survived both as prepositions and as a sufﬁx: cum te ¼ tecum; while only the analytical form survives in Italian (con te), Spanish has fused the two (contigo). The development of spatial adverbs into prepositions in Romance languages re-occurred: some prepositions of Modern French (Marchello-Nizia 2002) come from terms that were able to function as adverbs—many also as preﬁxes—until the seventeenth century. In time, languages tend to generalize one of the two syntactic positions, starting with difference in markedness. In Finnish, preposing and postposing an adposition makes a difference in style, as prepositional use is becoming less common: [poikki tien] (archaic/poetic) [tien poikki] (standard)

‘across (the) road’

[yli ja¨rven] (archaic/poetic) [ja¨rven yli] (standard)

‘over (the) lake’

53 Horrocks (1981: 118ff.), very interestingly, suggests that they specialized as adpositions when their adverbial function was taken over by the items that we know as (later) “improper” prepositions; this suggests a sort of cycle.

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139

In Greek, by Mycenaean times, the choice had clearly been made: prepositions are the rule and postpositions are therefore obsolescent and stylistically marked54—the opposite of Finnish. Ancient grammarians called the use of postpositions in Greek anastrophe, because they saw it as the reversal (IÆ æç “turnaround”) of the unmarked [prepositionþnoun] order: (4.54) H ¼ ‘from the ships’55

(Il. 2.91)

Anastrophe is attested mainly in Homeric Greek, and also in Classical Greek, as a rare variant of the normal prepositional use. We ﬁnd it also with the “newer” improper prepositions (åæØ, åøæ, KÆ, and mostly ŒÆ), but pre-positioning is otherwise more common: (4.55) Æææø KÆ ‘in the presence of witnesses’

(Isae. 11.43)

(4.56) KÆ Æææø ‘in the presence of witnesses’

(Dem. 30.27)

Wavering occurs (for both “proper” and “improper” forms) even in the same author: (4.57)

çÆ æØ ‘about wisdom’

(Pl.Phlb. 49a)

(4.58)

æd çÆ ‘about wisdom’

(Pl.Hp.mai. 283a)

But the use of post-positional syntax in Classical Greek is totally artiﬁcial: a remark by Aristotle leaves no doubt: L Pd i YØ K ﬁB ØÆº Œø ﬁ . . . x e ø ø ¼ Iººa c Ie ø ø . . . ŒÆd e `åØºº ø æØ Iººa c æd `åØºº ø ŒÆd ‹ Æ ¼ººÆ ØÆFÆ. things that no-one would say in speech . . . such as houses from instead of from houses . . . and Achilles about instead of about Achilles and all the things like that. (Arist.Poet. 1458b)

54

A reminder that Linear B cannot be regarded simply as pre-Homeric Greek is the fact that the archaic phenomenon of “tmesis” of verbal preﬁxes, so typical of Homeric style, is not found in Mycenean texts. 55 Note that it is incorrect to talk of retraction of the accent, since prepositions (when preposed) were proclitic (see Vendryes 1945: 239ff.). Their being unaccented was marked with a grave accent on the last syllable (the unmarked use). Greek postpositions (¼ in anastrophe) were normally autotonic, and appear accented on the ﬁrst syllable; cf. Sanskrit u´pa (), pa´ra (Ææ), pa´ri (æ), and a´pa (I). On accentuation in proclitic words, see Probert (2003: 133–42).

140

The history of Greek prepositions

The rules of anastrophe are much debated, for the accentuation of the papyri shows a disheartening degree of wavering and the grammarians give very contradictory directions (see Irigoin 1953: 94). This reveals that anastrophe was not just becoming rarer from Homer to classical times (to Koine´, when it practically disappeared—see Krebs 1884: 18ff.), but also that by the time of epic poetry it was already only an occasional and archaizing usage. The prestige of epic poetry ﬁrst and of Attic prose later kept it artiﬁcially in use for centuries, but late Classical grammarians (upon whom much of our knowledge depends) had no living usage and relatively few original examples from which to draw rules. The Medieval scribes (to whom we owe the texts we read) must have been even more at a loss.

4.10 Before Homer Prepositions are known as a particularly difﬁcult area for Comparative IndoEuropean Philology (cf. Sihler 1995: 439); in Greek, both proper and improper prepositions are of very problematic morphology—“rebelles a` l’analyse” (Humbert 1960: 299), even if most, perhaps all, words that we know as Greek prepositions go back to Indo-European—although with different meaning and function.Thus Greek I and Latin ante form a matching pair; there is a link between Greek ŒÆØ- in ŒÆ ªÅ (Thessalian ŒÆª[Ø), Mycenaean kasi-ko-no and the Hittite katti, katta—all related to Greek ŒÆ. Similarly, Greek K matches Latin in, Osco-Umbrian en, Old Irish in, Gothic in. Greek K matches Sanskrit api and (probably) Hittite appa. Greek corresponds to Sanskrit upa, Gothic uf, and, somehow, Latin sub.56 If the Classical Greek prepositions were originally adverbs, as Homer seems to suggest, what were they before that? Can we conjecture anything about the categorial origin of Greek prepositions—what “part of speech” they may have developed from? For some Greek prepositions we can easily reconstruct original nouns. In both Greek and across comparative evidence, we ﬁnd formally similar prepositions, whose meanings are closely related or identical, and whose morphological differences match case endings. So, Greek I and 56 A few of the old Indo-European “adverbs” did not develop into Greek prepositions. Some of these are traceable in the etymology of other Greek words: the Latin cum, for instance, which is also attested in Celtic and perhaps Balto-Slavic, appears in the Greek ŒØ < *kom-yos (not related to the Greek / ). Other forms are preserved as preﬁxes outside Attic: the Latin au, which is also attested in Balto-Slavic and Illyrian, and corresponds to the Indo-Iranian preposition ava, appears in (probably) Cretan ÆP-åØ (cf. Schwyzer and Debrunner 1950: II: 448). Conversely, a few Attic prepositions have no clear Indo-European etymon. One of these is Ø, probably a Greek innovation. It has been linked to the root *dis, (attested in Latin, Germanic, and Albanian, but only as preﬁx) perhaps with the ending of , I, and ŒÆ (cf. Wackernagel 1928: II: 155; Bonfante 1950: 106)—but this is all doubtful.

Prepositions in Ancient Greek

141

¼Æ (also attested as ¼Å) have endings that look like locative and accusatives; the same alternation recurs in æ, æÆ, to which we can add æÆ (possibly an old instrumental). Likewise, ŒÆ is likely to be an inﬂected noun (see also Morpurgo Davies 1983: 304ff.) and it has a link with Œø (the latter perhaps originally being an ablative). Thirdly, the Aeolic Greek preposition (cf. also Hamp 1983: 193)—semantically equivalent to Attic —and the Mycenaean pe-da are (mutatis mutandis) a perfect match for the Latin nominal accusative pedem. They therefore provide formal evidence of the creation in Greek of prepositions from inﬂected nouns,57 in this case a noun indicating a body part (cf. pp. 101–2). There is also decisive evidence from Old Hittite (another ancient IndoEuropean language) conﬁrming the etymological link between Indo-European prepositions and nouns. Hittite nouns such as ha-an-za (cf. Sihler 1995: 439), which goes back to *h2ent- meaning “face/forehead”, corresponds to Greek I “facing”.58 The same root can be seen in Greek in more complex adverbial/prepositional forms such as -Æ-Æ and -Æ-Ø (originally, perhaps, K governing the accusative and the locative of *ant-).59 This root also appears in the verb Iø “to face”. So we can posit that I is a noun *ant“face” in the locative, and that the genitive that follows it was originally an adnominal genitive. Therefore I must have been (Humbert 1960: 301) originally an improper preposition.60 This, let us note incidentally, further conﬁrms that the supposedly immense difference between “proper” and “improper” prepositions is essentially a matter of age. Hittite, being the oldest attested Indo-European language, provides precious diachronic information. Classical Hittite (around the fourteenth–thirteenth centuries BC), had forms functioning alternatively as adverbs, postpositions, or preverbs—a situation very similar to that of Homeric Greek and Vedic. 57 Philologists have long thought that the end parts of Greek prepositions are case inﬂections; Giles (1895: 291, 300) suggested that I ç, K, K, æ, and æ are old locatives, and I, Ø, , and ŒÆ (to which we might add – Æ) are old instrumentals (cf. also Bonfante 1950: 112). 58 Similar consideration can be made, at least in the form of conjecture, for other Ancient Greek prepositions. The compound IØ-Œæ() is said to be a double nominal form (Œæı then being from the root of ŒæÆ “head”). A more daring suggestion (see Sihler 1995: 439) is the noun *g´hesr “hand” (Greek åæ) alleged to appear in the locative *g´hsri in åæØ[] and ¼åæØ[] “as far as”. Humbert (1960: 329) sees also a noun for “handpalm” *gu in Kªª. 59 We know for sure that Greek did make use—although marginally—of old PPs as prepositions: KŒ (KŒ þ “foot”) was so used, as was its more telling counterpart K (consisting of K, which required the dative, þ in the genitive by analogy with KŒH). 60 A possible link between the *ant- root and I ç has been conjectured (Jasanoff 1976: 124ff.): the word for “both” in Tocharian A (an Indo-European language) is a¯mpi but also a¯nt(a)pi which might be from *H2nt (¼ *ant-) þ *bhi (instrumental ending). An even more hypothetical link between I ç and I has also been suggested (Hamp 1977: 145ff.).

142

The history of Greek prepositions

However, Old Hittite (sixteenth century BC) differs. Starke (1977: 127 ff.) has shown that although Old Hittite forms are very similar or identical to the classical ones, their use is not. We have a regular contrast between -a forms like anda “in” (cf. Lat. endo) and -an forms like andan, which in the later period will be used indifferently. At this stage the forms in -a (the so-called directive ending, also occuring in the nominal declension) are construed with a following directive or dative case, and apparently have a directional sense (cf. also Luraghi 1990: 133). The -an forms, on the other hand, have a static sense and a multiplicity of constructions: (a) with a locative/dative case preceding or following them; (b) with a genitive case preceding them; (c) with a possessive adjective in the nominative/accusative neuter form. There are other forms which complicate the picture further, but it is clear that the static forms are nominal, since they can be preceded by an adnominal genitive (not allowed in Classical Hittite): (4.59) (LUGA)]L-wa-asˇ pı´-e-ra-an king-GEN front ‘before the king’

(StBoT 12 Vs I 5)

Also, just as the directive -a ending is a case ending, so the -an ending is likely to be an accusative neuter ending. Otherwise constructions such as (4.60) pı´-e-ra-asˇ-sˇe-et (
(StBoT 8 Vs I 33)

(where ˇset is a possessive adjective neuter nominative/accusative) would be inexplicable. So the situation in Old Hittite, different from that of Classical Hittite, suggests a nominal origin of these forms, which will later turn into something able to function as adverb, preverb, and postposition. In Greek there are only vestiges of this, and no generalization can be made. It remains likely, however, that Greek originally had such nominal forms which later acquired the status of adpositions or preverbs. Other Greek candidates for this analysis are: æ – æ (cf. Coleman 1963: 89) K – K – K (ablative, like Latin intus—cf. also KŒ) æ (Latin sup-er) and (Latin sub—cf. Humbert 1960: 319) ÆæÆ (Lat. prae, Oscan prai), Ææ (probably an accusative), æ (genitive), æ (Sanskrit pa´ri, Latin per, perhaps an old locative), æ (ablative). In Ancient Greek we also have a construction NOUN[CASE]þ NOUN[GEN]:

Prepositions in Ancient Greek ŒŒºø ﬁ YŒı lit. ‘in-circle of -house’

143

> ‘around the house’

in which the item that functions as a preposition is clearly an inﬂected noun. This is a repetition of the history behind its older synonymous preposition: æd YŒı ‘around the house’ which in classical times was perceived simply as [PþNP], but æ too had probably been an inﬂected noun.

4.11 Main synchronic characteristics of the Ancient Greek system 4.11.1 The choice of case in PPs depended on the semantics of the case This was not necessarily so in classical or post-classical times, because PPs tend to crystallize formally while they evolve semantically—but it was so originally (cf. Humbert 1960: 298). To understand how this worked, recall Planudes’ remark (cf. p. 49) that there is a correspondence between spatial notions and Greek oblique cases (cf. also Ku¨hner and Gerth 1898: II: I: 290ff.; Bortone 2002: 70–2): Accusative ¼ goal motion (allative) Genitive ¼ source motion (ablative) Dative ¼ state/rest (locative) We should then consider the case required by particular prepositions. It can hardly be a coincidence—a syntactic quirk of no semantic signiﬁcance—that both Attic Greek prepositions expressing distancing motion or distant position, I and KŒ, governed only one case, that it was the same for both, and that it was the genitive (the old ablative, as Latin and Sanskrit conﬁrm). Conversely, for the reinforcement of partitive expressions (also rendered by the plain genitive), the prepositions used were KŒ and I: (4.61)

KŒ º ø ıæÆ ıÆæÆØ ‘of many, he takes four’

(4.62) OºªØ Ie ººH ‘few of many’61

(Il. 15.680) (Thuc. 7.87)

61 A use of KŒ that may seem inexplicable is in expressions of the relative static position of an object, e.g. in KŒ çæØ ŒÆŁ (Od. 21. 420) “sitting on a stool”, lit. “from a stool”. The explanation is that in this passage Odysseus shoots an arrow from the location indicated. This use of KŒ also occurs in set phrases, such as KŒ ØA (Ar. Eq. 639) “on the right[hand side]”. This construction was renewed in later Greek: in Modern Greek the phrase is Ie Ø / IæØ æ “on the right/left” (with regular replacement of KŒ with I) just as one can say Ie Øa æØ “on one side”. But both Classical and Modern Greek can also construct those phrases with a preposition of location: Classical Greek Kd

144

The history of Greek prepositions

The dative, as we have seen, was also locative; and the dative is the only case that was used with the locative (in Attic) preposition K: (4.63) K ÆºÆ EØ åÅ ‘the battle at Salamis’62

(Isoc. 5.147)

The dative, being also comitative, was also the only option for comitative prepositions such as , – Æ, and the very rare › F and ªÆ. On the other hand, the allative prepositions N and ‰ appear only with the accusative: (4.64)

N ˚ØºØŒÆ I Ø ‘he sends off (in)to Cilicia’

(4.65) ‰ KŒE º ‘we sail to him’63

(Xen. An. 1.2.11) (Isoc. 4.121)

Something similar but slightly more complex can be seen in prepositions that could govern multiple cases. Observe, for instance, the use of Ææ. It pointed to an area at one side of the referent object, and thus indicated a region, while direction or want of it was indicated by the case. In Classical Greek we see: With the genitive (ablative): IªªºÅ lŒØ Ææa Æ Øº (Hdt. 8.40) ‘a message came from (at the court of) the king’ With the dative (locative):

ØFÆØ . . . Ææa ﬁH ØÆ Œºø ﬁ (Xen.Cyr. 1.2.8) ‘they eat beside their teacher’ With the accusative (allative): Ææa c ª çıæÆ łÆØ (Xen.An. 2.4.17) ‘send to (at) the bridge’

Ø, Modern Greek c Ø, b Øa æØ, etc. There are, moreover, parallels in other IndoEuropean languages: cf. in Latin erat a septentrionibus collis (Caes.B.Gall.7.83.2), a dextra, a parte/de parte/ex parte, and phrases like ab oriente, a latere, a tergo (see also Sa¨vborg 1941: 41ff.). The same constructions are attested in Umbrian (Rix 2002: 52–4): nesimei asa “next to [lit. from] the altar” (Latin proxime ab); testru sese asa “at [lit. from] the right of the altar”. Languages of other families do the same, e.g. Turkish sag˘dan yu¨ru¨mek “walk on [lit. from] the right”. Similar structures are also found in Biblical Hebrew, and are mirrored in Biblical Greek: MFAOs O Ej OHF PJOl O Ej OH P‘l F ¯ ŁÅŒ f KŒ¯ (2Chr. 4:6) “put ﬁve on [lit. from] the right and ﬁve on [lit. from] the left”, Greek ØH ŒÆd f K IæØ æH. On K developing into N when linked with an (allative) accusative, see note 81 at p. 162–3. Not much credence can be given to the claim made by (amongst others) Humbert (1960: 305–6) that the occurrence of N and K with the genitive is real government. Phrases like K ` ºŒØØ (Od. 7.132) “in Alcinous’(house)” or E N `ªŁø (Pl.Symp. 174A) “dinner at Agathon’s ” are cases of ellipsis of another noun (and retention of its adnominal genitive) and not a government of a (partitive) genitive. There are parallel constructions in Modern Greek and in English, although in the Greek of today all prepositions can only govern the accusative: E F (< N F) ˚ Æ “dinner at Kostas’”. 62 63

Prepositions in Ancient Greek

145

This system is at its clearest in Homer. Homer (and authors that, if not so archaic in date, were so in style) attests the Greek [Pþcase] system at its inception, when the functional burden was carried by the inﬂected NP, and the preposition was to some extent optional (Horrocks 1981: 19): in modern terms, it was a speciﬁer, while the head was the NP. The noun, it has been said (Hewson and Bubenik 2006: 12), governed the “preposition” rather than vice versa. This stage enables us to see more distinctly why a preposition and a case were conjoined. The aim often was (i) the reinforcement of the meaning—or the reinforcement, and therefore disambiguation, of one of the several possible meanings—of the plain case form. The distinction between these two scenarios is neat only in extreme instances. Another aim often was (ii) the addition of an extra layer of meaning—the distinction between this scenario and the previous ones also, at times, being fuzzy: (i) Reinforcement or disambiguation Plain dative (¼semantically also comitative) case # – Æ

‘at one with’ þ dative (¼comitative) ‘jointly with’ þ dative (¼comitative)

¼ ‘together with’

For example – Æ —ÆæŒºø ﬁ (Il. 16.257)

f %ºø ﬁ (Il. 3.206)

‘with Patroclus’ ‘with Menelaus’

Plain genitive (¼semantically also ablative) case # Bº ¼æ çØ åøæ Œ åÆ ¼ı

‘far off/from’ ‘aloof from’ ‘apart from’ ‘separately’ ‘far from’ ‘split from’ ‘away from’

þ genitive (¼ablative) þ genitive (¼ablative) þ genitive (¼ablative) þ genitive (¼ablative) ¼ ‘away from’ þ genitive (¼ablative) þ genitive (¼ablative) þ genitive (¼ablative)64

For example Bº ¼æ l ¼ººø

64

(Od. 12.354) (Il. 1.498)

‘far/away from the ship’ ‘sitting away from the others’

Note also the use with the ablative sufﬁx -Ł: ¼ı K Ł (Il. 15.213).

146

The history of Greek prepositions

çØ Iºı ŒÇø º Ø åøæd O ø K H ÅH Œa XºŁ r "æØH åÆ

(Il. 6.443) (Eur.Or. 272) (Od. 14.496) (Soph.Aj. 750)

¼ı Å&ø

(Il. 13. 556)

‘skulk away from the battle’ ‘away from my sight’ ‘we went far from the ships’ ‘alone, separated from the Achaeans’ ‘aloof/away from the foes’

(ii) Additional meaning, e.g. dimensionality (4.66)

I ‘up/on/over’ þ accusative (¼ allative) > ‘upwards’: Œ I[a] łÅºc æı Æ (Od. 22.193) ‘they raised it on a high pillar’

(4.67) I ‘up/on/over’ þ accusative (¼ extensive) > ‘extending over’: "åÆØœ N d I[a] ¯ ººÆ (Il. 9.395) ‘there are Achaean women all over Greece’65 (4.68)

I ‘up/on/over’ þ dative (¼ locative) > ‘on top’: y . . . Ia ¼Œæø ﬁ ‘he slept on the top (of the mountain)’

(Il. 14.352)

With prepositions that took more than one case, the spatial sense of the case thus added something to the overall meaning of the prepositional phrase:

þ genitive ¼ ‘from under’66 þ dative ¼ ‘(at) under’ þ accusative ¼ ‘to under’

þ genitive ¼ ‘from the side of ’ Ææ þ dative ¼ ‘at the side of ’ þ accusative ¼ ‘to the side of ’

65 The addition of a preposition to the “non-case” forms such as -Ł, -ŁØ, etc. can be seen in the same light. The prepositions added were again either

(i) semantic reinforcement, e.g. K PæÆŁ (Il. 8.19) and I PæÆŁ (Od. 11.18) “from [the skyABL]”; (ii) a further element of the meanings (dimensionality beside movement or lack of it), e.g. PæÆŁØ æ (Il. 3.3) “[the skyLOC] in front of”. 66 The ablative sense of the genitive after a preposition was rare and disappeared before the Classical Age (Humbert 1960: 320; Forman 1894: 64). To take one speciﬁc example, the expression e åŁ is ablative only once in Hesiod (although it occurs there three more times), and never ablative anywhere else—although attested twice in Homer, once in Semonides, four times in Aeschylus, three in Euripides, two in Sophocles, once in Plato (in a quotation), and once in Ion.

Prepositions in Ancient Greek

147

þ genitive ¼ ‘from the vicinity of ’ æ þ dative ¼ ‘in the vicinity of ’ þ accusative ¼ ‘to the vicinity of ’ This was the state of affairs at the beginning of the history of these syntagms. It is partly reﬂected in Classical usage, but it is most clear—as one would expect—in pre-Classical Greek. Remnants of this system are visible also in Latin, and in today’s German Wechselpra¨positionen. Let us see how Homer uses : With the dative (locative): With the dative (lative): With the genitive (ablative): With the genitive (partitive): With the accusative (allative):

e

d ªÆ ÆåÇ ªÆEÆ (Il. 2.784) ‘the earth resounded greatly under (his) feet’ ÇıÆ ç –æ Æ Ø . . . ¥ı (Od. 3.478) ‘they yoked the horses under the chariots’ ¥ı b ºF Æ e ÇıªF (Il. 8.543) ‘they loosed the horses from under the yoke’ e æØ ıå Æ (Il. 4.106) ‘having caught under his breast’ XºÆ BºÆ (Il. 4.279) ‘he drove the ﬂock under (¼into) the cave’

The division of labour shown here by Greek (dimensionality expressed by prepositions, directionality mostly by cases) is a universal tendency. Although it is possible for a language to use adpositions to indicate dimensionality and directionality (as, for example, in English), and even to express the two in the same adposition (as, for example, in Hungarian), languages that combine adpositions and case forms usually express directionality with the bound morphemes, and dimensionality with the independent morphemes (cf. Kilby 1981: 120). Thus: from under (Hungarian alo´l) ! Homeric Greek þgenitive at under (Hungarian alatt) ! Homeric Greek þdative to under (Hungarian ala´) ! Homeric Greek þaccusative. 4.11.2 Many prepositions show synonymy—especially in non-spatial senses The most striking feature of the Ancient Greek prepositional system as a whole is the sheer number of prepositional syntagms. A vast inventory of prepositions (often differing only in elusive nuances) was combined with different cases producing a system of exceptional richness and subtlety.67 This 67 According to Brndal (1940: 92) Greek prepositions were decisive for the development of Western philosophy, since this was based on Greek and on the nuances that Greek prepositions express.

148

The history of Greek prepositions

also means that many items were synonymous, and so dispensable. We ﬁnd cases and manifold prepositions with the same meaning. For example, to indicate the material of which something is made, reﬂecting the common “the object comes out of the substance” metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 73), Herodotus writes: (4.69)

åÆºŒF Ø ÆØ a Iªº ÆÆ (Hdt. 5.82) ‘of bronze they make the statues’

[plain ABLATIVE/GENITIVE]

(4.70)

Kj ºø ØFÆØ a ºEÆ (Hdt. 1.194) ‘to make of wood the ships’

[Kj þ ABLATIVE/GENITIVE]

(4.71) Ipe ºø ØÅ Æ (Hdt. 7.65) ‘of wood made’

[Ip¸ þ ABLATIVE/GENITIVE]

Add also Diodorus (perhaps from the expression of means): (4.72) YøºÆ di[a] Kº çÆ (Diod.Sic. 17.115) [di› þ ABLATIVE/GENITIVE] ‘idols of ivory’ The variety is more remarkable in non-spatial expressions. With some nonspatial referents, even prepositions with totally dissimilar spatial meanings become equivalent (cf. pp. 36–41). Observe prepositional phrases introducing the topic:68 (4.73)

peqd NæÅ ‘(talk) about [peqß] peace’

(4.74) Ø Ilvd B º ªø ÆØ ‘this I say about [Ilvß] your daughter’ (4.75)

ª Å . . . Kr c ª çıæÆ ‘the opinion about [Kr] the bridge’

(Thuc. 5.55) (Eur.Hec. 580/1) (Hdt. 4.98)

(4.76) Kpd ŒÆºF º ªø ÆØ ‘talking about [Kpß] a handsome boy’

(Pl. Chrm. 155d)

(4.77) ÆFÆ . . . jata ø —æ H å º ªØ ‘this we can say about [jat›] all the Persians’

(Xen.Cyr. 1.2.16)

(4.78) u“pºq Ł ÆY å IŒø ‘I hear shameful things about [u“pe†q] you’69

(Il. 6.524)

68 In fact, even a plain case was a possible option—but, predictably, only in the earlier stages of the language: Nb Ø Ææ (Od. 11.174) “tell me (about) my father[GEN]”. 69 The “over” metaphor is a common way to introduce a topic: Late Latin supra (and so Spanish sobre and French sur), English on, German u¨ber, Modern Greek ø, Turkish u¨zerinde, etc. (cf. p. 75–6)

Prepositions in Ancient Greek

149

Observe also: IªŒﬁ Å

f IªŒÆﬁ æe IªŒÆ ŒÆ[a] IªŒÅ K IªŒÅ P[e] IªŒÅ Ø[a] IªŒÅ

(Od. 1.154) ‘out of necessity’ (Pind.Pyth. 1.51) ‘out of necessity’ (Aesch.Pers. 569CODD.) ‘out of necessity’ (Xen.Cyr. 4.3.7) ‘out of necessity’ (Soph.Phil. 73) ‘out of necessity’ (Od. 19.156) ‘out of necessity’ (Pl.Ti. 47e) ‘out of necessity’

å N å ŒÆa å a åı Øa åı

f åØ K åØ

(Aesch.Sept. 58) (Ar.Ach. 686) (Hdt. 1.124) (Pl.Prt. 332b) (Soph.Aj. 822) (Soph.Aj. 853) (Pind.Nem. 5.35)

‘quickly’ ‘quickly’ ‘quickly’ ‘quickly’ ‘quickly’ ‘quickly’ ‘quickly’

ç ø ﬁ

ç ø ﬁ I çd ç ø ﬁ æd ç ø ﬁ KŒ ç ı Øa ç ı e . . . ç ı æe ç Ø a ç ø

(Aesch.Supp. 786) (Philoch. F135b8) (Eur.Or. 825) (Aesch.Cho. 35) (Soph.Ant. 180) (Thuc. 6.59) (Xen.Cyr.3. 1.25) (Il. 17. 667) (Isoc. 2.26)

‘out of fear’ ‘out of fear’ ‘out of fear’ ‘out of fear’ ‘out of fear’ ‘out of fear’ ‘out of fear’ ‘out of fear’ ‘out of fear’

These different ways to express the same thing underscore two key points on synonymous prepositional constructions: (i) There can be neutralization of semantic distinctions—contextual synonymy reached by different routes—as we have seen in other languages (p. 77-8). In the case of Greek, considering this development in diachronic terms, this shows that some Classical Greek prepositions had become largely superﬂuous and could be discarded. (ii) When a new construction appears, it does not oust the older equivalents at once. New and older constructions co-exist for a while, even in the same language variety—indeed even in the same idiolect. 4.11.3 Some prepositions can be followed by [Pþcase] instead of just case Since Homer—and in classical texts—we see combinations such as: Bºþgenitive alternating with Bº I KŒþgenitive alternating with KŒ I ¼åæØ þ genitive alternating with ¼åæØ N:

150

The history of Greek prepositions

(4.79) Ie B K BÆ ıºHØ åÅ, ¼åæØ N ˚øæÆ ‘after the battle of Babylon until Cotyora’

(Xen.An. 5.5.4)

This indicates that PPs could also expand into P-PP (cf. pp. 29–31). 4.11.4 Prepositions with similar spatial sense are often alike in other meanings There is a tendency for similar or identical abstract meanings to occur in pairs of prepositions with (roughly) the same spatial meaning. Sometimes such correspondences are also found crosslinguistically. This is an interesting fact because it suggests there is a logic in the co-existence of spatial and nonspatial senses in a preposition—against the idea of random polysemy. For instance, the main Ancient Greek preposition referring to a region around an object is peqß, equivalent to English “about”. Note that æ, just like the English “about”, may mean, besides “along the perimeter of ”, also more generically “everywhere or somewhere within the region around”: (4.80)

PŒ KªåÆ Ææg Iººa æd Æºı æÆ q (Xen.Hell. 1.3.10) ‘he was not there, but (somewhere) around Salumbria’

A meaning of æ related to the above is “approximately” for numbers. It is a sense that English too expresses by “around” or “about”: (4.81)

æd ÆŒ ı ‘about seven hundred’

(Xen.Hell. 11.4.5)

Other non-spatial meanings of æ are remarkably parallel to the non-spatial sense of English “about”, for example “concerning (a topic)”: (Od. 17.563)

(4.82) rÆ ªaæ s æd Œı ‘I know well about him’ (4.83) KØ ø æd a Ø ‘knowledgeable about the tactics’

(Xen.An. 2.1.7)

It also indicates the object at stake (what the struggle is about): (4.84)

æ åø æd łıåB ‘running for his life’

(4.85) Icæ æd x Ø ÆåØ Œ

Ø ‘man ﬁghting for his own possessions’

(Hdt. 9.37) (Od. 17.471)

We have seen that another, earlier, preposition, I ç, expressed a local meaning practically identical to that of æ. They were not—at least originally—full

Prepositions in Ancient Greek

151

synonyms, because I ç really meant “on both sides of ”. But the broader sense of “around” was also possible, and we ﬁnd it as early as in Homer (in the ancient construction with the “locative” dative): (4.86) Æ Æ I çd %ØØﬁ Å ‘they stood around Menoetius’ son’

(Il. 17.267)

What is interesting here is that the abstract senses of I ç are also very similar to those of æ: (4.87) I çd f Ø åØºı ‘approximately two thousand’ (4.88) I ç ¯ º ﬁ Å . . . å ŁÆØ ‘ﬁght on account of Helen’ (¼the stake) (4.89) I çd b ﬁH ŁÆø ﬁ ÆPB º ªÆØ . . . ‘concerning her death they say . . .’(¼the topic)

(Xen. An. 1.2.9) (Il. 3. 70) (Hdt. 3.32)

And besides I ç and æ, prepositions that point directionally to a region (N and æ with the accusative) show also the non-spatial meaning “concerning”. Another pair of virtually synonymous prepositions that developed parallel meanings is (þ genitive) and /. Their spatial meaning is comitative70 (for , originally interessive: “to be amidst”): (4.90)

XºıŁ . . . sfm . . . %ºø ﬁ ‘he came with [ ] Menelaus’

(Il. 3.206)

(4.91)

ŒÆŁ leta H ¼ººø ‘sitting with [ ] the others’

(Pl.Resp. 359e)

The archaic comitative (locative) preposition was also synonymous with (þ genitive) in its non-spatial senses—which suggests a rationale in their polysemy. For instance, they both express a quality possessed: (4.92) sfm ªºﬁ Å IæﬁB . . . ¼ŒØØ ‘spouse of [ ] great virtue’ (4.93) leta IæB ØøŒ ‘having lived in [ ] virtue’

(Od. 12.143) (Aeschin. 84.15)

or instrument (replacing the older plain dative):

70

On þacc. developing the sense “after” (unlike ) see Wackernagel (1928: II: 241ff.).

152 (4.94)

The history of Greek prepositions nfm E Ø . . . æ Æ ‘having destroyed with [ ] these darts’

(4.95) leta ø ‘through [ ] labour’

(Soph.Phil. 1334/5) (Lys. 2.55)

or conformity to a standard: (4.96)

sfm ﬁH ØŒÆø ﬁ ‘in accordance with [ ] justice’

(4.97) leta H ø ‘in accordance with [ ] the laws’

(Xen.An. 2.6.18) (Antiph. 136.25)

was stylistically higher and, at all stages of the history of Greek, rarer than : statistics of occurrence compiled by Mommsen (1895: 6ff.) show to have been reserved primarily for “poetic” register: in Plato in Demosthenes in Aristophanes in Euripides

29 509

12 266

9 330

197 101

was used less than , and in post-Classical times it dropped out of spoken use, while lived on. Although their different fates must have also been connected to the waning of the dative, required by but not by , one is tempted to speculate that , being the older comitative preposition, had, so to speak, run its course. This ties in with the fact that the attestations of with concrete spatial sense are fewer than for —suggesting again that the spatial meaning is earlier. The preposition æ can now be assessed, in tandem with its older semisynonym I, just as æ was considered in relation to I ç. We may choose to translate æ as “before” and I as “opposite” but, basically, they both meant “in front of ”—although spatial examples of I are extremely rare: (Aeschin. 2.148)

(4.98)

K d pqe H OçŁÆº H æçÆÆØ ‘it appears in front of [æ] my eyes’

(4.99)

Imtd ÆØæø (not Attic, but Cretan—Leges Gortyn.1.40) ‘in front of [I] witnesses’

Note that their abstract meanings also largely overlap: (4.100)

º Imt’ NæÅ ‘war instead of [I] peace’

(Thuc. 1.120)

Prepositions in Ancient Greek (4.101) º pqe NæÅ Æƒæ ÆØ ‘he chooses war instead of [æ] peace’

(Hdt 1.87.4) (Il. 24.254)

(4.102) ( ¯Œæ . . . Imtd . . . ç ŁÆØ ‘to die on behalf of [I] Hector’ (4.103)

ıºF ŁÆØ pqe H ‘decide on your behalf [æ]’

153

(Xen.An. 7.6.27)

(4.104) Imtd F ÇB IŁﬁ Å ŒØ PŒºH Æƒæı ı (Isoc. 9.3) ‘rather than [I] living they choose to die gloriously’ (4.105)

pqe ı ŁÆØ . . . ºØ ‘rather than [æ] this he would choose to die’

(Pl.Symp. 179A)

Note also the abstract senses of another word for “in front of ”, p›qor: (4.106) !ı&Æ p›qor å . . . ¥ı ‘guided . . . horses in front of the-son-of-Tudeus’

(Il. 8.254)

(4.107) IºçH j p›qor Ł ºØ ŁÆE (Eur.Heracl. 536) ‘she wants to die rather than/instead of her brothers’

4.12 Main diachronic trends of the Ancient Greek system We can already spot changes from the pre-classical to the late classical period, if not clues to forthcoming developments. 4.12.1 From prehistoric times, cases show a tendency to merge Already by the time of our ﬁrst alphabetic record, Greek was clearly reducing its case inventory (cf. Szemere´nyi 1990: 166ff.), and indications of this trend are detectable in Mycenaean (see Risch 1986; Hettrich 1985; Morpurgo Davies 1985: 98ff.; Hajnal 1995: 16ff.). The trend is even predictable, if the level of stability of the inﬂectional paradigms is studied (cf. Coleman 1991: 201ff.) and case hierarchies across languages are considered.71 The case mergers in Greek cut the Indo-European inventory of ﬁve oblique cases down to three by the classical age (and to two by the modern period) (Figure 4.1). 71 There is evidence of the existence of a universal case-inﬂection implicational hierarchy—a chain of cases in which each case presupposes the previous one(s)—although its precise structure is still debated. Blake’s proposal (1994: 89) ﬁts Greek too: NOM
154

The history of Greek prepositions GENITIVE ABLATIVE

classical ‘GENITIVE’

DATIVE LOCATIVE INSTRUMENTAL (= comitative + instrumental)

classical ‘DATIVE’

FIGURE 4.1

4.12.2 Furthermore, the dative appears to be on the wane We noted (p. 128) that in Homer we ﬁnd the plain dative used spatially (including comitatively); in Attic we ﬁnd the plain dative used in a range of senses, but not spatially—with the exception of lofty poetry or a few ﬁxed phrases (cf. Ku¨hner and Gerth 1898: II: I: 441; Moreux 1968: 37): Plain locative dative > K/Kþdative (or K/Ææ, etc.þgenitive) Plain comitative dative > /– Æþdative (or þgenitive) This indicates (cf. also Humbert 1930: 92) that the local sense is (amongst) the ﬁrst to be lost.72 Indeed, the longest-lasting use of the dative is the grammatical one, as marker of the indirect object (Humbert 1930: 161ff.). A gradual decline of the dative is also visible in prepositional phrases: þdative is rarer than þaccusative since Homer; took the dative in Homer but no longer did in Attic, and in later Attic æ too ceased to take the dative (see Wackernagel 1928: II: 207ff.; Monro 1891: 194). Westphal’s (1888: 3) statistics on Xenophon’s usage show that, although prepositions with the dative were still very numerous, it was the case used the least: Prepositionþdative Prepositionþgenitive Prepositionþaccusative

4,075 4,697 6,733

72 Ancient Greek does not provide sufﬁcient evidence that the same may be true of prepositions; there is only the odd example of prepositions that have no clear spatial sense synchronically but reveal one in earlier stages. An instance is ¼ı, commonly used in the classical language in non-spatial sense:

(i) Æ ¼ı åæı F ‘everything except gold’ (ii) ¼ı IŒºŁı ‘alone without servant’ Older (pre-classical) texts, however, have (iii) P . . . ¼ı Å&ø q, Iººa ŒÆ ÆPf æøçA[] ‘he was never away from the foes, but indeed he would go after them’

(Pl.Criti. 112 C) (Pl.Symp. 217 A) (Il. 13.556)

A similar shift can perhaps be seen in the synonymous åÆ, which originally may have meant “split (in two)” (cf. Øå H), and thence “separated” and so “without”.

Prepositions in Ancient Greek

155

Furthermore, the relatively high number of datives here is largely due to (550 instances) and, above all, K (2,512), prepositions that could not take any other case. For prepositions able to take other cases, the dative is, on the whole, the least frequent choice—and the accusative the most popular (Westphal 1888; Mommsen 1895: 22). There even seems to be some indication that the government of the genitive is decreasing (Humbert 1960: 300): I no longer combines with it after Homer, nor does (with a couple of exceptions) I ç. The accusative slowly begins to establish itself as the main case used after prepositions—in Attic authors like Xenophon, prepositions such as I and I ç—which took all three cases in Homer—take only the accusative (De Mauro 1960: 229). In Latin too, post-classical inscriptions show the use of the accusative prevailing as the default case with prepositions. 4.12.3 The use of other plain oblique cases for spatial relation decreases In Greek literature we see that archaic texts (such as Homer and, later, high poetry) tend to use all cases on their own much more than ordinary classical prose does (cf. Barbu 1959: 187).73 An increase in the use of prepositions is a distinct diachronic trend in the history of Greek.74 More and more frequently, a preposition was added to the case ending. This trend is detectable even when comparing Homer with Mycenaean: phrases expressed in Mycenaean with a plain case such as the dative(-locative) appear in Homer as K þ dative, and Mycenaean phrases in the instrumental also appear in Homer as datives with prepositions (Morpurgo Davies 1983: 288). 4.12.4 The use of all plain oblique cases also decreases in verb phrases Prepositional phrases appear to replace or alternate with plain cases not only when these are adjuncts (optionally added to a clause) but also when they are complements (obligatory elements within a verb’s valency).75 Thus, for example, besides the standard construction ÆØ Ø “follow s.b.[plain DAT]” we get: Kd Ø ¥ ı K F

(Xen.Cyr. 5.2.1) [K þ DAT] (Ar.Plut. 823) [ þ GEN]

The same can be observed in Latin (see Pinkster 1984: 78; Brea 1985: 158). For this reason, the extent to which a language made use of prepositions (as opposed to cases) was, for a long time, taken as a yardstick of the level of “decay” of the language itself. This view can be found in von Humboldt (1836: }21:50,55), and in Horne Tooke (1829: I: 281): “Lay it down as a rule, that, of different languages, the least corrupt will have the fewest prepositions”. Others, like Brndal (1940: 18), associated prepositional use with high cultural development. 75 Contrast “[he wrote the letter][on that table]” with “[he put the letter on that table]”. 73 74

156

The history of Greek prepositions

A synonym, IŒºıŁH Ø “follow s.b.[plain DAT]”, behaves similarly:

f K d MŒºŁÅ Æ ÆPF IŒºıŁ ÆÆ IŒºıŁE ŒÆØ IŁæı ıçºF

(Xen.An. 7.5.3) (Lys. 2.27) (Ar.Plut. 13)76

[ þ DAT] [ þ GEN] [ŒÆØ þ GEN]

and the usual IŒø [Ø] Ø “hear from someone[plain GEN]” occurs as Iç ±ø XŒı Æ ª Å (Thuc. 1.125) IŒ Æ ÆFÆ KŒ F ŒæıŒ (Hdt. 3.62) ÆF IŒ Æ . . . Ææa H æ

ø (Dem. 6.26)

[I þ GEN] [KŒ þ GEN] [Ææ þ GEN]

The “reinforcement” of the case with a redundant preposition is found not only in Attic but also in other dialects and in pre-classical Greek (Wackernagel 1928: II: 218): KÆ Æ Ø e F ı Æƒ KŒ F ` Ø KºÆ æd B Å Ł[Æ]

(Thuc. 8.21.1) Attic (Hdt. 3.16) Ionic (Od. 7.191/2) Homeric.

4.12.5 The semantic differences between cases used after a preposition are lost Examples of case meanings fully retained after prepositions become rare in texts later than the Homeric poems. In many Greek prepositional syntagms, by the classical era there is no clear or consistent correspondence between the meaning that case forms have when isolated and the meaning that they express in prepositional syntagms. Comparing classical prose with Homer we see the semantic force of the case after prepositions fading. By the Classical period, we can assume that in most prepositional syntagms the meaning of the preposition and that of the case cannot be separated; it would therefore be incorrect to say that in Classical Greek genitive and accusative (and dative if applicable) after æ, æ, Ø, , and ŒÆ are always in opposition. At that stage, the combination of these prepositions with various cases yielded meanings barely relatable to the meaning of each self-standing case. So, while in early texts we ﬁnd (4.108) Ææ with dative (¼locative) ŒE Ææa Å ﬁB Iºåø ﬁ ‘he lay by the side of his wedded wife’

(Il. 9.556)

76 In late antiquity, IŒºıŁH takes the plain accusative, which is the only construction possible in Modern Greek.

Prepositions in Ancient Greek

157

later, the constructions commonly used to express the same meanings were: (4.109) Ææ with genitive (¼partitive) Ææ(a) ªæH I ÅF ÞŁæø ‘by the wet currents of the Ismenus’

(Soph.Ant. 1123)

or (4.110) Ææ with accusative (¼ location along an extended object): q Ææa c ›e ŒæÅ (Xen.An. 1.2.13) ‘there was a fountain by the side of the street’ In the same way, we ﬁnd broad synonymy between syntagms composed of æ with the three oblique cases: (4.111) æ with the dative (¼locative) åØÆ æd åæU… ‘he wore a cloak around the body’ (4.112)

(4.113)

æ with accusative (¼extension) ÆØ æd Eå ‘placed around (all along) the wall’ æ with the genitive (¼ partitive)77 åÅ æd ˜ÆæÆÆ ‘the walls around Dardania’

(Od. 15.60)

(Il. 18.374)

(Eur.Tro. 818)

The same development can be seen in K: ﬁ F hæ (4.114) K IŒæøÅæø ‘on the top[DAT] of the mountain’

(Hdt. 7.217)

(4.115)

(Hdt. 7.111)

Kd H Pæ ø ‘on the mountains[GEN]’

(4.116) Kd e ç ‘on the grave[ACC]’

(Thuc. 2.34.4)

Originally, the combinations Kþgenitive(partitive) and Kþdative(locative) had a different nuance: K with the genitive was only superessive, with the dative it was also adessive (Forman 1894: 37); but this distinction can be seen to fade in classical prose, where the two combinations are “pratiquement interchangeables”

77 In the competition between the circumessive constructions æþdative and æþgenitive, the syntagm with the genitive is prevalent—another sign that the dative was recessive throughout the history of Greek.

158

The history of Greek prepositions

(Ruijgh 1994: 147), and are used “eodem signiﬁcato . . . inter utramque constructionem . . . discrimen esse nullum visum est” (Sobolewski 1890: 166). As for Kþaccusative, Conti Jime´nez (1996: 32), who studied the use of K in Homer, found no differences in the directional uses of Kþdative and Kþaccusative (in terms of directionality, reaching of the goal, or animacy). Similarly, can be seen to indifferently take the genitive, the accusative, and even the dative—indeed at times there is no appreciable semantic difference (Moreux 1968: 35) in either spatial or non-spatial senses: (4.117)

e ªB ‘under the earth[GEN]’

(Pl.Ap. 18b)

(4.118) e ªB ‘under the earth[ACC]’

(Hdt. 7.114)

(4.119) e ªﬁB ‘under the earth[DAT]’

(Arist.Cael. 295a28)

Instances of coordination suggest a similar trend in æ: (4.120) e b æe æ ø HÆ…e b æe (Hdt. 2.121) ‘one stood towards North[GEN], the other towards South[ACC]’ Genitive and accusative were also the cases taken by Ø.78 In the concept of “through” the senses of the two cases employed, genitive (¼ ablative of point of departure) and accusative (¼ spatial extent and motion to the point of arrival) are conjoined, and the difference is occasionally neutralized, spatially or temporally: (4.121) Ø ¼ åı Ø ‘they walk across/through the city[GEN]’ (4.122)

Øa ŒF –ºØ ‘across the marine wave[ACC]’

(Aes.Supp. 490) (Aes.Supp. 15)

In the case of , the use of different cases (genitive and accusative) was specialized in very different meanings: þaccusative ¼ ‘after’ þgenitive ¼ ‘with’

78

There are indications that Ø was a late creation. It has no parallels in sister languages, it is rarer in high style (Bossler 1862: 29), and its use increases from the Homeric Greek to the Greek of the classical and post-classical periods. Even in poets who consciously imitated the archaic style of Homer (such as Apollonius) it is still more frequent than in Homer (Haggett 1902: 30). On perlative expressions in Ancient Greek, see Waanders (1988).

Prepositions in Ancient Greek

159

The dative (not used with in Classical Greek, but used by Homer— although only with plurals) could have the same sense as the genitive: (Il. 9.352)

(4.123) "åÆØE Ø º ØÇ ‘I fought with (¼ amidst) the Achaeans[DAT]’ (4.124)

a BØøH K å ‘they fought with (¼ amidst) the Boeotians[GEN]’

(Il. 13.700)

So, one construction was superﬂuous; the dative was the weaker case, and what we ﬁnd in Classical Greek is only the genitive: (4.125) a F ÆæÆıå › ø å ŁÆØ ‘ﬁghting indifferently with anyone’

(Xen.Lac. 11.7)

Indiscriminate use of cases in PPs is also found with non-spatial senses: (4.126) ÆPºÅBæ ‘to the music of a ﬂute-player[GEN]’

(Archil. 123) (Hes.Sc.Herc. 283)

(4.127)

ÆPºÅBæØ ‘to the music of a ﬂute-player[DAT]’

(4.128)

e c ŒÆ ÆÅ ‘during that night[ACC]’

(Hdt. 9.51)

(4.129)

e ıŒ ‘during that night[DAT]’

(Aesch.Ag.1030)

(4.130)

ŒÆ Ø I æ Å ‘through(out) the divine night[ACC]’

(4.131)

Øa Æe F åæı ‘throughout the whole time[GEN]’

(Od. 15.8) (Hdt. 9.13)

Cases did not necessarily become meaningless; they coalesced with the preposition into a single semantic unit. This is in accordance with our recognition of [prepositionþcase] syntagms as synsemantic (pp. 20–25), and proves the point made by Moreux: on ne peut reconnaıˆtre l’existence de deux e´le´ments morphologiques que lorsque la substitution de l’un a` l’autre change le sens d’une manie`re identique ou comparable dans la plupart des syntagmes ou` ils ﬁgurent: amamus/amatis, videmus/videtis. one cannot recognize the existence of two morphological elements unless the substitition of one for the other changes the meaning in a way that is identical or comparable in the majority of the syntagms where it appears: amamus/amatis, videmus/videtis. (Moreux 1968: 33)

160

The history of Greek prepositions

The syntagm [Pþcase] often has a meaning that the case alone (or with different preposition) never has. For example, I ‘up’ þ accusative could indicate average: (4.132) KæŁÅ Æ . . . Ia ÆæÆ ªªÆ B æÆ ‘they marched on average ﬁve parasangs a day’

(X.An. 4.6.4)

And its antonym ŒÆ, combined with the same case, could have a somewhat similar sense (cf. p. 41 and Adams 1885: 15; Biraud 1994: 175). 4.12.6 More adverbs develop prepositional use We saw that there is a group of “improper prepositions”, still used also as adverbs. From a historical viewpoint, these prepositions have been identiﬁed as the more recent tier in the Classical Greek prepositional inventory (Schwyzer and Debrunner 1950: II: 533: ju¨ngere Schicht; Chantraine 1948: 147: moins anciennes). So, Classical Greek had an older set of proper prepositions of putative adverbial origin, and a newer set of improper ones, of clear adverbial origin. Many of the new items are synonymous with older items: for example KŒ can be replaced by ø: ‘out of (the reach of) the darts’ > KŒ ºø pre-Classical (Il. 11.163) > ø ºH Classical (Xen.Cyr. 3.3.69)79 4.12.7 Fine semantic differences between many pairs of spatial prepositions fade Initially, there were small but clear distinctions between the pairs (or threesomes) shown in Figure 4.2—but we ﬁnd both items in each pair used increasingly in the same sense. Furthermore, we see one of them being used less and less: I ç/æ For I ç, the related pronoun ¼ çø (Latin ambo) ‘both’ and the preﬁx I çØ- (as in I çØø ‘to be in two minds’) conﬁrm an original sense of ‘on both sides of ’. Homer offers examples such as: (4.132)

I ç Oå

Ø . . . º . . . ŒŒºÆ (Il. 5.722) ‘she put wheels on the two sides of the chariot’

(4.133) I çd Þ ŁæÆ . . . HÆØ ‘they ﬂy on both sides of the river’

(Il. 2.461)

79 New “improper” prepositions were synonyms (and replacements) not just of old “proper” prepositions, but also of older “improper” ones: e.g. åøæ “outside; without” (mainly in Demosthenes) competing with ¼ı.

Prepositions in Ancient Greek

161

FIGURE 4.2

This was the key trait that separated I ç, initially, from æ “around” (see also Ku¨hner and Gerth 1898: II: I: 488; Wackernagel 1928: II: 159; Schwyzer and Debrunner 1950: II: 437, 488; Bile 1994: 96ff.). —æ, on the other hand, initially meant “around in a circle”. However, in Homer we see the two forms conjoined, for emphasis or metric requirements: (4.134)

æ I ç çæ ‘around and about the ditch’

(4.135) I çd æd Ł

Ø Iææ ‘a belt about (his) breast’

(Il. 17.760) (Od. 11.609)

The distinction disappeared by the Classical Age, when I ç lost its distinct role and started to be used in the more diffuse sense of “around”—as had happened to its Oscan cognate ampt. Therefore, I ç is often described as “idem signiﬁcantem” as æ (Bossler 1862: 47), and was gradually replaced by æ as a form too (Humbert 1960: 300ff.). For instance, Aristophanes has I ç 5 times and æ 190 times (Sobolewski 1890: 234).

162

The history of Greek prepositions

I/K

As for prepositions of location in the upper area of the referent object, Greek loses the difference between the superlative I “lever un objet sur un plan incline´” (Humbert 1960: 301), “Bewegung nach einem ho¨her gelegenen Gegenstande” (Westphal 1888: 5), and the once just superessive K which indicated rest on a place. Directional uses of K appear even in Homer: (4.136) [ŒÆ Å] Kd ø e ¼ªø (Il. 1.440) ‘dragging onto the altar the sacriﬁcial animals’ We can see one of the two receding. So, in Xenophon (Westphal 1888: 2) we get I 37 times and K 1,934 times; in Thucydides (Martı´nez Valladares 1973: 192) we get I twice and K 1,012 times: “ab usitato Atticorum sermone I alienum fuisse videtur” (Sobolewski 1890: 65). Another preposition, æ, indicated location in the upper area of the referent object, but—in principle—without contact; æ too, however, is often a synonym of K (Humbert 1960: 322).80

I/æ It is accepted that I originally meant “in front of” (cf. Ku¨hner and Gerth 1898: II: I: 453; Schwyzer and Debrunner 1950: II: 441; Humbert 1960: 301ff.; Ruijgh 1994: 144; Cooper 1998: II: 1161), even if the examples are thin on the ground; it was therefore semantically close to æ but not fully synonymous with it (see also Freyburger 1994: 122). The original distinction was perhaps that I indicated that one object was facing the other, “mit dem Antlitz zugekehrt” (Westphal 1888: 6), while æ (cognate of English fore-) could reﬂect an observer viewpoint: “mit den Ru¨cken zugekehrt” (ibid.). This may explain why æ developed the sense of “protecting/defending”. Both spatial senses (“in front of” facing and not) were later expressed by æ. N/K

This pair derived from variants of the same form (*en > K, *ens > N)81 which had diverged semantically—thanks to the different

80 Note that the opposition between contact and lack of contact that Greek distinguishes with reference to location in the upper area of a surface (K vs. P æ) is not marked on the lower side: P is ambiguous. This is in line with the theory that adpositions mark location in space according to the degree of salience in terms of human perception (see pp. 54–5). 81 Greek invented N from *K (cf. Wackernagel 1928: II: 156): the latter was K+, related to K in the way K (=KŒ+) is related to KŒ (see also Russell 1988: 145ff.). Thus N has an Indo-European etymon and yet is a Greek innovation. Most other Indo-European languages (including Latin, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Armenian, and Irish) and many Ancient Greek dialects (such as Arcadian, Cyprian, Beotian, Thessalian, Phocian, Locrian) left the task of marking the distinction rest/motion-to to the case ending: they used their equivalents of Classical Attic Greek Kþdative for static location, and of Kþaccusative for movement; cf. Ku¨hner and Gerth 1898: II: I: 468; Coleman 1963: 87ff. But Attic-Ionic marked formally the semantic distinction by assigning each of the two senses to separate

Prepositions in Ancient Greek

163

cases they governed: Kþdative was only inessive (no motion, cf. Latin inþ ablative), while Nþaccusative was illative (¼[in]to, cf. Latin inþ accusative).82 Attic (Jannaris 1897: 376)83 blurs the distinction only very rarely: (4.137)

N F b e ÆŁ e !Ø

Æç æÅ KçÅ (Xen.An. 3.4.13) ‘at this stage Tissaphernes appeared’

We also ﬁnd the constructio pregnans in which direction and static position co-exist: (4.138)

/ŒÆ

e ÆPºç K çø ﬁ ØŁE Æ (Soph.Ant. 499) ‘having put her own brother in the grave’ (¼ ‘having laid to rest’)

The same kind of distinction that used to exist between I and K and was later lost (rest vs. motion), also fades in the expression of location underneath the referent object. There is a blurring of the contrast between the static preposition , which is subessive, and “aliquid sub aliqua re esse signiﬁcat” (Sobolewski 1890: 208) and the directional ŒÆ, which is sublative, and “motum signiﬁcat ex superiore loco in inferiorem directum . . . genuina ac primaria eius vis” (Sobolewski 1890: 131)84—that is, “glissement d’un objet qui e´pouse une surface incline´e” (Humbert 1960: 311). This meaning85 is seen in

forms of the same preposition: while K retained the locative sense, *K (which, by regular development, had come to be pronounced /e:s/, which Classical Attic spelt N or K) came to specialize as illative. The Greek development of a distinct illative preposition is peculiar—quite so also within Greek itself, for it is the contrary of what Greek did post-classically: it extended the use of the (already innovative) preposition N, which by regular loss of the initial unstressed vowel became , supplanting K entirely. In doing so, however, it moved backwards, to the stage when inessive and illative meanings were conﬂated into one form, although now it was N and not K. 82 I emphasize the terminative sense (reaching the goal) of N, because it was absent in æ and ŒÆ which were therefore not fully synonymous with N (and therefore not dispensable). 83 The other classic example quoted (Jannaris 1897), K ¸ıŒÆÆ ﬁ Iﬁ Æ (Thuc. 4.42 codd.), is more questionable. While the form -ﬁ Æ (equivalent to -ﬁ B Æ) is 3rd pers. plur. imperfect from r Ø “to go” and indeed directional, it is also thought to be -B Æ, the corresponding form from N “to be” and therefore static, as K requires. 84 But ŒÆ was used to indicate the whole trajectory—not only “unde motus incipit”, but also “totum spatium percursum” and “ubi motus desinit” (Przybilla 1883: 21ff.), as is indicated by its use with verbs that normally take I and KŒ, as well as with verbs that take N, Ææ, and K. 85 The original spatial sense of ŒÆ has long been recognized: “genuinam ac primariam prepositionis ŒÆ signiﬁcationem esse localem grammatici ad unum quos inspexi omnes una tamquam mente consentiunt” (Przybilla 1883: 10ff.).

164

The history of Greek prepositions (4.139)

ŒÆa Þ ‘down (the) stream’

(Hdt. 2.96)

but its potential synonymy with is clear, as in the following pair: (4.140) f e åŁ ‘those under [] the ground’ (4.141)

F ŒÆa åŁe ˜Ø ‘of Zeus under [ŒÆ] the ground’.

(Soph.Ant. 65) (Aesch.Ag. 1386/7)

Sobolewski (above) noted that the motion indicated by ŒÆ had a stronger vertical slant, but this nuance too was lost, as in the contrast between I and K. I/KŒ There was an interesting, subtle semantic distinction between I and KŒ/K, of which even some Classicists are unaware. It was the same /ʕan/ and ‫ ﻣﻦ‬/min/, and it as between the Arabic prepositions corresponds, broadly speaking, to the difference between the Finnish ablative (-lta/-lta¨) and elative (-sta/-sta¨) cases:86 Greek I indicated position or distancing movement from the outer surface of the reference object (away from, cf. German cognate ab-), while KŒ/K expressed a distancing motion from the inside of a three-dimensional volume (out of). A parallel distinction must have existed in their Latin cognates ab (older ap) and ex (cf. Brea 1985: 155ff.). In other words, I and K had, in the expression of source-motion, the same functions that æ (to[wards]) and N (into) could have in the expression of goal-motion (see also Martı´nez-Valladares 1970: 79). In Classical Greek we can see the distinction between elative and ablative sense fading—some even trace this loss to Homeric Greek (Rosberg 1868: 7, 1870: 1). The confusion between KŒ and I occurs within the same idiolect and with the same referent—even in adjacent paragraphs (Martı´nez Valladares 1973: 190): (4.142) H KŒ —º ı H ‘of the ships from the Peloponnese’

(Thuc. 7.17.1)

(4.143)

(Thuc. 7.17.2)

Ie B —º ı ÆF ‘the ships from the Peloponnese’

86 It must be remembered, however, that what expressed the “motion” or “static position” component of their meaning was mainly (originally) the case that the prepositions were associated with. Therefore, I and KŒ/K in themselves rather correspond to the Finnish abessive and the (absent in Finnish but attested in other Finnic languages) exessive case.

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165

In Latin too, the idea of distancing was expressed by a pure case form (aptly named ablative), but this could be preceded by a range of prepositions indicating motion away from the referent object, which originally had different meanings but semantically converged in late Latin (Lo´pez 1972: 84): de, ex, ab. In summary, there was increasing synonymy in the Greek prepositional system, due to three processes in synergy (the ﬁrst two have just been outlined): (i)

(ii)

(iii)

the growing equivalence of pairs of prepositions, so that, for example, “under the ground” could be expressed either with ŒÆa ªB (Xen.Cyr. 4.6.5) or with e ªB (Pl.Ap. 18b); the semantic convergence of combinations of the same preposition with different cases, so that, beside e ªB, Classical Greek also used synonymously e ªB (Hdt. 2.127) and e ªﬁB (Xen.Oec. 19.9.4); the creation of new prepositional constructions from adverbs, so we also ﬁnd

(4.144) › b ŁÆg ŒŁØ j›ty c ªB (Soph.O.T. 967/8. Cf. Pind. Ol. 11.59) ‘He is dead and lies under the ground’ This type was increasingly common; more items of this kind, as we shall see in the next chapter, came just after the classical period, for example: (4.145)

u“poj›ty B ªB ‘under the ground’.

(Rev. 5.13)

4.12.8 Ablative meanings show particular weakness This is a phenomenon that reappears throughout the history of Greek, and is very common across languages (pace Lyons 1977: 691): ablative prepositions (and adverbs) in time tend to lose their ablative meaning, becoming locatives. Greek is no exception: ø was probably originally an ablative form meaning “from outside”, but came to mean just “outside”, locatively. The ablative sense was then expressed by an added preposition: Ie ø “from outside”. But in Modern Greek, I ø too has now become a locative “outside”, as well as retaining its ablative sense. Note also the ablative markers piled up in IıŁ (built on the abessive preposition ¼ı): ablative preﬁx I, ablative sufﬁx -Ł, and the genitive following (we can surmise) was originally selected for its ablatival sense. Consider also the Ancient Greek static K “within”— whence the elative form K Ł: forms like K, however, must have been originally elative, because in Latin (Mackenzie 1978: 141) some forms in -tus

166

The history of Greek prepositions

(the ending cognate of Greek -, Sanskrit -ta´s) show an original ablative meaning: caelitus “from the sky”, funditus “from the bottom”.87

4.13 Contrasting the semantics of synonymous “proper” prepositions The history of certain pairs of synonyms shows that the assignment of a meaning to prepositions has a life-cycle, and also shows this cycle as being in accordance with the localistic hypothesis. Observe:

/ Even in the oldest texts is receding (Mommsen 1895: 6). The commoner is newer (Schwyzer and Debrunner 1950: II: 484) and is basically comitative (Crespo 1994: 182ff.)—or to be more precise, interessive (cf. also Stefan´ski 1983: 137)—and, therefore, spatial or concrete in sense. Its meaning in earliest alphabetic Greek is “between/amongst” rather than “with” (cf. Wackernagel 1928: II: 240ff., Mommsen 1895: 39ff.), which is also the sense of Myceneaen me-ta (Morpurgo Davies 1983: 289): (4.146)

(Il. 11.4)

æÆ a åæ d åı Æ ‘bearing in (her) hands a portent’

(Il. 1.368)

(4.147)

Æ a ç Ø ‘they shared among themselves’ Observe also the related preposition Æ ‘between’:

87 In Classical Hebrew ‘H‘ /tahay/ “under” gradually became the (once) ablative ‘H‘ O ÐÐ ÐÐ /mittahay/, and in the history of Arabic too, ‫ ﻣﻦ‬/min/ “from” was increasingly preﬁxed to other prepositions, but gradually lost its elative meaning (Wright 1898: II: 188ff.). From the Classical Latin prepositions ab “from” and ante “before” we get abante “from before”; however, the ablative sense of ab- was lost: cf. French avant or the Italian avanti, purely locative. The process was taken one step further: one more ablative preposition, de, was preﬁxed to abante, producing dabante (today French devant, Italian davanti, etc.). The ablative meaning of de-, however, was also lost, so that, although in devant/davanti we get (etymologically) two ablative particles (deþabþante), its meaning is only static or even allative. Analogous developments can be seen in Scandinavian, in Coptic (Houghton 1959: 211), and in Slovene and Serbo-Croat (Bennett 1989: 134, 147, 152). In fact, there appears to be a cycle (according to Bennett 1989: 147):

simple form

ablative marker +original form

used as PREPOSITION

used as ADVERB

ablative marker +original form used as PREPOSITION

new ablative marker added to ablative marker +original form used as ADVERB

Instances of developments from static meaning to directional are also attested—e.g. in the prepositions in Middle and Modern Dutch dialects (Heestermans 1979: 20, 30, 47, 49, 136ff., 144).

Prepositions in Ancient Greek

167

(4.148) Æf Ø I çE K

ø ﬁ Z (Pl.Resp. 583C) ‘being between these two [things], in the middle’ Note that with the genitive appears in Homer with plurals and collective singulars. It is only at a later stage that starts to indicate instrument or manner.88 On the other hand, its older rival already shows such non-spatial senses in Homer. This may mean that meanings developed in a particular chronological order, but both and already existed in Mycenaean (me-ta, ku-su), so we cannot see them at the beginning of their life and ascertain their initial meaning. I / æ

The only interesting point is that in Classical Greek I ceased to be used in a spatial sense, while æ still had both types of meaning.

I ç / æ While æ survived into the Middle Ages, I ç died before the New Testament. The moribund I ç had ceased to be spatial, while æ was still both spatial and non-spatial. It is bafﬂing that a study on I ç should state: “il reste a` expliquer pourquoi I ç . . . n’y posse`de que son sens abstrait”. why I ç had nothing but its abstract meaning remains unexplained (Bile 1994: 104) The reason is obvious and takes us beyond even what the “localistic hypothesis” postulates. The localistic idea is that spatial meanings come ﬁrst, abstract ones later. However,

88 The theory that all the meanings of a preposition are connected seems to ﬁnd a block in , which has the disparate senses “with” (with the genitive) and “after” (with the accusative). But in some pre-classical sentences both senses ﬁt, as does the original sense “amidst” (not just “after in a series”— Mommsen 1895: 52):

(i) Kªg a E Ø Kº ª Å ‘I was chosen as ﬁfth among/with/after them’

(Od. 9.335)

(ii) ˇsØ Kªg Æ ÆØ a x æØ Ø ‘I’ll eat Nobody amid/with/after his comrades’

(Od. 9.369)

Furthermore, we can see a similar semantic shift, from “across/amid” to “after”, in Ø: (iii) ŒE[] . . . Æı

Øa ºø ‘he was lying stretched out amidst the sheep’ (iv) Øa åæı ‘after a while’

(Od. 9.298) (Xen.Cyr. 5.5.41)

Note also the parallel with Ææþaccusative, which originally expressed motion (or extended location) along a referent, and, with non-extended singular count nouns, came to mean “beyond” or “past”.

168

The history of Greek prepositions advocates of localism does not normally go as far as suggesting that once non-spatial meanings appear, spatial ones eventually disappear (perhaps taken over by another term), as if by a cycle. Nonetheless, looking at Greek, this is what we see. When we look at post-classical data, in the coming chapters, we will get a fuller picture. For now, let us note the following: (i) Even if one cannot prove that the ﬁrst meaning of these Greek prepositions is exclusively spatial, we can clearly see that spatial meanings are recessive: with time they decrease to extinction, while abstract ones increase; (ii) There is some regularity to this: although the moment of birth and the ﬁrst stage of life are only conjectured (and are therefore indicated in the graph below by an intermittent line), once prepositions become exclusively abstract in meaning, they never (re)acquire spatial meanings (Figure 4.3).

time of birth

first attestation

, amji¢

Localistic Hypothesis: the first meaning is ONLY spatial time of birth

disappearance

on record: BOTH spatial and non-spatial senses

on record: non-spatial senses ONLY

first attestation

disappearance

peri¢ Localistic Hypothesis: the first meaning is ONLY spatial

on record: BOTH spatial and non-spatial senses

on record: non-spatial senses ONLY

time

FIGURE 4.3

In order to check whether prepositions are solely spatial when they ﬁrst appear, we would need to have attestations of the ﬁrst use of each of them. This is obviously impossible: the “proper” prepositions, even in our earlier attestations, are not new. Furthermore, they appear to have been in use in non-spatial senses long before our records begin. For instance, as pointed out by Dunkel (1990: 161ff.), the abstract use of æ in the idiom æe ç Ø “because of fear”

Prepositions in Ancient Greek

169

(e.g. Il. 17.667) has a parallel in the Latin prae metu or prae pavore and in phrases with Hittite piran and with Vedic pura. It is therefore a non-spatial use that goes back to early Indo-European. A tangible (but faint) indication that new prepositions were only spatial comes from the preposition ‰, which “communis sermonis propriam fuisse” (Sobolewski 1890: 63) is spatial, at least initially (cf. Schwyzer and Debrunner 1950: II: 533). Perhaps, but less clearly, the fact that the Homeric compound prepositions are all either only spatial or mainly spatial (Ku¨hner and Gerth 1898: II: I: 528) could be interpreted in this way. In order to be sure, we would need to observe the Greek prepositional system at its birth, a phase that is lost to us. However, as Humbert noted Les pre´positions constituent en grec un ensemble . . . de dates diverses, un syste`me qu’une constante usure obligeait a` de constantes re´fections Prepositions in Greek constitute a mixture dating back to different times, a system that constant wear-and-tear forced to constant repairs (Humbert 1960: 299).

And there indeed are a few “new” (“improper”) prepositions that came into use after our records begin, such as Œø. Their use, at the start, is indeed only spatial.

4.14 Contrasting the semantics of “proper” and “improper” synonyms Two problems face us when we assess the difference between synonyms in the newer and the older sets of prepositions. First, we can date only very few “improper” forms (and none of the “proper” ones), and therefore we cannot tell what their (exclusive or predominant) ﬁrst sense was. Secondly, any author is free to metaphorize ad hoc a hitherto only-spatial preposition; that would not count as general Greek usage, but we cannot tell the difference. Several facts, nonetheless, are clear—and, taken together, point to an original spatial sense in many cases: (i) Only some “improper” prepositions are occasionally attested in a temporal and non-spatial sense, such as åæØ, KÆ, ø[Ł], Kªª, Æ, æÆ, ææø, æ Ł (cf. Lutz 1891: 19, 34ff.). (ii) Many are almost always spatial throughout antiquity, for example K (Lutz 1891: 22ff.), Y ø, ¼ø and ºÅ , and KØ (excluding one dubious fragment by Aesop: prov.122). (iii) A number of “improper” prepositions are only spatial, for example ZØ Ł and IÆØŒæ (Lutz 1891: 35).

170

The history of Greek prepositions (iv) Many “improper” prepositions that are not totally spatial in Classical Greek were nonetheless only spatial in Homer: ¼ªåØ, ºÅ , ºÆ, ŒÆŁæŁ, Œ, KŒ, ø. (v) Others were not always spatial even in Homer, but the non-spatial instances were then very rare (Kªª, æ Ł[]). (vi) Only a few were non–spatial—indeed, only non–spatial—since our earliest records (ŒÆ, åæØ, æ) (vii) Some post-Homeric “improper” prepositions (whose birth is attested), like Œø, had only spatial senses—while their older counterparts (ŒÆ, ) were very often non-spatial. (viii) Even for the “proper” ones, we can see that they were more spatial in Homer and then extended and increased their non-spatial uses in Classical times (Monro 1891: 195), even to the point of having only non-spatial senses. (ix) Spatial and non-spatial meanings seem to appear in a sequence: Øþ genitive (Liddell and Scott 1940: 388–9) in Homer is mostly spatial and appears to add non-spatial meanings as time goes on; Øþaccusative is often non-spatial in Homer, and loses its spatial sense in Classical Greek. (x) As regards the relationship between spatial and non-spatial meanings, classical philologists (e.g. Fritz 1991: 282) casually observe that non-spatial uses “lassen den unmittelbaren Zusammenhang mit den ra¨umlichen Bedeutungen deutlich erkennen” (allow the direct link with the spatial senses to be seen clearly).

5 Prepositions and cases in Hellenistic Greek The long and relatively continuous attestation of the Greek language gives it a signiﬁcance for general historical linguistics, as it offers a “window” on the nature of language change which few other languages can provide. (Joseph 1987: 412)

5.1 Late Ancient Greek: the Koine´ and its problems In the fourth century BC, after the Classical Era, once the Macedonians uniﬁed the Greek cities, a common language largely derived from Attic (cf. LopezEire 1993: 41ff.) prevailed in the Greek-speaking world.1 In the Hellenistic period2 we can detect the beginnings of some of the radical changes that later transformed the Greek prepositional system.3

1 For a general overview of Hellenistic Greek, Wifstrand (1950) is, in Browning’s (1978: 130) words, “by far the best summary account of the history of Greek literary prose language until the end of antiquity”, but he gives very little linguistic detail. Other good but generic and not recent introductions are the classic accounts by Meillet (1965: 267ff.) and Browning (1983: 19ff.). For a succinct but more upto-date and more linguistically detailed outline, see Horrocks (1997a: 32–127). An extensive analysis in sociolinguistic terms is provided by the very controversial Fro¨se´n (1974: 22ff.) and by the sounder Bubenik (1989). As for grammars, Mayser (1934), although very outdated, is still valuable; Gignac (1976, 1981) is a useful and more readable source but only deals with phonology and morphology, and is therefore useless for prepositions. Similarly, the two volumes (again, phonology and morphology) by Threatte (1980, 1996)—though very good—say little on prepositional usage. 2 By “Hellenistic” or “Koine´” Age I refer to the period from the time when Macedonian inﬂuence prevailed in Greece (late fourth century BC), throughout the time of the Roman Empire until the Byzantine Era, rather than the conventional 323 BC–AD 312 slot. For the history behind the changes in the language, see Meillet (1965: 245ff.), and Horrocks (1997a: 32ff.). 3 In this sense, although it may be true that “Om man vill go¨ra en skiss av det antika grekiska prosaspra˚kets fo¨ra¨ndringar genom a˚rhundradena, ma˚ste den hellenistiska tiden komma i centrum” (if one wants to outline the way in which the Ancient Greek language of prose changed through the centuries, the central position must be given to the Hellenistic Age) (Wifstrand 1950: 149), the entire history of the language should be considered. It would then be seen that the phase in which deeper changes become clear and far-reaching is the Middle Ages.

172

The history of Greek prepositions

A few speciﬁc problems face us when we try to identify characteristic innovative traits of the ŒØc ØºŒ. First, the evidence is comparatively restricted, in range if not in quantity. The area of provenance of the documents is limited, and to claim that a newly-attested usage found for the ﬁrst time in this period was the common Greek of the Hellenistic Era is often more than the data warrant. We have to work on the unrealistic assumption that the Greek spoken from the south of Italy through Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and the erstwhile Persian Empire and as far as the plains of the Punjab, was basically uniform.4 A bigger problem is the prestige that Classical Attic had, and the inﬂuence it therefore exerted on Hellenistic Greek prose as represented, for example, by the works of Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, Epictetus, or Strabo. Most literary authors wrote in a language that appears to differ from Attic only on close inspection (cf., e.g., S¸tef 1970: 69), although the effects of Atticism at this stage are not as far-reaching as in the following centuries. Besides non-literary papyri from Egypt, our richest source is the Greek Bible: the Septuagint Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (third–second centuries BC), and the Greek New Testament (ﬁrst century AD). This is for two reasons: (i) it constitutes the longest extant Hellenistic text; (ii) its language, unlike that of the literary texts of the time, is a good approximation to the vernacular (Moulton and Howard 1957a: 4; Regard 1918: 21ff.; Browning 1983: 22ff.; Mandilara´s 1972: 27; Horrocks 1997a: 56, 92). Some Gospels are, however, more archaizing than others—for example Matthew is more so than Mark, and Luke more so than Matthew (cf. also Meillet 1965: 265; Maloney 1981: 2ff.)—although never to the point of fully-ﬂedged classicism:5 we have a more literary Koine´ beside the more vernacular one (Wifstrand 1950: 160).6 For this reason, Mark’s Gospel will be our main focus here.

4 We do have Koine´ data showing regional variation (cf. Brixhe and Hodot 1993: 17ff.; Biville 1993: 129ff.; Consani 1993: 24ff.). Koine´ Greek did, nonetheless, spread in a form sufﬁciently homogeneous for the known ancient dialects, eventually, to disappear—with the partial exception of Doric (traits of which survives to this day in Tsakonian). 5 Paradoxically, as Christianity spread to higher classes (third century onwards), ecclesiastical Greek became increasingly archaizing, spurning the style of the very texts that it promoted as holy. 6 In the ofﬁcial Greek literary scene, one event must be noted: in the ﬁrst century BC, an Atticist movement arose, advocating the (artiﬁcial) use of the classical language instead of the contemporary one. That was the birth of the diglossia (see also pp. 199–200) that was to plague Greek writing and education for eighteen centuries to come (cf. also Horrocks 1997a: 79).

Prepositions in Hellenistic Greek

173

A further concern—the most serious one—is the inﬂuence of Hebrew and Aramaic, in which the original Old Testament (and perhaps parts of the New Testament) were written. This last point necessitates at least a brief digression.7

5.2 The plausibility of Biblical Greek The Greek of the Septuagint and of the New Testament certainly gives useful information about the development of the language from the classical period to the ﬁrst century of our era. However, if these are for us “les textes les plus utilisables” (Meillet 1965: 262), they are not unproblematic. The reliability of Biblical Greek as a sample of the language of the time has long been doubted.8 Most of its innovations on Attic usage have been ascribed to the inﬂuence of the Semitic original and of the Semitic mothertongue of the writers.9 There are numerous examples of indubitable “semitisms” in Biblical Greek, also in prepositional usage. Here is a macroscopic example: the Hebrew (5.1) NJlH E Ð‘A JxAQ /Sa:ne:?tti ?ey-haajim/ ‘I-hated OBJECTMARKER-life’ contains the prepositional object marker ‘A /?ey/ (see p. 11), which looked identical to the comitative preposition ‘A /?ey-/ “with” in its uninﬂected form. The translator failed to distinguish them, so the Greek reads: (5.2) K Å Æ f c Çø

(Eccles. 2.17)

The question of Semitisms is made even more difﬁcult by the immense semantic ground (cf. Lipin´ski 1997: 460) covered by the main (simplex) Hebrew preposition PJO /min/, d /b‰/ and M /l‰/: each of them has a bewildering array of meanings, often in common with the others. The Hebrew scholar William Chomsky (1970: 89), father of Noam, even posited, quite simply, a “principle of prepositional interchangeability” for Hebrew prepositions.

7 In the last two centuries BC, Rome took over Greece and the Hellenized territories (Macedonia, Asia Minor, parts of the Middle East, and Northern Africa), and the inﬂuence of Latin may therefore seem a further complication (cf. Krebs 1884: 46). But Latin speakers learnt Greek instead of displacing it, and Latin was imposed only at a bureaucratical level; only a very limited amount of it percolated through into living Greek (cf. Garcı´a Domingo 1979: 161ff.; Biville 1993: 131ff.). 8 For a sound and concise account of the issues, see Janse (2007). 9 Krivoruchko (2002) notes that, even the modern Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible made by Romaniotes (pre-Sephardic, non-Ladino-speaking Greek Jews) show Hebraisms in their use of prepositions.

174

The history of Greek prepositions

Given such background, Biblical Greek novelties in prepositional usage were, for a long time, all written off as translated Hebrew. But this view was changed (Mandilara´s 1972: 22ff.)10 by the philological research of the twentieth century.11 The belief that parallels between Biblical Greek and Hebrew (or Aramaic) usage always disprove the originality of the Greek has been called into question.12 Attestation in other texts, such as non-literary papyri, has shown that some constructions not found in Classical texts were part of spoken Hellenistic Greek; and a closer study of classical texts occasionally reveals precedents for what some scholars had hastily labelled as later semitisms: in many instances the Semitic model probably played no role or simply multiplied the number of occurrences of a pre-existing construction. Let us see examples of this in prepositional usage. (i) Simplex prepositions: in Biblical Greek “on the topic of ” is rendered at times by æ (instead of the more usual æ), for example: (5.3)

s K Ø bæ y Kªg r . . . ‘he is (the one) about whom I said . . .’,

(John 1:30)

this is both a literal equivalent to the Hebrew MS /al/ “on, above” and a construction occasionally attested in Greek since Homer. (ii) Multilectic preposition: e.g. ŒÆa æ ø (þ gen.) “in front of ”: (5.4) ŒÆa æ ø ø H IºçH (Gen. 25:18) ‘in front of all the brothers’ (translating JQtÐMS ‘on the face of’) and, using æ ø less literally: (5.5)

ŒÆa æ ø B ºø (Gen. 33:18) ‘in front of the city’ (in the original, JQt Ð‘A, ‘the face of ’)

This occurs also in the New Testament (where it is therefore not a direct translation): (5.6) ŒÆa æ ø ø H ºÆH ‘in front of all the peoples’

(Luke 2:31)

For a synopsis of the history, see Maloney (1981: 7ff.). In turn, a study of the prepositional and case-government system of the Gothic Bible (Klein 1992: 70)—which is based on the Greek—has found it very much structured on its own terms and “free of translational interference from Greek”. 12 A radically alternative explanation of the parallelisms has been put forth by the undeniably courageous but utterly implausible Yahuda (1982: 168ff.), who claimed that Greek and Hebrew are genetically related—indeed, that they are the same language. 10 11

Prepositions in Hellenistic Greek

175

In the Greek Bible, many prepositions are combined with æ ø.13 They all have indeed a Hebrew model [prepositionþface]—the most common of them is JQUM /li-fnei/ “to the face of ”. They are, therefore, usually discounted as “undoubtedly a Semitism” (Turner 1963: 279). But we should not disregard the papyri, where we ﬁnd (5.7) ÆPºc ŒÆa æ ø F ƒæF ‘yard in front of the temple’

(PFl.III 1col.2.8)

and indeed in Classical Attic too, once or twice, we ﬁnd (5.8) c ŒÆa æ ø B IÆ çºÆªª Ø (Xen.Cyr. 6.3.35) ‘the squadron in front of the enemy phalanx’ which cannot be a Semitism. However, some Koine´ usage may be innovative even if already attested, as the precedent may have fallen out of use. Another “diagnostic” could be considered. Let us consider, for example, the use of I to indicate agents: (5.9) Ie F ŁF IØª ‘approved by God’

(Acts 2:22)

I in agentive sense, besides mirroring the use of the Hebrew PJO /min/ “from”, and being not unknown to Classical Greek, is standard in Modern Greek. For some innovations ﬁrst found in the Bible, we could take the daring step of regarding their existence in later or in Modern Greek as a possible indication (although not as hard evidence) of their living use in the Koine´ outside the Bible.14 But there is a problem with this too, as we see next.

5.3 The inﬂuence of Biblical Greek We must be aware that the Bible has also been the model for later usage. Since the time it was written, the New Testament (and therefore its language) has been more familiar to uneducated Greeks than classical literature (and therefore than Attic Greek). For a list, see Blass and Debrunner (1979: 176). One is reminded of Thumb’s (1901: 10ff.) afﬁrmation that the study of Modern Greek is Grundbedingung for the Koine´. He also insisted that it is very valuable for Classical Philology, çøc H K ﬁB Kæ ø ﬁ . He was partly echoed by Meillet (1965: 266) who stated that “les parlers grecs actuels sont une source indispensable pour l’e´tude de la ŒØ”. 13 14

176

The history of Greek prepositions

We should recognize that many historians of Greek have underrated the importance of the innovations found in Biblical Greek because their interest was in the history of the language only up to the Hellenistic period, and rarely beyond. If the Greek of the Bible is taken as a point of arrival, its signiﬁcance is relatively limited; but if one observes the history of Greek in all its course, Biblical Greek turns out to also be a point of departure, the beginning of new Greek usage. Even innovations which are certainly semitisms (such as loans “within the Bible” from the Old Testament to the New), and which are therefore not representative of Greek speech of the time, may have become part of common Greek subsequently. Let us see a simple instance in prepositional usage. The expression (5.10) K O ÆØ (þ gen) ‘in (the) name of ’ in Greek has survived to this day as such. From Greek (usually via the Latin translation in nomineþgenitive) it has come into English and into countless other languages where it is still commonly used. In Greek (cf. Blass and Debrunner 1979: 168) it is an innovation of Biblical Greek—and it is a translation from the Hebrew (5.11) Nd /b‰Sm/ ‘in name (of )’

(cf. Arabic

/bismi/)

Other ancient prepositional idioms that have been common in the learned variety of Modern Greek (ŒÆŁÆæı Æ, see pp. 238–9) and that have become part of the spoken Greek of today go back to Hellenistic Greek (Biblical or otherwise) and no further:15 æe ø ‘above all’ Øa Æ ‘for ever’

(Jas. 5:12) (Acts 24:16, Luke 24:13)16

Some Greek prepositional idioms that are now in common use may indeed have Semitic origin. The Modern Greek prepositional idiomatic phrase b 15

Many other archaic prepositional idioms used today occur in classical texts but not in their Koine´ or Modern Greek sense. Other ones, attested in the Koine´, do go back to Classical Greek (e.g. æe e Ææ “for the time being” found in Heb. 12:11 also occurs in Plato and elsewhere), while others seem to ﬁrst occur in the Koine´ but in a different sense from Modern Greek, e.g. KŒ ı çı (1 Cor. 7:5) “with consent” not “unanimously”, K ﬁH Æ (Strabo 7.6.1) “in the interval” not “meanwhile” (cf. S¸tef 1970: 75ff.), or KŒ æı (1 Cor. 12:27) “in part” not “on (sb.’s) part”, a meaning probably taken from modern European languages. 16 This is short for Øa Æe F åæı found as such in Herodotus (9.13).

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177

ØA “in one go, all at once, suddenly” (more commonly Øa ØA) also has a near-parallel in the Koine´ Greek Ie ØA, which ﬁrst appears in the Greek Bible (Luke 14:18) and is thought to be a calque of the Aramaic AD H PJO /min h da:?/ “from one[FEM]” (cf. Moulton and Howard 1957b: 461)—although it mirrors also the Turkish birden “one[ABL]”, which also means ‘suddenly’. Another Modern Greek idiom (taken from the learned tradition) which has been traced back to Biblical Koine´ Greek is Ie ŒÆæØA (cf. 1 Kings 12:33 et passim), where it calques BoO /mil:e:v/ ‘from heart’. a

5.4 Prepositional and case usage in Biblical Greek In order to get a picture of prepositional usage in the Koine´ (besides taking into account the existing secondary literature on biblical, literary, and papyri Koine´), we shall systematically check usage in Mark’s Gospel17—which is probably the most linguistically reliable of the Gospels.18 Let us bear in mind, however, that—even though Koine´ Greek was a simpliﬁcation (in the sense of Mu¨hlha¨usler 1974: 73) of earlier Greek—the picture that we get of Koine´ prepositional usage (for the reasons mentioned before) is far from plain or unproblematic. In the following sketch of the use of prepositions in the Biblical ŒØ, only meanings and constructions alien to classical usage will be mentioned. Reference to classical usages which were continued in the Bible without formal or semantic variation will be made only to highlight a meaningful change in the frequency of use. Prepositions not dealt with below are to be assumed to be in use fundamentally in the same ways outlined for the pre-Christian period.19 The general trends and salient characteristics (as compared with Classical Greek) are discussed in the following ten subsections.20

17

The edition examined was Aland et al. (1966). I am leaving aside all questions relating to the so called “Theology of Prepositions”, such as the theological interpretation of phrases like K 'æØ ﬁH—for which see Turner (1965: 118ff.). Theologians often wrote about the subtleties of Greek prepositions in order to advance theological arguments, and the metaphysical implications of prepositional usage has been the object of much writing. For instance, Robertson (2003: 167–8) argues against Aetius’ claim that St Paul’s use (1 Cor. 8:6) of K with God and Ø with Christ is highly signiﬁcant, pointing out that both prepositions and N are used with reference to God in Romans 11:36. 19 For Biblical usage in keeping with Attic rules, see Abel (1927: 204). For the Koine´ use of the “prepositions” as preﬁxes, see Moulton and Howard (1957b: 294ff.). 20 For reasons of space, only some representative examples shall be given in each subsection. 18

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The history of Greek prepositions

TABLE 5.1 “Proper” prepositions in Mark Syntagm I çþACC I çþGEN I I I ØþACC ØþGEN N KŒ K KþACC KþGEN KþDAT ŒÆþACC ŒÆþGEN þACC þGEN

Occurrences 0 0 0 1 47 21 11 168 66 135 35 21 10 15 7 11 44

Syntagm ÆæþACC ÆæþGEN ÆæþDAT æþACC æþGEN æþDAT æ æþACC æþGEN æþDAT æþACC æþGEN þACC þGEN þDAT

TOTAL

Occurrences 7 5 3 9 13 0 1 64 0 1 0 2 3 9 0 6 715

TABLE 5.2 “Improper” prepositions in Mark Syntagm – Æ Ia

IØŒæ Kªª KŒ æ Ł KÆ Œ K

ø ﬁ K K KÆÆ ø[Ł] Kø ø ø

Occurrences 0 1 0 0 0 2 0 5 2 0 1 5 1 1 7

Syntagm ŒÆ ÆØ ÆŒæa I Æ åæØ O ø æÆ æØ º ºÅ ææø æ Ł Œø åøæ ‰ TOTAL

Occurrences 3 0 0 1 5 3 1 1 0 0 0 3 1 2 45

Prepositions in Hellenistic Greek

179

5.4.1 There is a visible increase in prepositional use Where Attic could have used plain cases (dative, genitive, accusative), we often see prepositional phrases, which is also true of papyri.21 For instance, Øþgenitive regularly denotes the instrument (this is rarely so in Classical Attic and never in Homer, where it is spatial): (5.12)

Øa H KÆŒºıŁø Å ø ‘by means of the following signs’

(Mark 16:20)

In the more literary parts of the New Testament we still ﬁnd the older Classical and Homeric way of expressing the instrument—the plain dative: (5.13) Å Ø

(Acts 2:22)

The replacement of plain cases by PPs can also be seen in the objects of many verbs that in Classical Greek did not take prepositions before their objects: (5.14) c ç E Ł Ie H IŒø ‘fear not those who kill’22

(Matt. 10:28)

The “superﬂuous use” (Doudna 1961: 16) of KŒ or I is also common with partitive genitives, a usage very rare in Classical Greek, and common in Modern Greek: (5.15) K Łı Ø Ie H łØåø (Vulgata: comedunt de micis) (Mark 7:28) ‘they eat (some of the) crumbs’ (5.16) › ¼æ . . . ¥Æ Ø K ÆPF çªﬁ (Vulgata: ut si quis ex ipso manducaverit) (John 6:50–1) ‘bread . . . that one may eat of it’

21 Some Koine´ constructions did not catch on, such as the use of Ææþgenitive for the plain genitive of possession (see Jannaris 1897: 391), e.g. Ææ ÆPH åæÆ (Polyb.3.78.5) “the by them [¼their] country”, or of ŒÆþgenitive: ƒ ŒÆŁ A ØÅÆ (Acts 18:15) “the at us [¼our] poets”. 22 Blass and Debrunner (1979: 87, 123) regard ç F ÆØ I as a Semitism, and so do Liddell and Scott (1940: 1946). However, Hebrew verbs of fearing (AYJ “feel awe; fear” and VY S “tremble; fear”), only occasionally have PJO “from” rather than the plain object (YS “be agitated; fear” has MS

“over”). While ç F ÆØ I does occasionally occur in the Septuagint (cf. Helbing 1928: 29ff.), ç A ÆØ I is also found in Modern Greek dialects (cf. Tzartzanos 1946: 185), and, as Amantos (1964: 206) remarks, “ ı åØÆ B ıø ÆÅ ŒÆd K ﬁB Æ ﬁ ººÅØŒﬁB, ›Æ Æø b ÆÆØ a ŁøæÅŁﬁB ‹Ø KªÆ IºH KŒ F ¯PÆªªºı, IØŒØ c ÆŁ ØÆÆ K ºØØ ÆPB KŒ B KÆ B IÆººÆªB, B æçıºø”. While the Homeric ç F ÆØ I (e.g. Il. 16.304) is irrelevant here because it meant “ﬂee from someone”, it is true that “to fear from someone” is a common construction across languages: cf. Turkish -dan korkmak, Romanian a /tarsidan az/. se teme de, Albanian te¨ kesh frike¨ nga, Hungarian -to´l fe´lni, Persian

180

The history of Greek prepositions

As concerns the relationship between case loss and prepositional increase, a word of warning is needed against sweeping conclusions. Some research on English (Dill 1987) has indicated that prepositions are freely lost and developed, thus raising questions about the widely-held assumption that there is a correlation between loss of inﬂection and increased prepositional use. Lehmann (1985: 313) has cogently attacked such presumed correlation, pointing out the circularity of arguments explaining the rise of prepositions by the loss of cases and the loss of cases by the emergence of prepositions. Furthermore, case syncretism due to phonological developments does not necessarily lead to the creation of prepositions: the distinctions could, in principle, be restored by adopting new endings, as Indo-European languages kept doing in their verbal inﬂections. It is also somewhat too vague to say that losing case inﬂection and expanding the prepositional inventory is just a tendency inherent in IndoEuropean languages (Kahr 1976: 107ff.), although philologists had posited a general drift towards analysis there. West Tocharian (possibly with some inﬂuence from Turkic) recreated two Indo-European case distinctions it had lost (the ablative and the locative), and even created as many as four new cases, which Indo-European never had (perlative, comitative, allative, and causative). The same process is found, even more clearly, in other language families: Finnish has triplicated the ﬁve cases of Proto-FinnoUgric (cf. Hodge 1970: 1ff.; Oinas 1961: 7). 5.4.2 There is a marked increase in the use of the “improper” prepositions Koine´ Greek is marked by the use of an exceptionally high number of “improper” prepositions—‘Polyprothesismus’, to use Krebs’ term (1884: 5).23 This may be in part a calque from Semitic (cf. also Moulton and Howard 1957b: 465): Hebrew JQUM “in front of ” occurs over a thousand times in the Hebrew Bible, and its synonym JQJSd “in front of ” some three hundred times, and this causes similar Greek polymorphemic prepositions to be very frequent in the Septuagint. According to Sollamo (1979: 13ff.) we get the following numbers of occurrences of Greek prepositions meaning “in front of ”: æ Ł KÆ KØ

84 times 181 times 218 times

23 One is reminded of Becker’s cross-linguistic observation (1841: 213) that “uneigentliche Pra¨positionen . . . ﬁnden sich insbesondere in Großer Anzahl in den neuern Sprachen”.

Prepositions in Hellenistic Greek

181

and so on (different authors translated Hebrew prepositions differently). However, such Hebrew forms could have been—and indeed occasionally were—also rendered in other ways, and so the increase in improper prepositions must be a genuine popular tendency of the Greek of the time.24 In fact, the increase in the use of “improper” prepositions is also quite noticeable in Plutarch, Polybius, and Diodorus (Wackernagel 1928: II: 158)—indeed in all literary Koine´ writers a “starke Vermehrung der Pra¨positionsadverbien” was noted (Krebs 1884: 5), and the same is found in papyri. Again, the spatial sense of the “improper” forms was semantically identical to that of the older equivalent simplex prepositions: (5.17)

ŒÆŁÅ ı . . . Kd F Zæı ‘sitting on the Mount’

(Matt. 24:3)

(5.18)

Kø Zæı ŒØ Å ‘lying on a mountain’

(Matt. 5:14)

5.4.3 There is a reduction in the use of the dative Although the classical use of the dative is still seen,25 it is often replaced by a prepositional phrase (cf. Regard 1918: 525ff.; Humbert 1930: 27ff., 68)—even in the same text, from one paragraph to the next: (5.19) ºÆºH E ‘I talk to you’

(John 8:25)

(5.20) ºÆºH N e Œ ‘talk to the world’26

(John 8:26)

Verbs that used to govern a dative object tend either to take an accusative or a prepositional phrase. For example, the verb Ø ø required the dative in Classical Greek but in the Koine´ is also used with prepositions: it is attested with K (perhaps owing to Hebrew verb PO A “to believe” that at times took d “in”):

24 In post-classical Latin we ﬁnd the same: although the frequent compound prepositions of Biblical Latin may be indirectly due to Hebrew, they are also clearly an independent trend of popular Latin (cf. Garcı´a de la Fuente 1986: 3ff.). 25 Even relics such as old locatives -Å Ø() /-Æ Ø() /- Ø() or -E, and the sufﬁxes-Ł, -ŁØ, - , - are occasionally found in the Koine´ (Threatte 1996: 367ff., 404ff.). Mark’s Gospel too has forms such as KŒ ÆØØŁ (9:22). 26 Therefore, N (followed by the accusative) is employed more extensively: not only at the expense of K to indicate rest in a place (see p. 186), but also in replacement of the ailing (plain) dative with which it still alternated.

182

The history of Greek prepositions

(5.21)

c Ø ﬁ K ÆPE

(Jer. 12:6, cf. John 3:15)

but also with K: (5.22)

K ı Æ ººd Kd e ˚æØ

(Acts 9:42)

and more often N (cf. Moulton and Howard 1957a: 67ff.): (5.23) e Ø Æ N ÆP (Acts 10:43, cf. John 3:16, Mark 9:42) The combination Ø ø N may also reﬂect Hebrew use, since PO A often takes the preposition M “to”; but that could also have been rendered—and often was (cf. Helbing 1928: 200)—by a plain dative. The choice of N, therefore, must be (at least partly) native to the Greek of the time—as also suggested by the Modern Greek Ø ø . For some prepositions which could take more than one case, such as , æ, or æ, the most common case with prepositions at this stage is the genitive (Regard 1918: 491, 513, 527, 590). In this respect too, the picture offered by Hellenistic Greek usage is not dramatically distinct from Attic—another indication that the clearer evidence of diachronic trends must be sought in later Greek. In Galatians (Buscemi 1987: 18, 101), for instance, we ﬁnd: Pþgenitives Pþaccusatives Pþdatives

83 80 47

These ﬁgures can be taken to indicate that the dative was disappearing, if we take into account the fact that 41 of the 47 datives found are due to syntagms with the preposition K. This, presumably, was linked to the fact that K could not govern any other case, because the prepositions that in Attic could take (beside the dative) other cases, seem to be used with those instead. For example, in Galatians never occurs with the dative at all. In Mark æ, , and æ (with one exception) had stopped taking datives altogether—as already had by the Classical period. For the government of the dative is very ancient; Mycenaean provides us with one instance of me-ta with the dative-locative, in the spatial sense “amongst”. In the history of , the syntax with the dative was, so to speak, the ﬁrst in and the ﬁrst out. In the Koine´, even the more literary authors such as Polybius use the dative distinctly less than Attic writers (cf. Horrocks 1997a: 49). In the whole of the New Testament (cf. Luraghi 1996: 108) and æ take no dative, while K, Ææ, æ, and take it less than before. Moreover, not all prepositions with multiple options have the genitive as the most frequent case. For instance, with K (Regard 1918: 418), the accusative is, at this stage, the most frequent, followed by the genitive, while the

Prepositions in Hellenistic Greek

183

dative is the rarest; for ŒÆ too the examples with the accusative are a “majorite´ . . . ´ecrasante” (idem: 467). If taken all together, prepositions (as our data from Mark shows) select the accusative most often (cf. Luraghi 1996: 90, 92). Some “improper” prepositions also provide further indication that the accusative may be becoming the preferred case with prepositions—Krebs (1884: 30) talks of the Koine´’s “Abusus des Accusativs”. For example, prepositions which in earlier Greek could only take the genitive, now also take the accusative: (5.24)

ø æø& ‘till morning[ACC]’.

(Jude 19: 25)

5.4.4 The number of cases governed by prepositions tends to be reduced This trend goes beyond the elimination of the dative (Wackernagel 1928: II: 208; Turner 1963: 249). —æ, for instance, in the papyri hardly ever appears with the genitive (let alone the dative), and it does so only once in the New Testament and thrice in Polybius—although other syntagms with this case are, as we just saw, very common. The accusative is the case that does not recede—no preposition ceases to take it—while the dative wanes and the use of the genitive either decreases (e.g. like the dative, it is no longer found after I ç or I) or is extended—perhaps (Luraghi 1988: 185ff.) in order to compensate for the loss of the dative. But the overall Kombinierbarkeit of prepositions with cases continues to decline. 5.4.5 The meaning of the case governed by a preposition fades As prepositions become unable to take a wide range of cases, the choice of a particular case mostly loses meaning (cf. also Regard 1918: 54). So, as the accusative loses its allative sense, it comes to be used more extensively. Not only in the classical way—with a verb of motion or implying previous motion (Liddell and Scott 1940: 1497b), for example: (5.25) ç æ ÆPe æ ‘bring him to me’

(Mark 9:19)

but also (even in the same paragraph) in a static sense: (5.26)

ø æe A ÆØ ‘until when will I be with you?’

(5.27) KØ ıÅª Å q æe c ŁæÆ ‘was gathered at the door’

(Mark 9:19) (Mark 1:33)

184

The history of Greek prepositions

This applies to most other prepositions too. Similar semantic equivalences can be seen (cf. Blass and Debrunner 1979: 185) in Ø þ accusative / Ø þ genitive þ accusative / þ genitive

(the dative not being a possibility altogether) (the dative not being a possibility altogether)

The results are equivalences such as (5.28)

(5.29)

(5.30)

K þ accusative: Kd e Łæ ŒÆŁ ‘sitting on the throne’

(Rev. 4:2)

K þ genitive: ŒÆŁ Kd Łæı ‘sitting on the throne’

(Isa. 6:1)

K þ dative: ŒÆŁ Kd ﬁH Łæø ﬁ ‘sitting on the throne’

(Rev. 21:5)

5.4.6 It becomes clear that some prepositions are falling out of use In Classical Greek there were already pairs of synonyms (cf. pp. 160–5); it now becomes easy to predict which of the two in each pair is going to prevail at the expenses of the other. For instance: /

supplants ; the fact that the latter required a dative was probably a factor. Compare (data from Abel 1957: 215):27 Demosthenes (Classical) Aristotle (Literary Koine´) Revelation (NewTest. Koine´)

346 300 38

15 8 0

I ç/æ

I ç is never used in either Testament (Abel 1929: 234; Humbert 1960: 300), and is replaced by æ. This is certainly not a peculiarity of the Bible, for I ç is also absent from the Ptolemaic papyri and from literary texts such as the works of Aristotle, Polybius, and Theophrastus (Jannaris 1897: 367).

K-KŒ/I

K/KŒ is losing functions to I. Although it still outnumbers it in Biblical Greek (Blass and Debrunner 1979: 170), as it did in

27

The form , prevalent in Classical (ﬁfth century BC) Attic, is losing ground to .

Prepositions in Hellenistic Greek

185

Classical Greek (Martı´nez Valladares 1970: 77ff.), papyri suggest, on the contrary, that it may have been giving way to I. The distinction between an elative and an ablative sense is increasingly lost, I being used as KŒ: (5.31)

I Å Æ KŒ F oÆ ‘they rose out of the waters’

(5.32) I Å Ie F oÆ ‘he rose out of the waters’

(Acts 8:39) (Matt. 3:16)

Furthermore, I is expanding semantically in other ways, showing meanings attested in pre-Christian times only extremely rarely, but which appear in the Koine´ with unprecedented frequency28 (cf. Garcı´a Domingo 1979: 161, 167; Regard 1918: 101ff.). Thus it replaces other prepositions, such as Ææ (cf. Blass and Debrunner 1979: 171) and, above all, the phonologically similar (Turner 1963: 258)—for example, in the expression of cause: Classical Koine´ I [

]

28

e åÆæA Ie B åÆæA

(Xen.Cyn. 6.15.1) ‘out of joy’ (Luke 24:41) ‘out of joy’

I is rare in Attic and very rare in New Testament Greek (Regard 1918: 67) where it usually has distributive meaning (cf. Moulton and Howard 1957a: 100). It is no longer used in any spatial sense—except with (the accusative of)

, creating a new compound meaning “between, amidst” (cf. Blass and Debrunner 1979: 166). The form Ia

(and similar ones) is also very frequent in papyri.29

To cite but a few:

(i) material: Ie æØåH ŒÆ ºı (Matt 3.4) ‘(made) of camel hair’ [(instead of Attic plain genitive)] (ii) reason: PŒ MÆ Ie F Zåºı (Luke 19.3) ‘couldn’t because of the crowd’ [(instead of Attic Øþgenitive)] (iii) agency: Ie ŁF ØæÇ ÆØ (Jas 1.14) ‘I am tempted by God’ [(instead of Attic þgenitive)] 29 This construction is already attested in Theocritus (22.21) Zø Ia

“between the donkeys”, and is common in Aristotle, Polybius, and Theophrastus. It is unlikely therefore to be due to Semitic.

186

The history of Greek prepositions

I

I is used less and less (Blass and Debrunner 1979: 166). As in Attic, the sense is usually abstract, although the papyri have a few of instances of spatial use. In Galatians (Buscemi 1987: 15) there is no I, nor æ, I, or I ç.

N/K

The distinction between rest in a place and motion to a place is lost in all Koine´ texts written in familiar style, with expressions of motion coming to be also used for rest. The two constructions co-exist in the Gospels (Kþdative being rarer in more “vernacular” authors): (5.33) › N e Iªæ ‘the one in the ﬁeld’ (5.34)

› K ﬁH IªæﬁH ‘the one in the ﬁeld’

(Mark 13:16) (Matt. 24:18 et passim)

Compare Classical with Koine´ Greek: Classical Koine´

K ﬁB ŒÅ (Hdt. 3.134) ‘in bed’ N c ŒÅ N (Luke 11:7) ‘they are in bed’ (in the Latin versions, in cubili and in cubiculo)

Classical

Œ ÆØ K ﬁH YŒø ﬁ (Thuc. 1.129; cf. Xen. Cyr. 8.2.16) ‘shall lie in the house’ E N e rŒ ı (Luke 9.61) ‘to those (who are) in my house’ (Latin versions have his qui domi sunt and in domo)30

Koine´

To a lesser extent, N took up functions of K, æ, and even æ (Blass and Debrunner 1979: 169). The loss of the location/motion distinction has also been noted in the use of the (once opposed) æþaccusative and Ææþdative (cf. Turner 1963: 254). And another directional preposition, ‰, becomes rare (Krebs 1885: 61). On the other hand, other spatial prepositions (besides N) give no sign 30 The loss of distinction, of course, is on the surface: directional prepositions are now believed to contain (crosslinguistically) more syntactic structure than locative prepositions (see Koopman 2000; Tungseth 2003; den Dikken to appear). This is required to explain the difference between the two possible readings of the Modern Greek æ e æŒ (where < N), which, as a result of the changes just indicated, can mean either “(s)he ran to the park” or “(s)he ran inside the park”. The question of how much compositional semantics we should include in the representation of hierarchical structure is, however, an open and debated issue, and not a crucial one for our study.

Prepositions in Hellenistic Greek

187

of decline in Biblical Greek or in papyri, for example I and ŒÆ.31 There are indications that even some “improper” prepositions were becoming uncommon in popular use: KØ never occurs in Mark or Matthew. 5.4.7 There are a few new (“improper”) prepositions New prepositions appear. Their most noteworthy characteristics are that they are all “improper” (that is, they do not function as preﬁxes), that they are usually polymorphemic, and that they tend to replace old prepositions.32 For instance (cf. Turner 1963: 251): IØŒæ, (ŒÆ) ÆØ, ŒÆØ, and, above all, I ÆØ33 “der attischen Schriftsprache vo¨llig fremd”. All these mean “in front of” and—with older formations such as KØ, æ Ł, and KÆ34—replace the “proper” æ (which had replaced I in a spatial sense); K-/IøŁ, æø “above” replace æ; ŒıŒºŁ “around” appears instead of æ; Œø (like Œø) “under” supersedes . The equivalence between the old “proper” prepositions and the newer “improper” ones (and the tendency for the former to be replaced by the latter) is easy to see: Classical Koine´

Kd B ŒçÆºB (Pl.Symp. 212e) ‘on the head’ Kø B ŒçÆºB (Matt. 27:37) ‘on the head’

Homeric Classical Koine´

e

(Il. 2.784 et passim) ‘under the feet[DAT]’ e f Æ (Xen.Oec. 18.5) ‘under the feet[ACC]’ Œø H H (Mark 6:11 et passim) ‘under the feet’

31

This is signiﬁcant for Modern Greek, as it corroborates (indirectly) the view that the use of ŒÆ in the modern language is a natural survival and not a learned resuscitation. 32 Some old simplex prepositions are replaced by other old simplex prepositions, but only in nonspatial senses. The use of Ø in the sense of “under the command” (H Ø ÆPF ºø in P.Petrie II 20 col.I 3 and IV 2) which we ﬁnd in papyri (and never before, after, or elsewhere) is due to the increasing overlap in the functions of Ø and (as the latter became less used) which started by their virtual equivalence in causal expressions (Benedetti 1985): cf. “woody and without paths because uninhabited”: ºÅ . . . ŒÆd IæØ c . . . KæÅ Æ (Thuc. 4.8.6) and ºı . . . ŒÆd IæØ F Øa c . . . KæÅ Æ (Thuc. 4.25.9). 33 On the presence of ablative morphemes in synchronically locative adverb/preposition (e.g. I[]- in the new I ÆØ, like -Ł for æ Ł of earlier date), see pp. 165–6. 34 While KÆ goes as far back as Homer, æ Ł appeared in classical texts but only after Homer. As for KØ, it starts appearing only in the fourth century BC (Sollamo 1979: 331).

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The history of Greek prepositions

An increase in “improper” prepositions has also been noted in Koine´ literary texts.35 Newer “improper” prepositions seem to oust even some older “improper” items, for example: åøæ and later åÆ appear instead of ¼ı and º36 IÆ

appears in lieu of Æ There are many synonyms (Krebs 1884: 32ff.), and therefore superﬂuous items: ¼åæØ IªåF

¼ åæØ ¼ Kªª

¼ ø ¼ ºÅ

Other “improper” prepositions, like ææø, disappeared after the Koine´ period. 5.4.8 Many such “newer” prepositions seem to be used only in a local sense It appears that the “newer” prepositions are mainly restricted to a local sense.37 In the Koine´, many of the “improper” prepositions already attested in Classical or even Homeric Greek (e.g. ¼åæØ, æ Ł, Kø, KÆ, ø, or Kªª) are occasionally found used non-spatially,38 but some are only spatial (IØŒæ, ŒıŒºŁ). Most of the newest (post-classical) prepositions, for example ¼øŁ, Œø, ŒÆ ÆØ, [[ŒÆ]ÆØ] æÆ, O ø, ªªı are only spatial. Few of the newest have very occasional exceptions. For example, although I ÆØ “is quite concrete in the LXX as well as elsewhere in the Koine´”

35 Krebs (1884: 1ff.) carried out an extensive study of the occurrence of even the most unusual (and sometimes questionable) improper prepositions in literary Hellenistic Greek (his corpus consisted of Polybius, Diodorus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Josephus, Plutarch, Arrian, Appian, Dio Cassio, Herodian, and Aelianus). Although the signiﬁcance of literary texts is limited, the array of improper prepositions found (61) is quite indicative: åæØ, – Æ, åøæ, ŒÆ, ¼åæØ, ºÅ , K, ø, ø, åæØ, ¼ı, Æ, º, åÆ, KŒ, ‰, Kªª, æÆ, ææø, › F, , ÆŒæ, ŒÆØ, ¼øŁ, KB, Kø, ŒÆÆØŒæ, ¼ØŒæı, æÆ, K ŒØÆ, KÆ, ªªı, IØŒæ, ŒÅ, oæŁ[], O ø, K[Y] ø, æ, ‹Ø Ł, æØ, IØ æÆ, ºŁæÆ ﬁ , IªåF, ŒŒºø ﬁ , æ, ¼æ, æø, æ, ﬁ , , ¼ø, PŁ, Œø, ¼ıŁ, ÅºF. KØæ Ł, Œø, IÆ , ŒæçÆ, I ÆØ, › , Æ 36 The chronological order of appearance º/¼ı ! åøæ ! åÆ is also interesting for Modern Greek, since º and ¼ı are now very archaic, åøæ standard, and åø colloquial. 37 This is also the case in papyri. 38 Since KÆ was already non-spatial by the time of Homer, it is not surprising that by the Hellenistic period its spatial use was being lost (Lutz 1891: 32), and was conﬁned to formal phrases (mainly of legal parlance) such as KÆ Æææø “ in the presence of witnesses”.

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(Sollamo 1979: 28), there are extremely rare non-spatial uses. These are usually clear Semitisms—with the odd exception being less easy to explain away: (5.35)

I ÆØ H ª ø ‘contrary to the decrees’

(Acts 17:7)

But in papyri known by Mayser’s time (1934: 538) I ÆØ was only spatial. It is also attested three times in Polybius, and still only spatially. The same applies to æ Ł, for which we have “presque toujours des exemples concrets” (Regard 1918: 625). Outside the Bible (and so outside the sphere of inﬂection of Semitic languages) and even in Polybius (Mayser 1934: 539) we see it “in streng ra¨umlichem Sinn”, unlike its older counterparts æ and I. Another fact to be noted in this connection is that prepositions that are (synchronically at least) only non-spatial never develop spatial meanings—in other words, the semantic shift here appears to be unidirectional. So ¼ı “without” develops no other sense, while the less ancient (Krebs 1885: 29) åøæ “separately; apart from” comes to mean “without”—the only meaning it has also in Modern Greek. For “proper” and “improper” prepositions in Mark’s Gospel, spatial and non-spatial uses are shown in Tables 5.3 and 5.4. The usage of the newer set of prepositions seems to suggest, even if the evidence at this stage is scanty and perhaps confused by interferences, that the use of new prepositions is usually spatial. In Biblical Greek, the old K, for instance, is both spatial and non-spatial, while its new counterpart K is only spatial (cf. Johannessohn 1926: 336). Many prepositions of the old set (the “proper” prepositions), are also predominantly spatial; but this appears to be true mainly of those with no recent “improper” replacement (i.e. I, N). On the other hand, several other older prepositions are clearly used less in their spatial sense. Neither æþgenitive nor þgenitive39 are ever spatial in the Septuagint (Johannessohn 1926: 174, 216, 245ff.)—and rarely so elsewhere in the Koine´. The history of æ, likewise, conforms to this pattern: at this stage, it is almost always used non-spatially, while the newer æ Ł, ÆØ, KØ take over its spatial sense (cf. Regard 1918: 549). We can see that K is extensively used in many non-spatial meanings, and somewhat less

39 Benedetti (1983: 70) lists the percentage of local uses of in some Koine´ (non-Biblical) authors. The data show that spatial uses were diminishing through time: Homer 46%, Aristophanes 11.6%, New Testament 10.9%.

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The history of Greek prepositions

TABLE 5.3 Occurrences of spatial and non-spatial uses of “proper” prepositions in Mark Syntagm I I ØþACC ØþGEN N KŒ K KþACC KþGEN KþDAT ŒÆþACC ŒÆþGEN þACC þGEN ÆæþACC ÆæþGEN ÆæþDAT æþACC æþGEN æa æþACC æþDAT

æþGEN þACC þGEN TOTAL

Spatial

Non-Spatial

0 32 1 6 137 40 78 22 17 6 1 1 0 39 7 4 0 7 0 1 48 1 6 0 3 0 456

1 15 20 5 31 26 57 13 4 10 14 6 11 5 0 3 3 2 13 0 16 0 0 2 0 9 266

Note: a æ appears only in the phrase æe æ ı ı which is a calque of the Hebrew x JQ UM

in spatial ones (while its newer rival, Kø, is spatial40). There is a sharp decrease also in the spatial use of ŒÆþgenitive, which is usually employed to indicate hostility (cf. Blass and Debrunner 1979: 182).41 This strengthens our 40 It may seem striking that the only occurrence of Kø in Mark is non-spatial; however, the use of Kø in the Bible as a Semitic calque is well known (cf. Abbott-Smith 1922: 164). It copies Hebrew and Aramaic MS /al/ or MS O /me:al/ (or EMS O /maɘla:/) which do mean “on” but are often used to say “above an amount” (as Kø does in our example in Mark), “ruling over” or “be in charge of” (cf. Brown et al. 1906: 775a). These are the non-spatial senses of Kø in Luke 19:17 and John 3:31. Furthermore, Kø is not a very new preposition, and is used non-spatially (although extremely rarely) even by Attic orators. 41 It is, however, still quite commonly used with the accusative in spatial senses (we shall identify the explanation for this at p. 233) beside ﬁgurative ones:

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TABLE 5.4 Occurrences of spatial and non-spatial uses of “improper” prepositions in Mark Syntagm Ia

æ Ł Œ K

ø ﬁ K KÆÆ ø[Ł] Kø ø ø ŒÆ ÆØ åæØ › ø æÆ º ºÅ Œø åøæ ‰a TOTAL

Spatial

Non-Spatial

1 2 0 2 1 5 0 1 4 3 0 5 3 0 1 3 0 0 29

0 0 5 0 0 0 1 0 3 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 12

Note: a It is, however, unclear how many different ‰ prepositions there are—and of what date.

hypothesis that there could be a sort of semantic cycle whereby spatial senses are, so to speak, “passed on” to new generations of prepositions. 5.4.9 There are improper prepositions that are combined with a simplex preposition, and then followed by plain case This is noticeable in literary authors of the Koine´ period. For example: (5.36)

ø Kd c ŁºÆ

Æ ‘as far as the sea’

(5.37) ø æe e ˚ÆŒÆ ‘as far as the Caucasus’

(Acts 17:24) (Diod.Sic. 2.43.2)

(i)

ŒÆŁ ‹ºÅ c ºØ ‘throughout the city’ (ii) e ŒÆ K

‘as far as I am concerned’

(Luke 8:39) (Rom. 1:15)

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The history of Greek prepositions

(5.38) ø N e åæÆŒÆ ‘as far as the pale’

(Polyb. 1.11.14)

The same preposition can even appear in the same text in both constructions: (5.39)

ÆŒæa H º ø ‘far from the enemies’

(5.40) ÆŒæa Ie B ºø ‘far from the city’42

(Polyb. 3.50.8) (Polyb. 11.20.1)

And so ¼åæØ K / ¼åæØ K / ¼åæØ æ (cf. Krebs 1884: 38ff.). Also noteworthy are occasional compounds such as K KÆÆ (Mark 15: 39). 5.4.10 Developments seen in the Koine´ are not always in line with later Greek It should not be assumed that the Koine´ simply represents a linear evolution towards the Middle Ages, a predictable trait d’union between Classical and Medieval Greek. Some Koine´ characteristics, when examined in the light of later developments, are rather surprising. Again, these can be either “dead ends” subsequently abandoned by the language, or just erroneous impressions on our part, formed from the somewhat distorted picture that the data give us. For instance, despite the fact that the dative is less used, K is “the most popular preposition in NT” (Turner 1976: 260). The plain dative loses ground to syntagms with æ and N, but was inevitably maintained if K was used. This is largely due to the extensive and manifold uses of Hebrew d /bɘ/ “in”. Proof of this is the fact (cf. Maloney 1981: 180ff.) that the most frequent nonspatial sense of K in Biblical Greek is instrumental/causal: (5.41) K ﬁH ºØ ﬁH ‘by famine’

(Gen. 41: 36)

This translates literally the original BS Yd “in famine”, but it also occurs in a papyrus (K ﬁH ºØ ﬁH P.Par.28.13) where it alternates with the classical e F ºØ F (P.Par. 26.9) and the older plain dative ﬁH ºØ ﬁH (P.Par. 27.14). A causal and instrumental use of K is also found (very rarely) in Homeric and in lofty Attic Greek, as old scholars had noticed:43

42

This also indicates that the ancient ablative sense of the genitive is no longer perceived, and it needs to be “reinforced” by a preposition (cf. also Turner 1963: 235). 43 E.g. Bossler (1862: 19): “Usu . . . quem . . . grammatici . . . instrumentalem vocant . . . plerisque eis locis ubi ille usus invenitur, id quod praepositione K signiﬁcatum est ita intellegi potest, ut sit instrumentum vel id cuius ope et auxilio aliquid efﬁcitur.”

Prepositions in Hellenistic Greek K OçŁÆº E Ø ¥ ÅÆØ K Ø ﬁB Ø K ºØÆE K ºø ﬁ

(Od. 18.135) (Aesch.Pers. 162) (Soph.Phil. 60) (Soph.Phil. 102)

193

‘you see with your eyes’ ‘to honour with respect’ ‘by means of prayers’ ‘by deceit’

and the instrumental use of K can be found even in late Medieval Greek: (5.42)

I ŒØ K åæ ‘killed with [bare] hands’

(Dig.Akr.Esc. 1433)

Therefore, the frequent use of K with instrumental sense in Biblical Greek is not an innovation due to the use of d “in” in Hebrew—it is, as Humbert (1930: 48) noted, “parfaitement helle´nique”. Indeed, at an earlier stage, the IndoEuropean locative case had merged with the instrumental case. Nevertheless, the frequency of instrumental K in Biblical Greek must be due to Hebrew, and in spoken Greek it must have been unusual.44 A comparison (Haggett 1902: 13) of its occurrences in Homer (23.1 per cent) and in Apollonius (17 per cent) shows that K was on the wane, despite the fact that Apollonius was imitating Homer’s style. Other prepositional peculiarities are “dead ends”. For example, in the Koine´ we often see P æ used to introduce the second term of comparison: (5.43) çæØ æØ bæ f ıƒ ‘wiser than the sons’

(Luke 16:9)

(5.44) ıÆæ N Ø bæ ÆP ‘they are stronger than he’

(Judg. 18: 26)

The interesting fact is that this use of æ (like the analogous employment of Ææ) is found neither in Classical Attic (where a plain genitive would be used) nor in later Greek (where I would be used). Moreover, it is not a semitism either: in the latter example above, the original text of Judges has PJO (literally “from”, a Hebrew preposition regularly employed for “than”), and that would have been translated much more closely by a classical ablatival genitive or by I as in Modern Greek. The use of æ is just peculiar to Koine´ usage.

44 Indeed, K and N are the most used prepositions in Biblical Greek; the gradual demise of the dative will (later on) make N the most common preposition—as it is in Modern Greek. Already in the New Testament, K is more frequent in more literary gospels such as Luke (Regard 1918: 227).

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The history of Greek prepositions

5.5 Synopsis of trends in the Koine´ In summary, in post-classical usage we see the tendencies detected in Classical and pre-Classical Greek strengthened: cases have a long history of syncretism, and the dative now looks particularly weak; at earlier stages, plain cases sufﬁced to express spatial meanings, but now spatial meanings are expressed by prepositions (added to cases); however, cases appear to be losing their individual signiﬁcance; this is also happening when they are inside a prepositional phrase; there are very many prepositions (of different date), including many synonyms; prepositions fall into two groups, and the “improper” type (ex-adverbs), which is the newer group, is being used more and more frequently (at times even compounding the “improper” prepositions with a “proper” one); their inventory is also expanding, thanks to new creations; “proper” prepositions are, to some extent, ousting one another (i.e. a number are becoming obsolete), but are mainly replaced by “improper” prepositions; most importantly, the “improper” prepositions tend to have a spatial sense, while the “proper” ones that are replaced by “improper” ones in spatial uses are increasingly conﬁned to non-spatial uses.

6 Prepositions and cases in Medieval Greek No class of words in the Greek is more important than the prepositions, and none are more imperfectly understood. Adams (1885: iii)

6.1 Problems with Medieval Greek Of the whole history of the Greek language from its Indo-European origins up to today, the Middle Ages1 is the period least studied, although it can be a goldmine for Greek philologists (cf. Krumbacher 1897: 21).2 Nobody has ever published a comprehensive grammar of Medieval Greek (cf. Mirambel 1964: 391; Holton 1974: 61);3 works on any aspect of Medieval Greek are still inﬁnitely rarer than those on Modern or Classical Greek. We do not even have a complete up-to-date dictionary (see Browning 1978: 105). Needless to say, no full-scale study of prepositional usage of this age has ever been carried out: only Tachibana (1993c, 1994) has taken a few steps in that direction. One key factor that accounts for this comparative neglect is the dearth of linguistically reliable texts. Owing to the inﬂuence of Classical Attic and of Biblical Greek, attestations of the living spoken Greek of the Byzantine Era are infrequent and dubious. “Medieval Greek” as we have it, is for linguists IÅ ıåÅØŒe ŒÆd æ ºÅ ÆØŒ (Jeffreys 1986: 139): most texts come in a variety of styles that approximate to a greater or lesser extent the classical language or, more often, the Hellenistic Koine´ (see Impellizzeri 1965: 20ff.; The chronological label “Medieval” is used broadly; e.g for Triandaphillidis (1941: 4) the ÆØøØŒc Kå goes from 330 to 1453 AD, for Browning (1983: 53, 69) from the sixth century to 1453. 2 For a brief outline of the main changes, see Browning (1983: 53ff.). 3 Only now this is being done: David Holton and Geoffrey Horrocks have been working on a Medieval Greek grammar at Cambridge. Work started in October 2004. 1

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The history of Greek prepositions

Garzya 1972: 28ff.; Tomadakis 1952: 25ff; Triandaphyllidis 1938: 28ff. and the more extensive Horrocks 1997a: 159ff. and Browning 1978: 109ff.). What we ﬁnd, in short, are combinations of styles of different ages, mixing a perplexing array of forms, of constructions, and of lexemes. This controversial ØŒc ªºH

Æ is a complication for our enquiry too. For a start, we have no texts reﬂecting spoken Greek dating from before the ninth century (see Panayiotakis 1993: 250ff.; Horrocks 1997a: 254ff.). Furthermore, purism adulterated even texts that were indeed written in a form of Greek approximating real contemporary usage (see Sˇevcˇenko 1981: 290ff.). Since it is impossible for us to identify all learned inﬂuences, it is difﬁcult to know if an old construction or meaning found in the texts was really still part of living usage; likewise, we cannot always be sure that the corresponding modern construction or meaning had not yet appeared. And when we ﬁnd in medieval usage something attested neither before this period nor after, we are left in doubt as to whether it ever really existed at all in Greek speech, or was just a hybrid born of the clash between living usage and puristic pressures. Most “demoticizing” texts, moreover, are in verse—a factor that imposes further constraints on the use of language (metre requirements, formulaic usage, etc.); there appears (Jeffreys 1986: 142ff.) to have been a veritable Kunstsprache, developed within an oral tradition, much like Homeric Greek. This would also account for the lack of dialectal variation, and for the disconcerting polymorphy that we see in the texts. This mixed character of Byzantine Greek has displeased scholars of all persuasions: Greek purists and European classicists on the one hand, and those who fought for the acceptance of the contemporary language on the other: ªº

Æ ıÇÆØc Øa c ›Æ å Æ ÆæÆ, E ƒ ›EØ ıº IŒ Å æŁ ø N e æ ıÇÆØe IØŒØ . . . . )ˇºØ ƒ PæøÆEØ çd f KæåøæF Æ N c Œ Ø e ŒØ ı, IÅÆÇ ÆPåæÅ Æ Ie f ºØŒØ f f K ıÆF Æ N f ıÇÆØf ıªªæÆçE. . . . "ºº ƒ KŒÆØ ÆPd º a æª ÆÆ Ie B ŒºÆ

ØŒB ŒØA. e . . . .´ıÇØ . . . ºªﬁø . . . B ıÅæÅØŒB ø b ÆÆØ a ƒŒÆØ ﬁÅ f Å ØŒØ , ƒ ›EØ Ła XŁº a º ›ºŒºÅæ c ´[ıÇÆØc] [ØººªÆ] ªæÆ Å N c Å Å ªºH

Æ H åæø ŒÆa f ›ı Œ Kªæç. ˇPb ÆÆØ a ƒŒÆØ ﬁÅ f IØŒØ , ØØ e ´ıÇØ K å Æ ØåEÆ. We who still work so willingly on the pre-Byzantine Atticism have always so many complaints about the Byzantine language . . . All the European scholars who tackled the editing of a text were immediately made to feel sick by the solecisms that they found in the Byzantine authors . . . But those editors were looking at things from the point of view of the classics . . .

Prepositions in Medieval Greek

197

Byzantium . . . because of its conservative tendency, cannot satisfy the demoticists who would like to see the whole of Byzantine literature written in the common language of the years in which it was written. Nor can it satisfy Atticists, because Byzantine Greek has accepted modern elements. (Tomadakis 1952: 12)

Both the Demoticists’ and the Atticists’ outlook entails the same fallacy. Although it is true that Medieval Greek is diachronically a point (or a series of points) in the evolution from the classical to the modern language, and that it therefore shares traits of both those synchronic systems (all the more so with the interference of purism), it should not be regarded as just a phase of transition between Classical and Modern Greek. By ignoring the individuality of Medieval Greek, it is often assumed that the study of Attic, perhaps combined with a knowledge of the Greek of today, sufﬁces to understand Medieval texts properly. This is not true; Krumbacher’s attack (1897: 28) against the Classicists who think they are equipped to tackle Byzantine Greek is still current in our time. The fact that Medieval Greek has rarely been tackled on its own terms also means that medieval inconsistencies with both Classical and Modern Greek have been taken to indicate that, while an old system was dissolving and a new one had not yet fully formed, the language was in an anarchic state of ﬂux. Furthermore, peculiarities of Medieval Greek texts not attested before nor after have often escaped notice. Since the diachrony of a language is made up of a series of self-contained synchronic systems, Medieval Greek grammar should be reconsidered as a necessarily organized independent structure, with its own internal principles and perhaps no more “irregularities” than Attic or the Greek of today— although some of its rules are alien to both classical and modern Greek grammar (cf. Mirambel 1964: 392). And we shall need to bear this in mind when looking at prepositional usage: in its history, Medieval Greek also took a number of “dead-ends”: new paths of evolution that by the Modern age had been completely abandoned.

6.2 The choice of Medieval Greek texts In order to get a picture of Greek prepositional usage in the Middle Ages we shall look at samples from the extant reasonably demotic texts: Nun gab es zweifellos in Byzanz . . . zwischen der Sprache der Literatur (“Hochsprache”) und der Volkssprache eine mehr oder weniger “gehobene” Umgangssprache, u¨ber deren . . . Verwendungsmo¨glichkeiten in der Literatur . . . fast nichts bekannt ist.

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The history of Greek prepositions

There is no doubt that in Byzantium . . . between the literary language (the “high” language) and the vernacular, there was a more or less “elevated” colloquial language, about whose . . . possibilities of use in literature virtually nothing is known. (Hunger 1981: 19)

Separating the wheat from the chaff is a delicate and uncertain task: Um so mehr muss man sich bemu¨hen, in den schriftsprachligen Texten die Spuren des vulga¨ren Einﬂusses aufzudecken, und an ihnen ist kein Mangel. Die Volkssprache hat sich fu¨r ihre ofﬁzielle Zuru¨ckweisung aus der Prosa gera¨cht indem sie heimlich in die Texte eindrang. All the more we must endeavour to detect the traces of the inﬂuence of the colloquial—and there is no shortage of them—in the texts written in literary style. The popular language avenged itself for being ofﬁcially rejected in prose writing by sneaking secretly into the texts. (Krumbacher 1897: 885)

What we have is, unfortunately, only an approximation to the living Greek of the time. This does not mean that such texts are unserviceable (Hatzidakis 1905: 483)—but just that it is all that we have to go by: given the dearth of epigraphic material, we are obliged, in attempting to trace the development of spoken Greek through the middle Byzantine period, to rely heavily on the “literary” sources which . . . permitted somewhat higher levels of compromise with change in the spoken language. (Horrocks 1997a: 161)

So, despite the necessary reservations, some texts can be said to be discernibly more “modern” than others. In fact, the few authors of the Byzantine Age who chose to use a language closer to that of living usage knew they were violating a tradition, and often even warn us beforehand: ¯N b ÆçE ŒÆd ŒÆÅ Æı ﬁø ºªﬁø ŒÆd x NŒﬁB Þ Ø ÇﬁH ŒÆd ±ºœŒﬁH æe c H æŒØ ø KåæÅ Å ºø Ø, Åb ŁÆı ﬁÅ, ıƒ . ˇP ªaæ KØØ ŒÆººØªæÆçÆ j çæ ø MØŒØ Å ŒÆd e ØÅæ ØªŒ Å ŒÆd łÅºe ØB ÆØ K Æ Æ, Iººa Aºº Øa ŒØB ŒÆd ŒÆŁø ØºÅ Å IÆªªºÆ ØÆØ

Ø ı Æ. Do not be amazed, my son, if for the exposition of the matters at hand I have used clear and commonplace language, and a simple and, so to speak, casually ﬂowing prose; for I did not endeavour to make a show-off of beautiful style or Atticizing diction, inﬂated with the highfaluting and the lofty. Rather, I tried to teach you in common and colloquial idiom. (Porphyrogenitus, De Adm. Imp. 1.8ff.)4 Furthermore, Porphyrogenitus says elsewhere (De Caerimoniis 5.2.4) that he had used words that in reality had been in use for a long time already (Œåæ ŁÆ . . . º Ø . . . æª ÆØ ºÆØ . . . ºª Ø). Other quotations of preemptive warnings and apologies (or indeed refusals to apologize) for making concessions to the living language—with original quotations—can be found in Hatzidakis (1905: 498ff.), Triandaphyllidis (1938: 29), and Browning (1978: 129). 4

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199

Such texts will naturally constitute the basis of our exploration.5 We shall draw on a variety of texts for general observations, but select only some of the most reliable ones to create a corpus for systematic examination.6 The latter group comprises the following texts (full references to the editions used will be found in the Bibliography): (i) The Chronicle of John Malalas; dating from the ﬁfth or sixth century; comprising about 97,000 words. Hailed as e æH ªº ªºø

ØŒe Å E f åA e IØŒØ (Triandaphyllidis 1938: 30), it is indeed written at “a linguistic level that approaches the vernacular” (Jeffreys et al. 1986: ix). See Dindorf (1831). (ii) ‘De administrando Imperio’ by Constantine Porphyrogenitus; from the tenth century; about 110,000 words. Its style is varied, deliberately casual (see quotation on the previous page) and “often careless” (Jenkins 1967: 12); it is close to the Greek of the time, although not truly vernacular (Horrocks 1997a: 191). (iii) The Chronography of Michael Psellus; from the eleventh century; about 84,000 words. Psellus’ style, despite his endeavour to keep it “purest . . . as classical as the writer could make it” (Dawkins 1953: 256) is only a “moderately Atticised Koine´” (Horrocks 1997a: 171) and with contructions “franchement byzantines et meˆme vulgaires” (Renauld 1920: 162). See Impellizzeri (1993). (iv) The poems of Poor Prodromos (—øåææ ØŒ); from the twelfth century; about 9,500 words. A colloquial work, although in verse, with an “arresting use of everyday language” (Horrocks 1997a: 265), especially in the syntax and in the vocabulary, with sporadic higher style for humour. (v) An anonymous metaphrase (a translation from a highly Atticizing style to a more contemporary form of Greek) of parts of Anna Komnene’s Alexiad (}XI–XIII). From the thirteenth or fourteenth century; about 20,000 words. See Hunger (1981). 5 It is true that a comprehensive description of a language must not ignore its written or formalized form—especially if, as in the case of Greek, the archaizing tradition has affected, in the end, even spoken use. As pointed out by Horrocks (1997a: 6), many histories of Greek wrongly disregard archaizing Greek as irrelevant to historical linguistics; but we shall need to take into full account the effects of purism when describing Modern Greek usage (Chapter 7). When language research examines language as a reﬂection of other processes (for instance, of a psychological kind), on the other hand, striving to weed out as many learned elements as possible becomes a justiﬁed technical necessity, and not (as, we must acknowledge, has often been the case for demotic Greek) the effect of a political dogma or of a romantic idealization. 6 Even studies of living languages are increasingly based on corpora, something traditionally abhorred in generative grammar (cf. Sampson and McCarthy 2004: 3–4).

200

The history of Greek prepositions (vi) The Chronicle of Leontios Machairas, Book 1; early ﬁfteenth century; over 50,000 words. Despite its Cypriot tinge, it is “one of the most important documents for the study of the popular Greek of its period” (Horrocks 1997a: 286) that “owes nothing to classical models” (Browning 1978: 127). See Dawkins (1932). (vii) The Chronicle of George Sphrantzes; from the ﬁfteenth century; about 47,500 words. Approximating the Umgangssprache, it uses a “popularizing Koine” (Browning 1978: 128) and clearly shows “una certa indipendenza dalla tradizione letteraria” (Maisano 1990: 38).

Whenever useful, we will also consider (with quotations and commentary) medieval texts outside the canon above—but not count them in the ﬁgures provided in the following sections. These ancillary texts are: (viii) The descent of the Virgin Mary to Hades; from the eighth/ninth century. Text in fairly “modern” Greek “car on y trouve parmi un grand nombre de mots du grec ancien ou du grec e´pure´ ” (Pernot 1900: 238). (ix) Digenis Akritis; probably from the twelfth century—although the extant manuscripts are later: the Grottaferrata is from the thirteenth/fourteenth century, and the Escorial—here quoted—from the ﬁfteenth century. This is a heroic verse romance in early vernacular (Jeffreys 1998: xlix) but with a ªº IæØŁ e ºªø

Øåø (Alexiou 1990: 77), as well as formulaic reiterations and metri causa polymorphy (Horrocks 1997a: 153ff., 261ff.). (x) Belthandros and Chrysantza; thirteenth/fourteenth century. Another semi-demotic verse composition in “ein Idiom . . . mit Elementen des gelehrten Sprachgebrauch der Literatur” (Beck 1971: 128). (xi) Chronicle of the Morea; early fourteenth century; versions H (Copenhagen, longer, but lacking the beginning) and P (Paris, possibly later). Remarkable for very modern features7 and little concern for the literary tradition that preceded it (Horrocks 1997a: 155).

7 Although this text is quite long—and therefore quite valuable—and of “almost wholly vernacular language . . . style closely reﬂecting . . . natural speech” (Horrocks 1997a: 276)—and indeed had been proclaimed to be no less than e ªÆºæ Å E B Æ ªº

Æ (Triandaphyllidis 1938: 33), I have decided to exclude it from my main corpus. This was due to its formulaic character, that has led scholars to identify the Chronicle of the Morea as part of a learned tradition (Jeffreys 1986: 144ff.), complete with plentiful pseudoclassical or misused classical forms (Browning 1978: 126). Its metric requirements, furthermore, clearly affected the use of compound prepositions (Egea 1988: 102).

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(xii) Libistros and Rodamne; early fourteenth century. Verse romance in semi-vernacular with dialectalisms—“singulier me´lange de langue populaire et de langue ´epure´e” (Lambert 1935: 50). (xiii) Assizes of Cyprus; fourteenth century. Legislative documents written in a formal but, nevertheless, fairly demotic style—a kind of “puriﬁed” ŒÆŁø ØºÅ Å with a dialectal tinge. (xiv) The Achilleid; ﬁfteenth century, Oxford and Naples versions—the latter being more old-fashioned. Another verse text showing “Un me´lange de formes savantes et populaires” (Hesseling 1919: 24). (xv) The Tale of Alexander, the æØ Æ or rhymed version; thirteenth/ fourteenth century. Relatively demotic, but “the archaizing inﬂuence makes its presence felt at every level” (Holton 1974: 85). (xvi) The Tale of Alexander, prose version; thirteenth/fourteenth century. Here too IæåÆEØ, ÆØøØŒd ŒÆd æØ, ŒØd j ØÆºŒØŒ, æØ Æ ººÅØŒd j ZłØ Æ ØØ ªºø

ØŒd Ø ıÆªºÇÆØ (Veloudis 1977: 120ff.). (xvii) The metaphrase of Plutarch’s —æd Æø IªøªB by Nicholas Sophiano´s; ﬁfteenth century. Sophiano´s was a Corﬁot scholar who was striving to standardize the “linguam nostram qua uulgo Græci utimur” (cf. Legrand 1874: 11).8 (xviii) Synaxarion of Noble Ladies; sixteenth century. Another fairly demotic text, but the “Reminiszenzen aus der Schule oder Kirche spielen eine sehr geringe Rolle” (Krumbacher 1905: 357), as does the metre. The dates of these texts span a large stretch of time: “Byzantine” Greek is accepted as a label covering a millennium (Mirambel 1964: 392). But there is another factor that justiﬁes such a chronologically wide-ranging selection— another disconcerting consequence of the I ØØ B ªº

Å of the Byzantine period: it is hard to see a development in the Greek of this period, and when we can see it, it does not appear quite so linear. In fact, when the line can be traced, it often goes backwards (see Browning 1978: 103; Hatzidakis 1905: 488ff.; Egea 1988: 23ff.; Dawkins 1953: 256): Psellus in the eleventh century is more archaic than Porphyrogenitus in the tenth and, in some ways, more so than Biblical Greek. Anna Komnene in the twelfth century outdoes them all: she tells us herself (Proem. 1.2)—as if to reassure us— that she was e ººÅÇØ K ¼Œæ K ıÆŒıEÆ, proﬁcient in rhetoric, and

8 Sophiano´s should be remembered for having produced a sketchy grammar of semi-demotic Greek (Legrand 1874: 33), in which he ventured to say that “hanc nostram, quam uocant uulgarem, linguam . . . uetere illa minime inferiorem esse”.

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The history of Greek prepositions

well-versed in Platonic dialogues. Indeed, her Greek was so classical that, to our philological delight, within a couple of centuries someone felt the need to translate her into more contemporary Greek (one of our corpus texts). In sum, in “Medieval” Greek: Ø ªæÆc ªºH

Æ æı YØÆ, I ºØåÅ ŒÆd ŒŒŒÆºØÆ Å, åøæd ªºø

ØŒc ƒ æÆ, IæåÆœŒæÅ ºØ Æ f ºıÆı ÆN B Iç ØŒÅ ÇøB Å. The written language remains the same, undeveloping and fossilized, without linguistic history, indeed more archaic in the last centuries of its unnatural life. (Triandaphyllidis 1938: 29)

Particular caution, as we noted, is to be used when dealing with compositions in verse, in view of the linguistic restrictions that verse writing imposes; for this reason, prose texts are, with one exception, the only component of our corpus. It must be noted, however, that a preliminary investigation carried out into Medieval Greek prepositional usage (Bortone 1997) was based on verse texts, and gave the same results that we shall see here.

6.3 The cases and their recession Although the case distinctions found in Medieval Greek are the same as in Classical times, the use of the plain cases (accusative, genitive, and especially dative)9 becomes less common, and is replaced by prepositional phrases. That is clear, for instance, in the metaphrases of archaic texts: (6.1) B ƒæŒB PŒ Kº (Anna Komnene’s original text }247) ‘they were not released from prison’ # (6.2) PŒ I ºı ı Ie B çıºÆŒB (the ‘truly Medieval’ metaphrase) where the plain genitive is avoided (see also Hunger 1981: 158ff.) and a preposition is added to it. But often the genitive is avoided altogether, and the preposition is followed by an accusative: (6.3) H IæB . . . åØ (Plutarch Paid. 6) ‘to what extent he partakes of virtue’ # (6.4) H åØ Ie c Iæ (Sophiano´s’ translation)

9 We also see a clear reduction in the use of the -Ł ending on nouns. Observe the rendering by Sophiano´s of Plutarch (Paid.2) ÅæŁ j ÆæŁ ! Ie Æ æÆ ŒÆd Å æÆ.

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The remarkable thing about this construction is that it is more “modern” than standard Modern Greek usage. It shows the natural direction of development that the language would have followed if it had not been tampered with. Although in genuine “demotic” syntax all verbs can only govern the accusative or a prepositional phrase, in the Greek of today åø+I or åøþaccusative would be regarded as artiﬁcially “hyperdemotic”. The standard form today is åøþgenitive. A case more systematically avoided is the dative; this too, rather than being given a preposition, is replaced altogether—by prepositions with another case: (6.5) IŁæØ . . . KªåØæÇı Ø f ÆEÆ ‘they entrust the children to people’ # (6.6) ı Ø a ÆØÆ ı N Æ Œºı

(Plut.Puer. 4)

(Sophiano´s’ translation)

(6.7)

ı ÆØ E ŁÆı Æ E Ææ Ø (Plut.Puer. 5) ‘happens to admirable fathers’ # (6.8) ı ÆØ N f . . . ŁÆı Æ f Æ æÆ (Sophiano´s’ translation) Unlike the genitive, the dative case is gradually replaced in all uses; a case as a whole is lost.

6.4 The revolution in case government As regards the relationship between cases and the prepositions that govern them, medieval texts show that a fundamental change from classical syntax has occurred, which will persist into Modern Greek. Its importance has rightly been emphasized: “in the sphere of syntax the most important development of the period is that all prepositions are now constructed with the accusative case” (Browning 1983: 82). Even in Atticizing authors like Psellos (Bo¨hlig 1956: 133ff.), the accusative is the most frequent post-prepositional case. In more genuine medieval texts we see it also used with prepositions that could never have had it in Attic: Classical Ø ‹ºÅ B ıŒ Medieval Øa ‹ºÅ c ŒÆ

‘throughout the night’ (Xen.An. 4.2.4) ‘throughout the night’ (Achilleid Ox. 603)

Classical

‘till this day’

(Lys. 24.1)

‘till today’

(Libist. E2723)

åæØ B B æÆ Medieval åæØ c æ

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The history of Greek prepositions

Classical KŒ ººØ KŒ B NŒÆ Medieval KŒ ºø . . . KŒ e O Ø

‘expels from the house’ ‘I expel from the house’

(Dem. 59.83.7) (Ptoch. I152)

Observe, again, the late medieval metaphrase of a Koine´ text: (6.9) Ie B ª

ø ‘from birth’ # (6.10) I(e) ÆPc c ª Ø

(Plut.Puer. 2)

(Sophiano´s’ rendering of the same)10

The ﬂuctuation often occurs in medieval texts: (6.11)

Id F F ‘two instead of one’

(6.12)

Id æe çÆæ ŒØ ‘instead of water, poison’

(Assizes 423.14) (Ptoch. IV259 variant K)

(6.13) åæØ B æ ‘until today’

(Ptoch. 38.54)

(6.14)

(Ptoch. 42.53)

åæØ c æ ‘until today’

In this context the genitive is still quite frequent, but it is little more than a learned element, alien to spoken Greek. The tendency to govern “meaninglessly” only the accusative is clear. In Classical Greek, the use of different cases after the same preposition was semantically distinctive: þaccusative þgenitive

¼ ‘after’ ¼ ‘with’

Although these two syntagms are also found in medieval texts with their classical meanings, we also ﬁnd þaccusative meaning “with”, because the accusative was becoming the only post-prepositional case:

10 Beside the accusative and the genitive, we see extremely rare instances of the ancient ablatival sufﬁx -Ł added to nouns governed by I (e.g. Ptoch. III: 56: Ie ØŒæŁ). However, it is extremely unlikely that such forms were in living use: their choice, besides being due to a pursuit of stylistic variatio, is likely to have been metri causa.

Prepositions in Medieval Greek (6.15) K Æ KŒı ‘together with them’ (6.16)

a f !æŒı ŒŁÆØ ‘they sit with the Turks’

205

(Belth. 786) (Morea H&P 764)

The context made disambiguation (through the use of different cases) often unnecessary, so that þaccusative was used in both senses: (6.17) a F . . . a Kæﬁ Å ªıÆŒÆ . . . a ﬁ Å ÆPc ŒÆ (Morea H 2748ff.) ‘after this, marry a woman so as to make children with her’ Or, both constructions are used in a single sense: (6.18) a ØŒÆØ Å ŒÆd IºÅŁÆ ‘with justice and truth’

(Assizes 6.74)

This wavering is still found today in dialects (Pidonia 1977: 276ff.). The standard language, however, has gradually narrowed the choice to the accusative only. The evolution of is particularly noteworthy because, as we shall see (pp. 206–7) it led to the creation of , the only (in one interpretation) new monolectic preposition that Greek has created since classical times. The switch to single-case government deeply affected the prepositional system as a whole, in that it caused the rise of compound prepositions.

6.5 Medieval prepositional usage Besides a reduction in the number of cases used, the range of traditional prepositions available to a Greek speaker had also been shrinking. Listed below are the “proper” prepositions found in Porphyrogenitus’ De administrando imperio: I I I N/

KŒ/K K K/K /Kç ŒÆ/ŒÆŁ

Ææ/æ æ æ æ

/ æ / / ç

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The history of Greek prepositions

However, the corpus we examined also shows that the main prepositions of the “newer” set11 had many forms (forms attested now for the ﬁrst time in the corpus are marked in bold type):12 ŒÆÆØŒæ / jatamtijqur ´ / ¼ØŒæı / ¼ØŒæı æø / æøŁ / Kø / KøŁ / Ip›my / Ip›myhem Klpq¸r / æ Ł / Olpq¸r ø / øŁ ø / ’ssy / øŁ ÆØ / KØÆ / KÆ / ŒÆ ÆØ / ŒÆÆ Œø / I[ı]Œø / Œø / ŒøŁ

/ le†sa / (Pþ)

/ (Pþ) le†sa O ø / K ø / ZØ Ł ºÅ KØ / ŒÆØ K ŒŒºﬁø / ŒıŒºŁ ´ ø / cuqohem ´ / tqicuqohem ´ cuqﬁ ´ ø / tqicuqﬁ ÆŒæŁ åæØ æÆ jomt›

6.6 One addition to the inventory—or not Furthermore, there is one (seemingly) new “proper” preposition. The sequence þ articles (a, etc.) underwent dissimilation,13 and a secondary form arose. The uniqueness of this development (as compared with, say, the evolution of Ø into ªØ) lies in the fact that the older form was not ousted.

11 Other texts occasionally attest other new prepositions: e.g. the new preposition ÆÇ “together with”, although not found in the corpus, is attested in this period. 12 We will not check the rates of occurrence of a few “improper” prepositions (åæØ “for the sake of”) that had no “proper” synonym, displayed throughout their history no semantic shifts from abstract to spatial or vice versa, and played no role in the semantic or formal development of other prepositions. But we will, of course, consider them in the discussion of overall diachronic trends. 13 In some Greek dialects, the same had happened (but did not catch on) to ŒÆ: between 345 and 127 BC, forms such as Œa , Œa f ı, Œa a NøŁÆ appeared (see Threatte 1980: 410ff.). By an opposite development, in the Tale of Alexander (e.g. Holton 1974: 2221, 2340; Veloudis 1977: 233) and other texts we ﬁnd ªØÆ and ØÆ (see also Holton 1974: 82; Politis 1964: 99); to this day, there are dialects that have I for I (Amantos 1964: 202).

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207

It is likely that was going to replace entirely, and that the survival of as a separate form is due to purism. In other words, that it was an artiﬁcial interference in the development of demotic Greek. If this is correct, should not be counted as a new preposition, but as the new form of the old one. Its syntactic difference from (the government of the sole accusative) would simply be a trait of the new system, which applies to all genuinely demotic prepositions. Had it not been for purism, which caused the old to be retained, was to be the continuation of , accidentally altered; the fact that was retained alongside caused to be classiﬁed as a “new” preposition because it appeared to be an addition to (and not just an evolution within) the inventory. We should give an intermediate status between the status of prepositions such as Œø (that are “fully new” in so far as they did not exist as prepositions in Classical Greek), and the status of prepositions such as (which is simply the phonologically altered form of the long-standing preposition N). A slightly different interpretation is also possible. The two meanings of (þgenitive ¼ “with”; þaccusative ¼ “after”), made it a very common and very valuable preposition; the system, though, could no longer allow the government of cases other than the accusative. Thus was used for a while with the accusative in both senses but this was not a sustainable solution, as there was no way to disambiguate the meaning intended. What the system could allow, on the other hand, was the creation of new forms. So was split into two forms, and , both governing the de rigueur accusative. Initially, in the Byzantine period, and coexisted for a while with the fundamental common meaning of “with”. Some division of labour, however, was immediately started;14 this restored the formal separation between comitative and temporal meanings. We shall see that in Modern Greek only means “after”.15 14 It has long been assumed that and simply constituted (alongside the plain dative and

þdative) semantically equivalent forms in a chaotic phase of transition in the language. Once more, however, a genuinely synchronic look at the texts reveals internal consistences that indicate that Medieval Greek was far more rule-governed than it has usually been credited with being, as we already propounded at p. 197. There were indeed semantic criteria for the selection of or (Tachibana 1988): in Digenis Akritis appears with arguments of “lower animacy”: animals or collective, generic, inanimate nouns rather than proper or human nouns or pronouns. More interestingly, these nouns usually selected the “newer” (rather than ) if they were concrete—even when is instrumental. The older rival was almost entirely ousted by / . The use of in the Middle Ages is likely to be a deliberate archaism, as shown by syntagms with the wrong case (not the accusative, which could be thought to have been part of living use, but the genitive). 15 It is also interesting to notice that the newer form ( ) is the one that expressed a more “concrete” sense—the comitative one (although not only that): in Machairas Book 1, for instance, is used spatially about 58% of the time, and in Ptochoprodromos about 65% of the time.

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The history of Greek prepositions

6.7 General observations Despite the difﬁculties that the texts present, a close examination reveals a coherent and sufﬁciently uniform picture of medieval prepositional usage— and signs of speciﬁc developments. Our investigation will eventually focus on the semantic evolution of the “improper” prepositions; before looking at the results of the corpus testing for those, however, we shall outline the general traits of the Medieval Greek usage of cases and prepositions. What follows now may at ﬁrst appear as an unconnected list, but it will eventually become apparent that the evolution of Medieval Greek prepositional usage has a logic, and that this is clear only if all parts of the system are taken into account. Whatever may not seem central to our inquiry will still prove essential—not only for us to have a meaningful overview of Medieval usage but to make sense of the subsequent developments.

6.8 Semantic mergers Many prepositions (old and new) in the Middle Ages became largely or completely synonymous—which suggests that at a later stage they could be discarded. There are two main ways in which distinctions were blurred. One is through semantic merger: the difference in meaning between two prepositions was lost and one of them became superﬂuous. This is the culmination of a process already detectable in Classical Greek (see pp. 160–5). For instance, the old preposition I ç,16 which in Classical Greek was already becoming semantically indistinguishable from æ, and was virtually absent in the Koine´, is never attested in Porphyrogenitus and most medieval texts. We have seen (p. 160–65) that by the end of the classical period, the different nuances in the following pairs were being lost and the second item was replacing the ﬁrst (in the expression of their common spatial meaning): I ç/æ

I/K

I/æ

ŒÆ/

/

In Medieval Greek the process goes further, with several prepositions being reduced to one. Let us look more closely at two groups of prepositions:

16

I disregard the fact that I ç survived (to this day) as a preﬁx. Many other old prepositions totally obsolete today (e.g. I, K, æ) are still in current use as preﬁxes. The history of Latin to Romance also affords many parallel examples of items surviving as preﬁxes only (e.g. Italian super-, ante-, stra-, etc.). This further justiﬁes our decision (p. 120) not to classify prepositions and preﬁxes together.

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209

6.8.1 K ¼ æþaccusative ¼ K ¼ N The preposition K, as we saw in the Hellenistic Koine´, had long been threatened by the once only directional N. This is increasingly conﬁrmed by medieval texts: (6.19)

NŒB ÆØ N a Å Æ N L F NŒF Ø (Porphyr. 27.70/71) ‘to reside in the islands in which they now reside’

(6.20)

ƒ N 'æø ÆÆ . . . ŒÆd K ÆE ºØÆE åæÆØ Øª (Porphyr. 32.136/7) ‘who stay in (N) Croatia and in (K) the other countries’

So K was treated as a learned synonym for N: its use in a directional sense is extremely frequent (although from a classical viewpoint, wrong): (6.21) ŒÆºŁø ÆPH I ç æø K ﬁH ﬁø ‘once they had both descended into the ﬁeld’

(Porphyr. 53.213)

(6.22) çıª N æåÆØ K 'æø ÆÆﬁ (Porphyr. 32.72) ‘theyﬂeeandgotoCroatia’(notethattheverbhasthe“correct”preﬁxN)17 There are indications that æ too was dropping out of use (giving way to N/ ), before being revived by purists with some success (cf. Jannaris 1897: 395). In medieval texts it seems to be a largely dispensable equivalent of N (which, even in Classical Greek, could indicate motion to a goal unreached) and we see them alternating also in a metaphorical sense: (6.23)

IªÅ r å . . . N ÆP . . . IªÅ . . . m æe KŒÅ r å (Achilleid N 708/9) ‘love he had for (N) her . . . the love that he had for (æ) her’

(6.24) a çÆØ æe ºº ‘said to many’ b ! r N ºº

(classical original in Plut.Puer. 2) (Sophiano´s’ metaphrase)

Likewise, K (which in Classical Greek combined with as many as three different cases) is clearly being replaced by N/ . For instance, in its use with the accusative (expressing motion), K in Medieval Greek was losing ground to N: 17 In Ancient Greek, the preposition K, before the appearance of its directional offshoot N, had both senses (position and movement); in Medieval Greek and in Modern Greek (contrary to what we see in the usage of prepositions), the old preﬁx K retains its directional sense, so that K Æø (Modern Greek Æø) means “to go into”.

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The history of Greek prepositions

(6.25) a Kd e ºÆªøeﬁ q ‘launched them in pursuit of the hare’ b ! uæ Å N e ºÆª (6.26)

(Plut.Puer. 3) (Sophiano´s’ metaphrase)

a Kd f ‹æı KºŁÆ ‘once you reach the boundaries’ b ! ‹Æ çŁ ﬁ Å N a æÆ

(Plut.Puer. 12) (Sophiano´s’ metaphrase)

But even K as a static locative is supplanted by N/ : (6.27) N e ŒŁ ŒºøæØ ŒÆØŒF Ø ‘they dwell on every branch’

(Achilleid N720)

This is usage that would have been unacceptable in Attic, which would have required the superessive K—with the dative.18 Also noteworthy is the hapax æe Kd Ø (Porph.53.149) “and in addition to this”, not only because it combines simplex prepositions (note the particle was not allowed to break the sequence æe K), but because we see æ and K used synonymously even in their non-spatial sense. In summary, we see K, æþaccusative, K and N becoming indistinguishable (in their spatial uses, and partly beyond), with N prevailing. Let us now consider another group of old prepositional phrases. 6.8.2 KŒþgenitive ¼ æþgenitive ¼ Iþgenitive (¼ Ææþgenitive) That the preposition K/KŒ was now entirely synonymous with I is shown by their co-occurrence in parallel constructions (see, e.g., Renauld 1920: 163ff.) (6.28) IBæ ÆØ . . . KŒ B ÞÅªÆ . . . ŒÆd Ie B 'æı ÇÆ (Belth. 795/6) ‘he received praise from (KŒ) the queen and from (I) Chrysantza’ (6.29)

KŒ B ººB ı Æ . . . ŒÆd Ie c Æ c ºº . . . (Ptoch. 37/8) ‘from (KŒ) my great hunger; and from (I) my great hunger . . .’

18 We also see K used—probably artiﬁcially—instead of the “truly Medieval” N—in the functions in which Medieval N was being used instead of the Classical K: K b ªaæ ﬁB ØA ﬁ

ºﬁÅ . . . ÆPc . . . Æ (Porph.53.460) “having placed her (statue) on top of a column”. Since N was being used regardless of motion or lack of it (which is what used to distinguish it from K), and regardless of dimensionality (which is what used to distinguish it from K), the old inessive K is here also used as superlative (the role of K ).

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(6.30) KªŁÅ K ÆPH › ´œ

ŁºÆ , ŒÆd K ÆPF › * ŁºÆ , ŒÆd I KŒı › —æ ÅªÅ, ŒÆd K KŒı › ´ºÆ Åæ . . . (Porph. 32.33ff.) ‘Visˇeslav was begotten of (KŒ) them, and of (KŒ) him Radoslav, and of (I) him Prosigoi, and of (KŒ) him Vlastimer’ (6.31) KŒ b ˇPÇÆ ŒÆd 'ÆÇÆæÆ ›e æH , KŒ b "ºÆÆ ›e æH , Ie b %æÆ ›e æH ŒÆ, Ie b *ø Æ ›e æÆ ØA, Ie b !ıæŒÆ . . . (Porph. 37.45ff.) ‘ﬁve-day journey away from (KŒ) Uzia and Chazaria, six-day journey away from (KŒ) Alania, ten-day journey away from (I) Mordia, oneday journey away from (I) Russia, and from (I) Turkey. . .’ Observe two more revealing sets of “minimal pairs”: (6.32)

e b Ie F Æ, e b ¼ºº KŒ F Łı (Achilleid N 731) ‘[water ﬂowing] partly from (I) the mouth, partly from (KŒ) the breast’

(6.33)

Ie åæı e j K æÆ oºÅ ‘made of (I) gold or of (KŒ) other material’

(Achilleid N 748)

From the last example we can predict which preposition (KŒ or I) is winning: only I also takes the accusative (åæı ), which was the real contemporary syntax, and no longer the archaic genitive that still appears with KŒ; the adjective æ governed by KŒ is a loftier synonym of ¼ºº—which is used after I—and its accentuation too is classical. The prepositional phrases with KŒ are a clearly conscious archaism, treating KŒ just as a literary equivalent of I. We also ﬁnd KŒ used with meanings widely attested for I. This is perhaps a further indication that I is what the writer had in mind when he wrote, as tradition required, KŒ: (6.34) ‘comparison’: IªÆH æ æ å (¼KŒ) a ØÆ a ØŒ ı ‘I love you more than my own eyes’ (Soummakis 120, in Kriara´s 1968ff.: V: 343) (¼ Classical Greek plain genitive; Medieval/Modern Greek I)

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The history of Greek prepositions

(6.35)

‘agency’: a c ØÆ ﬁB KŒ f ¼æå ‘lest he should be caught by the chiefs’ (Morea P 5415—and version H has I ) (¼ Classical Greek or Ææþgenitive; Medieval/Modern Greek I)

(6.36) ‘contact/grip’: ØØ KŒ e å æØ ‘grabs him by his hand’ (Holton 1974: 1141) (¼ Classical Greek plain genitive; rarely so used in Koine´; Medieval/ Modern Greek I; see pp. 217–18) In fact, KŒ, which used to be much more frequent than I even in the Koine´ (Turner 1963: 259), was now slightly rarer than I.19 In Porphyrogenitus’ text, for example, KŒ/K occurs 201 times, and I 239 times. Besides KŒ and æþgenitive, another preposition that can be regarded— largely but not entirely—as a superﬂuous analogue of I is Ææþgenitive: in Porphyrogenitus it expresses mainly agency and ﬁgurative ablative motion (e.g. “obtain salvation from someone”), or comparison.

6.9 Phonetic mergers Besides the loss of semantic distinctions, there is another reason for the fading of many Classical prepositions: loss of phonological distinctions. An example of this is K becoming confused with I, also as preﬁx. Initial unstressed vowels were being lost—and, since antiquity, the ﬁnal vowel was often elided. The result was as follows: I > I (Iç ) K > K (Kç ) > ( ç )

}

This explains sentences like: (6.36) ƒ åøæÇ Iºçf Kd IºçH (Pernot 1900: }10 vers.A) ‘those who separate brothers from brothers’

19 At this time we also ﬁnd that KŒ has produced a new preﬁx: - and, in conjunction with another lost preposition (I), a new adverb was also formed: Æ “again”. Neither, however, had prepositional use—except (Holton 1974: 83) in the Tale of Alexander (Holton 1974: 1426): b ŒÆ Æ. For the proliﬁc life of as a sufﬁx, see Hatzidakis (1914: 8ff.).

Prepositions in Medieval Greek

213

in which K must represent I because the meaning is clearly “from”, as further conﬁrmed by another version of the same text, that has: (6.37)

ƒ IªÆH åøæØ e H IºçH (Pernot 1900: }10 vers.B) ‘those who love the separation of brothers’ (see Pernot 1900: 249)

Another indication that I and K were being confused and that I was prevailing is the adverb (which, at this stage, was also a compound preposition) Iø. The original form, already widely attested in Classical Greek, was Kø, and the form often used in the Middle Ages was just ø: in this sense Iø can be seen as a mistaken reconstitution of the elided Classical form: K-ø >

-ø >

I-ø

The most convincing piece of evidence here is the semantics: all three forms (Kø, ø, and Iø) are used in the superessive sense (“on”) which belongs to K (þ¼ø) rather than to I. In the selected texts we ﬁnd a similar confusion in the use of nominal and verbal preﬁxes, with - appearing where KØ- is clearly meant (see also Martini 1976: 61; Politis 1964: 99): (6.38)

æ łÆØ KŒ F º ı ‘return ( æ çø ¼ KØ æ çø) from the war’

(Porphyr. 53.20)

In a similar fashion, æ is becoming confused with Ææ, as the former was now being discarded in favour of the newer—and often compounded—ªæﬁø/ ªæŁ. For instance (Egea 1988: 102): (6.39) ŒººØ . . . IŁø / æd a NF Ø . . . (Morea P1135) ‘I’d regard dying preferable . . . to having them say that . . .’ So, we see that merges phonologically with I; KŒ merges semantically with I; æ merges phonologically with Ææ, which merges semantically with I: ! I KŒ ! I æ ! Ææ ! I Thus the distinctions (either in meaning or in form) between several prepositions become blurred, and the result is that the number of simplex prepositions is reduced.

214

The history of Greek prepositions

Although one cannot conﬁdently draw a line between artiﬁcial archaisms and genuine rare uses, the impression is that, with the exception of set phrases and erudite constructions, the following ancient prepositions no longer occur: I ç, I, K, [ŒÆþgen.], æ, æ, æ, , æ, So, in popular Medieval Greek, of all the simplex prepositions, the only ones that eventually remained in general use (cf. Horrocks 1997a: 194; 216ff.) were: N/ , I, ªØ, , åøæ and ‰ (for ŒÆ see p. 288).

6.10 Losses and births amongst the new It is not only old items that get discarded. Some new prepositions seem to supersede other new prepositions—at least in some contexts. One among many synonyms usually prevails: KŒ, KŒ Ł, I ø(Ł), ø(Ł) ! ø(Ł) K, K Ł, ø, I

ø, øŁ, I

øŁ,

Æ !

Æ The preposition ø(Ł) replaces the original KŒ (in itself an “improper” rival of KŒ). Observe Komnene’s Alexiad, and its metaphrase: (6.40) ‹ ÆØ N d KŒe H øæÅ ø ! ‹ ÆØ N d xøy H Ł ø ‘whatever is outside what has been given’20 (Alexiad }438) In the same way, Ia

takes the place of Æ: (6.41)

Æf —Ææø ŒÆd *ı ! Ia

H —Ææø ŒÆd *ı ‘between Patra and Rhodes’ (Alexiad }65)

Sometimes the style of the context is also informative. The fact that, for instance, ¼øŁ (unlike Kø) tends to occur with older nominal forms is a further indication that ¼øŁ is losing ground to Kø. In Ptochoprodromos, for example, “the table” is usually neuter: e æÆ ÇØ (e.g. III.264 N e æÆ ÇØ)— which is also the Modern Greek form, and is unknown to Classical Greek. However, we ﬁnd ¼øŁ + B æÆ ÇÅ (in III.267).

20 We see also a general decline in the use of the -Ł form of the new prepositions. Compare, e.g., Komnene }357 and its metaphrase: ƒ æÆŁ F Æ F ! N æÆ Z F Æ F.

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215

On the other hand, a few completely new prepositions appear. Their format (a detail that, as we shall see later, is quite important) is that of compound prepositions: they require another, monolectic preposition before their object unless it is a weak pronoun (in which case they require the genitive—see also p. 263). Examples include: Œ ‘near’ as adverb; Œ+ +object; Œ+genitive weak pronoun ÆÇ ‘together’ as adverb; ÆÇ+ +object; ÆÇ+genitive weak pronoun.

6.11 Sound changes Some phonological changes just alter the shape of prepositions. Now Ø [ðja] begins to appear as ªØ [ja]. In the same version of the same text we ﬁnd: (6.42) ‰ Øa a ‰æÆEÆ Å ŒººÅ ‘through/because of her beautiful beauty’

(Dig.Akr. E 173)

(6.43) ‰ ªØa a ‰æÆEÆ Å ŒººÅ ‘through/because of her beautiful beauty’

(Dig.Akr. E 215)

At times, the choice might be dictated by the metre: Ø can be disyllabic, unlike ªØ. Here, however, the two forms are metrically equivalent. For N (by the Middle Ages pronounced /is/), an alternative form N sometimes appears. By aphaeresis of the initial unstressed vowel, the form or was born. Some variations of I[]—namely I , I, and Iç before consonant also occur, and are all only medieval. Another change (truly morphological rather than phonological) is that, in adverbs, the ending -Æ gradually prevails, and this also affects the ﬁrst elements in compound prepositions: I appears as I Æ.

6.12 Parallels in neighbouring languages and their possible inﬂuence Although it is likely to be a coincidence, the diachrony of prepositional (and case) usage from Classical Latin to Romance languages like Italian or French has striking parallels with that of Greek from the classical to the modern period (see also Ewert 1961: 266). For example: Classical Latin had, like Greek, both plain cases and [preposition þ case] syntagms, with some prepositions being able to govern different cases; but the plurality of case distinctions after prepositions and in general was gradually lost. The causes of the loss of case distinctions have been ascribed—as in Greek—to phonological changes (notably loss of ﬁnal

216

The history of Greek prepositions consonants, and loss of vowel quantity distinctions) and perhaps the adoption of the language by foreign-speaking peoples. There must have been, however, a speciﬁc trend for nominal inﬂection to be lost, or these factors would have led to the elimination of inﬂection in the verbal system too. Noteworthy is the early merger of the Latin genitive and dative (Rohlfs 1969: 6) parallel to Greek. Direct case distinctions were effaced, their task being taken on by word order (see Tekavcˇicˇ 1980: 28ff.). Prepositions became necessary to express the meaning of the oblique cases. Prepositional syntagms semantically equivalent to plain oblique cases were rife in the classical colloquial; in post-Classical Latin they were increasingly preferred, until they supplanted entirely the use of oblique cases. More speciﬁcally, the Latin ablative (used spatially or in abstract notions such as comparison) was replaced by de þ ablative; in Greek, the genitive (¼ ablative) became KŒ or I þ genitive. The Latin ablative (as comitative/instrumental) became cum þ ablative; the Greek dative was reinforced by or replaced by . The Latin genitive (as possessive or partitive) became de þ ablative; the Greek genitive became I (if inanimate). The Latin dative (spatially, or for indirect object) became ad þ accusative; the Greek dative became N/ þ accusative. The extended use of de and ad (>French de, a` and Italian di, a), and the loss of case distinctions, caused the creation of more speciﬁc periphrastic forms, e.g. a` cause de or au moyen de, like Modern Greek KÆØÆ and ØÆ

ı. Adverbs, combinations of old prepositions, and combinations of adverbs þ prepositions were turned into new prepositions (cf. also Togeby 1969: 417) to replace the lost items. Thus, e.g., (de) ab ante > Italian (d)avanti. In postclassical Greek, [I], K, I > (I) ÆØ. In some pairs of Latin prepositions semantic distinctions were lost and one of the prepositions was discarded: ex dropped out of use completely, leaving its functions to the equally ancient ab. In Greek the cognates did the same: K became obsolete, replaced by I.

For some of the developments seen in Medieval Greek, the inﬂuence of other languages is thought to be likely. In particular, just as Latin was affected by Greek (Joseph 1991: 195), Byzantine Greek was affected by Latin (see Triandaphyllidis 1938: 25; Egea 1988: 24; Horrocks 1997a: 73ff.), since Latin was the ofﬁcial language of the Empire.21 21 Medieval/Modern vernacular Greek used to be called Þø ÆEŒÆ or Þø ÆœŒ “Roman” (e.g. Machairas II }158).

Prepositions in Medieval Greek

217

There are, for example, medieval uses of I that are ascribed to Latin: When employed (only in Medieval Greek) in the sense of “erstwhile”, as a calque on Latin ex, much in the way ex is used in Modern English as a preﬁx (see also Sofroniou 1989: 124). In this use, the corresponding Greek I (and K), require a genitive plural to follow: (6.44)

(Malalas 393.23)

e Ie KØ Œø ‘the ex-bishop’

(6.45) › Ie ø —æ Œ ‘the ex-consul Priscus’

(Malalas 449.12)

Cf. also (6.46)

› K I ıÆø ‘the ex-Jew’

(Sphrantzes XV.2)

Less plausibly, pace Jannaris (1897: 369), Latin is invoked as the model for the use of I to indicate agency (as a calque on ab). This use (standard in Modern Greek) is, however, just the modern equivalent of earlier agentive constructions of ablative origin such as þgenitive, Ææþgenitive, KŒþgenitive, with many (accidental) parallels elsewhere: German von, Italian da, Danish af, Slav Macedonian jl, Turkish tarafından, etc (cf p.75–6). The inﬂuence of other neighbouring languages—the Balkan Sprachbund—is also a possible factor, but hard to disentangle from accidental parallel developments. For instance, the Medieval Greek construction (6.47) æø KŒ e ƒ Ø ‘I pull him by [lit. from] his coat’ (6.48) ØØ KŒ e å æØ ‘grabs him by [lit. from] the hand’

(Ptoch. IV383) (T. Alex. R 1141)

which was also common with I, is found across the Balkans also today: Greek Turkish Romanian

e Bæ Ie e å æØ elin-den aldı ˆıl lua˘ de mıˆna˘

¼ he took him from the hand ¼ (he) took (him) from the hand ¼ he took him from the hand

took him by the hand

¼ by

Contrast: English

218

The history of Greek prepositions

Italian Danish

lo prese per mano tog ham i ha˚nden

¼ for ¼ in

On the other hand, the inﬂuence of other languages is perhaps not the explanation here. In Greek the medieval KŒ e å æØ and the modern Ie e å æØ replace the classical genitive of contact—and we could say that they translate it, since the old genitive was both partitive and ablative (see p. 112), and in classical texts one can ﬁnd sentences semantically parallel to the Medieval Greek ones above: (6.49)

ı ºÆ B åØæ (Pl.Chrm. 153b) ‘grabbing [lit. of(f)] me by [lit. of(f)] the hand’

(6.50) ºÆ F ƒ Æı (Pl.Resp. 327b4) ‘pulling him by [lit. of(f)] his coat’ The Balkan factor therefore remains very elusive. It will be reconsidered in the next chapter, when we look at Modern Greek usage (pp. 240–5).

6.13 The compounding of prepositions By effacing the ancient oppositions amongst syntagms consisting of the same preposition and different cases, the Greek prepositional system lost a number of semantic distinctions. This co-occurred with the loss of many individual prepositions (and with prepositions becoming more frequent—often obligatory—instead of plain cases). It is therefore to be expected that new elements would be added to the prepositional inventory. In medieval texts, the adverbs which in late ancient times had started “governing” a noun in the genitive (e.g. Œø) are more frequent, and even in conservative styles they tend to oust the older preposition—sometimes with bizarre clashes: (6.51) K b ﬁH

[sic] H ÆPH ØÅ Øºø Ø Å ‘in the middle of these 18 miles there is an island’

(Porph. 42.93)

where K ﬁH

ﬁø is mixed with the (later more common phrase)

þgenitive. That the “improper prepositions” represent the most spontaneous Greek use of the time is suggested by passages like this: (6.52) K b ﬁH ÆPﬁH Œ æﬁø ŒEÆØ › –ªØ —ÆªŒæØ, K ﬁH ÆﬁH F Iªı çı, ﬁH ZØ

F ÆPF Œ æı (Porph. 29.235/6) ‘St Pancratius lies within the same city, in the church of St Stephen— really inside the same city’

Prepositions in Medieval Greek

219

First, the classical preposition K (with the obsolescent dative case) is used; then the message is reiterated using the “modern” preposition

(with the genitive).22 It is clear that the “improper” prepositions were becoming the standard, the new prepositions—editors of Byzantine texts (e.g. Psaltes 1913: 336; Tabachovitz 1926: 15) often do note, in passing, that the use of the uneigentlichen Pra¨positionen is now more frequent. The changes go further. More “improper” prepositions combine with another preposition, such as N or I. So, although we still ﬁnd constructions such as (6.53)

ºÆ

F Œı ‘plane tree in(side) the garden’

(Achilleid N 740)

We also ﬁnd, in the same text—even with the same referent: (6.54) ºÆ

Æ N e æØ ºØ ‘plane tree in(side) the garden’

(Achilleid N 746)

The latter is more “modern” in a number of ways:

Æ is morphologically a later form than

: we see here the modern tendency to use -Æ as the ending for all adverbs. Machairas has both

and

Æ, but only the latter takes N; the choice of nouns reﬂects the degree of “modernity” of the whole phrase: the classical term ŒB goes with

, but

Æ appears with æØ ºØ (lexically and morphologically a post-classical noun); the choice of

Æ N also allows the writer to avoid the (more archaic) government of a case other than the accusative. There is another indication that speakers started to feel that it had become standard for prepositions to be compounds. Beside the “improper” prepositions, even some of the old “proper” prepositions (e.g. I, Ææ) are now combined with another preposition: (6.55)

Id ªØa ŒæıÆ Æ¥ ÆÆ (quoted in Kriara´s 1968ff.: II: 250) ‘instead of tears, blood’

(6.56) Tç ºØ N ººa . . . Ææe [sic] Ie a KÆFŁÆ (Sphrantzes XXXI.3) ‘useful in many respects, except for the following’

22 Between the ﬁfteenth and the seventeenth centuries even some of the “improper” prepositions, very occasionally, appear on their own with the accusative (Tachibana 1994: 35ff.).

220

The history of Greek prepositions

Why is the use of a second preposition momentous? The answer is to be found in Modern Greek: this change, eventually, made it possible for speakers to combine the same adverb with different prepositions (pp. 272–8). Medieval Greek attests the birth of this new system, but does not have it fully developed; although many “improper” prepositions, at this stage, can combine with a simplex preposition (rather than governing the genitive), they can usually do so only with one. Contrastive combinations of the same “improper” preposition with different simplex prepositions are, in the main, a later development. However, in medieval texts we ﬁnd, for instance: (6.57)

Å . . .

Æ N e æØ ºØ ‘he placed . . . in(side) the garden’

(6.58)

Æ Ib a O ØÆ Å . . . ı ‘they dart from inside her eyes’ (6.59) ªÆº

Æ KŒ e Œº ı ‘he took out of its cage’

(Achilleid N 746) (Achilleid N 814) (T.Alex. R 2775)

where the simply inessive preposition

Æ is made illative or even elative by its compounding element. This is not unlike the way in which, say, Ææ in Ancient Greek would indicate motion-to, motion-away, or indeed no-motion according to the case it governed: in post-classical Greek, the compounding of prepositions compensates for the loss of multi-case government which perhaps was its cause (cf. also Browning 1983: 83). The obvious key question to ask is whether one can be certain that compound prepositions were indeed the medieval equivalent of the Classical simplex ones—whether they really “translated” the Attic prepositions. This can be deﬁnitively demonstrated, because, luckily, we have parts of translations from classical (at least linguistically) texts into literary Medieval Greek—simpliﬁed versions for the less educated—and we can see parallels such as these: Medieval metaphrase (Hunger 1981)

Komnene’s original N c ŁºÆ

Æ Kd Œ e ªB

! ! !

Ia

B ŁºÆ

Æ (}76)23 Kø N ŒÆ (}195) ŒøŁ B ªB (}329)

23 We can safely assume that Ia

was now a unit (although orthography was slow to acknowledge this) because I had otherwise dropped out of use entirely. As early as Ptolemaic papyri (Vela Tejada 1991: 183) I only appears in the phrase Ia

.

Prepositions in Medieval Greek

221

So, here a native speaker of the time tells us that the “improper” prepositions were really the new generation of Greek prepositions.

6.14 Which combinations are compounds? We have said (p. 20) that a combination of prepositionþcase should be regarded as a unit if synsemantic. In line with this, we should say that combinations of two prepositions can be regarded as a compound when the two elements do not independently contribute their individual meanings to the phrase. If so, perhaps we should say that in the medieval corpus, Iø/ Kø/ø can make a compound with N, but not with I or KŒ— because, although Kø does occur in conjunction with KŒ or I, the sequence Kø KŒ does not express a combinatory meaning. At this stage in the history of Greek, I or KŒ accompanied Kø only when they were required, externally, by a verb indicating ablative motion (cf. Tachibana 1993c: 428ff.). So, on the one hand, we get (6.60) Y Æ Kø N ŒÆ ‘stood on a pillar’ (6.61)

K Œ Iø N I Ø ‘he was standing on the chariot’

(Metaphr.195) (T.Alex. R 857)

but the other combination is found only in contexts such as (6.62) K Æº a –æ ÆÆ Kı KŒ a Œæ Ø ı (Achilleid Ox. 296) lit. ‘they ripped off the weapons from on their bodies’ (6.63) ƒ ŒÆ ÆººæØ K ÇłÆ Iø KŒ a çÆæÆ lit. ‘the knights dismounted from on the horses’

(Morea H858)

which indicates that here Iø and KŒ/I have their individual meanings. In Modern Greek, ø I has a special combinatory meaning, so that it can also be used in locative or even allative phrases. For such meanings, Medieval Greek can use only Iø N: (6.64)

ıºØa K ıÆ Iø N e Łæ (Byzantine Iliad 56, quoted by Tachibana, 1993c) ‘ﬁve birds were ﬂying above the throne’ In Modern Greek: ıºØa F Æ ø Ie e Łæ

222

The history of Greek prepositions

A hapax legomenon in my corpus is further indication that Kø and the element combined with it still had their full individual semantic value: (6.65) Kø Kd c ŒºÅ ‘I collapsed on the bed’

(Ptoch. I.204)

The same considerations seem true of Œø: there was no contrastive use of Œø I, which was only used with ablative verbs. In contexts where it would be used non-ablatively in Modern Greek, for example: (6.66) c ªB, Œø Ie a å ÆÆ ‘in the ground, under (from) the soil’ medieval texts do not allow it, and select a second preposition whose individual meaning suits the context: (6.67)

N c ªB Œø e a å ÆÆ (another hapax) (Malalas 421.6) ‘in the ground, under (below) the soil’

In fact, in the non-ablative sentences in which Modern Greek requires Œø I, Medieval Greek has IŒø N (Tachibana 1993c: 430). By the same token, besides the attested O ø N there is no › ø I at all. Where Modern Greek would have (›) ø I, in Medieval texts we see K ø N (Tachibana 1993c: 431). The same applies to the contrast between

Æ N and

Æ KŒ (for which we saw examples at p. 220):

Æ KŒ is not a compound because (unlike Modern Greek

Æ I) it can only be used ablatively. Similarly, æ a N in Medieval Greek performs the functions of both Modern Greek æ a and æ a I. The latter does not appear before the Chronicle of Morea (fourteenth century). Indeed, in Medieval Greek most of the “new” prepositions (e.g. O ø) cannot combine with other prepositions at all: they still take only a genitive. Even those that can take a compounding preposition ( ø, ªæﬁø or Kø) still appear most often with the genitive.

6.15 The “improper” prepositions in Medieval Greek Now we get to the central part of our exploration of Medieval Greek usage. Having identiﬁed which “improper” prepositions are used (and all their occurrences), our task is then: (i) To assess how often, in Medieval Greek, the meaning of the “improper” prepositions was spatial or non-spatial (next section);

Prepositions in Medieval Greek

223

(ii) To consider which older prepositions these newer ones were replacing (see pp. 227–34). We shall do that by checking whether the older forms were still in use, and if they were, how: spatially, non-spatially, and to what extent either. In this section we look at the statistics of occurrence of the “improper” prepositions, and of their semantic classiﬁcation as spatial or non-spatial.24 In Tables 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3, each preposition indicated in the ﬁrst column is to be understood as also subsuming its variants (as listed at pp. 205–6). TABLE 6.1 Newer prepositions—occurrences in a spatial sense

¼ØŒæı (variable accent) ªæﬁø K æ(Ł) KÆ /-Æ K KØ ø(Ł) (K)ø(Ł) ø(Ł) (I/)Œø(Ł) Œ ŒŒºﬁø(-Ł) ÆŒæŁ

Æ /- ºÅ O ø /-Ł

Malal.

Porph.

Psell.

Ptoch.

Meta.

Mach.

Sphr.

5 0 11 30 0 0 35 26 7 9 0 0 0 16 63 7

3 0 0 0 2 1 7 12 1 4 0 3 0 12 15 3

2 0 0 1 21 0 4 2 0 0 0 0 0 3 2 0

0 0 2 0 0 0 1 4 1 1 0 0 0 0 2 0

4 2 2 0 11 2 5 9 3 1 0 1 2 13 8 7

0 2 8 0 0 0 1 5 5 3 4 0 0 13 1 2

0 0 4 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 11 1

Note: Malal. ¼ Malalas (Dindorf 1831); Porph. ¼ Porphyrogenitus (Jenkins 1967); Psell. ¼ Psellus (Impellizzeri 1993); Ptoch. ¼ Ptochoprodromos (Eideneier 1991); Meta. ¼ Metaphrase (Hunger 1981); Mach. ¼ Machairas (Dawkins 1932); Sphr. ¼ Sphrantzes (Maisano 1990).

We might have expected to ﬁnd that, when a new preposition comes to be used in lieu of an older one, it is used from the start in all the contexts where the older one is (or used to be) employed. The only difference across time would then be the ratio between the frequency of use of the two items, as one becomes more common and its older counterpart gradually disappears— while the meanings expressed by both types remains the same. What we see, on the other hand, is that: 24 For a complete list, text by text, of all the occurrences in my corpus of the prepositions referred to—with the reference and the original phrase transcribed—see Bortone (2000).

224

The history of Greek prepositions

TABLE 6.2 Newer prepositions—occurrences in a non-spatial sense

¼ØŒæı (var. acc.) ªæﬁø K æ(Ł) KÆ /-Æ K KØ ø(Ł) (K)ø(Ł) ø(Ł) (Æ/)Œø(Ł) Œ ŒŒºﬁø(-Ł) ÆŒæŁ

Æ / O ø /Ł ºÅ

Malal.

Porph.

Psell.

Ptoch.

Meta.

Mach.

Sphr.

0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 3 1 1 4 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0

1 0 0 1 1 0 2 3 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 11 5 0

0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0

Note: For abbreviations, see note to Table 6.1.

TABLE 6.3 Newer prepositions—total occurrences contrasted Prepositions

Spatial

Non-Spatial

¼ØŒæı (variable accent) ªæﬁø K æ(Ł) KÆ/-Æ K KØ ø(Ł) (K)ø(Ł) ø(Ł) (I-/-)Œø(Ł) Œ ŒŒºø(Ł) ŒæŁ

Æ/- O ø/-Ł ºÅ Total

14 4 27 31 34 3 55 59 18 19 4 4 2 57 20 102 451

1 0 1 4 2 1 8 8 0 1 0 0 0 19 5 1 51

Prepositions in Medieval Greek

225

(i) In the overwhelming majority of instances attested in the corpus, the newer prepositions were used in spatial senses. The non-spatial use is, however, slightly increased as compared with Koine´ usage; (ii) The newest ones (absent in Koine´) such as ªæﬁø, and Y Æ are only spatial, as are some older ones such as ŒŒºﬁø.

6.16 The exceptions It would not be surprising if some of the newer prepositions previously attested only in spatial senses had by now started to show some non-spatial senses. Such a semantic development would be compatible also with a localistic interpretation. Nevertheless, at this stage in the history of Greek, this seems to be rarely the case;25 the data so far mostly conﬁrm that the new set of prepositions that had started to appear in Classical Greek was essentially spatial in meaning. Furthermore, some of the Medieval non-spatial examples can be explained away. Cases in point are the non-spatial uses of (ŒÆ)Kø and KÆ, and, sometimes, of O ø and ø. These can be discounted as calques from Biblical style and, in turn, from Hebrew. The examples below will indicate why. In Sphrantzes, KÆ is used only once and is non-spatial; the referent, however, is explicitly God: (6.68)

Ø KÆ Œıæı ‘honourable before the Lord’

(XVIII.8)

It is possible to account for this instance as a formula from Biblical Greek: we ﬁnd the identical phrase Ø KÆ Œıæı in Ps. 115.16 (the Greek version), where KÆ is used in a non-spatial sense because the idiom translates the original Hebrew: (6.69)

EFE J JQ JSb YXJ ‘precious in-the-eyes-of God’

(Ps.116.15)

Similarly, in Porphyrogenitus’ text (ŒÆ)KØ is used twice: once spatially, once non-spatially: (6.70)

B b IÆçæA . . . ŒÆØ F Æ Øº ø IÆªø Ł Å (50.36) ‘once the report had been read out in front of the king’

25 It is also of interest that, in some texts, prepositions whose meaning is going beyond the spatial realm (e.g ¼ø, O ø in Machairas; ¼ø(Ł), O ø, and K in Psellus) only have (besides their spatial sense) temporal sense but no other “abstract” meaning, as if temporal meanings constituted a stage between spatial and abstract ones.

226

The history of Greek prepositions

(6.71) ŒÆıŁıŁÅ Æ Æƒ ›d ÆPF KØ ı F çıºÆ ŁÆØ a ØŒÆØ Æ ı (Proem. 44) ‘may his ways be made straight before thee, [Lord] to keep your ordinances’ So, only when the referent is God is the sense non-spatial. And in that sentence the style is somehow biblical, inasmuch as passages with similar phraseology can be seen in the Greek Bible—we ﬁnd, for instance: (6.72) Zçº ŒÆıŁıŁÅ Æ Æƒ › ı F çıºÆ ŁÆØ a ØŒÆØ Æ

ı (Ps.118.5 [Greek numbering]) ‘may my ways be made straight, to keep your ordinances’ (6.73)

›d Içæø OæŁÆd KØ ÆPH (Prov. 12.15 [Greek numbering]) ‘the ways of fools (are) straight before them’ [¼right in their own opinion]

and this usage is due to the Hebrew original sentences: (6.74) (6.75)

x Jv H YO M JLYD hQL J

(Ps.119.5 [Hebrew numbering]) ‘let my ways be ﬁxed to keep your ordinances’ (Prov. 12.15 [Hebrew numbering]) FJQJSB Y J MJF A x Y f ‘the way of the fool is straight before him’

In Malalas, the only instance of æ Ł in non-spatial sense is: (6.76)

y KŒæÅ Æ B ØA ÆPF F KÆŒF ÆØ æ Ł ÆPF ŁÅ (156.16) ‘whose right (hand) I held so that peoples would submit to him’

The whole sentence can be found, verbatim, in the Septuagint Greek version of Isaiah 45.1. There the use of æ Ł is due to the original (6.77) NJ F e FJQ UMÐDY M F QJOJB JxXG HEÐYA lit. ‘whom I held by his right-hand to subdue before him nations’ The non-spatial use of other prepositions in the corpus sometimes has Biblical parallels. The use of O ø in a temporal sense (as noted, the only non-spatial use of O ø in the corpus) recurs hundreds of times in Biblical Greek. Both in the Scriptures and in the corpus it usually appears in the same lexical context (æå ÆØ/æ ÆØ þ O ø “come after”) where it is a translation (or a calque, – rei/. in the New Testament) of the Hebrew preposition JY H A /ah Similarly, Porphyrogenitus’ ø F Łı ç ı ŒÆd H KºH ÆPF (13.133) might re-echo a Greek version of Job 39:3. a

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And by the same token, the Biblical construction ŒÆa æ ø is sometimes used in medieval texts, with—as in Biblical usage—the mixture of spatial and non-spatial senses of its Hebrew model JQUM (see also p. 101). A real exception is the non-spatial use of

, perhaps due to the original use (also synchronically) of

as a noun in many non-spatial senses. However, although

Æ/

is often non-spatial, the complex new preposition Ia

“between” in the corpus is always only spatial.

6.17 The older prepositions in Medieval Greek Having assessed how often the meaning of “improper” prepositions was spatial or non-spatial, we need to check which older prepositions the newer ones were replacing; in order to do this, we need to see not only which older prepositions were still in use, but also with which meanings they were used: spatial or non-spatial ones. The prepositions standardly regarded as constituting the older set (Schwyzer and Debrunner 1950: 436–533) were I ç, I, I, I, Ø, K, N, K-KŒ, K, ŒÆ, , Ææ, æ, æ, æ, æ, and .26 Further distinctions must be made within this set. To make sense of the way in which the semantic range of these prepositions had changed in Medieval Greek, we also need to consider: (i) whether a synonym for them (synonym for their spatial sense) was or was not available; (ii) whether that synonym was also old (and already endowed with nonspatial senses) or new. In this light, we must distinguish four broad groups, although the boundaries (in instances that will be pointed out) are slightly fuzzy: Group Æ Old prepositions for which there were new replacements (for their spatial sense): I ! replaced by Kø(Ł) or Iø(Ł) I ! replaced27 by K æ (Ł/-), KØÆ/-, KØ, IØŒæ æ ! replaced by ŒŒºﬁø(Ł), (æØ)ªæø(Ł) æ ! replaced by K æ (Ł/-), KØÆ/-, KØ, IØŒæ 26 I have disregarded—although included by Schwyzer (Schwyzer and Debrunner 1950) in his list of “die a¨ltere Schicht der Pra¨positionen”—the preﬁx Æı- (which was never used as a preposition), and the rare dialectal preposition , which was not used in Medieval Greek. 27 With reference only to the long-lost spatial sense (also taken over by æ).

228

The history of Greek prepositions

æ ! replaced by Kø(Ł), Iø(Ł) ! replaced by ()Œø(Ł) Group Old prepositions replaced spatially by both old prepositions and new ones:28 I ç ! replaced by æ but also by ŒŒºﬁø(Ł) or (æØ)ªæø(Ł) KŒ-K ! replaced by I but also by ø(Ł) and KŒ (Ł) K ! replaced by N/ but also by

Æ/-, K, ø(Ł) K ! replaced by N but (in a different sense) by Kø(Ł) /Iø(Ł) Ææ ! replaced by N but (in a different sense) by ºÅ and Œ

! replaced by but also replaced by

Group ª Old prepositions replaced spatially by both old and new ones—but not entirely:29 ŒÆ ! partly replaced by N/ and (in other senses) by Œø, ºÅ and Œ æ ! partly replaced by N/ and (in other senses) by ºÅ and Œ Group Old prepositions for which no recent spatial replacement was available at all: I ! remaining as such Ø ! remaining as ªØ N ! remaining as

The statistics of occurrence of groups Æ, , and ª are shown in Tables 6.4, 6.5, and 6.6.30 It may have seemed reasonable to assume that when an old preposition is being phased out of use, this will be done by resorting to it less and less in all its uses. This would make sense if each of the prepositions that were being gradually discarded had been replaced by its newer rival in all meanings from the beginning. We saw that this is not the case, and that the replacement was only in spatial uses. Some editors of Byzantine texts (e.g. Bo¨hlig 1956: 140ff.) 28 Unlike those of the next group, these prepositions had replacements covering all their spatial senses. 29 The importance of this subdivision will become apparent as the discussion proceeds, and in Modern Greek in particular. 30 Prepositions in Group , which have retained both spatial and non-spatial senses throughout their history, have therefore not been examined in the corpus.

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TABLE 6.4 Old prepositions—occurrences in a spatial sense Spatial I ç I I KŒ/K K K ŒÆ Ææ æ æ æ

æ Total

Ptochoprodromos 0 0 0 13 0 7 4 0 0 0 17 7 0 1 49

Porphyrogenitus 0 0 0 53 349 21 27 13 4 2 156 12 0 3 640

TABLE 6.5 Old prepositions—occurrences in a non-spatial sense Non-spatial I ç I I KŒ/K K K ŒÆ Ææ æ æ æ

æ Total

Ptochoprodromos 0 0 2 37 14 6 21 12 2 9 25 0 1 0 129

Porphyrogenitus 0 16 12 142 146 123 186 116 110 8 191 4 25 99 1178

did notice that the older (“proper”) prepositions, in phrases of spatial meaning, at this stage are a minority—a diminishing minority. What we observe in the use of old prepositions is the counterpart of what the new ones do. In our sample, the use of the older set of Greek prepositions

230

The history of Greek prepositions TABLE 6.6 Old prepositions—total occurrences contrasted Prepositions I ç I I KŒ/K K K ŒÆ Ææ æ æ æ

æ Total

Spatial 0 0 0 66 349 28 31 13 4 2 173 19 0 4 689

Non-Spatial 0 16 14 179 160 129 207 129 112 17 216 4 26 99 1308

Total 0 16 14 245 509 157 238 142 116 19 389 23 26 103 1997

appears to be steadily restricted to non-spatial senses—the senses that the “young” counterparts cannot express: old prepositions are used non-spatially while the new ones replace them in their spatial uses. Bearing in mind the inﬂuence of archaizing styles, the picture is even more coherent than one would expect. Furthermore, we must bear in mind that there is no reason why the old prepositions should lose their spatial use at the same rate or at the same time as one another. The early prepositions are being gradually conﬁned to non-spatial uses, but there are two macroscopic exceptions: N/ and I. The key factor here is that they had no new synonyms onto which they could, as it were, “unload” their spatial meaning. It is also possible that N/ and I had some kind of special status: they are the only simplex prepositions that can appear as the second element of compound prepositions. It may be argued that a spatial sense is also detectable in two more old simplex prepositions: ªØ and ; and indeed these prepositions, too, are marginally used as second elements of compounds:31 Id ªØ ÆÇd

‘instead of ’ ‘with’

31 The double preposition b åø (e.g. in the Tale of Alex. 340) “without [lit. withþwithout]” is not part of this system. It is a combination paralleled in other languages (e.g. non-standard Italian con senza, Dutch met zonder). To this day this combination in Greek is occasionally used but regarded as not standard.

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231

And, most importantly, they too had no younger replacement. For the rest of the old prepositions, the trend is quite clear. We can take, for example, Porphyrogenitus’ text. Let us start by looking at the old prepositions that were giving way only to new ones without being confused with other old ones: 6.17.1 Group a I

In Porphyrogenitus I is only and exclusively used in a distributive (i.e. non-spatial) sense; in the medieval period the spatial meaning that I once had is primarily expressed by Kø—a new preposition which, in turn, is not able to express a distributive sense.

I

Similarly, I appears exclusively in the non-spatial sense of “instead of/in exchange for”. In Medieval Greek, the old spatial meaning of I “in front of, facing” (barely attested in Ancient Greek) is expressed by new prepositions like æ Ł; but these were not able to express non-spatial notions such as “in exchange for”.

æ

In the same way, the classical æ “around” (which had also absorbed the functions of I ç—see Group below) appears conﬁned, almost without exception, to the expression of a topic, perhaps since it traditionally appeared in that function in countless titles; æ in its old spatial (circumessive and circumlative) sense is very rare in this period—those senses have been, as it were, transferred to (æØ)ªæﬁø.32

æ

In our medieval texts, æ is primarily temporal, if used at all. Its spatial use is very rarely found—even in old-style authors such as Psellos (Bo¨hlig 1956: 137), and then usually in formal contexts. It is replaced by æ Ł, which is, in turn, unable to express the nonspatial meanings of æ.

æ

A vast range of non-spatial meanings (and nothing else) is found in æ: it presents the reason, the topic, or it indicates an addition to some item. It also expresses comparison. The spatial sense is now expressed by (K)ø(Ł).

The meaning of is also, at this stage, almost always non-spatial: either it indicates being “under” an abstract object (usually somebody’s power), or it expresses agency. Such meanings are, on the

32 —æ was being replaced even in its non-spatial sense of topic—by ªØ, perhaps through imitation of neighbouring languages, since Turkish ic¸in “for”, Bulgarian ya “for”, and Albanian pe¨r “for” are used to introduce topics (see p. 242). This means that the formerly spatial æ was ﬁrst conﬁned to a non-spatial sense (“on the subject of”) and then disappeared from spoken use altogether.

232

The history of Greek prepositions other hand, unattested for Œø, which was now covering the spatial domain that had lost.

Next, we look at other prepositions whose spatial sense was now expressed by newer rivals, but (unlike those in the previous group) which had been supplanted (long before, through semantic merger) also by other old prepositions. The latter ones—the “prevailing” old prepositions—were those which had no new substitutes themselves, and so retained spatial senses (e.g. N, I, or ). The prepositions which had been replaced (even partly) by N, I, or , and had therefore come to be used as old-fashioned synonyms for them, can be expected to have some of the spatial meanings that N, I, and still had. 6.17.2 Group b I ç This group is, in theory, where I ç belongs, but in Porphyrogenitus there are no occurrences of it at all. Already by the time of Classical Greek, its sense of “on both sides” had been loosened to “around”, so that I ç had become a superﬂuous synonym for—and had long been replaced by—æ (and so, in turn, by (æØ)ªæﬁø—see p. 231). KŒ

The use of KŒ is, at this stage, increasingly artiﬁcial: besides facing competition from the newer ø, KŒ had become indistinguishable from the equally old I. And as I had a combination of spatial and non-spatial uses, and we should expect that in KŒ. The occurrences of KŒ in Porphyrogenitus attest non-spatial use in almost three-quarters of cases.

K

An extreme case is that of K, the most archaizing (and so, arguably, artiﬁcial) preposition. The fact that it required the dative made it particularly alien to spoken usage. Sometimes it is replaced by K and

; however, K had been extremely common in Classical and Biblical Greek, and it had come to be wholly interchangeable with N. For these two reasons, even in Medieval Greek it has extensive spatial use.

K

More than four-ﬁfths of the occurrences of K are non-spatial. In Medieval Greek it mainly indicates the abstract grounds for something—the triggering factor, the reason. It also expresses the topic and time duration. Its old spatial sense is largely lost to Kø. The same had happened with I (Group Æ), but K denoted a more horizontal motion, like N, whose spatial sense it occasionally exhibits.

Ææ In the medieval period, Ææ is restricted almost exclusively to the expression of agency and to the (also non-spatial) sense of “with the

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233

exception of ”. The meaning “from” is only found with abstract objects. The spatial sense of “at, by, next to” is extremely rare now (and often interpretable also as agentive): less than 10 per cent of occurrences. It is taken over by N (only a near-synonym), or by the newer ºÅ and, later, by Œ (but neither ºÅ nor Œ could express agency, or mean “with the exception of ”).

Across the entire history of Greek, had been a rarer and loftier synonym of . With the disappearance of the dative from spoken Greek, had ceased to have any natural life, and survived only in literary style as an artiﬁcial replacement of the or that the author had in mind. The result is a prevalently spatial sense—in the rare occasions in which is still found.

Finally, we must consider the prepositions that—although replaced by other (new and old) prepositions in some of their spatial senses—still had other spatial senses that were not expressed by other prepositions (neither old ones, nor new ones). 6.17.3 Group g ŒÆ We still ﬁnd ŒÆ frequently, mainly in the non-spatial sense of “against” (¼with inimical attitude or intent). This often appears with verbs of motion (“marched against”, etc.), but ŒÆ is clearly selected because it denotes hostility (non-spatial meaning), rather than movement (spatial meaning). Temporal and totally abstract senses are also quite common. The old basic spatial sense of “down(wards)” is gone— taken over by Œø, while the meaning “towards” is expressed by N. The important peculiarity is that ŒÆ did not have a new substitute for its other spatial sense of “in the region of ”, and so that meaning lingers on, although it is not frequent. æ Another ailing preposition was æ, which used to be very common in the classical tradition—both in spatial and in multifarious non-spatial uses. In Medieval Greek, non-spatial uses are slightly more frequent than the spatial ones. It was largely but not entirely replaced by N, which is why Medieval æ, when it is used in a spatial sense, often has the sense of N: terminative motion to, reaching the goal. However, the original spatial sense of æ was that of locative or allative approximation (to go or to be “towards, somewhere near an object”). This semantic difference from N made æ (like ŒÆ) not dispensable.

234

The history of Greek prepositions

It is important to note that, therefore, Group ª (ŒÆ and æ) is partly like Group (prepositions replaced in their spatial sense by other—new or old—prepositions) but also partly like Group (with no substitutes for their spatial use). No analysis is made here of the prepositions in Group , since I, Ø, N, and had no replacements at all; that must be the reason why they also retain non-spatial meanings—not only in medieval texts but to this day. 6.17.4 Summary To summarize what the ﬁndings show: old prepositions with no (new or old) rivals—e.g. I—retained their spatial meanings (as well as non-spatial ones); old prepositions—e.g. æ—with a new substitute shed their spatial use, ‘unloading’ it onto the new preposition—e.g. Kø; the same was done by old prepositions—e.g. Ææ—that had been replaced by both a new form—Œ—and by another old but unrivalled form (that therefore retained spatial sense)—K; however, they can be found used as an archaic/learned equivalent of the latter—e.g. Ææ used like K—adopting its spatial meanings; old prepositions—e.g. ŒÆ—that had only partial replacement (of whatever age), lost the spatial meanings that could be expressed by their substitutes, but retained the senses that nothing else in the system could express; in general, old prepositions always kept the non-spatial senses, because new prepositions at the time could not have them; prepositions lose their spatial senses according to whether—and the extent to which—they had newer substitutes onto which they could “transfer” their basic spatial function; newer prepositions are predominantly spatial; the completely new prepositions of Medieval Greek—e.g. ªæﬁø—are only spatial. The overall picture of the system is therefore fairly clear: new items have shown that spatial senses are usually the ﬁrst to appear, and the old items have attested that non-spatial senses are the last to be lost. The very few prepositions that are attested only in non-spatial meanings since our earliest (Ancient Greek) records—e.g. åæØ—have remained entirely non-spatial. This shows that, although it is marginally possible for a preposition to start its life with a non-spatial meaning, in such case it is not possible to develop spatial meanings subsequently: the semantic trajectory appears to be unidirectional.

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235

6.18 Something new in the old Lastly, there is something else well worth noting. So far, we have observed that old prepositions lost some of their meanings (the spatial ones); their use became semantically (besides statistically) more restricted; however, we must be aware that they also kept developing new meanings. This applies even to the prepositions which (as we know from hindsight) were approaching the end of their lives. Let us see what is crucial to our enquiry, namely the kind of new meanings that they developed. As is to be expected, amongst the novelties that make occasional appearances in Byzantine texts, there are meanings—then new—that are now standard in Modern Greek. To list just a few, only by way of example: (6.78) Ø/ªØ expresses the topic: IŒ Æ Æ Øa e ÆıB ¼æÆ ‹Ø c ˚Æ æÆ çØºE (Malalas 133.4) Lit. ‘Having heard about her husband that he loved Cassandra’ Today: IçF ¼Œı ªØa e ¼æÆ B ‹Ø IªÆØ c ˚Æ

æÆ (6.79) Ø also indicates the beneﬁciary: › Łe e øŒ Øa f øå (Alch. 36.11 in Jannaris 1897: 375) ‘God gave it for the poor’33 Today: › Łe e ø ªØa f çøå (6.80)

or exchange: Iººø c Ø Æ Øa H æÆªŒH c Ø (Morea H 2094) ‘to change our faith for the Franks’ faith’

Today: Iººı c Å Æ ªØa c Å H æªŒø (6.81) or role: N e Å F æÅªe Øa ÆåºØÅ ı ‘at the service of the king as his squire’34

(Machairas 548.13)

33 In English too, for indicates destination (spatially), cause (purpose), and beneﬁciary (animate purpose): “leave for a reason”, “leave presents for you”, “leave for Paris”. Modern Greek ªØ has the same three functions. 34 A number of Hellenistic prepositional constructions that many scholars (such as Blass et al. 1979: 120) had dismissed as Semitisms peculiar to Biblical Greek still occur in Medieval Greek. An example is the essive and translative use of N which scholars of the Koine´ assumed to be a rendering of the Hebrew M /l#/ “to”: in Porphyrogenitus (45.20) I see ÅPŁÅ Æ ŒÆd N ªÆ Ł Kª “they grew

236

The history of Greek prepositions

Today: ‰ PÅæ Å ı, a more archaic construction than the Medieval: Classical ‰ in the sense of qua—another case of purism setting the clock back. But the Medieval construction is still used today with predicates of syntactic objects, for example: e r å ªØa Åæ Å “he had him as a servant”. Furthermore, there are also meanings that are indeed peculiar to the Medieval period (the dead ends, see p. 197):35 in Byzantine texts, some prepositions that will survive into Modern Greek have senses that they did not have in antiquity and do not have today: (6.82) I[] also occurs as the expression of cause: I ı IÆ Çı ‘they sigh because of me’

(Libist. 2634)

(¼Attic Ø, K, æ and Modern Greek ªØ) (6.83) I indicates topic: KæøB Æ Ib f ØŒ ı ‘they asked him about his folk’

(Machairas }487)

(¼Attic æ, rarely æ or K, Modern Greek ªØ) (6.84)

N also indicates the object of feelings: ØÆ IªÅ åØ N K Æ ‘you have such love for me’

(T.Alex. P. 234)

(in Biblical Greek too—but IªÅ has a different sense; Attic æø took plain genitive or æþaccusative; Modern Greek has IªÅ ªØ) (6.85) also indicates reference: q . . . Łe ŒÆd ¼Łæø a Æ ‘He was God, and human in all [respects]’

(Synaxarion 124/5)

(¼ Attic plain accusative; Modern Greek þaccusative)

and they became a big people” and in the Chronicle of the Morea (version H 2477) I ﬁnd a KæÅ N ªıÆŒÆ ı “to take as his wife”—while in the other version of the Chronicle of Morea (P 2477) we see the forerunner of the Modern Greek construction with ªØ: a KæÅ Øa ªıÆŒÆ ı, which also reappears in e Æ Øº Æ ‹ı YåÆ Ø Øa çı ØŒe Iç Å (Morea H821) “the king that they had as their natural leader”. 35 When a form or construction is labelled here as “only Medieval” (or earlier), comparison is being made only to the standard Modern language. Some “Medieval” constructions or forms may survive in modern dialects.

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237

æ develops also a distributive sense: ØÆØæH a æE Þ ı øŒ E æØ d æe Æ (Porphyr. 41.12) ‘dividing the three wands, he gave to the three [of them] one each’ (¼ Attic I, Modern Greek I)

In Medieval Greek there are, therefore, quite a few new meanings to the old prepositions, and many of these meanings are widely attested. What is crucial to our enquiry is that, although the old (or even dying) prepositions keep developing new senses, these new senses were non-spatial. So: we have seen that the old prepositions, that once had both spatial and non-spatial meanings, appear to have later lost most or all of their spatial senses; now we see that their semantic domain, shrunk in this respect, did however also expand to cover new meanings, but it appears to have done so only in the abstract domain. We can compare points in time, as shown in Figure 6.1. This conﬁrms that, across time, the semantic domain of Greek prepositions seems to ‘glide’ along the spatial/non-spatial axis, and it appears to do so only by moving from concrete to abstract. SPATIAL SENSES

NON-SPATIAL SENSES

TIME 1

FIGURE 6.1

TIME 2

FURTHER NON-SPATIAL SENSES

7 Prepositions and cases in Modern Greek El conocimiento profundo de una lengua no si consigue en tanto no se tenga un dominio completo del sistema de las preposiciones. An in-depth knowledge of a language is not attained until one has total mastery of its prepositional system. (Lo´pez 1972: 12)

7.1 Problems with Modern Greek Assessing Modern Greek1 data is far from straightforward.2 Greek today is a composite language. For centuries, as we saw, the Greek of ancient times was imitated; with the establishment of a Greek state in the 19th century, an artiﬁcially archaic Greek was de facto adopted, and later ofﬁcially imposed. Now, after legal reforms in the mid-1970s, Modern Greek is no longer characterized by the diglossia of which it had become the example par excellence. However, the controversy carried on (cf. Landsman 1989: 159ff.; Kazazis 1993: 8): above all, the formal abolition in 1976 of the archaizing variety of Greek (called ŒÆŁÆæı Æ) cannot eliminate the profound— and yet always partial—inﬂuence that this has had on the spoken language. Only since the 1980s has a national standard language been gradually emerging (cf. Joseph and Philippaki-Warburton 1987: 2); with the possible exception of the Hellenistic Koine´, it is the ﬁrst time this has happened in

1 By the term “Modern Greek” I refer only to contemporary standard Greek, whereas other philologists stretch the label “Modern” much further back in time—as historians do. Joseph (1992a: 87), for instance, considers “Modern” Greek to have started in 1650. 2 For an overview of prepositions and cases in Modern Greek, see also Holton et al. (1997: 370ff.), Mackridge (1985: 203), and Joseph and Philippaki-Warburton (1987: 45ff.)

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Greek history.3 Standard Modern Greek is therefore very young—but it is not very modern. Although the learned (and at times macaronic) Katharevousa has ofﬁcially lost the competition, Demotic ( Å ØŒ), the natural spoken Greek evolved from Koine´, has not completely won either—not yet, at least.4 The standard Greek of today has a very mixed character, which is the result of the unavoidable encounter between the two forms5 (Babiniotis 1979: 25).6 So, as pointed out by Horrocks (1997a: 6), the inevitable interference between written and spoken varieties cannot and should not be ignored by historians of Greek. Scholars bemoan Katharevousa not only for creating diglossia,7 but also for its effects on spoken Greek. What we ﬁnd, in synchronic terms, is an inordinate degree of heterogeneity: in the phonology, in the morphology, in the syntax, in the lexicon—in prepositional usage too. What the living language had long discarded, has resurfaced in people’s speech: prepositional items such as K, KŒ, æ, æ, æ, , syntactic constructions such as the government of the genitive, of the defunct dative, and set phrases with anastrophe. Some of these are even used frequently, but they are, nonetheless, conscious loans from the old media ‘ofﬁcialese’ or the Schriftsprache; as such, they are 3 In Classical Greece (Morpurgo-Davies 1987: 9ff.), although the aggregate of the Greek dialects was felt to constitute a single language, and to speak any Greek dialect was considered ººÅÇØ—indeed, the ensemble of the Greeks was seen (cf. Hdt. 8.144) as › ªºø

—there was no standard language as such (see also Consani 1991). The post-Classical Koine´ was a supraregional (even international) variety—de facto close to what today we term “standard”—with slight regional variations; but it was not regarded as the standard by the Greeks, who listed it as one of their dialects alongside regional ones like Doric or Aeolic, by then substantially koine´ized but well known from written texts (with a dialectal quality either because genuinely old or through imitation of older texts). An ofﬁcial single standard, therefore, perhaps exists only today. 4 No topic in Modern Greek philology has aroused such violent passions or prompted the production of such an immense amount of scholarly (as well as very unscholarly) work as the “Language Question”. Reliable accounts of the history and effects of the Modern Greek diglossia can be found in the extensive but outdated Kordatos (1973), the more balanced Petrounias (1978) and Alexiou (1982), the more concise Browning (1982, 1983: 100ff.), and Mackridge (1990), and the more recent Kazazis (1993: 7ff.), and Horrocks (1997a: 344ff.). The most thorough and deﬁnitive treatment is Mackridge (2009). A very good account of the effects of diglossia on Modern Greek literature can be found in Beaton (1994: 296ff.). 5 It is interesting to note that for Norwegian too, in the conﬂict between Bokma˚l and Nynorsk (the two ofﬁcial forms of the language), it had been hoped that a resolution will be a “Samnorsk”: a gradual, natural fusion between the two varieties (see Haugen 1965: 21ff.). 6 As it happens, the title of Babiniotis’ essay is in itself “— æÆ B Å ØŒB. . .” (“Beyond demotic [Greek]” with the “improper” preposition æÆ þ genitive) but within the text he uses, almost invariably, the modern compound æÆ I (e.g. Babiniotis 1979: 30, 39, 42, etc.). 7 As graphically put by Bo¨hlig (1956: 1), the “Katastrophalen Nebeneinander von zwei schlieblich volkommen verschiedenen Sprachen im modernen Griechisch” (catastrophical co-existence in Modern Greek of two ultimately completely different languages).

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The history of Greek prepositions

usually unproductive. In some instances, however, prepositions or constructions that were dying or dead are now enjoying a new lease of life (æ is perhaps a case in point) and the distinction between living and learned usage cannot easily be made.

7.2 Trouble with the neighbours Inﬂuences on Modern Greek usage may also come from other sources. Although the thorny question of the inﬂuence of neighbouring languages on Greek (or, on the contrary, of their being the recipients of inﬂuence from Greek) cannot to be solved here, it cannot go unmentioned. Modern Greek, besides being a stock example of the effects of diglossia, is also a good example of language contact. The Balkan area shows such a large number of shared linguistic features as to be cited as the Sprachbund par excellence: besides common inheritance and independent identical developments, there must be an element of convergence due to interaction.8 The main languages evincing “Balkan” traits (to varying and hotly debated extents) are Modern Greek, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croat, Romanian, Slav Macedonian, Turkish, Albanian,9 and at times Slovene, Hungarian, and (Southern) Italian. Balkan parallels can also be seen in the use of cases and prepositions. Let us see some examples. The Greek use of the accusative to express the goal of a motion reappears in neighbouring languages (see Heg 1943: 85), but it is a construction found in countless languages the world over (cf. p. 124). Bulgarian, Slav Macedonian, Romanian, and Albanian merged genitive and dative as Greek did (Banﬁ 1985: 51ff.); the use of the genitive in lieu of the dative has spread from the Greek dialects of Southern Italy to the local Italian dialects, remaining even where Greek became extinct (Rohlfs 1969: 15ff.): verbs such as “say to”, “send to”, “write to”, or “show to” appear with di “of”.

8 The literature on this topic (which is in fact a large cluster of manifold interrelated topics) is immense. After (and, to a small extent, even before) the seminal work by Sandfeld (1926), which is still fundamental (cf. Asenova 1987), dozens of scholars have devoted themselves to Balkan philology, endeavouring to identify shared phenomena or to explain them, and several journals and institutes have been founded to these ends. For a good summary, see Joseph (1992b); for an account of the history of the ﬁeld see Asenova (1979) and, above all, Banﬁ (1985), who outlines well the aims and discoveries of Balkan linguistic research (besides Georgiev 1977 and Asenova 1977), with deﬁnitions and the necessary background (cf. also Duridanov 1977). For the general principles and examples of other areas of linguistic convergence, see Campbell (2004: 330–40). For some of the issues from the viewpoint of Greek, see Joseph (1983). 9 If Albanian has many parallels with Greek, then Arvanitic (the variety of Albanian spoken in Greece), as one would expect, has even more (see data in Sasse 1991: 315ff.).

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241

Bulgarian, Albanian, and Romanian also tend to express both possession and indirect object status with the same case or preposition; this is seen as due to Greek by some (e.g. Rohﬂs 1969: 16) but as copied by Greek from elsewhere by others (e.g. from Romanian, according to Comrie 1989: 27ff.). Also common to several languages of the area are the use of the accusative as the prepositional case, and the existence of two distinct sets of personal pronouns (“strong” ones, i.e. phonologically stressed and semantically emphatic, and “weak” ones, i.e. unstressed and unemphatic),10 with an unusual system whereby “improper” prepositions govern the genitive of the unstressed pronouns or some items identical to possessives (Qvonje 1991: 30ff.). The simplex prepositions, on the other hand, take the emphatic pronouns (and ordinary nouns) in an unmarked or accusative case. The result is that “on me” is phrased as “on mine”: Greek Romanian Italian Bulgarian Turkish Hungarian

Kø ı asupra mea sopra di me d]h[y vb u¨zer-im-de rajta-m

Several individual uses of prepositions are also pan-Balkan.11 A preposition can expand its semantic range so as to cover that of the foreign preposition that already corresponds to it in some basic sense (see Asenova 1990: 3).12 A full (or even just extensive) list is out of place here, but a few example are in order.

10 Thus Greek åØ E K Æ “(s)he has seen me” like Romanian m-a va˘zut pe mine, etc. For details of the use of pronouns in Greek when used as the object of prepositions, see Holton et al. (1997: 309ff., 365). 11 Note that individual Greek prepositions were also taken as loanwords by other languages. In Southern Italian, ŒÆ is common (examples from Rohlfs 1969: III: 204): Sicilian Abruzzese

muru kata muru kat’ u mied‰k‰

‘all along the wall’ ‘at the doctor(’s)’

Derivatives of Greek ŒÆ—with distributive sense—also appear in Spanish cada uno “each one” (also borrowed into Standard Italian) and in dialectal and archaic Bulgarian, for instance in rfnf lty ‘every day’ (Sandfeld 1926: 19). In Arvanitic (Sasse 1991: 320ff.), we ﬁnd andı´s, ana´mesa, ekto´s, me´hri, metaxı´, and enandı´on—some of them even combined with simplex prepositions. Albanian (Sandfeld 1926: 19) has borrowed ana´mesa, which also resurfaces in Aroumanian as ana´misa. 12 It is, on the other hand, possible for different languages to have prepositional phrases with the same morph-by-morph structure but with very different use. For instance, the Modern Greek phrase KŒ æı F has a different sense from the structurally identical Turkish tarafından, which—unlike its Greek morphological counterpart—introduces agents.

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The history of Greek prepositions

Earlier (p. 235) we saw an unexpected semantic development in ªØ: ‘for > concerning’ (¼Classical æ). This has parallels across several neighbouring languages: Greek Albanian Turkish Bulgarian

ØºØ ªØa Æ ﬂet pe¨r ty senin ic¸in konus¸uyor ujdjhb pf nt,

‘(s)he is talking about[lit. for] you’ ‘(s)he is talking about[lit. for] you’ ‘(s)he is talking about[lit. for] you’ ‘(s)he is talking about[lit. for] you’

Consider also some uses of Modern Greek I, reﬂected across the Greek borders and alien to Classical Greek. For instance, “to be knowledgeable about” is expressed as “knowledgeable from” (unlike Classical Greek æ þ accusative): Greek Bulgarian Albanian Hungarian

æØ Ie ÆPŒÅÆ njq hfp,bhf jn rjb ai merr vesh nga makinat autkrl tud

‘(s)he knows about[lit. from] cars’ ‘(s)he knows about[lit. from] cars’ ‘(s)he knows about[lit. from] cars’ ‘(s)he knows about[lit. from] cars’

Another new sense of I is “comparison” (in Classical Greek, plain genitive) Greek Turkish Bulgarian Romanian

ªºıŒæ I[e] e ºØ baldan (daha) tatlı gj-cfl]r jn vtl mai dulce decaˆt mierea

‘sweeter than[lit. from] honey’ ‘sweeter than[lit. from] honey’ ‘sweeter than[lit. from] honey’ ‘sweeter than[lit. from how much] honey’

However, we can also say that this construction corresponds exactly to the ancient ablatival genitive that we ﬁnd used in Classical Greek comparative constructions. That it was an ablatival genitive is suggested by sister languages like Oscan and Latin, that use their distinct ablative case: Classical Greek Classical Latin

ºØ lØ melle dulcius (cf. Plaut.Asin. 614)

So the Modern Greek Ie e ºØ could also be seen as nothing more than a literal rendering of the Ancient Greek (just as the Italian pi u dolce del miele looks like a literal translation of its Latin antecedent). Indeed, when the second term of a comparison is a pronoun, Greek still uses the genitive today. Note the semantic equivalence Modern Greek Modern Greek

ªÆºæ Ie Æ ªÆºæ ı

‘older than me’ ‘older than me’

Prepositions in Modern Greek

243

Furthermore, the fact that Greek chose time and again an ablative expression to indicate comparison is not surprising: it is quite common across languages of all families and locations: Hebrew Polish

b f O XF ‘ O słodszy od miodu

‘sweeter than[lit. from] honey’ ‘sweeter than[lit. from] honey’

Indeed, the use of “from” to introduce comparatives is also common in English, in the speech of young children (Clark and Carpenter 1989: 8). This is the trouble with putative Balkanisms: in many cases, coincidences cannot be ruled out. Let us consider another example. Balkanists (e.g. Asenova 1972: 42) have highlighted the cross-Balkan use of ablative prepositions or cases to indicate route: Modern Greek uses I (see also Tachibana 1993a: 63ff.), and Albanian nga, whereas English uses by (not from) and French uses par (not de). Other languages, like Greenlandic (Fortescue 1984: 206), have a distinct perlative case (-kkut) separate from the ablative (-mit). The Greek use of an ablative expression as perlative is indeed usage alien to Classical Greek (cf. Waanders 1988), and we could strengthen the argument by pointing out that a further Balkan language, Turkish, uses the ablative case in a “route” sense; we might even see the perlative use of da in Italian as part of the Balkan domain: Modern Greek Albanian Turkish Italian

æÆ Ie e Ø13 kaloi nga shte¨pia evden gec¸ti passo` dalla casa

‘he passed by[lit. from] the house’ ‘he passed by[lit. from] the house’ ‘he passed by[lit. from] the house’ ‘he passed by[lit. from] the house’

This perlative sense of I is also found in the compound prepositions that have I as their second element; contrast an example with its Classical counterpart: (7.1)

e æe çØ c ºÅ æÆ

Æ Ie øº ‘the water reaches the city passing through (inside) pipes’

(7.2) e oøæ . . . Øa øºø ÆæÆªÆØ N c ºØ Iª (Hdt. 3.60) ‘the water reaches the city passing through (inside) pipes’. The Greek may go back to the Middle Ages. In our medieval corpus we ﬁnd K used as perlative:

13 This use of I (and its counterparts) also corresponds to English through (not only to by): æÆ I º ‘he passed through [lit. from] the tunnel’, as in Turkish tu¨nelden gec¸ti, Italian passo` dal tunnel, etc.

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The history of Greek prepositions

(7.3) Æ K y ŒÆd ƒ *H Ø æåÆØ æ . . . c . . . ´ıºªÆæÆ ‘river by which the Russians also pass, on their way to Bulgaria’ (Porphyr. 42.76ff.) Latin too occasionally uses the ablative for path (porta¯ introierit in Cic.Pis. 23.55), and a variety of “ablative of route” is also attested in Oscan and Umbrian. However, geographically more distant (and genetically unrelated) languages have verbs with the very same construction: (7.4)a Arabic (Wright 1898: II: 130) ‘he went in by [lit.from] the door’ (7.4)b Arabic ‘the road passes through [lit.from] the lands of the village’ In Basque too (Saltarelli 1988: 178) the ablative indicates movement past an object, and in Finnish (cf. Hakulinen 1961: 334) the elative expresses motion through, by, or past, as the ablative does in Estonian (Haman 1962: 90). So the Balkan nature of the ablative-as-perlative is debatable. Let us now look at some peculiar uses of . The fact that instrument and manner should be expressed by a comitative preposition in many Balkan languages comes as no surprise (see p. 45). Thus one travels ‘with train’ and not ‘by train’ in: Greek Albanian Turkish Sl.Maced. Romanian Hungarian Bulgarian

b e æÆE but also in: me tren Swedish trenle Italian cj-do´p German cu trenul Estonian vonat-tal Catalan c dfr

med ta˚get con il treno mit der Eisenbahn rongiga amb tren

Much has been made of other shared uses. These include ‘to speak to’ expressed as ‘to speak with’: but it is the same in: Greek ØºH

Bulgarian ujdjhz c Turkish ile konus¸mak S.Macedonian p,jhydf co´ Romanian a vorbi cu Albanian te¨ ﬂas me Hungarian -val/vel besze´lni

Swedish Italian Dutch Polish Armenian Persian French

tala med parlare con spreken met rozmawiac´ z

parler avec

Prepositions in Modern Greek

245

and ‘married to’ as ‘married with’: but it is the same in: Greek Romanian Turkish Albanian Slav. Maced.

Ææ ca˘sa˘torit cu ile evli martuar me

Swedish Italian French German Catalan

gift med sposato con marie´ avec verheiratet mit casat amb

So, areal inﬂuences are a questionable but possible factor in the semantics of Greek prepositions; they may explain certain idiomatic uses, but should not be over-emphasized.

7.3 Cases in Modern Greek Typologically, Greek must be classiﬁed, today as ever, as a fusional and inﬂected language (cf. Joseph 1992a: 91) with a vast allomorphy. In particular, Greek nouns (unlike, for example, those of French or Italian as compared with their Latin ancestors) are still inﬂected for case. This is not to say that the system of nominal inﬂection is the same as in the classical language. In the history of Greek (post-classically as well as preclassically) there has been case syncretism: Classical Greek had fewer morphological case distinctions than Indo-European had, and Modern Greek has fewer than Classical Greek.14 The dative, except for non-productive set phrases, is now totally obsolete (cf. Triandaphyllidis 1941: 227; Yannakopoulou 1982: 119), and all the other cases, in one declension type or another, coincide morphologically more often then they used to (for a comparison of learned and demotic paradigms see Vostantzoglou 1967: 417–46 ). However, there is complete consensus—see, for example, Tzartzanos (1946: 81), Eleftheriades (1985: 77), Yannakopoulou (1982: 119), Holton et al. (1997: 255)—that we still need to recognize the productive existence of the following cases: nominative accusative

14 Observing the history of case syncretism in Greek, it is difﬁcult not to wonder whether Greek is going to lose its cases altogether, as Latin did. Prepositions started eroding case use in antiquity (cf. Barbu 1959: 185ff.), and are advancing even now. However, it is too early to say that Greek is going to shed case inﬂection entirely; centuries of efforts to make Greek archaic prevent Greek to be synchronically more consistent, and less ambiguous, by now, about its future developments.

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The history of Greek prepositions

genitive (vocative15) The way cases tended to merge (syncretize) across the history of Greek accounts for this. The diachrony of the “genitive” of Modern Greek could be outlined (in an extremely simpliﬁed sketch) as shown in Figure 7.1. INDO-EUROPEAN Genitive Ablative

CLASSICAL GREEK

MODERN GREEK

Genitive

Genitive

Dative

Dative FIGURE 7.1

In Modern Greek, basic spatial meanings (ablative, locative, and allative) are expressed by prepositions. There is a limited number of spatial uses of the plain case forms—which we shall now review16—but most of these uses alternate with prepositional constructions. Names can be misleading, as the same case-ending can carry diverse meanings; in semantic terms, the Classical Greek case that we call genitive could, just as sensibly, be called ablative; and the Modern Greek genitive (thus called because it continues morphologically the classical genitive) could perhaps also be called dative. The accusative, which is today the most frequently occurring case—more recurrent than in Classical Greek (Triandaphyllidis 1941: 227)—can be used on its own to denote spatial (as well as temporal) extension: (7.5)

a æ Æ Æ åØºØ æ ‘we ran (for) a kilometre’ b æ Æ Æ Ø øæ ‘we ran (for) half an hour’

These uses are equivalent to prepositional constructions: (7.6)

a æ Æ cia Æ åØºØ æ ‘we ran (for) a kilometre’ b æ Æ cia Æ Ø øæ ‘we ran (for) half an hour’

15 On the status of the vocative, see pp. 110–11. 16 For a fuller account of Modern Greek case usage, inclusive of all non-spatial meanings, see Tzartzanos (1946: 1: 86), Holton et al. (1997: 255ff.).

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247

The accusative after verbs of movement is also used in informal Modern Greek with place-nouns, and with nouns denoting the goal of the act: (7.7)

a b Ła ø æÅ ‘I am not going to Sparta’ b ÆhæØ çªø —Ææ Ø ‘tomorrow I am leaving for Paris’

This use too alternates with prepositional constructions: (7.8)

a b Ła ø sc æÅ ‘I am not going to Sparta’ b ÆhæØ çªø cia (e) —Ææ Ø ‘tomorrow I am leaving for Paris’

Colloquially, the goal of the act can now also be something other than a place: (7.9)

a ø ºÆ ‘I am going for a stroll’ b A Æªø; ‘shall we go for an ice-cream?’

corresponding to (7.10)

a ø cia ºÆ ‘I am going for a stroll’ b A cia Æªø; ‘shall we go for an ice-cream?’

In the colloquial, the accusative can also be, perhaps by synecdoche, a locative: (7.11)

a ı "ŁÆ ‘they live in Athens’ b r ÆØ b ˚æ; ‘are you at St Cross (College)?’ c ıÇø ´º ‘I study at Volos’

Again, there are synonymous prepositional constructions: (7.12)

a ı sc "ŁÆ ‘they live in Athens’

248

The history of Greek prepositions b r ÆØ se b ˚æ; ‘are you at St Cross (College)?’

The accusative without preposition to indicate location or spatial goal is anathemized by traditional Greek linguists (e.g. Kondosopoulos 1992: 3–6); however, besides being used today, it is attested in Medieval and in Ancient Greek (Heg 1943: 86ff.): (7.13)

a c ¸ı ÆæÆ ‰ łÆ ‘they went to Lombardy’ b Łæ ŒØ ı ‘he goes home’

(Morea 374) (Soph.Trach. 58)

Another “concrete” sense of the plain accusative is content: (7.14) Æ Œıd ª åÆæØ ‘a box full of papers’ Again, prepositional syntagmata can be used in its stead: (7.15)

a Æ Œıd ª Ipe åÆæØ b Æ Œıd ª lº åÆæØ

The genitive has a more limited use than before (cf. Triandaphyllidis 1941: 228). Its occurrence is still fairly frequent in standard contemporary Greek,17 but that is partly due to Katharevousa. The genitive is less extensively employed in the colloquial, and it is avoided in northern dialects. Even in the standard language, several nouns have no genitive in the plural. Many of the old uses of the genitive (e.g. ablative, partitive, comparative, etc.) are now expressed by I. The possessive genitive, in standard Greek, cannot be said to alternate freely with I, inasmuch as this use of I is still restricted to inanimate objects; but in a number of dialects (Greek Macedonia, Western Thrace, Thessaly) I is also used to indicate possession with animate objects (see p. 65). The preposition is clearly gaining yet more ground from the use of an oblique case.18 Nonetheless, there are uses of the genitive with no prepositional synonym, for example age: 17 The Standard modern language (its demotic component) is largely based on the Greek of the Peloponnese (southern part of the Greek mainland), with elements from the fairly similar Greek of Constantinople and perhaps of the Ionian islands (cf. Mackridge 1985: 4ff.; Kazazis 1993: 12; Beaton 1994: 296ff.). 18 Ablative prepositions are used to express possession in many languages (English of < off), including many geographically close to Greece: cf. the Slav Macedonian use of jl (cf. Lunt 1952: 60) and the Italian use of di (as opposed to the Latin or Russian genitive).

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249

a Æ Œæ Ø ŒÆ

æø åæH ‘a fourteen-year-old girl’ b *Æ Œæ Ø Ie/ b ŒÆ

æÆ åæØÆ19

The genitive (which had absorbed the prehistoric ablative) in the postclassical period absorbed also many functions of the extinct Classical dative. The genitive in Modern Greek (as in other languages of the Balkans, such as Romanian) therefore also has some allative (besides ablative) meanings,20 and other meanings once expressed by the dative, such as beneﬁciary. This is, again, conﬁrmed by the alternative use of prepositions21—which are obligatory when one uses emphatic pronouns: (7.17)

a F ø Æ e N ØæØ ‘I gave (to) him the ticket’ (dative sense) b F Bæ a ºç ‘he snatched the money from him’ (ablative sense) c F åø Æ Hæ ‘I have a present for him’ (dative > beneﬁciary sense)

(7.18)

a ø Æ e N ØæØ s(º) ÆP ‘I gave the ticket to him’ b Bæ a ºça Ip(e) ÆP ‘he took the money from him’ c åø Æ Hæ ci(a) ÆP ‘I have a present for him’

There are other uses of the genitive—also expressed by prepositional phrases: (7.19)

a ºı ØæÅ åæÆ F Œ ı lit. ‘the wealthiest country of the world’ b ºı ØæÅ åæÆ se Œ lit. ‘the wealthiest country in the world’

(7.20)

a ¼Łæø ŒÆºF åÆæÆŒæÆ lit. ‘a person of good nature’

19 In Italian Greek (Bova) a form of I would indeed be used here, but that may very well just be a calque from the Italian una ragazza di quattordici anni. 20 For an analysis based on Cognitive Grammar, see Iakovaki (1993: 143ff.). 21 Note also that in northern dialects, where the genitive has more restricted use, the “dative” genitive (of indirect object) is replaced by the accusative (cf. Dimitriadis 1999: 98ff.).

250

The history of Greek prepositions b ¼Łæø lº ŒÆºe åÆæÆŒæÆ lit. ‘a person with good nature’

(7.21)

a ÆØØa ŒÆºB NŒª ØÆ lit. ‘kids of good family’ b ÆØØa Ipe ŒÆºc NŒª ØÆ lit. ‘kids from good family’

The genitive can also indicate content (partitive sense). In this use too, genitive and prepositional phrases can be synonymous: (7.22)

a Øa ıººªc ØŒym ‘a collection of-paintings’ [plain genitive] b Øa ıººªc Ipe ÆŒer ‘a collection of paintings’ [preposition ‘from’]

The difference in the age of these constructions corresponds now to differences in register: the plain genitive is literary, the preposition with the accusative more colloquial. This is true also of certain adverbs (Theophanopou´lou-Kontou´ 1992: 318–19): (7.23)

a IÆºªø þ gen / IºªÆ ‘according to; depending on’ b IÆæø þ gen / IæÅÆ I ‘independently of ’

One does come across prepositions governing the genitive or the dative, but these come from Katharevousa (cf. Setatos 1994: 874ff.)—although Æþgenitive, KÆþgenitive, and ŒÆþgenitive are now used productively. Katharevousa has also imported into Modern Greek several set expressions containing with various prepositions governing the genitive. These are mostly frozen fossils, and include:22 Kd ºı åæØ Øª B K ±ÆºH Oåø Ie ŒØF æd æŒØÆØ Øa B Æ

‘at last’ ‘until now’ ‘since childhood’, lit. ‘from (the time of) soft nails’ ‘in common’ ‘what this is about’ ‘by force’

22 On fossilized prepositional phrases from Katharevousa, see also p. 301.

Prepositions in Modern Greek æe ŁF a åÆæA

251

‘for God’s sake’ ‘with joy’

and even two prepositional phrases, now mostly spelt as a single word, which function themselves as prepositions: Øa

ı K ÆNÆ

‘via; by means of ’ ‘because of ’

Again, the Greeks’ tendency to see their language as a diachronic continuum, coupled with the inﬂuence of older language styles on native speakers, makes it harder to distinguish complex and simplex forms. With few exceptions, the case governed by all prepositions in Modern Greek is the accusative: a non-contrastive use which is therefore mere syntactic marking.23 The nominative appears after prepositions (and verbs) in essive or translative phrases/sentences such as: (7.24)

a Ie ººÅº ªØ ØıŁı ‘from clerk he became director’ b b ØÇØ ªØa ¯ººÅÆ ‘he does not look Greek’ c ÆØÇ ı åØÆ a ØŒæ ‘he played all the time as a child’ d ıÇØ ØŒÅªæ ‘he studies [to be] a lawyer’ e æØ ªØa ı ‘he is thought of as (il passe pour) clever’

But this is essentially a matter of syntactic co-indexing. Observe: (7.25) (Kªg) e æø Ie ØŒæ ‘I have known him since (he was) a child’ in which the accusative in ØŒæ signals its co-reference with “him”—and contrast it with a sentence like: (7.26) (Kªg) e æø Ie ØŒæ ‘I have known him since (I was) a child’ 23 When nineteenth-century historian Karl Hopf evinced an interest in Modern Greek, he was told by his professor that there was no point in studying the language of a people so debased as to use I with the accusative (Woodhouse 1992: 34).

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The history of Greek prepositions

Here, the nominative should likewise not be seen as a “government” of the preposition, but as a tag indicating that the adjective is co-referential with the subject Kª. It is not surprising that in Classical Greek, where cases in prepositional syntagmata were not mere syntactic markers, the case-requirements of the prepositions prevailed: (7.27)

a K ¼çæ çæø ¼ Ø ª Ø (Xen.Cyr. 3.1.17) ‘if someone[NOM] from senseless[GEN] was to become wise[NOM]’ b KŒ øåH . . . º ØØ ªªÆØ ‘from poor[GEN] they become rich[NOM]’

(Dem. 8.66)

c N ¼æÆ KŒ ØæÆŒø ºıH Ø (Pl.Th. 173b) ‘from boys[GEN] they end up (turning) into men[ACC]’ which translate into Modern Greek as: (7.28)

a ¼ ŒØ Ie IÅ ªØ ç ‘if someone[NOM] from senseless[NOM] was to become wise[NOM]’ b Ie çøåd ªÆØ º ØØ ‘from poor[NOM] they become rich[NOM]’ c Ie IªæØÆ Ła ŒÆÆºı ¼æ ‘from boys[NOM] they end up being men[NOM]’

Finally, the obsolete dative, thanks to Katharevousa, appears in the standard language in a handful of set expressions—with the iota subscript omitted in the ØŒ Å Æ, the single-accent orthography. These include: ¼ æåØ ªø e E A Ø Æ ﬁH ŁﬁH KØ Køﬁø YØØ Z Æ Ø ŒÆºﬁB ﬁB Ø A ﬁ Å Łı Æﬁ æª ÆØ E ŒÆ() E æÅE ﬁH ZØ łıåﬁB ŒÆd ÆØ

‘home and dry’ ‘a known fact’ ‘thanks God’ ‘face to face’ ‘with one’s own eyes’ ‘in good faith’ ‘at any cost’ ‘in fact’ ‘per cent’ ‘in cash’ ‘indeed’ ‘body and soul’

Some old nouns in the dative are now used in a seemingly prepositional fashion but with the genitive of the referent noun(s):

Prepositions in Modern Greek ºªﬁø

ﬁø KººłØ Ææı Æﬁ Ø

253

‘because of ’ ‘through; via’ ‘for want of ’ ‘in the presence of ’ ‘on the basis of ’ (now also b Å)

In a few old phrases24 (some now spelt as a single word), the dative is also governed by prepositions—especially K. These include: K ÆPçæﬁø K Y Ø ‹æØ Kd ºÅæø ﬁB Kd Ø Ø Kd ﬁø Kd ﬁB PŒÆØæÆﬁ K Pd [ºªﬁø]

‘red-handed’ ‘on equal terms’ ‘on payment’ ‘on credit’ ‘ad hoc’ ‘by the way’ ‘under no circumstances’

ƒ f ÆPﬁH

f ¨ﬁH

f ﬁH åæﬁø

f E ¼ººØ

‘his entourage’ ‘God willing’ ‘in time’ ‘among other things’

K IŒﬁø K I ﬁ Å K IÆ ﬁ B K Iı Æﬁ K ª Ø K ª Ø K PŁ ﬁø åæﬁø K ÇøﬁB K ºªﬁø K æØ K Ææﬁø K ﬁ Å æØ Ø K æØ K ıªŒæ Ø K Ø K Ø K ºØ K ﬁH Æ

‘in the wrong’ ‘in defence’ ‘waiting’ ‘in absence’ ‘in general’ ‘fully aware’ ‘in due course’ ‘alive’ ‘in question’ ‘in part’ ‘in passing’ ‘anyway’ ‘in the ﬁrst place’ ‘in comparison’ ‘okay’ ‘nevertheless’ ‘at the end’ ‘meanwhile’

24 On fossilized prepositional phrases from Katharevousa, see also p. 301.

254

The history of Greek prepositions ‘in cold [blood]’ ‘while’ (now usually spelt as a single word)

K łıåæﬁH K ﬁH

7.4 The Modern Greek prepositional inventory Let us now see which prepositions are used (productively25) in contemporary Greek. To understand this correctly, we need to include in the category Prepositions also compound prepositions26 (cf. pp. 25–31). The Modern Greek prepositional inventory is as follows (only the commonest meanings are listed here):27 Simplex I ªØ åø ŒÆ

KÆ

‘from’ ‘for’ ‘without’ ‘towards’ ‘with’ ‘against’

Æ åæØ Ææ æ

‘after’ ‘between’28 ‘as far as’ ‘contrary to’ ‘before’

æ

åøæ ‰/ø

‘towards’ ‘like’ ‘at/to’ ‘without’ ‘as far as’

Compound29 I Æ

Id ªØ IŒæı I

‘between’ ‘instead of ’ ‘opposite’

25 The list (although not the ensuing discussion) deliberately excludes the items which Katharevousa kept artiﬁcially alive (or revived) in a limited number of phrases: ¼ı, Ø, N, KŒ, K, K, K, ŒÆØ, æ, º, æ, , æ, and ; also discounted are Katharevousa phrases and inﬂected nouns used in prepositional fashion, such as K ÆNÆ, ºªﬁø, or

ﬁø (another reminder of the fuzziness of synchronic categories and the gradualness of diachronic reanalyses). 26 It is at times impossible to distinguish between simplex and compound forms—and not only in Greek: in English there is no clear distinction between the status of into and out of or instead of and in lieu of. Furthermore, originally multilectic forms like throughout or notwithstanding are ofﬁcially recognized as prepositions (Quirk and Crystal 1985: 666). However, whether we choose to regard Greek demotic prepositions such as Y Æ as simplex prepositions, or loans from Katharevousa like Øa

ı as complex ones, is not a matter of much consequence; spelling could reveal our personal belief, but it is now the rule to write all these forms as one word. 27 The implicit localism that can be detected in the accounts of prepositional and case usage produced by many linguists (cf. p. 51) can also be found amongst Modern Greek ones: Setatos (1994: 864) tacitly arranges prepositional meanings in a hierarchy starting with space (except for Katharevousa items that no longer have any spatial sense). 28 It is likely that this ancient preposition (here listed as “simplex”) originally arose from a composition of +, but the perception of that was lost very early. We are again at the blurred boundaries between monolectic and compound prepositions (cf. p. 132 n. 44). 29 On other combinations (e.g. I Æ I,

Æ I, Kø ) see pp. 271—7.

Prepositions in Modern Greek I ÆØ I I ÆØ

(æØ)ªæﬁø I (æØ)ªæﬁø

ºÆ I ºÆ

KŒ I KØÆ

ø I a I K-/I-/ø I K-/I-/ø

ØÆ I Y Æ Œø I Œa

ÆÇd

ÆŒæØa I

Æ

o æÆ I æ a I æ a

æÆ I ø I ºœ I ºœ

æd I

255

‘facing’ ‘facing’ ‘around’ ‘around’ ‘beside’ ‘beside’ ‘except’ ‘against’ ‘out of ’ ‘after’ ‘over’ ‘on’ ‘after’ ‘as far as’ ‘under’ ‘near’ ‘together with’ ‘far from’ ‘inside’ ‘after’ ‘in front of ’ ‘in front of ’ ‘beyond’ ‘behind’ ‘next to’ ‘next to’ ‘before’

Some linguists have denied the latter group the status of prepositions. While they may barely draw a distinction between prepositions used productively and relics from Katharevousa,30 they disallow compound prepositions: Babiniotis and Kondo´s (1967: 244ff.) excluded them altogether from the category of ‘prepositions’; 30 Cf. e.g. Triandaphyllidis (1941: 392), Tzartzanos (1946: 1: 219), Holton et al. (1997: 405). Note that the point at which one draws the line between productive and fossilized forms is necessarily chosen arbitrarily. There is a fair degree of agreement as to which items constitute the truly demotic set—for instance, Tzartzanos (1946: 1: 181) and Yannakopoulou (1982: 381) coincide; Tsopanakis (1994: 534) adds åæØ. But when grammarians produce a list of the prepositions that they deem archaic but still in use,

256

The history of Greek prepositions

Tsopanakis (1994: 533ff.), likewise, makes no mention of them when he deals, albeit extensively, with prepositions—even though he includes “improper” ones;31 Holton et al. (1997: 365) discuss the ﬁrst elements of compound prepositions only in the section on adverbs. On the other hand: Triandaphyllidis (1941: 393), although referring to items like ø as “adverbs”, admits that when they are combined with simplex prepositions they N ıÆ F b æŁ

Ø; Mirambel (1949: 186ff.) had already given full prepositional status to such adverbþP combinations—albeit implicitly—by terming them “pre´positions compose´es”; Yannakopoulou (1982: 382) states that it is a characteristic of the prepositions of today’s Greek that they are either ±º (such as , , or I) or Ł (exempliﬁed by ÆÇd , Œa , and ÆŒæØa I); Eleftheriades (1985: 475) classiﬁes them as “phrasal prepositions” and recognizes that they “function as unit [i.e. simplex] prepositions”; Mackridge (1985: 203ff.) accepts that “there is a number of adverbs of time and place which combine with one of the primary prepositions to form complex prepositions”; Nakas (1987: 20ff.) weighs up the two views at length and concludes, on the basis of his evidence, that there are Ł æŁ

Ø to be distinguished from independent sequences of adverbsþprepositions; Fries (1991: 67) acknowledges the existence in Modern Greek of “combinations of intransitive and transitive P-lexemes” which result in forms such as ø being inside the prepositional phrase;

they inevitably disagree as to what is part of living usage. The tentative list above of “productively used” simplex prepositions contains more than the demotic ones, because some Katharevousa prepositions are now fairly productive; but all lists are questionable (be they all-inclusive or with exclusions) since they suggest either that all prepositions are equally productive, or that productive and non-productive ones are neatly distinct—neither of which is true. 31 An interesting exception: Tsopanakis (1994) ignores all forms like ø , but also lists as (improper) preposition (alongside the ancient åæØ) Y Æ (by others spelt Y Æ ). In doing so, he is purely guided—it seems—by spelling conventions: in no other respect does Y Æ differ from ÆÇd . Theophanopou´lou-Kondou´ (1994: 239) also describes Y Æ as compound only diachronically.

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Theophanopou´lou-Kondou´ (1992: 310ff.) identiﬁes, in the Chomskyan X-bar framework, compound prepositions with a [[ADV þ P] þNP] structure (as opposed to the [ADV [PþNP]] type also found in Greek); Tachibana (1993b: 525ff.) talks about “complex prepositions” and explores the meanings of some of them—combinatory meanings that the items constituting compound prepositions cannot have on their own. Detractors see items such as

Æ, ø, or ø (unlike prepositions such as I) as nothing but adverbs. It is true that adverbs differ from simplex prepositions in some respects: the “adverb” is mainly intransitive—it can only take clitic pronouns and, above all, it requires them in the genitive: (7.29) a ŒØ AÆØ

Æ ‘(s)he sleeps inside’ (7.30)

a *ŒØ AÆØ I ‘(s)he sleeps away’

(7.29) b

Æ ı ‘inside me[GEN]’

(7.30) b *I ı ‘from me[GEN]’ (7.29) c (7.30)

*

Æ Æ ‘inside me[ACC]’

c Ie Æ ‘from me[ACC]’

Furthermore, only ‘adverbs’ can act as a noun or as an adjective: (7.29) d

e

Æ ‘the inside’

(7.30) d *e I ‘the distance(?)’32 (7.29) e (7.30)

e

ø æÆ ‘the back door’

(cf. Hesse 1985: 15)

* Ie æÆ ‘the far door(?)’

32 Expressions like e I can be used metalinguistically—all Greek words of any number and gender are then referred to as neuter singulars—but this is irrelevant to our discussion.

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The history of Greek prepositions

But while it is unquestionable that forms such as Œø, Œ, or

Æ can be adverbs, we must recognize that when they are compounded with monolectic prepositions like or I they are, functionally, prepositions of the Modern Greek language. The resulting constructions usually have the format ø I, Œa , but in some cases the adverbial preposition is placed after the NP: (7.31)

e Ø æ ‘in front of the house’

Rarely, the adverbial preposition has a simplex preposition both before and after the noun:

e ÆPŒÅ Ie Œø ‘under the car’ Compound Ps are like simplex ones (e.g. , , I, or åøæ) in that they take accusative objects (and if the objects are pronouns, they then must be emphatic ones): Ie e Ø ‘from the house’ ªØa e Ø ‘for the house’

like ø Ie e Ø ‘over the house’ like Id ªØa e Ø ‘instead of the house’

Ie Æ ‘from me’ ªØa Æ ‘for me’

like ø Ie Æ ‘over me’ like Id ªØa Æ ‘instead of me’

One might counterargue that this happens simply because the [ADV þ P] sequence is accidental, and that what we see are the syntactic requirements of the preposition alone. However, the adverbial and the prepositional use of items like Kø differ semantically, as signalled by intonation (cf. Nakas 1987: 24ff.)—and perhaps punctuation: ¼çÅ Æ e Æº ı Kø, e Œæ Ø ‘I left my coat upstairs on the bed’ ¼çÅ Æ e Æº ı Kø e Œæ Ø ‘I left my coat on (top of) the bed’ Indeed, if the “adverb” is removed from our putative compound prepositions, a sentence may change meaning or become ungrammatical: e ºÆ r ÆØ æ a e Ø e ºÆ r ÆØ ------- e Ø ªÆ ªŒ Œø Ie e ÆPŒÅ ªÆ ªŒ ---- Ie e ÆPŒÅ

‘the bicycle is in front of the house’ ‘the bicycle is in the house’ ‘the cat came out from under the car’ ‘the cat came out of the car’

Prepositions in Modern Greek ªÆ æØ ŒÆ Œø Ie e ÆPŒÅ ¼ * ªÆ æØ ŒÆ ---- Ie e ÆPŒÅ ¼

259

‘the cat was under the car’ (unsemantic)

Furthermore, compound Ps, like simplex ones, have no semantic restrictions in the kind of object pronouns they can have, nor in the type of meaning they need to have in order to be allowed to have an object pronoun. “Adverbs” taking weak pronouns as objects, on the other hand, prefer animate objects: (7.32) Œ ºÆ Ø ÆÇ Æºø Å ŒÆd e ªÆd ŒØ Æ Kø Å ‘the girl was reading lying down and the cat was sleeping on top of her’ (7.33) *BæÆ c ŒÆæ ŒºÆ ŒÆd ÆºÆ e Ø º Kø Å ‘I took the chair and placed the book on it’ (7.34)

%ÆæÆ ŒŁÆØ KŒE, ŒÆd ºÆ Å ˚ÆÅ ‘Mary sits there and, next to her, Katy does’

(7.35) * ŒıÇÆ rÆØ ŒE, ŒÆd ºÆ Å r ÆØ e Ø ‘the kitchen is there and, next to it, is the bathroom’ (7.36)

› — åØ

Æ ı ‘Panos has so much hatred inside him’

(7.37) *e ø Ø r å

Æ ı Æ Œæ Ø ‘the room had a bed inside it’ We have already seen (pp. 27–31) reasons for recognizing certain sequences as compound prepositions.33 A further objection that could be raised is that in Greek many other adverbs can be combined with a preposition and its object. If, say, ø I is given prepositional status, several other adverbs should be listed as compound prepositions (when followed by a prepositional phrase—and as intransitive prepositions when on their own). For example: IæÅÆ ‘independently’

åØŒ ‘relatively’

also also

IæÅÆ I ‘regardless of ’

åØŒa ‘according to’

33 It may be worthwhile also to make a crosslinguistic comparison of the classiﬁcation adopted: full prepositional status is normally given (Quirk and Crystal 1985: 669ff.) to English multilectic prepositions that correspond (often morph-by-morph) to Greek compound prepositions. Examples include: out of (ø I), next to (ºÆ ), close to (Œa ), ahead of ( æ a I), prior to (æd I), away from ( ÆŒæØa I), and indeed strings such as in front of ( æ a ), as well as nonspatial ones (despite their clear spatial origin) that have no Greek correspondent, such as in the face of, in the light of, in line with, by way of, at the hands of, and on the grounds of.

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The history of Greek prepositions

Œæıç ‘secretly’

also

Œæıça I ‘unbeknown to’34

The status of these items is relevant to our discussion because, although in some respect they resemble compound prepositions, they are not spatial.35 However, an analysis of these combinations made in the early 1990s (Theophanopou´lou-Kondou´ 1992: 315–17) has shown that their semantic characteristics and their syntactic behaviour differ signiﬁcantly from forms like ø I; it has concluded that (in X-bar terms), while the Œæıça I type does indeed have the adverb (the intransitive preposition) as its Head, in the ø I type e KØææÅ ÆØŒe ºØıæªE ‰ æ ØæØ c B —*O¨ ıØ Æ Øa ƒd ÅÆ [ ŁÅ æŁ Å] the adverb functions as a Speciﬁer of the P forming a virtual unit—a compound preposition. (Theophanopou´lou-Kondou´ 1992: 319)

Theophanopou´lou-Kondou´ (1992: 320, nodes translated) therefore suggested the following analyses of the two structures:36 (i) Linear sequences [adverb þ (preposition þ NP)], that have an empty Speciﬁer slot and two Heads (through repetition of single-bar node): PP P⬘ P⬘

Spec P κρυφα1

NP P , απο⬘

(ii) Linear sequences [(adverb þ preposition) þ NP], that have the “improper” P as Speciﬁer, and the Prepositional Phrase as Complement: PP P⬘ Spec ⬘ πανω

P , απο⬘

NP

34 Theophanopou´lou-Kondou´ also notes (1992: 317) that the requirements of these apparent prepositions are common to all words related to them: e.g. Œæıç takes I like Œæ ø I “to hide (something) from”, and Œæı I “hidden from”; çøÆ takes like ı çøH “to agree with”, etc. 35 It is interesting, but not signiﬁcant for Modern Greek, that the original meaning of the stems of pﬃ pﬃ these adverbs was probably “concrete”: åØŒ < å = “hold”, I-KæÅÆ < K-Iæ = “hang upon”, etc. 36 Although Theophanopou´lou-Kondou´’s study is syntactic and synchronic (rather than semantic and diachronic), it highlights that it has been spatial adverbs that have turned into prepositions.

Prepositions in Modern Greek

261

Theophanopou´lou-Kontou´ (1992: 317–18) thus interprets the difference between different sequences of adverb þ preposition þ noun phrase as due to the different position of the “adverb”, that may or may not be in the Head position. She also emphasizes that the Head position was a later development in the history of the language. In sequences such as Œæıça I, the ﬁrst element is nothing but a self-standing adverb that can be separated from the following I in ways Kø cannot be: ZŒÆ Œæıça Ie f ªE ı > ‘he did it unbeknown to his parents’ º Æ qÆ ø Ie e æÆ ÇØ > ‘the lamp was over (from) the table’

Ie Øe ZŒÆ Œæıç; lit. ‘to whom did he do it unbeknown?’ *Ie d qÆ º Æ Kø; lit. ‘from what was the lamp over?’

So, we can discount the Œæıça I type, but accept the ø I type as PP. Similar objections concern lexical sequences of other kinds, such as: (i) [[P1 þ N þ P2] þ NPacc]

e.g. b å

Å ‘in relation to’ or b ııÆ e ‘in connection with’

(ii) [[P þ N] þ NPacc]

e.g. b Å ‘on the basis of’ or b Içæ ‘prompted by’

(iii) [[NPcase] þ NPgen]

e.g. Ø ‘on the basis of ’ or

ﬁø ‘via’

(iv) [[P þ N] þ NPgen]

e.g. K ÆNÆ ‘because of ’ or N æ ‘at the expense of ’

These sequences are often idiomatic (i.e. the overall meaning is not transparent from its constituent parts), and they do not allow all syntactic or morphological variations (additions, removals, changes). The categorial analysis of these sequences (indeed, also of some of the compound prepositions here recognized as such) is problematic; but this is not only due to the data analysed: a further hurdle is the inadequacy of some of our traditional theoretical assumptions. The Saussurian dogma that synchrony cannot be given any diachronic “width” somehow clashes with the gradual character of grammaticalization.37 The processes of grammaticalization and of reanalysis account not only for diachronic change, but also for synchronic variation (Lehmann 1985: 310). The issue here is that sequences like Œø I have indeed started their life as ADV [PP] structures, but by subsequent reanalysis they have shifted to [ADVþP] þNP;

37 For a set of criteria that can be used to assess the cohesiveness of multilectic prepositional constructions (the degree of grammaticalization) on a scale, see Quirk and Crystal (1985: 671–2).

262

The history of Greek prepositions

other sequences, however, have not made that shift.38 Theophanopou´lou-Kontou´ (1994: 238), one of the few scholars who studied the structure of Modern Greek prepositions, stresses repeatedly that the distinction between free sequences and compound prepositions is ﬂuid and that the shift is gradual; this is certainly borne out by the facts, although it is not always clear which grammatical conceptualizations may correctly describe each stage. Let us consider examples (7.29) and (7.30), parts a–d above in their order. Items of the (a) type (which are usually translations from French and English anyway) are not fully-ﬂedged prepositions since the sequence is breakable or pluralizable, and the noun may preserve its meaning: (7.38)

K ºØÅ BŁ Å æ ŒÆØ[ b { c} å

Å b]cIçÆ Æ lit. ‘the development of the matter is in close connection with our decision’

(7.39)

æØ Œ Æ [ b {ŒÆºb} å

Ø b] f ª ‘we are on good terms with the neighbours’

Items of the (b) type are not prepositions, because the noun that they contain is an attribute of whatever noun follows: (7.40)

b Å ÆPa f r Æ ‘on the basis of what I saw’

where the noun Å is coreferential with—an apposition to—the following noun, which is the true object of the preposition. The phrase, therefore, means “with what I saw as the basis”. Items of the (c) and of the (d) type are usually relics from Katharevousa. The (c) type consists of a small number of frozen case-marked nouns now used, unproductively, as prepositions:

ﬁø old dative Ø old dative

¼ ‘by means (of)’ ¼ ‘on the basis (of)’

38 Theophanopou´lou-Kondou´ (1994: 236) reiterates that the loss of paradigmatic and syntagmatic variability (increasingly ﬁxed order of the constituents and gradual inability to vary them or to omit them) indicates grammaticalization (cf. Lehmann 1985: 305ff.). This is right, but we should not take it as an indication that a construction like ø I (since it alternates with ø ) is not a preposition. Some combinations express a combinatory meaning—another diagnostic for prepositional status also accepted by Theophanopou´lou-Kondou´ (1994: 236, also in Quirk and Crystal 1985). Similar combinatory meanings were expressed in Classical Greek by associations of detached (even postposable) prepositions and cases, some of which were synsemantic (pp. 20–5). Moreover, Modern Greek compound prepositions correspond crosslinguistically to monolectic items: English above, Classical Greek æ = Modern Greek ø I. Cf. also Nakas (1987: 24) who sees items like ø as either intermediates between adverbs and prepositions or as pairs of homophonous twins, because “åı a åÆæÆŒÅæØ ØŒa H ª Øø æŁ

ø”.

Prepositions in Modern Greek

263

Items of the (d) kind are old complete PPs taken from Katharevousa (some now spelt as single words) and they constitute another small and fundamentally non-expandable category: N Zçº disused preposition þ noun without article K ÆNÆ disused preposition þ noun without article

¼ ‘to the beneﬁt (of)’ ¼ ‘from the cause (of)’

Items of both the (c) and the (d) types can only be followed by a genitive. This is against the rules of modern prepositional usage (but, of course, is just what the noun on which these forms are based requires). It appears, therefore, that forms such as K ÆNÆ are not integrated amongst prepositions as I or ø I. The lack of both syntagmatic and paradigmatic ﬂexibility of these constructions (the ﬁxed nature of the order of the constituting elements, the ban on the insertion of premodiﬁers, the existence of restrictions in the selection of the nouns used, etc.) may suggest that they are being grammaticalized into a prepositional phrase; those traits, on the other hand, are also what is to be expected in constructions borrowed en bloc from other languages (or from older forms of the same language, such as Katharevousa).39 Even before we look at semantic evolution of Modern Greek prepositions, a few general diachronic observations can be made about the whole inventory: (i) As we have seen, if the combinable “improper” prepositions40 are properly taken into account, the system is not at all poor as compared with the classical one, or with that of modern European languages, although it has often been claimed to be.41 Without compound prepositions (or learned archaisms), Modern Greek would have no equivalent of English prepositions such as on, near, or under—as it has no counterparts to along, throughout, across, or to non-spatial prepositions such as during; (ii) At least one new preposition has been added: ºÆ. Others of medieval origin have become well-established: Y Æ , Œ, ºœ

39 We can likewise discount the occasional occurrence of a few foreign prepositions such as ØÇÆ “opposite” (< French vis-a`-vis “facing”), or ıªæ “straight to/on” (< Turkish dog˘ru “towards”) because their use in Greek is only adverbial. 40 By “improper” prepositions we still refer (only) to those so labelled in Classical Greek philology—although in Modern Greek , , and ªØ too fulﬁl synchronically the prerequisites for that label, since they are not used as preﬁxes. 41 For instance, Fries (1991: 66) says that “a striking difference” between German and Modern Greek is that Greek has only about twenty simplex (transitive) prepositions while German has over two hundred; Eringa (1969: 22) says that demotic prepositions “ne sont pas tre`s nombreuses, pas plus de dix”.

264

The history of Greek prepositions

(iii) The inventory is rich despite the fact that the Medieval ºııÆ has been drastically curbed, with the result that usually only one form of each preposition has survived (except for Iø/Kø/ø): Ø, ªØ > ªØ only42 K æ, æ Ł, K æ , æ > æ only.43

7.5 The compound prepositions today It is now de rigueur, except for borrowings from the learned tradition, for most “improper” prepositions to be combined with a second (but simplex) preposition. The older alternative, the genitive, is mostly avoided except when using a weak pronoun. This was the predictable result not only of the tendency to combine adverbs with simplex prepositions, but also of the trend for prepositions (of whatever structure) to govern only accusatives. Surveying Modern Greek usage, we will look at compound prepositions ﬁrst, and at simplex ones afterwards, as we did in the analysis of Medieval prepositional usage. Why do the compound ones get priority? Consider this line from a famous poem by Nobel laureate George Seferis: (7.41) ˚ø Ie e ºÆØ, Œa e æ,

Æ d ç ‘under the planetree, near the water, amidst the laurel’ Compound prepositions can really be regarded as the standard prepositions of Modern Greek. As the gloss indicates, the modern Greek compound prepositions correspond to the recognized prepositions of English—and to the classical Greek simplex prepositions. Theophanopou´lou-Kondou´ (1994: 240) speciﬁcally ascribes the spread of compound forms in the Modern Greek 42 The occurrence today of Ø as a preﬁx is irrelevant—and partly artiﬁcial; the survival of old prepositions as preﬁxes is a phenomenon found crosslinguistically, and in Greek there is also the inﬂuence of Katharevousa to be taken into account. The archaic form of the second part of the preﬁxed word often conﬁrms the learned origin. Thus (Bortone 1994), besides the genuinely demotic ØÆ- Çø, that has a modern verb base, we ﬁnd the verb ØÆ-Œø “to interrupt” in which the modern verb Œ ø “to cut” still appears in its classical form (there is no *ØÆŒ ø, let alone *ªØÆŒ ø); similarly, besides the modern preposition “with” and the modern verb ÅªÆø “to go” we ﬁnd the combination of their archaic synonyms in ı Æø “happen” (never * ı ÅªÆø, let alone * ÅªÆø), and besides “into” and the modern ç æø “bring” we ﬁnd their older forms in N ç æø “contribute” (never *N ç æø or * ç æø). In Modern Greek there are many verbal and nominal preﬁxes, including many unknown to Ancient Greek (Œ- Œ ÆØ “I stop brieﬂy”), which do not have a corresponding preposition (cf. ÆÆ- º ø “I see again”, ºı-Ł ºø “I want intensely”, ŒÆº-æø “I have a nice time”, ŒÆŒ-çÆ ÆØ “I make a bad impression”). For the development of preﬁxes in Modern Greek see Dietrich (1995: 143ff.). Other reasons for treating items used K ıŁ

Ø differently from their twins used K ıØ were discussed at pp. 120–1. 43 By the same token, the survival of K æ as an interjection is extraneous to our discussion.

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265

prepositional system to the contemporary ‘IºØÆ B ØŒØºÆ H æŁØŒH ø f åÆæÆŒæØ c IæåÆÆ ººÅØŒ’. The Greek system of simplex prepositions had indeed gradually lost the connotation of dimensionality; languages can either have nominal inﬂections and adpositions indistinct as to dimensional features (e.g. Modern Greek generic preposition , Turkish all-purpose locative case), or cases and adpositions which identify those features (e.g. Ancient Greek Ææ, K, etc. and Finnish speciﬁc adessive, inessive, etc.). Thus, Modern Greek has a simplex preposition that subsumes several ancient ones, and Turkish has a single case sufﬁx that subsumes the meanings of several Finnish ones. Non-dimensional expressions of static spatial relation (with no speciﬁcation of the size and shape of the reference object) are the most basic;44 if dimensionality needs to be stated, Modern Greek resorts to combined prepositions and Turkish resorts to polymorphemic postpositions which mark transparently the two required features [locationþdimension]. See Figures 7.2 and 7.3, for example. English

‘in the house’ ‘at the house’

Ancient Greek Ps (dimensional)

, , ′ εν τω & οικω , ′ 1 τω παρα & οικω

Modern Greek P (nondimensional)

σ[1ε] το1 ′ σπιτι

Modern Greek compound P (dimensional)

′ (‘inside at’) ′ μεσα στο1 σπιτι ′ (‘before at’) 1 στο 1 σπιτι μπροστα

FIGURE 7.2

English

Finnish case (dimensional)

‘in the house’

talo–ssa

‘at the house’

talo–lla

Turkish case (nondimensional) ev–de

Turkish inflected postposition (dimensional) evin iç-i-n-de (‘inside of’) evin ön-ü-n-de (‘in front of’)

FIGURE 7.3

The Ancient Greek prepositional system was also able to express ﬁne degrees of proximity—in ways that Modern Greek can only express with compounds (Figure 7.4):45 44 See Lyons (1977: 690), Bennett (1975: 13), Fillmore (1971), and for more details, Miller and Johnson-Laird (1976: 383ff.). 45 Spatial relations are nonetheless expressed by adpositions sketchily, and usually even more sketchily by case-forms. Jackendoff and Landau (1992: 118) claim that this is not a limitation in human language but in the encoding of spatial representation in our cognition, directly linked with the properties of the human brain.

266

The history of Greek prepositions

, (1) εν

, (2) επι¢

¢ (3) παρα

¢ (4) προV

, ¢ (5) ανευ

FIGURE 7.4

1 2 3 4 5

x inside y: Classical Greek K (Modern Greek

Æ ) x outside but in contact with y: Classical Greek K (Modern Greek ø ) x outside but close to y: Classical Greek Ææ (Modern Greek ºÆ ) x outside but not far from y: Classical Greek æ (Modern Greek Œa ) x outside and far from y: Classical Greek ¼ı (Modern Greek ÆŒæØa I)

Has the use of compound prepositions developed further than in the Middle Ages? Let us see what the new constructions are at this stage in the history of Greek.46 Modern Greek has increased the use of combinations of “adverbs” of concrete meaning with an obligatorily transitive preposition, like

Æ or ø I. The prepositions that may appear as the second element are still mainly I and (marginally and ªØ47). Now a few “improper” prepositions can even be compounded with either I or , something reminiscent of the Classical use of multiple cases after a preposition. Most of the “improper” prepositions that in Byzantine Greek (if they existed) took a plain genitive, in Modern Greek have a secondary preposition and accusative objects: the genitive is usually not an option (except in archaizing styles or with weak pronouns)48. The sequences [adverb+I/ ] have not just all become synsemantic since the Medieval period: the degree to which they are synsemantic today still varies synchronically according to the individual combination—Classical [preposition þ case] sequences are parallel in this respect too—and in many instances, the adverb is semantically independent of the following PP.49 46 There is no general agreement on what the inventory of today’s compound prepositions (and their combinations) is; different grammarians and different speakers have divergent views; here we accept e.g. ºÆ I but not of æÆ —unlike, for example, Fries (1988: 76). All this is open to discussion. 47 Only ÆÇ and few synonymous—but less standard—comitative adverbs such as I Æ take

(besides Y Æ , see also p. 256 footnote 31), and only I takes ªØ. 48 For a detailed structural description, see Eringa (1969: 22ff.). 49 I therefore consider totally erroneous Triandaphyllidis’ (1941: 393) listing of ø and Œø

together with true compound prepositions such as ø I or Iø I. The same applies to

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267

In those instances, an adverb and a preposition simply express their individual meanings. The semantic differences between the choice of I and of as second element in true compound prepositions, on the other hand, shall be discussed in the following sections, looking at the “adverbs” that can combine with either, and at those that can take only one of them.

7.6 Compound prepositions allowing a single combination For the sake of convenience,50 let us start with the items that can form a true compound with only one preposition—bearing in mind that the distinction between those combining with one and those combining with two is hazy.51 This group includes: I Æ, I, KŒ, KØÆ, ø, Y [Ø]Æ, Œø, Œ, ÆÇ, ÆŒæØ,

Æ, , æÆ, ø, æ, and o æÆ. Their range of meanings is limited, and in the list below just one meaning—the most typical and, in some cases, the only one—is exempliﬁed. This group includes the old “improper” prepositions—items that used to take a genitive, but could not be preﬁxes, and so were seen as just adverbs—although their form may now be slightly different. (7.42) I Æ + ‘between, amongst’52 æBŒÆ Øa çøªæÆçÆ Å I Æ b Ø ºÆ ‘I found a photograph of her between two books’ (7.43)

KŒ + I ‘except’

ı çÅ Æ ‹ºØ KŒ Ie Æ ‘everybody agreed except me’

(7.44) KØÆ + ‘against’ ƒ ‚ººÅ qÆ KØÆ c K Æ Å F ˝`!O ‘the Greeks were against NATO’s intervention’53 Eleftheriades’ (1982: 476) and Fries’ (1988: 76) listing of Œø and Y ØÆ as “phrasal prepositions” on a par with true ones such as ø . 50 For reasons of space, reference is made only to the standard language, and, in this section, only to productive usage. The distinction between productive and unproductive usage, however, is particularly difﬁcult for Modern Greek—see pp. 289–300. 51 Hesse (1985: 13), for instance, accepts I Æ I, which is indeed not unheard of, although I Æ is very much more common. 52 The synonymous preposition Æ is an archaism, and can still only take a genitive. Interestingly, Joseph and Philippaki-Warburton (1987: 46) remark that the difference between the old Æ and the more recent I Æ is that “the latter has a more locational sense”. Indeed, with weak pronouns, Æ can only have a non-spatial sense. 53 See also p. 293.

268 (7.45)

The history of Greek prepositions ø + I ‘out of, outside’ ªBŒÆ ø Ie e Ø ‘they came out of the house’

(7.46) Œø + I ‘down, under’ åÆ Æ Øa Æº Æ Œø I(e) e Œæ Ø ‘they forgot a suitcase under the bed’ (7.47)

Æ + ‘inside’ YåÆ aæ

Æ e Œºº ªØ ‘we had a bar inside the college’ (7.48) [O] ø + I ‘behind’ XÆ ø Ie d Œıæ ‘(s)he was behind the curtains’ (7.49) æÆ + I ‘beyond’ æåØ ¼ººÅ ªB æÆ Ie c ŁºÆ

Æ ‘there is another land beyond the sea’ (7.50) æ + I ‘before’ Ø Æ c åÆ æd (Ie) d K Ø ‘(s)he studied only the night before the exams’54 In this group we can also list a couple of classical simplex (“proper”) prepositions which today, especially in familiar style, are turned into compound ones: (7.51)

I + ªØ ‘instead of ’ ª %ÆæÆ Id ªØa Æ ‘Mary went instead of me’55

(7.52)

+ I (obligatory with pronouns and indeﬁnite NPs) ‘after’ ªÆ ØÆŒb a (Ie) d K Ø ‘we went [on] holiday after the exams’56

54 Another sui generis combination, which puzzles linguists (cf. Theophanopou´lou-Kondou´ 1994: 241) as to its structure and therefore status, is ‰ æ “as regards”. 55 Note that there is a signiﬁcant difference (pace Babiniotis and Kondo´s 1967: 245) between this combination (I+ªØ) and a sequence of independent prepositions, such as Id . E.g. in Id b

Æ ºÅ Æ ÆP “they talked to him instead of [to] you”, —which is obligatorily repeated before the second pronoun—occurs because it is required by the verb. This is further demonstrated by paraphrases in which I is a conjunction: is still there, because it is still required by the verb: cf. Id a Øº ı b Æ ºÅ Æ ÆP “instead of talking to you they talked to him”. 56 Katharevousa also employed another old temporal adverb with the same sense: ØÆ “then, later”, an even more archaizing synonym of . This has entered learned and then popular use, and

Prepositions in Modern Greek

269

% is usually followed by I and (accusative) indeﬁnite NPs and pronouns, but often by a plain (accusative) deﬁnite NP. The ﬁrst element of demotic compound prepositions, however, cannot be used without the second element (*ø e æÆ ÇØ, * ÆÇd f çºı). The use of as a non-compound preposition (especially with deﬁnite NPs) is therefore due to Katharevousa—and a I is as an attempt to “regularize” a learned simplex preposition by turning it into a compound. Further proof of the learned origin of is the fact that can be used as a self-standing adverb (ŁÆ A “we’ll go afterwards”), but Modern Greek transitive simplex prepositions of demotic origin (e.g. ) cannot be used intransitively as adverbs.57 In this list (compound prepositions allowing a single combination) we also need to include the newest prepositions of the inventory (their individual etymology will be noted as we come to them). It is interesting to observe that, when new prepositions were created, the syntactic format they took was that of compound prepositions: (7.53) Y Æ + 58 ‘as far as’ a ÆººØa Y Æ f þ ı rÆØ B Æ ‘hair down to the shoulders is fashionable’ (7.54)

Œ + ‘near’59 ÆŒæØ a YåÆ Ø Œa c ŁºÆ

Æ ‘if only we had a house near the sea’

(7.55) ÆÇ + ‘together with’60 çıªÆ ÆÇd b e Iæç ı ‘I left (together) with his brother’ has also come to be used as a compound preposition in the same way as , so that we can now also say ØÆ I. 57 Thus, both BªÆ b c ‚ººÅ “I went with Elli” and BªÆ ÆÇd b c ‚ººÅ “I went together with Elli” are grammatical, but only ﬁrst elements of compound prepositions can be used on their own: Ła A ÆÇ “we’ll go together” cannot be expressed as *Ła A . 58 This is the truly demotic preposition for “as far as”, which is further conﬁrmed by its form: although now spelt as one word (Y Æ ), it is a compound preposition: Y [Ø]Æ “straight”þ . Grammars (e.g. Tsopanakis 1994: 534) often list Y Æ as one of the few simplex preposition of several syllables, but its length simply highlights its compound nature: otherwise, it would be the only demotic preposition of more than two syllables, because KÆ, Æ, and KØ are all of learned origin. Note the impact of Katharevousa: Y Æ is now quite rare, while its (once) learned synonym åæØ is far more standard. 59 ˚ is from Œ “short” (cf. Andriotis 1983: 166); therefore Œ means “at a short distance”. 60 %ÆÇ is attested even in the Middle Ages but not in the Medieval Greek corpus we examined. It apparently derives from ÆÇ, the “adverbial accusative” of the diminutive of the noun AÇÆ “clod, lump”, so that presumably it meant “in a lump with”. Other etymologies have been put forth but largely rejected (see Hatzidakis 1905: 111ff.), including a dative * ÆÇﬁB of the same noun (but with an inexplicable stress shift), and a compound preposition – Æ+ (with a plausible—but otherwise

270

The history of Greek prepositions

(7.56)

ÆŒæØ + I ‘far from’61 r ÆØ ÆŒæØa Ie c ÆæÆ ı ‘they are far away from their country’

(7.57)

o æÆ + I ‘after’ qæŁÆ KH o æÆ Ie e º ‘they came here after the war’62

How can we tell that these combinations constitute compound prepositions? We saw that one criterion for establishing compound status is the synsemanticity of the combined element; however, in ø Ie e Ø “out of the house”, I seems per se a fully semantic preposition: its individual sense of “from” seems to be what it expresses, since that meaning ﬁts the context. One might therefore feel inclined to conclude that ø I is not a compound. It would be a wrong analysis, however, as other examples with ø I demonstrate: I can be used with ø anyway, regardless of whether there is ablative/perlative motion, lack of any motion, or even allative motion: XÆ ø Ie e Ø BªÆ ø Ie e Ø ªBŒÆ ø Ie e Ø æÆ Æ ø Ie e Ø

‘they were ‘they went (to) ‘they came (out) ‘they passed (by)

outside the house’ outside the house’ outside the house’ outside the house’

So the phrase can be static, perlative, elative, and allative. Similarly, for Œø I, we ﬁnd I used regardless of whether the sense is static location, source-movement or goal movement: r ÆØ Œø Ie e æÆ ÇØ Bª Œø Ie e æÆ ÇØ ªBŒ Œø Ie e æÆ ÇØ æÆ Œø Ie e æÆ ÇØ

‘it is under the bed’ ‘it went (to) under the bed’ ‘it came out from under the bed’ ‘it passed (through) under the bed’

unattested—voicing from /s/ > /z/). Other colloquial constructions enable us to see how a noun may come to be added adverbially to so as to reinforce or disambiguate the comitative sense: cf. ªÆ b e ˚ Æ Ææ Æ, lit. “we went company with Kosta”, equivalent to ªÆ b e ˚ Æ ÆÇ. 61 From the adjective ÆŒæ “long”; thus the adverb/preposition ÆŒæØ (which used to be—and at times still is—spelt ÆŒæı) possibly means “at a long distance”. 62 Another new preposition, but of restricted (dialectal) use, is Ø “near”. It only occurs with . Let us note that it is still only spatial. It derives from the adjective Ø “snub-nosed, ﬂat” (cf. Andriotis 1983: 323). Hence, as an adverb, “(ﬂatly) against”.

Prepositions in Modern Greek

271

which indicates that Œø I is a compound.63 Likewise: (7.58)

XÆ/ ªBŒ/Bª/ æÆ ø Ie d Œıæ ‘(s)he was / came out from / went (to) / passed þ behind the curtains’

So, ø I is also a unit. The association of ø “behind” with I “from” does not necessarily mean “from behind”: (7.59)

Æº a åæ ÆÆ ø Ie Æ ÆŒÆ ‘(s)he put the money behind a painting’

In fact, to explicitate the ablative meaning, an additional I can be pre-posed to the unit ø I (although compound prepositions with I can also indicate source-movement without repeating I in front of them): (7.60)

ªÆº a åæ ÆÆ [Ie] ø Ie Æ ÆŒÆ ‘(s)he removed the money from behind a painting’

The compounds we have looked at so far, as the section heading has indicated, can only appear with one simplex preposition; we need to examine now whether they really have no other option. Do the adverbs listed in this section as compoundable only with either or I never appear with the other of the two? The answer is that yes, they do—but without constituting compound prepositions (see pp. 31–2). The simplex preposition in those instances has its own independent meaning and is selected by the verb. Observe, by way of example, after adverbs that may only combine with I: ø . . . :

ŒÆŁÆ ø e Œ

‘they were sitting out, in the garden’

and similarly:

63 One may argue that, for the sake of consistency, we should say that Œø I is a compound in all but the last two sentences, where I has full meaning (ablative/perlative). This is correct in principle, but there is evidence that the perception of native speakers is that I here loses its independence (its individual ablative/perlative sense): another I is very often preposed if the overall sense has to be ablative or perlative: (i) ªBŒ Ie Œø Ie e æÆ ÇØ ‘came out from under the bed’ (ii) æÆ Ie Œø Ie e æÆ ÇØ ‘passed under the bed’.

272

The history of Greek prepositions

Œø . . .

ÆŒæØ . . .

e æBŒÆ Œø e ªØ r ÆØ ÆŒæØa e KøæØŒ

‘they found him down(stairs) in the cellar’ ‘they are far away abroad’64

In the same fashion, the adverbs that can combine only with may be followed by (but may not combine with) I. Such sequences occur only when an independent, fully semantic I is required by a verb of ablative or perlative meaning (that is, a verb requiring I before its object anyway), such as ªÆø “to exit”, or æø “to pass”: I Æ . . . I ªBŒ I Æ Ie a ıe ÆæŒÆæØ Æ ÆPŒÅÆ ablat./perlat. ‘he came out from between the two parked cars’

Æ . . . I elative

e ŒØ r å ªE

Æ Ie Øa æÆ ‘the mouse had come out from inside a hole’ (pace Hesse 1985: 13)

Æ . . . I perlative

e æe çØ c ºÅ æÆ

Æ Ie øº ‘the water reaches the city passing through (inside) pipes’.

7.7 Compound prepositions with contrastive combinations Some of the “improper” prepositions that combine with a simplex preposition to create a true compound may do so with either I or —although with varying frequency. These are: IŒæı, I ÆØ, ªæﬁø, ºÆ, Kø, æ and ºœ. We noted previously an increase in the number of prepositions that, rather that taking the genitive, combine with (at least) one simplex preposition—æ, for example, is now increasingly combined with I. The number of compound prepositions that can appear in both combinations (+ and +I) has also grown since the Middle Ages,65 although the minimal pairs that we ﬁnd have not always developed clearly distinct meanings.

64 One cannot interpret in this way (for example) the compound preposition ÆŒæØa I in our earlier example rÆØ ÆŒæØa Ie c ÆæÆ ı for semantic reasons, since ÆŒæØ changes the sense of the simplex preposition: rÆØ Ie c ÆæÆ ı means “they are from their country”. 65 As noted before, contrastive combinations (þ /+ I) are still not possible for many Modern Greek compound prepositions, and it is perfectly possible that they never will be: in Classical Greek, many prepositions could combine with two (or even three) cases, but many could only govern one. At the end of this section, an explanation of this inbalance in terms of spatial (perceptive) terms will be brieﬂy noted.

Prepositions in Modern Greek

, &, ° h lampa einai ° panw s [ e° ]

, &, ° h lampa einai , ° panw ap [ o° ]

` trapezi ` to

` trapezi ` to

273

FIGURE 7.5

Between the combinations of the same “improper” preposition with different simplex prepositions there can be a ﬁne semantic difference; sometimes the difference is negligible or imperceptible, but at times it can be signiﬁcant. While the ﬁrst element (the “improper” preposition) carries most of the overall semantic weight, the second element ( and I, which take a more subtle meaning that “at” and “from”) add a further nuance related to the notions of proximity and distancing (Figure 7.5):66 (up)on: ø – above: ø I ‘adverb’ + + object ¼ within the region of typical interaction ‘adverb’ + I + object ¼ outside the region of typical interaction We can only talk, rather vaguely, of a “region of typical interaction” (i.e. location in an area or position that allows the interaction expected between two objects—see Miller and Johnson-Laird 1976: 387) because the precise location is identiﬁed by pragmatic or psychological factors—not by geography. Location in such a “region” does not automatically imply presence or lack of physical contact, but something more subjective (cf. pp. 55–6). Consider the pair shown in Figure 7.6 (examples adapted from Tachibana 1993b: 526ff.). Despite the identical English translation, there can be a different nuance: æ a+ is more likely to be said if the subject is watching television, because the typical “interaction” between a television set and someone positioned close to it for a protracted time is for the television to be showing a programme and for the person to be watching it; on the

66 Cadiot (1989: 56), describing the French prepositional system, identiﬁes two kinds of prepositions: those with a strong “sens interne”, which he terms “insituant”, and the simplex, monosyllabic, most common “pre´positions incolores” of French: a` and de, which he terms “vectorial ”. He also points out that French compound prepositions combine the two elements [“insituant ” þ “vectorial ”].

274

The history of Greek prepositions

mprosta`

` sthn

` thleorash

‘in front of the television’

, ` thleorash ` mprosta` apo` thn ‘in front of the television’

FIGURE 7.6

other hand, if the subject is ignoring the television set, we can get æ a+I. For example: (7.61) ‹ r å , ŒÆŁÆ ‹ºØ æ a (*I) c ÅºæÆ Å ‘whenever there was a match, they would all sit in front of the TV’ (7.62) b æ Æ a ÆæÆŒºıŁ ø e ªØÆd qÆ Øa ªº æÆ æ a Ie c ÅºæÆ Å ( æ a allowable) ‘I could not follow the match because there was a vase in front of the TV’ Examples here may be the best clariﬁers, so let us see these “improper” prepositions that allow both combinations (with or without a semantic difference). Let us start with the ones that go back to Classical Greek: (7.63)

Imtßjqu se† or, rarely, Ip¸ ‘opposite’67 a åØ æŒ IŒæı e Ø Å ‘there’s a park opposite her house’ b åØ æŒ IŒæı Ie e Ø Å ‘there’s a park opposite her house’

(7.64) Ipe†mamti + se† or, more commonly, Ip¸ ‘opposite, facing’ a e Œ E I ÆØ Ie e Ø ı ‘the hospital opposite my house’ b e Œ E I ÆØ e Ø ı ‘the hospital opposite my house’ (7.65)

Kp›my/Ip›my/p›my + se† or Ip¸ ‘on, over’ a çººÆ º ı ø a æ ‘leaves ﬂoat on the waters’

67 Today IŒæı is rare (rather dialectal)—and the combination with I is unusual.

Prepositions in Modern Greek

275

b ŒØ Æ ª çıæÆ ø I[e] e Ø ‘they built a bridge over the river’68 Two items that (despite their classical etymology) entered common prepositional use in their present form only in Medieval Greek also belong here:69 (7.66) cuqﬁ ´ ø + se† or Ip¸ ‘around’70 a ªæﬁø Ie c ºÅ ‘around (the external perimeter of) the city’ b ªæﬁø c ºÅ ‘about (inside) the city’71 (7.67) lpqost› + se† or Ip¸ ‘in front of ’, cf. ﬁg. 7.6. There are two new prepositions that can take either or I—although not equally often. They combine with I less frequently72 and the results are virtually synonymous: (7.68) dßpka + se† or Ip¸ ‘next to’73 some difference being barely perceptible: a ŒÆŁÆ ºÆ e ææ ‘he was sitting next to the president’ b Bæå Æ æÆ ºÆ Ie e ÆªÆÇ ‘there was a taverna next to the shop’ In the ﬁrst sentence, ºÆ I is less likely because I would suggest that there is no interaction between the two referents; in the second sentence, ºÆ is less likely because the referents are inanimate. (7.69) pk›z + se† or, rarely, Ip¸ ‘next to’74 synonymous with ºÆ:

68 This is a reﬁnement of the Medieval system. In Medieval Greek, the choice of the preposition was made regardless of contact or lack thereof (Tachibana 1993c: 428ff.): (i) ıºØa K ıÆ Iø N e Łæ (› º B !æø 56) ‘birds ﬂew above/over the throne’ (Modern Greek would require ø I) and regardless of whether the position is relative (¼ interchangeable) or intrinsic: (ii) Iø N e ÇØ Ø (ibid. 606) ‘over the waistcoat’ (Modern Greek would have ø I). 69 As we saw in the preceding section, compound prepositions include the most recent creations: when Greek speakers started using these adverbs prepositionally, they combined them with a simplex preposition. 70 It is now common to spell ªæﬁø and other old dative forms omitting the iota subscript. 71 It would also be possible to see this as an independent sequence of adverbþPP. 72 This is why some combinations may not be acknowledged in some grammars. 73 Its origin is the adverb Øº with shifted accent, derived from the adjective Øº (Classical Attic ØºF) “twofold”. According to Dieterich (1904: 15), the semantic shift from “double” to “adjacent” is “da sich dann die beiden Enden beru¨hren, so liegen sie nebeneinander”. 74 Its origin is the adverb ºªØ[] (cf. Andriotis 1983: 283)—cf. the adjective ºªØ “sideways, slanted” and the noun ºªØ “ﬂank”.

276

The history of Greek prepositions

FIGURE 7.7

a ºœ e ÆæŁıæ qÆ e Œæ Ø ‘beside the window was the bed’ b ?ºœ Ie e ÆæŁıæ qÆ e Œæ Ø (same translation) It is logical to suppose that all these items which can take either or I (regardless of the degree to which they have differentiated the two combinations), must somehow differ from the others that we saw in the previous section (such as ø and Œø) which select only I regardless of location in- or outside the referent’s region, and regardless of whether the verb has an ablative, locative, or allative sense. If some of the “compoundable” prepositions may take only , some only I, while others can take either, there should be a reason. Although, as we have seen, there is no clear-cut line between the two groups, a broad distinction is indeed discernible. Let us take the picture in Figure 7.7 as an example. The notation, which reﬂects the judgement of six native speakers, is as follows:75 marking [4] indicates a construction deemed wrong in that context; marking [3] indicates a combination deemed unlikely or dubious; marking [2] indicates a combination deemed acceptable but not ideal; marking [1] indicates a combination deemed to be the most appropriate. Compounded with se†

Compounded with Ip¸

[2] the shoe is I Æ chair and table [1] the shoe is ºÆ the chair [1] the radio is ºœ the chair

[3] the shoe is I Æ I chair and table [2] the shoe is ºÆ I the chair [3] the radio is ºœ I the chair

75 Neither combination with I Æ or ªæﬁø is marked [1], because my informants felt that, for reasons of relevance, another preposition would be more natural here (e.g. the shoe is Œa the chair, etc.).

Prepositions in Modern Greek [1] the chair is Œa the table [-] ø is not used as a compound [-] Œø is not used as a compound [-] ø is not used as a compound [-] ÆŒæØa is not used as a compound [1] the small jug is

Æ the cupboard [1] the cat is æ a the table [2] the hand is æ a the table [1] one wall is I ÆØ the other [4] there is a garden ªæﬁø the house [2] the walls are ªæﬁø the room [1] the large jug is ø the table [4] the lamp is ø the table

277

[-] Œa I is not used as a compound [1] the other chair is ø I the table [1] the rug is Œø I the table [1] the larger jug is ø I the cupboard [1] the painting is ÆŒæØa I the table [-]

Æ I is not used as a compound76 [2] the cat is æ a I the table [1] the hand is æ a I the table [2] one wall is I ÆØ I the other [1] there is a garden ªæﬁø I the house [4] the walls are ªæﬁø I the room [4] the large jug is ø I the table [1] the lamp is ø I the table

At pp. 54–5 we noted that natural languages describe the location and the spatial attributes of objects according to human properties—especially the position and the characteristics of our organs of perception. The distinction that we see in Greek in the selection (or impossibility of the selection) of I and ties in with that theory. The difference between the items that can and those that cannot take both I and (ø,

Æ, and æ vs. ø, ø, and Œø) boils down to the opposition between what is and what is not particularly in focus, readily perceptible, and available for interaction. That which is, receives a more elaborate description than that which is not. Let us consider the four “improper” prepositions that can only take I. These indicate objects outside the focus area (ø I) or far away ( ÆŒæØa I), or at the other side of an object from the standpoint of our organs of perception—horizontally ( ø I) or vertically (Œø I). Thus, on the vertical axis, the distinction of coherence and incoherence (which does occur in ø I vs. ø ) is not found in Œø (which takes I but not ).77

76 Although, if—for instance—the cat had come out of the cupboard under the table, being an elative motion, we would say that it had come

Æ I the cupboard. 77 This is reechoed in English: we have on contrasting with above on the one hand, but only under on the other—and “le fait est universel”, according to Hjelmslev (1935: 132).

278

The history of Greek prepositions

On the horizontal axis, many languages, including English, leave both front and back unspeciﬁed; Greek does not, but, despite having a contrast between æ a I and æ a at the front, it has only ø I to describe location at the back: languages that do make a distinction horizontally only make it in the front area, “jamais dans celle de derrie`re” (Hjelmslev 1935: 132). By the same token, we do not ﬁnd clear distinctions (+ /+I) for the other foursome (ºÆ and ºÆ I are barely distinguishable, ºœ and ºœ I both occur but are synonymous, I Æ has no common counterpart I Æ I, and likewise Œa has no contrasting *Œa I); this too can be explained perceptually: these are all terms describing spatial location taking as their viewpoint the referent, not the subject and, therefore, they are left vague. The last group ( æ “in front of ”, I ÆØ “opposite”, ªæﬁø “around”, ø “on”) combine with both I and

because they refer to perceptually prominent positions.

7.8 Semantic innovations in the compound prepositions Having now acquired an adequate synchronic picture of the prepositional system of contemporary Greek,78 we can check whether it shows anything important for diachronic semantics. In the last three chapters we have been often focusing on compound prepositions because they are the later generation of prepositions in the Greek language as a whole, and our records of their usage, therefore, go passably close to the beginning of their history. Now we get to the key part of the analysis of the today’s use of these items, which were the “new” prepositions of Classical and post-Classical Greek. At that point in the history of the language, they were the “fresh” set of spatial prepositions; we saw that they have continued to be used mainly in spatial senses throughout the Middle Ages, and that most of them still have spatial senses to this day. The question is: have they otherwise altered their semantic range in any way? Observe the following Modern Greek examples: 7.8.1 I ÆØ (7.70) Ł

Å B KŒŒºÅ Æ Ipe†mamti sc Œæø Å ‘the position of the Church on abortion’ (7.71) i ı ºª æÆºØ e Ipe†mamti sc ŒÆ Æ Å ‘let us show some realism in this situation’

78 For a list of the most common meanings of Modern Greek prepositions, see grammars such as Holton et al. (1997: 371ff.), Tzartzanos (1946: 181–225), Triandaphyllidis (1941: 386–93).

Prepositions in Modern Greek (7.72)

279

b qÆ b Ææd Ipe†mamti sd åæ Ø ı ‘they were never serious about their obligations’

(7.73) æ Æı a ØŒÆØ Æ Æ Ipe†mamti se N æØÆºØ ‘they protect our rights from imperialism’ (7.74)

Æ b I ØªB ı æØçæa Ipe†mamti sº ººa ŒæØæØÆ ‘data with non-uniform behaviour vis-a`-vis many criteria’

(7.75) qÆ ‹ºØ PªE Ipemamtß Æ ‘they were all polite towards us’ (7.76) Ipe†mamti sa æ º Æ ı a ØŒ ı b r ÆØ Æ ‘compared to his problems, mine are nothing’ 7.8.2 I Æ (7.77)

ƒ å

Ø Im›lesa sc ¯ººÆ ŒÆd c !ıæŒÆ ‘the relations between Greece and Turkey’

(7.78)

æÆ æ Ø a ØÆº Ø Im›lesa sº ıe ıÆÅ ‘now you have to choose between two possibilities’

(7.79)

Ła Øæ ø a ºça Im›lesa se ØçæÆ Næ ÆÆ ‘I shall distribute the money to various foundations’

(7.80) qÆ Im›lesa sf ŒÆºæı ‘he was one of the best’ 7.8.3 ªæﬁø (7.81) YÆ Œı ÆÆdæ cuqﬁ ´ ø se ˚ıæØÆŒ ‘we saw a documentry on the Cyprus [problem]’ (7.82)

cuqﬁ ´ ø Ipe e ºø e ªæçÅŒÆ I æÅÆ Œ ØÆ ‘about Solomo´s countless essays have been written’

(7.83)

r å ªÅŁE c ˚ÆºÆ Æ cuqﬁ ´ ø sa 1850 ‘(s)he was born in Kalamata around 1850’

7.8.4 KØÆ (7.84) ºÆd f º Å Æ Km›mtia sf !æŒı ‘peoples who fought against the Turks’ 7.8.5 ø (7.85)

ÆPe b Ła e ıÇÅ Ø ªØÆd r ÆØ ’ny Ipe e Ł Æ ı ‘he is not going to discuss this because it is outside his topic’

280

The history of Greek prepositions

(7.86) ŒÆ a Æ ªØÆd ’ny Ipe ÆPa åÇØ c ¼ ‘look at the data because, beyond that, you build on sand’ (7.87)

a å Ø ı r ÆØ ’ny Ipe ŒŁ ºªØŒ ‘his plans are totally absurd’

(7.88) b r Æ ’ny Ipe a ıÅŁØ Æ ‘(s)he said nothing other than the usual things’ (7.89) ıºØ ’ny Ipe I çÆºØ ØŒc æ Æ Æ ‘(s)he works outside of any insurance protection’ 7.8.6 KŒ (7.90)

æÆ Æ ‹º d K Ø, Kjter Ipe c ªøªæÆçÆ ‘I passed all the exams except geography’

(7.91) Kjter Ipe ÆPe e Ø º, åØ Å Ø Ø ¼ººÆ æÆ ‘besides this book, (s)he has published another three’ (7.92) rÆØ ¼åæÅ , Kjter Ipe KØŒı ‘it is useless, apart from being dangerous’ 7.8.7 Œø (7.93)

j›ty Ipe c ªºø

ØŒc ÆææŁ Ø Å º ºØØŒf ŒØı ‘(s)he was seeing political dangers behind the language reform’

(7.94) ØÅb f ıŁ ı j›ty Ipe e F Æ F æøÆ ‘poets who compose only under the inspiration of love’ (7.95)

æ Ø a r ÆØ IŒ Æ j›ty Ipe æØÆ ‘(s)he must be still less than thirty (years old)’

(7.96) ‹ Ø rÆØ j›ty Ipe c Kı Æ F Æ ØºØ ‘all those under the power of the king’79 (7.97) j›ty Ipe ÆPb d ıŁŒ b åØ ¼ººÅ KØºª ‘under these circumstances (s)he has no other choice’ 7.8.8 Œ (7.98) jomta sa ºªåØŒ Å æªÆ åØ ŒÆd KØ Å ØŒa ¼æŁæÆ ‘besides her literary works there are also scholarly articles’

79 Note, incidentally, how the same metaphors are repeated through time: in Classical Greek this was ƒ e Æ ØºE Z (Xen.Cyr. 8.1.6). Cf. also p. 75.

Prepositions in Modern Greek

281

(7.99) ÆPa f r rÆØ Æ jomta s ÆPe f ŁÆ IŒºıŁE ‘what you have seen is nothing as compared to what will follow’ 7.8.9 ÆÇ (7.100) f IªÆØ ‹ø rÆØ lafd lº a KºÆ Æ ı ‘(s)he loves them as they are, including their faults’ (7.101) ?ŒÆ ÅŒÆ lafd lº e I Æ æ80 ‘they came/went down with (¼by means of) the lift’ 7.8.10 ÆŒæØ (7.102)

› æÅ ææ qÆ æØÆŁ ŒÆd lajqia Ipe çÆÆØ ‘the former president was moderate and alien to fanaticism’

7.8.11

Æ (7.103) ŒØ a ŒÆÆŁ

Ø c ØÆæØ Å le†sa sº Ø B ‘she is planning to submit her thesis within six months’ (7.104) æÆ Øa ›ºŒºÅæÅ Çøc le†sa sc ØÇ æØÆ ‘(s)he spent a whole life in destitution’ (7.105) IæåÆEÆ ØåEÆ åı Iç ØøŁE le†sa sc ªºH

Æ ‘archaic elements have been assimilated into the language’ (7.106) le†sa sc ªåı Å, åÆ a æØ e æçºØ ı ‘in the commotion, he forgot to take his wallet’

80 This use of ÆÇ (rather than just ) in an instrumental sense (a non-spatial use, unlike the original comitative use) is extremely rare, and has elicited opprobrium (e.g. Lypourlis 1994: 210, whence the example). Despite being taken verbatim from native speech, it is the only example in this list that my informants somewhat objected to. Comparing ÆÇ with the highly polysemous we see how compound prepositions are not as advanced in their semantic development from concrete to abstract as the simplex ones. The same can be seen in the comparison between simplex prepositions and plain cases: in Ancient Greek, was added to the plain dative (cf. also p. 17 and 145) in comitative expressions rather than to instrumental ones (Heine and Kuteva 2006: 186). In modern Polish, the preposition z is regularly added to the instrumental case in comitative sentences (e.g. on poszedł do kina z przyjacielem ‘he went to the cinema with a friend’), but it is regarded as very substandard when it is added (as it occasionally is) to the instrumental case used in instrumental sentences (e.g. kroic´ chleb [z] noz˙em ‘to cut with a knife’).

282

The history of Greek prepositions

7.8.12 æ (7.107)

d r ÆØ a æ º Æ ı lpqost› sa ØŒ ı; ‘what are my problems compared with his?’

(7.108) M IØÆçæÆ ı lpqosta sº ÆPe e ÇÅ Æ b ŒæØ ‘their indifference towards this question shocks me’ (7.109) lpqosta sc æÅ ı ŒºÆ a ÆæÅ ‹ºÆ ‘at the ﬁrst difﬁculty (s)he gave up on the whole thing’ 7.8.13 ø (7.110) Oæªø Æ ı æØ IŒæØ H p›my s ÆPe e Ł Æ ‘they organised a conference precisely on this topic’ (7.111)

Œø ŒÆæØ æÆ p›my s ÆPe f IªÆø ‘I am having a career in (the ﬁeld) I love’

(7.112)

ZŒÆ ÆçØŒ, p›my se Łı Å ‘she did it all of a sudden, in a ﬁt of rage’

(7.113) KæÆ Å B ŁæÅ ŒÆ p›my se ºÆ ‘the inﬂuence of religion on the people’ (7.114)

PºåØ p›my sº ÆPe Y Æ çøØ ‘at least on this we are in agreement’

(7.115) KØıåÆ Å ÆØ, p›my Ip[e] ‹ºÆ, ŒÆæ æÅ Å ‘success means, above all, perseverance’ (7.116) æÆ Æ p›my Ipe ıe ‘more than two weeks have passed’ (7.117)

æŒÆ ŒØa ØåEÆ p›my Ipe d NºªØŒb ØÆçæ ‘we found common grounds above the ideological differences’81

7.8.14 Discussion Although the overall picture of the system is not tidy, the evidence is overwhelming: the once “only spatial” new prepositions (that had partly replaced the old ones which, in turn, had become conﬁned to non-spatial uses) have now become also non-spatial. Items like ø, which were (albeit rarely) used

81 It is always possible for a writer to use a more archaic preposition and syntax (to translate oneself into a more ancient style) although retaining the modern meaning. The sentence above can be rephrased as æø NºªØŒH ØÆçæH, even if the use of non-spatial senses is a recent development.

Prepositions in Modern Greek

283

in non-spatial senses already in Ancient Greek, have now a particularly large range of non-spatial senses. If we home in on KŒ—there is something else to be noted. When, in the previous pages, we illustrated today’s usage of compound prepositions, a spatial example was given for each item. It may have been noticed, however, that for KŒ, the example provided was non-spatial. The reason is that a non-spatial meaning is now the only meaning this preposition can have.82 The evolution of KŒ is particularly clear but a similar shift occurred in åøæ, which is now only non-spatial.83 The fact that the new “improper” prepositions, after developing non-spatial SPATIAL ONLY

time1

SPATIAL + NON-SPATIAL

time2

NON-SPATIAL ONLY

time3

FIGURE 7.8

meanings, have stopped expressing spatial ones, attests the same development that we saw in the generation of prepositions that preceded them.

7.9 Today’s usage of the simplex prepositions In styles affected by traditional usage (which include the standard language), almost all classical prepositions can, in principle, be found;84 in demotic Greek, however, only a few of the old Classical simplex prepositions had

82 We ﬁnd the same (that only non-spatial use is possible today) for KÆ. This was already both spatial and non-spatial in our earliest attestations—it was already in full use in Homer, very widespread in Classical Greek—and also had both kinds of meanings in Koine´ Greek and Medieval Greek. 83 There are apparent exceptions to this: KŒe ` ŁÅH “outside Athens”, KŒe ¯ºº “outside Greece”—but these are loans from Katharevousa, as it is easy to demonstrate: (a) they are followed by the genitive, and not by I, as modern grammar requires; (b) the form of the noun they govern is also a fossil: `ŁÅH is the genitive of the ancient and otherwise obsolete pluralis tantum name of the city instead of the modern singular `ŁÆ; likewise, ¯ ºº is the genitive of the name of the country in the obsolete 3rd declension, instead of the modern 2nd declension ¯ ººÆ; (c) moreover, the syntagmata KŒe Ie c `ŁÆ and KŒe Ie c ¯ººÆ mean, non-spatially, “except Athens” and “except Greece”. 84 I ç is not used at all today—not even in learned idiomatic expressions. But in our medieval corpus it was already totally absent, and even in Classical times it was losing ground to æ.

284

The history of Greek prepositions

survived. The tendency to make compounds has affected some of them (e.g. I, ), but most still occur on their own. The simplex prepositions of the modern standard language are all of ancient origin—including two with slightly altered shape: and ªØ. This fact, again, suggests that the “new generation” consisted primarily of compounds. Simplex prepositions do exist in contemporary standard Greek, but only half of them come from earlier genuine popular use (cf. also Mackridge 1985: 203), namely: I, ªØ, ø/‰, , ,85 , åøæ/åø, and partly ŒÆ whereas it is from the learned tradition—regardless of their productive colloquial use today—that we get the rest (cf. also Mackridge 1985; Jannaris 1897: 366): I, , åæØ, Ææ, and most probably æ As we shall see (and as we saw in Medieval Greek), ŒÆ is a borderline case. Let us ﬁrst look at the old simplex prepositions that have no later substitute: I, , ªØ, , , åøæ/åø. Modern Greek grammars rightly afford a separate place to I and (e.g. Holton et al. 1997: 371). These are by far the most common prepositions (followed by ªØ and ) of the modern language (cf. Hesse 1985: 12), and have the distinctive role of appearing in compound prepositions. They have a vast range of meanings, and also retain their spatial sense (having no later substitutes). We start with I and , followed by the rest in alphabetical order (examples aim to be representative, not exhaustive): 7.9.1 I ablative perlative partitive material possessive causal

qæŁ Ie c `ŁÆ b ÆØ Ie c æÆ r Æ Æ I ÆP Æ ¼ªÆº Æ Ie æ Ææ a ØÆ I e æÆ ÇØ æ I e ç

‘(s)he came from Athens’ ‘it could not get through the door’ ‘I saw one of them’ ‘a statue of marble’ ‘the legs of the table’ ‘(s)he was shivering with fear’

85 According to Triandaphyllidis (1946: 381) is not a preposition but a “comparative particle” (› Øø ÆØŒe æØ), both when used with the nominative and when used with the accusative. Tzartzanos (1946: 181) also excludes it from his list of prepositions.

Prepositions in Modern Greek agentive

ŒŁÅŒ Ie e KåŁæ distributive XØÆ Ie æ

285

‘(s)he was killed by the enemy’ ‘we drank two beers each’

7.9.2

locative allative indir. obj. time within time when mode/style change limitation

æ Œ ÆØ c `ŁÆ ŒÆıŁ ÆØ c `ŁÆ e r Æ b ‹ºı

b Æ åæ ºØø ºÅªŁÅŒ e º

a Ææ Æ æçŁÅŒ b æÆå ŒÆºe e Ø

‘I am [to be found] in Athens’ ‘I am directed to Athens’ ‘I said it to everybody’ ‘I ﬁnish in a year’ ‘(s)he was wounded in the war’ ‘seriously’ ‘(s)he turned into a frog’ ‘good at tennis’86

çıª ªØa c —ºÅ BªÆ ªØa æ qæŁ Æ Æ ªØa A ŒºÆØ ªØa e ŁÆ Å ªØa Æ

‘(s)he left for Istanbul’88 ‘they went for water’89 ‘a parcel for you has arrived’ ‘(s)he cries because of her death’ ‘for ever’ (Koine´ Øa Æ)90

7.9.3 ªØ87 destination aim beneﬁciary cause duration

86 It will not be pointed out each time that in these uses we see reﬂected the diachrony of the whole system: for instance, for a phrase such as “good at something”, Classical Greek employed the plain accusative, Medieval Greek N+accusative, and Modern Greek +accusative. 87 The form ªØ seems to be used also to introduce imperatives and as a disjunctive particle, but this is due to homonymy. Those uses are two other (accidentally) identical particles: the exhortative ªØ is from Classical rÆ, and the disjunctive ªØ is from Turkish ya (ultimately from Persian ), both unrelated to the preposition and to each other. 88 As we saw in Medieval Greek, ªØ is only a phonologically altered form of Ø (just as we get ªØÆ < ØÆ). This change, however, is found only in these two related words, which makes ªØ, in a way, a new preposition. Perhaps this too, besides (a) the lack of a replacement, and (b) the marginal use of ªØ in compounding, helped ªØ to retain, inter alia, the spatial sense seen here. 89 “For” often marks objects sought after a verb of motion (“aim”/ “destination”); cf. English “send for the doctor” or Italian andar per funghi, “go in search of mushrooms”. 90 Since the perlative sense of the ancient Ø is lost in ªØ, the temporal sense of the two prepositions is different: Ø meant “throughout a time span”, while ªØ indicates direction. The identical meaning of the expressions Øa Æ and ªØa Æ, therefore, are arrived at through different metaphors—although in morphology and syntax the latter expression is simply the updated version of the former. Likewise, the causal meanings of the two prepositions have different origins (see Vasilaki 1992: 183): Øa denotes a cause through its instrumental-agentive sense, ªØa indicates a reason through its ﬁnal sense.

286

The history of Greek prepositions

reference limitation role exchange price topic

r ÆØ ıÆE ªØa Æ ªØa Æ e çÆU r ÆØ ‰æÆE e Øº ªØa Hæ a A K f ªØa Æ e Bæ ªØa ŒÆ Pæ d r ªØa c %ÆæÆ;

‘it is important to me’91 ‘the food, in my view, is good’ ‘(s)he sent it as a gift’ ‘you go instead of me’ (cf. I) ‘he bought it for ten euros’ ‘what did he say about Mary?’92

7.9.4 (cf. p. 19) locative comitative

r ÆØ b e ØıŁı ªBŒÆ ºÆ b c *Æ

‘he is with the director’ ‘I went out for a walk with Rita’93

91 This use of ªØ would correspond to a dative in Classical Greek. Having considered its range of meanings, we can see ªØ as one of the main heirs of the dative of Classical Greek, as much as . Classical Greek used datives for many uses of modern ªØ: (i) › ŒÆŁ Æ ıºØ ªØa e Æı ı ‘everyone labours to his own advantage’ > A Icæ ÆﬁH E (ii) ªØa A åø XÅ ŁØ Ie ŒÆØæ ‘as far as you are concerned, I have been long dead’ > ŁÅå E ºÆØ (iii) r ÆØ Øe hŒº ªØa ºªı ‘it is easier for few’ > ÞA E OºªØ

(Soph.Aj. 1366) (Soph.Phil. 1030) (Xen.Hell. 6.5.52)

Translating ªØ into another Classical Indo-European language, Latin, would also require datives: (iv) (v) (vi) (vii)

e Øº ªØa Hæ ‘he sent it as a present’ > muneri misit (Nep.Att. 8.6) ºÆ æe ªØa c ÆæÆ ‘harmful to the country’ > perniciosus patriae (Cic.Inv.rhet. 1.1) qæŁÆ ªØa a ÅŁ ı ‘they came to help’ > auxilio . . . venirent (Caes. B.Gall. 2.23.1) ‹æØ Æ æÆ ªØa c ŒłÅ ‘decided a date for the talks’ > dies conloquio dictus est (ib. 1. 49.1)

Classical Greek marked the benefactive role with the dative (a case originally allative in sense). Indicating a benefactive role (animate goal) with the same case that expresses an allative motion is common: Finnish

annoin lahjan sinulle ostin lahjan sinulle

‘I send a present to you’ ‘I buy a present for you’

allative case, allative sense allative case, benefactive sense

In many languages the benefactive adposition is synonymous with the allative case or adposition: Finnish ostin lahjan sinua varten ¼ ostin lahjan sinulle ‘to buy a present for you’ ‘to buy a present for you’ Italian comprare un regalo per te ¼ comprare un regalo a te Turkish senin ic¸in hediye almak ¼ sana hediye almak ‘to buy a present for you’ Mod. Greek IªæÇø Æ Hæ ªØa Æ ¼ F IªæÇø Æ Hæ ‘to buy a present for you’ 92 This rather unexpected use of ªØ (corresponding to Attic æ)—already noted in Medieval Greek—may be tentatively explained as a foreign calque. See p. 202, on the inﬂuence of neighbouring languages. 93 In Modern Greek, as in Turkish, and in some varieties of colloquial Italian, the object of a “with” prepositional phrase added to a singular subject counts as part of the subject just as if it were linked to it by “and”, so that the verb is marked as plural. Thus “I went to the cinema with my uncle” can be

Prepositions in Modern Greek time comit. manner cause description instrum. content

Å Æ b c ÆPª åÅŒ e Hæ b åÆæ Ł ø b e åºØ ÆP ŒØ b ŒŒŒØÆ ÆººØ e åÅ b e Æ Ø Æ ÆŒŒºØ b çÆ ºØÆ

287

‘they woke up at dawn’ ‘(s)he accepted the gift with joy’ ‘(s)he got angry at that remark’ ‘someone with red hair’ ‘he struck him with the stick’ ‘a bag of beans’

7.9.5 æ æ is primarily a conjunction; it is also an adverb, and is also used in a prepositional fashion (pace Triandaphyllidis 1946: 381, 397; Tzartzanos 1946: 181). It always means “before” in a temporal sense: conjunction æd (a) æ ı ıe æ adverb ıe æ æ preposition æd ıe æ

‘before two days go by’ ‘two days before/ago’ ‘two days ago’

In prepositional usage, it is often “regularized” into a compound preposition by the addition of I: preposition æd Ie e º

‘before the war’

7.9.6

is originally a conjunction, and is still used mainly as such: (7.118)

a qæŁÆ Kª, ÆPc çıª ‘as soon as I arrived, she left’

(7.119)

æåæÅ , a a c b rå E ‘he walked on, as if he had not seen me’

(7.120)

ÅæF a I ı Ø ‘they work as policemen’

rendered as ªÆ Ø a b e Ł ı, amcamla sinemaya gittik, siamo andati al cinema con mio zio. The afﬁnity between the conjunction and the preposition had already been noted by Apollonius Dyscolus (—æd ı

ø 214.4–20) in the second century AD; Basil of Caesarea (Robertson 2003: 167, 172) in the fourth century contested that a different the degree of divinity of the three persons in the Trinity can be implied by the use of and as opposed to ŒÆ. In classical Greek, a singular subject followed by a (+ genitive) comitative phrase can take a plural verb.

288

The history of Greek prepositions

is denied prepositional status altogether by some (Triandaphyllidis 1946: 381, and indirectly Tzartzanos 1946: 181) but can be used in prepositional fashion, since the accusative may replace the nominative if the article is added: comparative

ıºı a Œº Ø ıºı a f Œº ı

‘they work as/like slaves’ ‘they work like slaves’

7.9.7 åøæ åøæ (and its less standard synonym åø) is no longer used in the spatial sense of “separately”, but only in a more abstract sense of lack: defective defective

ø œ åøæd ªºÆ ø œ åø ªºÆ

‘I drink tea without milk’ ‘I drink tea without milk’

7.9.8 ‰ ‰ is another simplex preposition94 of terminative sense—cf. also åæØ (p. 291) and Y Æ (p. 269): terminative æÆ Æ ‰ c ÆæÆºÆ ‘I walked as far as the beach’ also of time æØ Æ ‰ d ç ‘we waited until seven’95 Occasionally, ‰ still appears in the form ø.96 7.9.9 ŒÆ A separate space must be dedicated to ŒÆ. Today, it only partly continues traditional demotic use, and partly echoes Katharevousa usage (cf. also æ in the next section). So ŒÆ is also still spatial—but (Bortone 1997: 13) to a more limited extent than in Medieval Greek, and far less than in Classical times. We have seen (p. 233) that although one old spatial sense of 94 It appears to be a simplex preposition, although one could argue (implausibly) that orthography may hide a compounding preposition (so ‰ K Æ ¼ ‰ b Æ etc.): cf. the presence of other (undisguisable) prepositions in other contexts: Æªø ‰ b a ŒŒŒÆºÆ ‘frozen to the bone’ (cf. Tzartzanos 1946: 219). 95 Uses other than those exempliﬁed above may not be truly prepositional. E.g. ØºÆ KŒE ‰ åºØı çÆæı “they sent there up to a thousand soldiers” suggests prepositional status, but this is belied by its counterpart ç Æ ‰ åºØØ çÆæØ “up to a thousand soldiers arrived” where ‰ would be governing a nominative. 96 The form ‰ may derive (at least partly) from ø by synaeresis (Tzartzanos 1946: 1: 217). However, Classical Greek had no less than ﬁve ‰/u particles (cf. Liddell and Scott 1940: 2039ff.), with a bewildering array of functions, including a prepositional use with spatial terminative meaning. Similar prepositional uses (with spatial and temporal terminative meaning) are attested for ø. The precise origin of Modern Greek ‰ is therefore debatable—as is that of Classical ‰ (Ku¨hner and Gerth 1898: II: 1472)—and possibly manifold. The non-spatial use as essive (e.g. ÅæF ‰ I ı Ø “they serve as policemen”) might be an extension of the terminative, but may also be a separate conjunction.

Prepositions in Modern Greek

289

ŒÆ—namely “down(wards)”—had already disappeared by the Middle Ages (taken over by Œø), there was no new substitute for its other spatial sense of “in the region of ” (except, to some extent, æ). Today ŒÆ still has the spatial sense of “in the region/direction of”, arguably because no new substitute has appeared to this day: the spatial and the temporal meanings of ŒÆ are approximate location in space or time; they are, therefore, quite different from—and not replaceable by— (pace Eringa 1969: 23).97 approx. movem. approx. locat. approx. time time duration conformity extent manner

Æł ŒÆa e æØ æ ŒÆØ ŒÆa e Ø ªæØ Æ ŒÆa d ŒÆa e º ŒÆa c ª Å ı KÆæAÆØ ŒÆa ŒÆa ºŁ

‘travel northwards’ ‘it is somewhere near Sounion’ ‘I got back around 2.00’ ‘during the war’ ‘in my opinion’ ‘depends on how much’ ‘by mistake’

7.10 Simplex prepositions revived productively by purism Given the degree of interpenetration between Å ØŒ and ŒÆŁÆæı Æ, any attempt to give a descriptive account of Modern Greek usage (not only in the case of prepositions) must acknowledge that, even synchronically, demotic and archaic usage often form a continuum, in which different items of the same class follow the rules of either register to different degrees. Some old prepositions have now re-entered living usage with a degree of productivity that matches or even surpasses that of traditionally demotic prepositions (e.g. åæØ vs. Y Æ , vs. o æÆ). Which prepositions one classiﬁes as “revivals” is a rather arbitrary decision—and every grammarbook differs. There are some ancient prepositions that even retain a syntax alien to demotic usage (such as Æ governing the genitive) and that are now productive. The sub-division of the inventory made here into partly puristic, wholly puristic, and fossilized items is mainly for convenience of exposition, and remains open to discussion. Registers are not watertight and usage is very ﬂexible: many Greeks, especially educated ones, regard most of the diachrony of the Greek language as a reservoir they can freely draw upon.

97 The spatial sense of ŒÆ, therefore, although ŒÆ is an old simplex preposition, is probably genuine: it was in demotic use (contrary to Horrocks 1997a: 194; 216ff. Cf. also Kriara´s 1994: 182). Paradoxically, its use (still fairly current) in the non-spatial sense of “against (¼ with hostility towards)” is a learned loan, as shown by its requirement of the genitive, and its stress (cf. Hesse 1985: 11), unlike in the other use.

290

The history of Greek prepositions

In this section we look at the prepositions that, thanks to the learned tradition, have been kept alive (or resuscitated) and are now used productively. 7.10.1 I It is still used, but it has no spatial sense today (nor in Medieval Greek, and, by and large, it had already lost it even in Classical Greek).98 It is usually compounded—and thus brought into line with the modern system: (7.121)

Id [ªØa] çÆU Bæ åØÆ ‘instead of food, (s)he took pills’

Compare ancient usage with modern usage, and note how the non-spatial sense is the only one retained, while the old spatial use is now ungrammatical and requires a “new-generation” preposition instead: classical spatial use modern spatial use real modern translation classical non-spatial use modern non-spatial use

[ı] IŁ z Œ ¼æ (Xen.An. 4.7.6) ‘pine trees in front of which men stood’ *FŒÆ Id [ªØa] a ›EÆ ŁÅŒÆ ¼æ FŒÆ æ a a ›EÆ ŁÅŒÆ ¼æ Id º ı NæÅ (Thuc. 4.20) ‘instead of war, peace’ Id ªØa º , NæÅ

7.10.2 Today is only temporal. This means that its original spatial use is lost (and passed onto the newer ) while its meaning is now only non-spatial. It is another old preposition that shows a tendency to be compounded. Triandaphyllidis (1941: 390) labels as “rare”, but this is completely untrue. As regards meaning, compare Ancient with Modern Greek: classical spatial use no modern spatial use real modern translation classical non-spatial use

ŒÆŁ a H ¼ººø (Pl. Resp. 359) ‘sitting with the others’ *ŒÆŁØ a (Ie) ı ¼ººı ŒÆŁØ ( ÆÇ) b ı ¼ººı a e åæ (Pl. Resp. 537b)

98 Although it is a fact that we tend to take for granted, it is also not insigniﬁcant that prepositions like I, of long-standing exclusive non-spatial sense, did not develop spatial senses after the nonspatial ones.

Prepositions in Modern Greek

also modern

291

‘after this period’ a (Ie) ÆPe e Ø Å Æ

7.10.3 åæØ This is an old preposition99 with only a marginal new replacement: Y Æ (cf. p. 223). The latter is very rare and barely standard. The result is that åæØ still has spatial (terminative) sense. The same usage has ‰/ø (cf. p. 288). classical spatial use modern spatial use classical temporal use modern temporal use

åæØ B ºø ‘as far as the town’ åæØ c ºÅ åæØ b ı ‘till now’ åæØ ÆPc c æÆ ‘till this day’

(Thuc. 6.96) (Hdt. 7.16)

7.10.4 Ææ This is another old preposition which is now used only with non-spatial meaning. Its original meaning of “close to (but falling short of)” remains only in the ﬁgurative senses. Compare ancient with modern usage:100 classical spatial use no modern spatial use real modern translation

Ææa Åæd ØFÆØ ‘they eat next to their mother’ *æH Ææa c Å æÆ ı æH ºÆ c Å æÆ ı

classical non-spatial use a Ææa F ºª Æ ‘the things said by you’ not in modern use *ÆPa f NŁÅŒÆ Ææa Æ real modern translation ÆPa f NŁÅŒÆ Ie Æ classical non-spatial use Ææa ØŒæe qºŁ IŁÆE ‘I came little short of dying’

(Xen.Cyr. 1.2.8)

(Xen.Cyr. 6.1.42)

(Isocr. 19.22)

99 Archaic usage which was ofﬁcially promoted when ŒÆŁÆæı Æ was being enforced (and which sometimes really became part of unmarked living speech) has subsequently been, just as artiﬁcially, discouraged and stigmatized. Triandaphyllidis (1941: 389) says emphatically that the common preposition åæØ (which he dismisses as ‘IæåÆÆ æŁ Å’) ‘r ÆØ ŒÆºe IçªÆØ’. The truly demotic synonym Y Æ , however, is far less common. 100 Although in Classical Greek prepositions like Ææ could be combined with different cases, here only one combination (whichever is regarded as most representative) is given as an example.

292

The history of Greek prepositions

also Modern use

Ææa æåÆ a

ø ‘I very nearly fell’ lit. ‘by a hair’s (breadth) I did (not) fall’ cf. Italian per un pelo non sono caduto

7.10.5 æ æ has a mixture of spatial and non-spatial senses; it is a successful revival (cf. Jannaris 1897: 395, but see also pp. 233–4), and it was one of the two old simplex prepositions that had no full replacement in Medieval Greek—only a limited rivalry with ŒÆ, only in the sense of “in the region of ”. Today we ﬁnd: spatial direction time direction

æ æe e Ø Å ‘(s)he ran towards her home’ çªÆ æe e æØ ‘we left towards the evening’

The spatial sense of approximate location/direction survives; partly, perhaps, because of Katharevousa. In the other senses, on the other hand, it is regularly replaced by more demotic prepositions: (7.122) æı æe Ø øæÆ > æı ªØa Ø øæÆ ‘they beat as punishment’ (7.123) IºªÆ æe e çº > IºªÆ b e çº ‘according to gender’ (7.124)

e ºÅ æe ŒÆ ºæ > e ºÅ ªØa ŒÆ ºæ ‘(s)he sold it for ten pounds’

(7.125) I ÆØ æe f ºØØŒ > I ÆØ f ºØØŒ ‘I am talking to the politicians’

7.11 Simplex prepositions revived less productively by purism There are some prepositions that living Greek had already discarded, but that had remained in use in Katharevousa—so much that they may surface in casual speech today, but in a more restricted range of expressions. For some, a demotic form just does not exist. Let us ﬁrst see an example of this. 7.11.1 K þ genitive ‘during the government/rule of ’ This not only has some productive use, but it has no demotic preposition to replace it. Even the broader sense of “during” does not really have a translation into demotic Greek. Two ways to express the notion of “during” are discussed next.

Prepositions in Modern Greek

293

7.11.2 ŒÆ þ accusative This construction at least does not entail governing a genitive, but it is still a construction taken from Katharevousa, and it still has that ﬂavour. Furthermore, it is ambiguous, as it also means “around (the time of)”. 7.11.3 ŒÆa c ØæŒØÆ (þ genitive) This phrase literally means “in the duration (of)”; but it is a bit of a mouthful and it is also from Katharevousa.101 As noted earlier, even when a demotic equivalent of the archaic term or construction is available, Katharevousa may have rendered the archaic one quite current: for example KÆ þ genitive “against” is still common (and so is its—perhaps even more archaic—synonym ŒÆ þ genitive) although the demotic version, KØÆ also exists: º Å Æ KØÆ f !æŒı º Å Æ KÆ H !æŒø º Å Æ ŒÆa H !æŒø

‘they fought against the Turks’ ‘they fought against the Turks’ ‘they fought against the Turks’

Some Katharevousa prepositions are now used productively only with one meaning: all the other meanings that they used to have are now expressed by new formations—but the old preposition is still indispensable. An example is the productive use of Ø “divided by” in arithmetic, not replaceable by ªØ. The phrases we look at in this section are those structurally rather alien to Modern Greek grammar: they preserve their original syntax (such as the government of cases other than the accusative) and they may even have the original morphology (such as old case endings). They are a presence artiﬁcially induced, and the degree to which each phrase is a living part of today’s spoken Greek varies considerably. In the next section (7.12), we shall also see totally fossilized phrases, which may contain lexical items otherwise unknown to the modern language. A place in the lexicon and not in the grammar ought to be reserved for old prepositions preserved only in a ﬁnite number of set phrases. It is, however, possible for a speaker to use even these constructions productively, although the phrases thus created constitute a self-conscious and marked usage which is being progressively restricted to humour. We will, again, compare ancient use

101 In fact, Classical Greek could also express the notion of “during” with þaccusative (cf. Ku¨hner and Gerth 1898: 1525; Liddell and Scott 1940: 1885) and, at a push, Iþaccusative. These constructions, however, have not gained currency in modern usage.

294

The history of Greek prepositions

with modern usage. Usually, both the old spatial and most of the old nonspatial uses of these semi-obsolete terms are now ungrammatical. Modern Greek expresses spatial meanings by means of prepositions of the new generation instead. What matters to us is the question: in the very rare cases in which these items are used at all, in what kind of expressions do they occur? 7.11.4 I There is only a marginal use of I in Modern Greek102 (few grammars list it at all, e.g. Tsopanakis 1994: 546); it is used almost only with temporal sense (it was never spatial in Medieval Greek, and by Classical times its spatial sense was being taken over by K). Today, the spatial sense and the sense of duration only survive in a couple of idioms from Katharevousa: Ia e Œ [] “all over the world”, Ia f ÆNH “in the course of centuries”, Ia uæÆ “per hour”: classical spatial use104 not in Modern Greek real Modern Greek use classical non-spatial use not in Modern Greek

Ia A Æ c %ÅØŒ (Hdt. 196) ‘throughout the land of the Medes’ *Ia ‹ºÅ c åæÆ H %ø103

‹ºÅ c åæÆ H %ø Ia e º (Hdt. 8.123) ‘throughout the war’ *Ia e º

The main sense artiﬁcially surviving is “intermittence”: Ia A Æ æÆ (Xen.Cyr. 1.2.8) ‘every day’ corresponding modern use Ia æE æ ‘every three days’105 classical non-spatial use

7.11.5 N (in this form, not as ) Classical spatial use

N ˚ØºØŒÆ I Ø ‘sends to Cilicia’

(Xen.An. 2.11)

102 On the extensive use of IÆ- as a preﬁx, see Koukoules (1931). 103 The phrase Ia åæÆ does exist in Modern Greek, but cannot have spatial sense; it means ‘according to / by country’, e.g. ŒÆÆÅ Ia åæÆ ‘classiﬁcation according to the country’, IæØŁ d Ia åæÆ ‘ﬁgures by country’. The same sense appears in phrases such as åØºØ æÆ Ia uæÆ ‘kilometres per hour’ or indeed Ø c Ia æÆªøØŒe æ ‘price by square metre’, where the referent is spatial but the sense of Ia is not. 104 Again, although in Classical Greek many prepositions could combine with different cases, here only one combination (the one regarded as most representative) is given as an example. 105 Archaic forms still in use may have more “modern” alternatives—in this case, for example, ŒŁ æE æ (where ŒŁ is not a preposition). They will not be pointed out each time.

Prepositions in Modern Greek no modern spatial use real modern translation classical non-spatial use not in Modern Greek modern equivalent

295

* Ø N c ˚ØºØŒÆ

ºØ c ˚ØºØŒÆ åæB ŁÆØ N a çÆ (Xen.An. 3.4.17) ‘to use for their slings’ *a åæÅ Ø ØF N d ç a åæÅ Ø ØF ªØa d ç

But an (artiﬁcial) modern use is: classical non-spatial use modern non-spatial use

N Å ‘to memory’ N Å ‘in memory’

(Pl.Leg. 811a)

7.11.6 KŒ classical spatial use no modern spatial use106 real modern translation classical non-spatial use not in Modern Greek real modern translation

KŒ . . . çØÆºH Ø (Xen.Cyr. 5.3.3) ‘drink from cups’ *ø KŒ çØº ø Ie çØº KŒ º ı Ø NæÅ (Dem. 19.133) ‘after the war he made peace’ *KŒ e º ŒÆ NæÅ a Ie e º ŒÆ NæÅ

But in Modern Greek it does occur in non-spatial idioms: classical non-spatial use modern non-spatial use

K ÆNÆ ‘by cause’ K ÆNÆ ‘because (of)’

(Eur.IT. 64)

7.11.7 K classical spatial use no modern spatial use real modern translation classical non-spatial use

not in Modern Greek real modern translation

K ﬁB ºØ ‘in the city’ (Pl.Ap. 30a) *K c ºÅ

c ºÅ K Å Æ . . . K PæÆØ Å Ø (Xen.Cyr. 8.7.3) ‘you indicated through heavenly signs’ *Æ . . . K PæØÆ Å ØÆ Æ . . . b PæØÆ Å ØÆ

Some set phrases, nonetheless, survive:

106 This, as we said, refers to the standard language. There are dialects that have Oå (
296

The history of Greek prepositions

classical non-spatial use modern non-spatial use107

K IªŒﬁ Å ‘in necessity’ K IªŒﬁ Å (idem)

(Xen.Hell. 6.4.23)

7.11.8 KÆ108 classical spatial use no modern spatial use real modern translation

KÆ ø XÅ º ªØ ‘to speak in front of everybody’ *a Øº Ø KÆ ‹ºı a Øº Ø æ a b ‹ºı

(Thuc. 6.25)

but the classical non-spatial sense remains: classical non-spatial use modern non-spatial use

KÆ B Kº ‘against the expectation’ KÆ B ª Å ‘against the opinion’

(Lys. 8.2)

7.11.9 K classical spatial use no modern spatial use real modern translation: classical non-spatial use: not in Modern Greek: real modern translation:

Kd B ªB NŒE (Pl.Phd. 109c) ‘to live on earth’ *a ı Kd c ªB a ı c ªB / ø c ªB N åf . . . Kd f ı åø Ø (Pl.Resp. 371e) ‘they have resistance to pain’ *åı Iåc Kd f ı åı Iåc f ı

Some uses, however, remain: classical non-spatial use: modern non-spatial use:

Kd æE æÆ ‘for three days’ Kd æE æ (idem)

(Xen.Hell. 6.4.23)

107 Exceptional spatial uses like K EººØ can occasionally be heard, and are easily explained as taken from old news reports or such like. 108 See also KØÆ (p. 267). They are synonymous except for register: KØÆ is newer (as is indicated by the modern adverbial ending -Æ and the combination with ) and KÆ is from Katharevousa (to this day, it can only take the genitive)—yet KÆ is more common.

Prepositions in Modern Greek

297

7.11.10 ŒÆ þ genitive109 æ ŒÆa B ŒçÆºB å (Pl.Resp. 398) ‘pouring (scented) oil onto their heads’ no modern spatial use *åÆ ºØ ŒÆa a ŒçºØÆ ı real modern translation åÆ ºØ a ŒçºØÆ ı classical non-spatial use KØæŒ Æ Æ ŒÆa H Æø (Lys. 32.13) ‘perjuring myself on (the lives of) my children’ not in Modern Greek *OæŒÇ ÆØ ŒÆa a ÆØØ ı real modern translation OæŒÇ ÆØ ø a ÆØØ ı classical spatial use:

nonetheless, we also have: classical non-spatial use ŒÆa H º ø ‘against the enemies’ modern (learned) use ŒÆa H KåŁæH ‘against the enemies’

(Lys. 18.3.4)

7.11.11 æ This was very common in Katharevousa, and is now in the passive knowledge of all speakers; it occasionally crops up in speech—but never in a spatial sense: classical spatial use

I

ØºÆ ÆF æd —ºÅ (Xen.An. 4.3.27) ‘they sent off ships around the Peloponnese’ no modern spatial use * ºÆ ŒÆæ ØÆ æd c —ºÅ real modern translation ºÆ ŒÆæ ØÆ ªæﬁø c —ºÅ classical non-spatial use ƒ æd c çØº çÆ Z (Isoc. 9.8) ‘those who deal with philosophy’ not in Modern Greek *ÆPd f r ÆØ æd c çØº çÆ real modern translation ÆPd f IÆ åºFÆØ b c çØº çÆ nonetheless, we have: classical non-spatial use æd e çŁØøæ ‘around autumn’ modern (learned) use æd e çŁØøæ

(Thuc. 3.18)

109 ˚Æ is the only preposition today with contrastive case combinations (cf. Fries 1988: 162).

298

The history of Greek prepositions

A more archaic (but once extremely common) construction is æ þ genitive, used only in the non-spatial sense of “on the topic of ”. It was the only use of æ that we found in Medieval Greek, and may still be found today; but it is a self-conscious archaism. For instance: classical spatial use no modern spatial use real modern translation classical non-spatial use not in Modern Greek real modern translation classical non-spatial use modern (learned) use more modern translation

åÅ æd ˜ÆæÆÆ (Eur.Tro. 817) ‘walls around Dardania’ *a åÅ æd B ºÅ a åÅ ªæﬁø Ie c ºÅ æd ıæÆ . . . IØŒE (Thuc. 1.60) ‘do wrong for the sake of tyranny’ *a Œø IØŒ æd B ıæÆÆ a Œø IØŒ ªØa [a IŒ ø] c ıæÆÆ æd NæÅ º ªØ (Thuc. 5.55) ‘discussion about peace’

ıÇÅ Å æd NæÅ (artiﬁcial but acceptable)

ıÇÅ Å ªØa c NæÅ/ø c NæÅ

Note also that æ þ dative is totally defunct, so that (reﬂecting the overall history of prepositional government in Greek) the construction with accusative is standard, the one with the genitive is rare, and the one with the dative (as the example below show) is obsolete: classical spatial use: no modern spatial use: real modern translation: classical non-spatial use: not in Modern Greek: real modern translation:

ŁæÆŒ æd æØ (Xen.Cyr. 1.2.13) ‘a corset around the breast’ *ŁæÆŒÆ æd f æı YåÆ ŁæÆŒÆ ªæﬁø Ie e æ Ø æd ﬁH åøæﬁø (Thuc. 1.60) ‘fearing for the village’ *ç Ø Ø æd e åøæØ ç Æ ªØa e åøæØ

7.11.12 æ This is used only in one sense: temporal (and that to a limited degree)—the use we also found in Medieval Greek. Compare: classical spatial use no modern spatial use real modern translation classical non-spatial use

æe H OçŁÆº H æçÆÆØ (Aeschin. 2.148) ‘appears before the eyes’ *K çÆÇÆØ æe a ØÆ K çÆÇÆØ æ a a ØÆ æø Ø æe H (Xen.Cyr. 4.5.44) ‘doing something for you’

Prepositions in Modern Greek not in Modern Greek modern non-spatial use

299

*ŒÆ ŒØ æe A ŒÆ ŒØ ªØa A

The temporal meaning survives in a few phrases: classical non-spatial use

modern (learned) use

æe æØH æH (Hippocr.Morb.Pop. 7.1.51) ‘three days before’ æe æH ‘a few days before (¼ago)’

7.11.13 æ classical spatial use no modern spatial use real modern translation classical non-spatial use: no modern use: real modern translation:

bæ B Œ Å ªºç q (Xen.An. 1.10.12) ‘above the village there was a hill’ *bæ e åøæØe qÆ Æ ºç ø Ie e åøæØe qÆ Æ ºç bæ z . . . ŒÅ PŒ Æ (Isoc.Bus. 11.39) ‘for which they paid no penalty’ *bæ a ›EÆ b Ø øæŁÅŒÆ ªØa a ›EÆ b Ø øæŁÅŒÆ

A few (non-spatial) phrases are still heard: classical non-spatial use: modern (learned) use:

bæ e æ . . . æ Ø ‘drinking beyond measure’ bæ e æ ‘excessively’

(Critias Fr. 6.22)

7.11.14 classical spatial use: no modern spatial use: real modern translation: classical non-spatial use

e e PæÆ (Pl. Tim. 23c) ‘under the sky’110 *e e PæÆ Œø Ie e PæÆ

øŁ e F (Xen.An. 2.5.14)

110 For a phrase like “under x” we have all the constructions in use at each stage in the history of the language (Bortone 1997: 9). Classical ŒÆa ªB became indistinguishable from e ªB (p. 164)—and the latter became synonymous with combinations with the other cases: e ªB, e ªﬁB (p. 158). The “improper” constructions such as Œø ªB ﬁrst appear (rarely) in Classical times but became more common in Koine´—with multiple forms: Œø B ªB (p.165), etc. Today one uses only the “improper” preposition, compounded: Œø Ie c ªB—the use of the old simplex form being possible, but not in spatial senses: *e c ªB.

300

The history of Greek prepositions

modern non-spatial use real modern translation:

‘saved by you’ * ŁÅŒÆ e Æ

ŁÅŒÆ I Æ

and yet a few (non-spatial) phrases have survived: classical non-spatial use similar modern use

[e] N å ‘under the power’ e e Œæ ‘under the power’

(Callim.Jov. 75)

What do these data indicate? We must bear in mind that these constructions are borrowings from an artiﬁcial archaic language and not natural remnants of an earlier stage in the history of the language; therefore, they could, in principle, have any kind of meaning. And yet, they are mostly non-spatial.

7.12 Simplex prepositions revived in fossilized phrases Finally, at the very end of the productivity spectrum, there are totally fossilized phrases; in these, any ancient preposition may occur with any case of any ancient noun in any form. In Modern Greek there are numerous111 Classical or Hellenistic phrases often without a demotic equivalent. It is interesting that many such idioms112 are also rendered in Romance languages (or even in English) with a Latin expression. Consider, for instance, the data in Table 7.1. As the table shows, even when occuring in set phrases, old prepositions are usually non-spatial. So, although the inﬂuence of Katharevousa—as indeed of Classical Greek and of Biblical style—may have seemed a further problem, for the most part it appears not to upset the general pattern. Our diachronic study of Greek prepositions has been complicated by several factors: by the lack of “initial” ancient data; by the presence of 111 An extensive list can be found in Eleftheriades (1982: 471). 112 There are, of course, also set prepositional idioms made (lexically, syntactically, and morphologically) according to modern grammar, such as a çÆ, ªØa a ÆÅªæØÆ, etc. For these, see Moustaki (1992: 159). There are also Modern Greek prepositional uses which may have a foreign origin, a possibility suggested by parallels in other languages. For example, The Greek åøæ ¼ºº or e åø ¼ºº, meaning literally ‘without other’, but idiomatically ‘deﬁnitely, certainly’, is mirrored, with the same double meaning, in the Italian senz’ altro, the Bulgarian ,ep lpyuo, and the Albanian pa tjete¨r. The Greek Øa æÆ e æ ‘a hole in the water’, meaning also a futile or unsuccessful effort, is mirrored in the Italian un buco nell’acqua, the Albanian nje¨ vrime¨ ne¨ uje¨ etc.

Prepositions in Modern Greek

301

TABLE 7.1 Older Greek phrase in Modern Greek

Latin phrase in Romance or English

English meaning

±meu ºªı Ip’ IæåB dia

ı eNr IæÆ Kj H æ æø Km ıºﬁø Ø B mejem Kpd ı jat¸pim æB jata º Ø le†wqir IÅÆ letanu´ Æ leta 'æØ pqe H ıº~ ø pqer e Ææ su`m E ¼ººØ sum–pkÞm/leEom ´ u“pe Kå ŁØÆ ÆæÆª Æ w›qim

sine causa ab initio via ad majora a priori in toto honoris causa in loco /in situ post factum verbatim ad nauseam inter nos anno Domini ante portas ad interim inter alia plus/minus sub rosa e(xempli) g(ratia)

without reason from the beginning through/by means of to greater (achievements) beforehand in all honorary on the spot after the event literally to saturation entre nous in the Common Era imminent for the time being amongst other things more or less in conﬁdence for instance

chronological gaps in the post-classical data; by the different ages of the items examined; by the presence or lack of new items replacing old ones; by the unclear status of some items; by the lack of dividing lines between productive and unproductive, between compound and independent, between standard and non-standard; by the interferences from the literary tradition and perhaps from other languages. Nevertheless, Greek has given us a sufﬁciently clear picture of prepositional semantic development. Not only is this an interesting picture for Classicists, Byzantinists, and grammarians of the modern language, but it also has something more general to say to philologists and linguists—and perhaps to others besides. This is what we brieﬂy consider next, in conclusion.

Epilogue etymology will give us in all languages, what philosophy has attempted in vain J. Horne Tooke (1829: 299)

The ﬁrst part of the book simply aimed to present a basic background. It outlined, in three chapters: (1) the linguistic elements that are (or are relevant to) prepositions, such as prepositions, postpositions, case forms, combinations of prepositionsþcases, and combinations of adverbs and prepositions; (2) the type of meanings that prepositions express and the possibility that there can be an order to them, starting perhaps from concrete spatial meanings; (3) and the origin of case forms and adpositions in languages of different families. The second, and more extensive, part of the book traced the diachrony of prepositions (and of related items) through the exceptionally long and welldocumented history of the Greek language. Four e´tats de langue were reviewed: Ancient (both Homeric and Classical), Hellenistic, Medieval, and Modern Greek. The philological problems speciﬁc to each period were noted: we lack adequate evidence for the early stage; in the later stages, the picture is obfuscated by the imitation of classical and biblical models, culminating in an archaizing style being enshrined in law. The Middle Ages, the period normally studied the least, required the analysis of an especially formed corpus of relevant texts. The picture that emerged was nonetheless clear. The earliest evidence attests a rich array of prepositions which have both spatial and non-spatial meaning; but in the course of the history of Greek prepositions there is a regular process of replacement whereby a number of new prepositions gradually takes over from the old ones. A thorough examination of the development of Greek prepositions and case markers showed that in the history of the Greek prepositional system, whenever new sets of prepositions have come into use, they almost invariably expressed spatial meanings, and that those spatial meanings were contemporaneously lost by the older items (e.g. > Œø). The older (partial) synonyms, on the other hand, could survive, unless and until they fell out of use, carrying (often numerous) abstract meanings. They could even develop new meanings, but only non-spatial ones: meaning changed only from spatial to non-spatial. Of the old prepositions, only those which had no

Epilogue

303

younger rivals were able to retain spatial senses. The new exclusively spatial prepositions, in time, developed a range of non-spatial meanings. There is now even marginal evidence that the new prepositions eventually lose their spatial sense completely, thus repeating entirely the life-cycle of their predecessors. Scattered evidence for a semantic trajectory of this kind is provided also, to a limited degree, by other languages, and was discussed in the ﬁrst part of this book, but it could have been dismissed as anecdotal and unsystematic. The idea that the earliest meaning of prepositions is spatial is far from new, but it has constantly found opposition on the grounds that it was unprovable. Some philologists (cf. Vogt 1949: 113) stated that the hypothesis was believable, but that given the lack of studies providing the evidence, it would have been foolhardy to come out strongly in favour of it. The most unhelpful (and widespread) assumption, perhaps, has been that the “localistic hypothesis” must be either universally valid or entirely mistaken. The formal and orderly evidence presented in the second part, however, casts doubt on the opposite view (Hickmann and Robert 2006: 8) that a “characteristic of language is that spatial terms always have non-spatial uses”, and that the hypothesis that the spatial use of adposition cases is historically primary is a speculation “as unveriﬁable as the ding-dong theory” (Sampson 1972: 118). The regularity of the semantic development shown by Greek calls for a general explanation. Historically, the ﬁrst meaning, in the overwhelming majority on instances, appears to have been spatial: spatial prepositions are born spatial. Non-spatial senses were subsequent developments, and may be regarded as metaphorical extensions of the original spatial sense. While an old preposition developed numerous ﬁgurative meanings, a new preposition with only spatial meaning was created; the old form was then either used exclusively in metaphorical senses, or was discarded altogether. In turn, the preposition more recently created (if it caught on) began to develop non-spatial meanings too, and the cycle was repeated. The recurring pattern of development identiﬁed here is not claimed to be cross-linguistically applicable, but it will need to be taken into account in future discussions about the historical validity of the “localistic hypothesis”. The semantic evolution of Greek prepositions as traced here, furthermore, systematically conforms to the “unidirectionality hypothesis” of cognitive theories of metaphor (see p. 82–4), according to which words of concrete meaning develop abstract meaning but not the reverse (Trask 2000: 354). The data presented in this book is therefore also a contribution to the ongoing debate on that hypothesis and on the limits of its application (cf. Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 112; Newmeyer 1998: 260–78; Heine 2003: 164–175; Ziegeler 2004: 115–35; Grady 2007: 193; Heine and Kuteva 2007: 47–53).

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Index abessive meaning 104–5 ablative construction of left/right 143–4 n. 61 ablative to locative semantic shifts 165–6 Abruzzese 241 n. 11 adjectives becoming prepositions 91–2 Adpositions see prepositions and postpositions agency and cause 75–6, 81 agentive meaning 43 Akkadian 94–5, 101 Albanian 75, 179 n. 22, 240–5, 299 n. 112 allative meaning 46 Anderson 51–59 animacy, in object pronouns 258 Arabic 37, 70, 105, 164, 165 n. 87, 244 Areal inﬂuences see Balkan Sprachbund Armenian 244 Arvanitic 240 n. 9, 241 n. 11 Babiniotis and Kondo´s 255 Balkan Sprachbund 217–18, 240–5 Basque 10, 244 Brndal, V. 26, 29–32, 37–8, 49–50, 57, 85, 97, 155 n. 74 Bulgarian 231 n. 32, 240–1, 242, 244 cases ablative genitive in Homeric Greek 126–8, 242 accusative as prepositional case in Medieval Greek 203–4 accusative as prepositional case in Modern Greek 251, 263–4 accusative as spatial case 112, 240, 246–8 accusative in Ancient Greek 112

accusative in Homeric Greek 124–5 accusative in Medieval Greek 203–5 case syncretism 153–4, 194, 245–6 case synonymity after prepositions 156–60, 183–4 cases deriving from postpositions 86–7 cases more clearly spatial earlier 155 cases vs prepositions, prejudices 155 n. 74 contrasted with prepositions 6–15 dative in Ancient Greek 113–14 dative in Homeric Greek 128 dative, recession of 154, 181–2, 239, 240, 246, 249, 252–3 degree of meaningfulness 32–5 equivalence between cases and postpositions 94 forms vs functions 7 n. 2 genitive in Ancient Greek 110–15 genitive in Biblical Greek 182 genitive in Modern Greek 239, 245–54 locative in Ancient Greek 11, 115 locative in Koine´ 181 n. 25 marked on adverbs 98, 133 marked on constituents not nouns 10 marking multiple features 14–15 more abstract than prepositions 15 nominative in Ancient Greek 111 nominative in Modern Greek 251 obsolescent cases 11 partitive genitive in Homeric Greek 125–6, 218 range of cases with prepositions reduced 183 synsemantic with a preposition 20–1 vocative in Ancient Greek 110–11 with the addition of prepositions 16–20 Catalan 103

338

Index

cause see agency Chinese 66, 89 cognitive linguistics 55–6, 73–4 comitative meaning 43–45 comparison 242–3 compound prepositions 29–32 and dimensionality 263–5 being like prepositions with cases 19, 266 selecting simplex prepositions in Modern Greek 265–77 cohesiveness 261, 269–70 their semantic innovations in Modern Greek 277–82 their status in Modern Greek 255 their structure in Modern Greek 256–63 compound tenses 23 Comrie 241 cyclical change 83–4 Danish 8, 22, 39–40, 217 dimensionality 264 directional cases based on locatives 25 Dutch 8, 22, 136–7, 230 n. 31, 244 Eleftheriades 256 Estonian 101 Ewe 65 existential expressions 66–7 Finnish 18, 37, 45–6, 58, 59–60, 62, 64, 95, 101, 138, 164, 244, 264–5, 285 n. 92 foreign parallels and inﬂuences 216–18 parallels with the development of Latin 216–17 see also Balkan Sprachbund French 8, 40, 41, 98, 148 n. 69, 165 n. 87, 243–5, 262 n. 39, 299 n. 112 Fries 256 Gaelic (Scots) 64 German 5, 6, 22, 23, 36, 40, 148 n. 69, 217, 244–5

grammaticalization 88 Greek, diachrony 85 Greenlandic 243 Hatzidakis 198 Hittite 138, 140, 141–2 Hjelmslev 51 Holton et al. 255 Homeric Greek 123 multiple spatial case combinations 145 status of prepositions in Homer, 133–7 see also cases homonymy 76 Hopf 251 n. 23 Horne Tooke 155 n. 74 Horrocks 135, 138 n. 53, 198 Hungarian 68, 75, 99–100, 147, 179 n. 22, 240–2, 244 Icelandic 22, 37 imperatives becoming prepositions 91 indirect object 47 Indo-European 140 instrumental meaning 43, 45 Irish 37 Italian 12, 23, 37, 40, 42, 75, 102, 165 n. 87, 216, 217, 230 n. 31, 240–1, 243–5, 249 n. 18, 285 n. 92, 299 n. 112 Jackendoff, R. 27, 30, 42–3, Jakobson 35 Joseph 171 K (for Kasus) 3–4 Kannada 58 Kant 53–4 Katharevousa 176, 238–9, 241, 250, 252, 253 n. 24, 254 n. 25, 26, 27, 254, 255, 262, 263 n. 42, 268, 269 n. 58, 282 n. 83, 288, 290 n. 100, 291, 292, 293, 295 n. 108, 296, 299 Koine´ Greek 65, 171–4

Index Koine´ Greek 171–2 inﬂuence on later Greek 175–7 semitisms in Biblical Greek 173–5, 179 n. 22 Korean 90 Krumbacher 198 Latin 12, 16, 65–6, 87, 98, 101, 137–8, 143–4 n. 61, 148 n. 69, 164–5, 242, 244, 245 n. 14, 300 adverbs into prepositions 137–8 Biblical Latin 181 n. 24 inﬂuence from Greek 18 inﬂuence on Greek 217 Latvian 33–4 Lithuanian 103 localism see localistic hypothesis localistic hypothesis 47–52, 70–1, 73 implicit localism in descriptions of Ancient Greek 115–17 locative meaning 43–4, 46, 60–1 locative prepositions with genitive of possession 144 n. 63 Macedonian see Slav Macedonian Mackridge 256 Malayalam 25 Mark’s Gospel, prepositions in 177–94 Medieval Greek archaism and attitudes to it 195–7 assessing texts 197–8 corpus texts 199–201 increasing archaism 201 metaphor 41, 54–6, 57, 62, 75–8 anthropomorphic metaphors 80–1 cross-linguistically recurrent metaphors 148 n. 69 opposite metaphors for same meaning 76–7 Middle English 92 Mirambel 256 Modern English 148 n. 69, 259 n. 33

339

Modern Greek 238–9 set phrases 250–1, 252–3 see also Katharevousa Moreux 159 Mycenaean 134, 166 Nakas 256 NCM (non-concatenative morphology) 21–2 non-linear developments 192–3 Norwegian 22, 239 n. 5 nouns becoming prepositions 93–106 Old English 92 Oscan (and Umbrian) 88, 242, 244 participles becoming prepositions 90–1 perlative meaning expressed as ablative 243–4 Persian, 101, 103, 179 n. 22, 244 phonological changes effacing distinctions between prepositions 211–13 phrases becoming prepositions 92 Planudes 48–9 Polish 59, 243–4, 280 n. 80 polysemy 41–8, 71–5 see also metaphor possession 62–5 postpositions, borrowing 92–3 contrasted with prepositions 5–6 developing into cases 86 derived from verbs 91 in Indo-European languages 138 in relation to other categories 3 in relation to prepositions 4–6 in relation to cases 7–8 standard deﬁnition 37 pragmatic factors affecting meaning 79–80 preﬁxes, in Ancient Greek 119–21, 135, 208 in Modern Greek 263 prepositions, added to case 16–20, 23, 194 derived from verbs 89–91

340

Index

prepositions, added to case (cont.) anastrophe of “proper” prepositions 134, 139–40, 239 borrowing 92–3 compound prepositions 26, 27, 28–32, 132, 150, 194, 218, 255 contrasted with cases 6–15 criteria for case selection 143–7 etymology of the term 4, 37 “improper” 118–19 “improper” prepositions being the more recent type 160 “improper” prepositions compounded with a simplex one 215, 266 “improper” prepositions governing weak genitive pronouns 241 “improper” prepositions in Mark’s Gospel 191 “improper” prepositions lost in Medieval Greek 214–15 “improper” prepositions mostly or only spatial 188–9, 194, 225, 234 “improper” prepositions ousting other “improper” prepositions 188, 194 “improper” prepositions spatially equivalent to “proper” ones 181, 187 “improper” prepositions variably synsemantic with a simplex preposition 266 in Ancient Greek 115–19, 141 in relation to other categories 3 increasing number of “improper” prepositions 160, 180–1, 186 increasing synonymous prepositions 160–5, 208–9 marking direct objects 11–13 meanings of “improper” prepositions in Medieval Greek 222–7 non-spatial meanings of “improper” prepositions increasing 225, 235 obsolescence 184–6, 194 origins 89–106

etymology of “proper” prepositions in Indo-European 140–3 prepositions derived from nouns 101–6 prepositions increasingly added to cases 155–6, 179 “proper” and “improper” 116 “proper” prepositions in Mark’s Gospel 190 rates of occurrence in Ancient Greek 121–3 replacing plain cases 181, 202 spatial “proper” prepositions having no replacement 189, 234 spatial meanings of “proper” prepositions being recessive 189, 194, 229–30, 234 structures constituting prepositions 27–32 synsemantic with case 20–5 terms for preposition in other languages 5 productive/unproductive, fuzzy distinction 255 n. 30 prototypes 72–4 Rohlf 241 Romanian 8, 12, 75, 217, 240–2, 244, 245 Russian 15, 34 Sanskrit 17, 68, 159 n. 54, Schwyzer 227 Semitisms in Medieval Greek 225–7 Serbo-Croat 240 Sicilian 241 n. 11 Slav Macedonian 240, 244, 249 n. 18, 299 n. 112 Slovenian 240, 299 n. 112 Spanish 12, 13, 138, 148 n. 69 spatial meaning historically recessive 166–9, 234 see also localistic hypothesis

Index Swahili 64 Swedish 9, 19–20, 22, 23–4, 60, 75, 98, 244–5 synonymity, among Ancient Greek prepositions 148–9, 184–6, 208–9 in both spatial and non-spatial meanings 150–3 Tachibana 256 Tajik 96 temporal meanings 57–9, 225 n. 25 Thai 89 Theophanopou´lou-Kondou´ 257, 259–61, 264 tmesis 135 n. 50, 159 n. 54 To’aba’ita 90 Tocharian 17, 87 Triandaphyllidis 202, 256 Tsopanakis 255 Turkish 10, 14, 17–18, 40, 68, 70, 88, 96, 97, 144 n. 61, 148 n. 69, 179 n. 22, 217, 231 n. 32, 240–1, 243–5, 262 n. 39, 264–5, 285 n. 92 Umbrian 138, 144 n. 61 unidirectional shift from spatial to nonspatial 189 unidirectionality 82–3, 237 Urdu 93–4 Welsh 64, 101, 103 Yannakopoulou 256 Yiddish 22 Hebrew (and Aramaic) 37, 69, 101, 105, 144 n. 61, 165 n. 87, 173–4, 179 n. 22, 190 n. 40, 243 Jt¨HA 226 ð 13, 173 ‘A 11, JQtÐ‘A 174 b ´ 192–3 ˙ Nb´˙ 176

341

JQJp¨b´˙ 180, 225–6 JQJp¨M 101 JQ tM 101, 175, 180, 226–7 Mp 174 ¯ ÐMp 174 JQt ¯ PJO 175 Bo O 177 AD H PJO 177 Greek terms ¼ªåØ or ¼ªåı 170, 188 – Æ 119, 144–5, 154, 178, 269 I ç 117, 122, 131, 141 n. 57, 148, 149, 151, 155, 160–1, 167, 178, 183, 184, 186, 228, 229–32, 283 n. 54 I 40–1, 117, 122, 141 n. 57, 146, 155, 160, 162, 178, 183, 186, 190, 205, 227, 229–32, 237, 293 Ia

11 n. 4, 178, 185, 188, 191, 214, 220, 227 see also I Æ IªŒÅ, prepositional phrases with 149 IÆºªø and IºªÆ 250 I Æ 215, 254, 266–7, 271, 276–8 IÆæø and IæÅÆ 250, 259 ¼ı 119, 145–6, 154 n. 72, 166, 188–9, 254 n. 25, 265, 300 I Æ 266 I 117, 122, 140, 141, 152–3, 162, 167–9, 178, 186, 189, 190, 204, 205, 227, 229–31, 236, 283, 289 as I[] ªØ 219, 230, 254, 257, 266, 268 IØŒæ[] (variable accent) 119, 141 n. 58, 178, 188, 206, 223, 224, 227, 254, 271, 274 ¼ø 169 IÆØŒæ 169 Iø 206, 213,, 224, 227–8 as Iø N 220, 274 n. 68

342

Index

IøŁ 187, 206, 227–8 I , I, Iç’ 215, 236 I ÆØ 187, 188–9, 216 with I 255 with 255, 271, 274, 276–8 I

ø[Ł] 214 I ø[Ł] 214 I 117, 122, 132, 134, 139, 143, 148, 156, 164–5, 166 in Biblical Greek 105, 175, 178, 179, 184–5, 189, 190 in Medieval Greek 202–4, 205, 211–13, 216, 217–18, 228, 230, 232, 234, 236–7, 252 in Modern Greek 75, 84, 242–3, 248–51, 254, 256, 257, 266, 271, 272–7, 283–4, 294, 299, 300 Ie ŒÆæØÆÐ 177 Ie ØÆÐ 177 ¼Ł 188 I[ı]Œø 206 IŒø N 222 I 206 n. 13 ¼æ 145 ØÇÆ 262 n. 39 ªÅÐ, prepositional phrases with 165 ªØ 38–40, 206, 215, 219, 228, 230–1, 235–6, 242, 246–7, 249, 251, 254, 257, 263, 266, 283–5, 297, 298, 299 n. 112 ªØÆ 206 n. 13 ªæŁ and æØªæŁ 206, 228 ªæﬁø or æØªæﬁø 97, 206, 222, 223, 224, 228, 231–2, 234, with I and 255, 271, 274, 276–9, 296–7 - 114, 128–30, 181 n. 25 Ø 117, 122, 140 n. 56, 141 n. 57, 148, 149, 158–9, 167 n. 88, 170, 178, 179, 184, 190, 203, 206, 215, 228, 234, 235, 254 n. 25, 263, 292, 300 Øa ØÆÐ 178 Øa Æ 176 Øa

ı 216, 251, 254 n. 26 ØÆ 206 n. 13

Ø Œ 131 ºÆ, with I and 255, 259 n. 33, 263, 265, 271, 274–7 åÆ 145–6, 154 n. 72, 188, 300 åø 254, 283 åø 230 n. 31 Kªª 119, 169–70, 178, 188 N 117, 122, 144, 148, 149, 162–3, 178, 181, 186, 189, 190, 192, 193 n. 44, 203, 205, 206, 209–10, 215, 216, 228, 230, 232–4, 236, 252, 254, 293–4, 300 as essive 235 n. 34 N 215 KŒ / K 105, 117, 122, 135, 143, 148, 149, 156, 160, 164–5, 178, 179, 184–5, 190, 204, 205, 211, 216, 217–18, 228, 229–30, 232, 239, 243–4, 252, 254 n. 25, 294, 300 KŒ æı 241 n. 12 Œ 132, 142, 145–6, 170 KŒøÐ 141 n. 58 KŒ 119, 132, 142, 170, 178, 214, 228, 255, 266–7, 279, 282 KŒ Ł 214, 228 K øÐ 141 n. 58 K æ or O æ 206, 223, 224, 227, 263 æ Ł 119, 169, 178, 180, 187, 188–9, 191, 226, 227, 231, 263 K 96, 97, 117, 122, 134, 140, 142, 144, 149, 154, 155, 162–3, 178, 181 n. 26, 186, 189, 190, 192–3, 209–10, 228, 229–30, 232, 234, 253–4, 254 n. 25, 264, 265, 294–5, 300 K O ÆØ 176 K

ﬁø 178, 191, 218–19 ÆÆ 141 ÆØ 141, 189, 206 KØÆ 206, 223, 227, 254, 266–7, 279, 282, 292, 295 n. 108 KÆ 119, 139, 169, 178, 180, 187, 188, 189, 191, 206, 223, 224, 225, 227, 250, 254 n. 25, 269, 282, 292, 295 119 ŒÆ or Œ 106, 119, 170, 178, 191, 300 Ł 97

Index K 96, 141 n. 57, 142 K Æ 205 K 119, 142, 166, 169, 178, 188, 189, 206, 223, 224, 228, 232, 254 n. 25 KØ 119, 169, 180, 187, 206, 223, 224, 226, 227, 269 n. 58 ŒÆØ 187, 206, 225 K see also KŒ K ÆNÆ 216, 251, 254 n. 25, 260, 262 K KÆÆ 178, 191 ø 119, 160, 166, 169–70, 178, 191, 206, 214, 224, 225, 226, 228, 232, 254, 259 n. 33, 266–7, 269, 270, 271, 276–7, 279 øŁ 206, 214, 223, 224, 228 Kø [Kı] 119, 178, 181, 187, 188, 191, 213, 223, 224, 227–8, 231, 232, 234, 254, 258 Kø N 220, 274 n. 68 Kø with I and 255 KøŁ 206, 223, 227 ØÆ I 255 K 117, 122, 140, 141 n. 57, 148, 154, 157, 162, 178, 181, 182, 184, 187, 190, 205, 209–10, 212–13, 228, 229–30, 232, 235, 239, 253, 254 n. 25, 265, 292, 295–6, 300 ø,

ø, or Y ø 119, 169, 178, 191, 206, 214, 222, 224, 228 øŁ 206, 214, 223, 224, 228 ø 119, 178, 183, 188, 191–2, 254, 283, 287, 290 -Ł 114, 128–30, 146 n. 67, 166, 181 n. 25, 202, 204, 214 n. 20 -ŁØ 114, 128–30, 146 n. 67, 181 n. 25 Y Æ (Y [Ø]Æ ) 254 n. 26, 225, 255, 263, 266, 269, 288, 290 ŒÆ 96, 117, 122, 140, 141, 148, 149, 160, 163–4, 170, 178, 190, 205, 206 n. 13, 228, 229–30, 233–4, 250, 254, 288, 292, 300 with the genitive in Modern Greek 296 ŒÆ æ ø 174, 227 ŒÆ c ØæŒØÆ 293

343

ŒÆÆ 96 ŒÆÆØŒæ[] 206 ŒÆÆØ æÆ 188 ŒÆ ÆØ 178, 187, 188, 191, 206 ŒÆÆ 206 ŒÆØ 187, 206 ŒÆØ 119, 156, 254 n. 25, 300 ŒÆæŁ 170, 188 Œø 169–70, 187–8, 206, 207, 218, 222, 223–4, 228, 232–3, 255, 258, 261, 266–7, 270, 275–6, 279–80, 288, 299 n. 110; as adverb 127, 135, 141, 257, 271 Œø I 222, IŒø N 222 Œ 206, 215, 222, 223, 224, 228, 233–4, 255, 256, 257, 259 n. 33, 263, 265, 266, 269, 276–7 Œæıça I 259–60 ŒıŒºŁ 188, 206, 223, 224 ŒŒºﬁø 97, 142, 206, 223, 224, 228 ºªﬁø 254 n. 25 ÆÇ 215, 230, 255, 256, 266, 269, 280 ÆŒæ 119 with I 178, 191–2 ÆŒæØa I 255, 256, 259 n. 33, 265, 266, 269, 271, 276–7, 280 ÆŒæŁ 206, 223, 224 in Medieval Greek 205–7, 228, 230, 232–4; ØÆÐ 176–7 åø 230 n. 31; in Modern Greek 19, 45, 248, 250, 254, 256, 257, 266, 268, 280 n. 80, 283, 286, 289, 295

Æ 206, 214, 219, 223, 224, 227, 228, 256, 257, 265, 266–7, 280–1

Æ 254 contrast with I and with 276–7

Æ N 219–20, 222

Æ I [I ] 220, 222, 271;

Æ KŒ 220

206, 218–19, 223, 224, 227, 228,

ﬁø 254 n. 25, 260, 262 27–9, 117, 122, 131, 141, 149, 151–2, 154, 156, 158–9, 166–7, 178, 182, 184,

344

Index

189, 190, 204–7, 216, 228, 233, 236, 251, 266, 283, 288, 289–90, 300 contrast with genitive and accusative 115–16 a – Æ 19 I 29, 254, 268, 290, 297 Æ 119, 132, 167, 169, 178, 188, 214, 250, 254, 269, 289, 300 åæØ or ¼åæØ 119, 141 n. 57, 169, 178, 188, 191–2, 203–4, 206, 254, 269, 283, 288, 290, 300 ªÆ 144 æ 227, 254–5, 258, 259 n. 33, 263, 271, 276–7, 281, 295, 298 æ a N 222 æ a I 222, contrast between æ a and æ a I 272–3 çØ 145–6 ıªæıÐ 262 n. 39 Æ 212 n. 19 212 n. 19 see › ıÐ 144 O æ, see K æ ZØ Ł 119, 169 O -ø, ø, or K -ø 119, 178, 188, 191, 206, 223, 224, 225, 226 as ø 256, with I 255, 266–7, 270, 276–7; O ø N 222 O ø I 222 K ø N 222 ø 29–30, 32, 79, 148 n. 69, 213, 221, 223–4, 254, 255, 256, 263, 268, 271, 282 with I or 30, 78, 257–9, 260, 261 n. 38, 262, 265, 272, 274, 276–7, 281, 295, 296, 297, 298 ø N 220 Ææ 24, 35, 117, 122, 142, 144, 146, 154, 156–7, 178, 179 n. 21, 182, 190, 192, 205, 210, 213, 228, 229–30, 232, 234, 254, 264, 265, 283, 290–1 Ææ I 219 ÆæÆ 142

Ææ Œ 131 æ 142, 153 141 ºÆ 170 æÆ() 119, 141, 169, 178, 191, 206 with I 255, 266–7 æ 96, 97, 117, 122, 134, 139, 141, 141 n. 57, 142–3, 148, 149, 150, 154, 156–7, 160–1, 167, 178, 182, 184, 186, 190, 205, 213, 227–8, 229–32, 236, 239, 242, 254 n. 25, 296–7 æØ 119, 178 ø see O ø ºœ 255, 263, 271, 275–7 º 119, 178, 188, 254 n. 25, 300 ºÅ 119, 169–70, 178, 188, 206, 223, 224, 228, 233 ææø 119, 169, 178, 188 æ 119, 170, 254–5, 259 n. 33, 266–7, 272, 286 æ 117, 122, 142, 149, 152–3, 162, 167–9, 178, 187, 189, 190, 205, 227, 229–31, 239, 254 n. 25, 297–8, 300 æe ø 176 æ 96, 97, 117, 122, 131, 141 n. 57, 142, 147, 149, 158, 163 n. 82, 178, 182, 183, 186, 190, 192, 205, 209–10, 228, 229–30, 233–4, 236–7, 254, 265, 283, 288, 291, 300 æ Ł() 97, 119, 170, 178 æ 96, 142

’ 215

[] 251, 254, 283, 286–7 - 114, 130, 181 n. 25

144 n. 61, 206, 215, 216, 228, 230, 247–9, 254 n. 25, 256, 257, 264, 266, 271, 272–7, 283–4, 288, 293, 294, 295, 296, 299 n. 112

Ø 269 n. 62

or 17, 117, 122, 144–5, 149, 152, 154, 155, 156, 166–7, 178, 184, 190, 205, 216, 228, 229–30, 233, 253, 254 n. 25, 269, 280 n. 80, 300

Index

ıªª 188

åØŒ I 259 å, prepositional phrases with 149 ÅÐº 132, 145 æØªæﬁø see ªæﬁø Œ 131 æ 97, 117, 122, 142, 148, 162, 174, 178, 182, 189, 190, 193, 205, 229–31, 234, 235, 239, 254 n. 25, 298 æø 187, 206, 281 n. 81 æøŁ 206 oæŁ 97 117, 122, 135, 140, 142, 146–7, 154, 156, 158–9, 163–4, 170, 178, 182, 184, 185, 187,

345

189, 190, 205, 212–13, 222, 228, 229–32, 239, 254 n. 25, 280 n. 79, 298–9, 300 Œø 119, 178, 187, 188, 191, 206, 223–4, 228, 299 n. 110 ŒøŁ 206, 220, 223–4, 228 o æÆ I 255, 266, 269, 288 -çØ 130–1 ç , prepositional phrases with 149 ç ıÐ ÆØ I 179 n. 22 åæØ 106, 119, 170, 206, 234, 300 åøæ 105, 119, 145–6, 188–9, 254, 257, 283, 287, 300 ‰ 117, 119, 122, 144, 178, 191, 235, 254, 283, 287, 290