Stability, Variation and Change of Word-order Patterns over Time (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory)

STABILITY, VARIATION AND CHANGE OF WORD-ORDER PATTERNS OVER TIME

AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE General Editor E. F. KONRAD KOERNER (University of Ottawa) Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY

Advisory Editorial Board Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles); Lyle Campbell (Christchurch, N.Z.] Sheila Embleton (Toronto); John E. Joseph (Edinburgh) Manfred Krifka (Berlin); Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin) E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Hans-Jürgen Sasse (Köln)

Volume 213

Rosanna Sornicola, Erich Poppe and Ariel Shisha-Halevy (eds) Stability, Variation and Change of Word-Order Patterns over Time

STABILITY, VARIATION AND CHANGE OF WORD-ORDER PATTERNS OVER TIME Edited by ROSANNA SORNICOLA Università di Napoli Frederico II ERICH POPPE Philipps- Universität Marburg ARIEL S H I S H A - H A L E V Y The Hebrew University of Jerusalem with the assistance of Paola Como

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stability, variation, and change of word-order patterns over time / edited by Rosanna Sornicola, Erich Poppe, Ariel Shisha-Halevy, with the assistance of Paola Como. p. cm. -- (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV, Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 213) Chiefly papers presented at a workshop held within the 13th International Conference on Historical Linguisitics, which was held Aug. 14,1997, Düsseldorf, Ger. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Grammar, Comparative and general-Word order-Congresses. 2. Linguistic changeCongresses. 3. Language and languages-Variation-Congresses. I. Sornicola, Rosanna, 1953-. II. Poppe, Erich. III. Shisha-Halevy, Ariel. IV. International Conference on Historical Linguistics (13th : 1997 : Düsseldorf, Germany) V. Series. P295.S69 2000 415--dc21 00-050830 ISBN 90 272 3720 4 (Eur.) / 1 58811 037 o (US) © 2000 - John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements Introduction Part I. Stylistic and Pragmatic Principles in Stability, Variation and Change Jean-Pierre Benoist La formation des principes de l'ordre des mots du russe moderne en tant que problème de stylistique littéraire et de linguistique Antonio Loprieno From VSO to SVO? Word Order and Rear Extraposition in Coptic Erich Poppe Constituent Order in Middle Welsh: the Stability of the Pragmatic Principle Part II. Stability and Diachrony Guy Deutscher Stability Against the Odds? The Survival of Verb Final Order in Akkadian Ariel Shisha-Halevy Stability in Clausal/Phrasal Pattern Constituent Sequencing: 4000 Years of Egyptian (with Some Theoretical Reflections, also on Celtic) Rosanna Sornicola Stability, Variation and Change in Word Order: Some Evidence from the Romance Languages

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55

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Part III. Reanalysis, Grammaticalization and Change Jan Terje Faarlund Reanalysis in Word Order Stability and Change Alice C. Harris Word Order Harmonies and Word Order Change in Georgian Carol F. Justus Word Order and the First Person Imperative Part IV. Variation and Change Marcello Cherchi Variant Order of Surface Segmentables on the Border between Morphology and Syntax: the Case of Preradicai Verbal Morphology in Kartvelian Oliver Currie Word Order Stability and Change from a Sociolinguistic Perspective: the Case of Early Modern Welsh Mark Janse Stability and Change of Word Order Patterns Over Time Willem Koopman & Wim Van Der Wurff Two Word Order Patterns in the History of English: Stability, Variation, and Change Anette Rosenbach & Letizia Vezzosi Genitive Constructions in Early Modern English. New Evidence from a Corpus Analysis Index of names Index of subjects Index of languages

119 133 165

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231 259

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309 315 321

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The editors would like to thank Clare Orchard and Giovanna Pianese for editorial assistance, and to acknowledge financial support from the Department of Modern Philology of the University of Naples "Federico II".

INTRODUCTION

The subject discussed in this volume was originally proposed for a workshop on "Stability, variation and change of word-order patterns over time" held at the XIIIth Conference of the International Society for Historical Linguistics (Düsseldorf, 14th August 1997). Guidelines were prepared centred around two main problems: (a) the relationship between stability and variation of word-order (WO) patterns and (b) the relationship between synchronic variability and change of WO patterns. This partition, which as a mere device for organizing the debate certainly had an element of artificiality, nonetheless reflects the implicit assumption that variation and variability are the intermediate link between stability and change in a manner that is far from being clear and uncontroversial. Each problem prompted further issues. Thus participants were asked to present criteria for assessing stability and variation and to discuss the nature of stability and variation; in particular, the impact of internal and external factors and the role of grammaticalization of WO patterns in determining stability were suggested as possible factors affecting the nature of stability and variation. As to the relationship between synchronic variability and change, two factors were proposed as further themes for debate, i.e. the relationship between internal flexibility of WO patterns and change and the influence of pragmatic factors on trends of change. The present collection of papers includes some of the contributions presented at the workshop in Düsseldorf, as well as additional invited articles. One of the criteria inspiring the preparation of the workshop and of the volume was gathering an array of studies covering a significant range of languages, in order to have problems and conceptions specific to the various linguistic and philological traditions reflected in the discussion of synchronic and diachronic 'movements' of WO. It is, in fact, a basic belief shared by the editors that themes like WO flexibility and change, which are currently being debated in contemporary research on diachronic syntax, can benefit from detailed studies and fresh theoretical and historical visions stemming from diverse scholarly traditions. The range of languages investigated here includes Hamito-Semitic languages like Egyptian with its later stage, Coptic, an ancient Semitic language like Akkadian, Caucasian languages like Georgian, Mingrelian, Svan,

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Laz and Indo-European languages. Among the latter there are ancient languages like Hittite, Greek, Latin and modern ones like Russian, Welsh and various Romance languages. Germanic languages are represented by Old Norse, Modern Scandinavian languages and by English. The detailed study of WO patterns from this wide range of languages can balance, test and perhaps allow a critical reconsideration of large-scale typological pictures that - from Greenberg's, Vennemann's and Givón's works onwards - have characterized a non-negligible part of contemporary research in diachronic syntax. Moreover it can also prompt a critical consideration of formal models of syntactic change like the ones put forward by Lightfoot. Almost all contributions concern languages which are no longer spoken. The special theoretical and methodological foundation and properties of what one may therefore term 'dead-language linguistics' are as yet relatively underplayed in linguistic analysis. Three aspects seem particularly relevant to the issues under discussion in the present volume, and call for caution in appreciating linguistic features: (a) The properties of written texts as 'testi di lingua': considerations of genre and style, possible hyper-dialectal or interdialectal status, relationship with spoken language, even ecdotics (variatio here acquires a very different meaning). (b) The problem of the written text, and of its transmission, in linguistic diachrony: a chronological sequence of written texts does not necessarily constitute a diachronic continuity that can be taken, without special unscrambling, as a database for tracing grammatical change. (c) The methodological and 'technical' problems of analytic and heuristic work on ancient languages which are attested only in a limited corpus of written texts, and in particular the methodological position of non-attestation of linguistic features. The book exhibits a lively concordia discors. Although the overall perspective is functionalist, formal paradigms are assumed in some papers as a stimulating source for more general reflections. Some articles show a pronounced orientation towards a truly 'historical' analysis of data, while others have a stronger theoretical inclination. On the whole, however, a nondogmatic spirit pervades all papers: rather than proposing all-encompassing models or sweeping generalizations, the authors tend to raise questions, point out problems deriving from current models and give outlines for further possible directions of research. Non-dogmatism and a certain amount of skepticism may not be unwelcome. If the reflection on stability, variation and change of every single aspect of syntax inevitably leads to general problems of both synchronic and diachronic linguistics, with a still open bicentennial debate behind them, the

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state of the art in WO studies does not unravel less controversial scenarios. A centuries-old subject of research, WO (and perhaps it would be better to adopt the more comprehensive term 'constituent order', which would also better suit the range of phenomena covered in this volume) embraces a series of phenomena of primary importance for the understanding of syntactic structure. The models elaborated in the last decades show conceptual similarities but also differences in their assumptions and results that make a comparison difficult. In recent years, rather than producing a cumulative growth of knowledge, research on WO has instead leapt forward partially neglecting former results. This is hardly a unique situation in the history of sciences, and linguistics is no exception. Sometimes recent models opened new views, like typological studies on correlations or 'harmonies' of WO patterns, which have revealed regularities linking individual structures and produced an attempt to globally represent linearization processes. Yet this result had its costs, as linearity was perhaps inevitably - singled out as a parameter independent of structure and this was at times represented simplistically with consequent misrepresentation of data (cf. the observations in Deutscher's, Loprieno's, Poppe's, ShishaHalevy's, Sornicola's papers). Although a conspicuous mass of reasearch, with data from a vast number of languages, has been carried out over the last twenty years (cf. Hawkins 1983, Hawkins 1994, Harris & Campbell 1995), it is perhaps possible to question the soundness of the overall representation of diachronic 'cycles' and single 'stages' of a given cycle. This may be due, not only to the difficulty in determining a specific linear property, for any given period of a language, but also to the more general theoretical problem of how to represent individual structures and correlations of structures over time (see further on). Thus it would not be too pessimistic to say that we still do not know much about continuities and discontinuities of WO patterns over time and their range of synchronic flexibility. Even after twenty-five years Charles Li's evaluation of Greenbergian typology does not seem out-of-date. In his view, although "invaluable as a pioneering source of stimulation in modern studies of language typologies", it "does not constitute an unshakable foundation for diachronic syntax". Moreover "the SVO, SOV, VSO typology does not provide a trichotomy of the vast majority of languages in the world. At best, it represents three points of idealization in the continuum of word orders and a wide array of ancillary grammatical properties. The precise nature of this continuum remains somewhat of a mystery to date" (Li 1977:xiv).

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Further problems with a more specific explanatory dimension can be considered. For example, the explanations of typological 'cycles' and correlations of WO patterns are often based on functional factors of a semantic, pragmatic or cognitive nature (like Hawkins's principle of ease of perception), which are singled out as having an independent and unconditional role. Functional factors - and in particular semantic and pragmatic ones - certainly play a central role in the functioning of syntax. Yet, it is possible to entertain doubts as to whether they can per se explain the complexities of macroscopic diachronic processes like the setting up of a new type or the alignment of a pattern with another within the same language. These phenomena can hardly be observed by linguists, as they go through large-scale historical processes like those that bring about new cultural norms within a society. The locus of the cognitive factors considered in functional-typological models is instead the speaker conceived as an abstract individual who is always and everywhere the same and as such is placed 'beyond history'. It seems therefore profitable to reconsider the problem of 'movements' of WO patterns over time from a perspective which combines the historicalphilological approach with the functional-typological one. In this view, the search for 'cycles' and harmonies can be usefully integrated with studies on individual structures/patterns. Yet an attempt to bring together the two traditions of research meets the preliminary difficulty of having to relate assumptions, methods and results that may be very different and in some cases even at variance. On the other hand, a reflection on stability, variation and change has to face the additional difficulty of having to handle concepts of broad epistemological interest that are not unique to linguistics and that - although frequently employed in human sciences - seem to escape unitary definitions. In fact, they are found more or less implicitly in various historical, sociological and economic models, with different meanings. Even their use within the same discipline may considerably differ. In recent historiographical models invigorated by a critical reception of structural ideas, the notion of stability is connected with 'permanence', 'duration' of a historical structure. Some French scholars identify periods in European history described as "grandes plages d'équilibre, qui, dans le long terme, anulent le mouvement" (Burguière 1971:v), which nonetheless may not necessarily include a true 'stationary state' but also minor periodical cycles of change. What seems particularly interesting, however, is that within contemporary historiographical models 'stability' - be it conceived as permanence /

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duration or recurring cycles of change - is part of a more general interest in change and the times of change. It is in mathematical and physical sciences that stability is considered per se as a first rank theoretical problem. The properties of being in 'stable' vs 'unstable' equilibrium are defined for a simple pendulum in lower upright position: "pour tout voisinage arbitrairement petit de l'équilibre, le pendule demeure dans ce voisinage pour toutes les perturbations suffisamment petites (les perturbations affectent la position et la vitesse, toutes deux nulles à l'équilibre). Le pendule est aussi en équilibre en position verticale supérieure, mais à l'opposé du cas précédent, cet équilibre est instable" (EPHU, 2: 2449a). This meaning, which has an obvious intuitive content, seems very close to the one that is found directly or indirectly associated with the terms 'stability, 'stable' in various human sciences. Likewise in economics the notion of 'equilibrium state' implies the possibility of minimal fluctuations not substantially affecting it. Here 'stability conditions' are defined as "the conditions for a system to tend to revert to its original conditions after a disturbance" (Black 1997:440). The equilibrium state to which a system reverts is not necessarily a stationary state, but may also be "a steady-state growth path or some form of limit cycle" (Black 1997: 440). Incidentally, the notion of 'cycle' is one of the economic models that have admittedly influenced conceptual tools of contemporary historical reasearch. More than other sciences, mathematics has assigned a central place to the theoretical interest in stability developing many formal models. Yet even mathematicians admit that "there is no unitary rigorous definition of stability encompassing all the meanings of this word in contemporary scientific research" (Milani 1981:418 [translation ours]); however, various models have been worked out, each amenable to a particular theory. This is why some scholars - following Thorn - suggest a definition of meta-mathematical nature: "a property defined within a mathematical structure is a property of stability or instability if it either positively or negatively determines the susceptibility of a mathematical object of the structure to be employed as a model of reality" (Milani 1981:418 [translation ours]). In this sense the notion of stability is connected to the traditional scientific problem of the possibility to predict events by mathematical models. In Milani's words, "the problem of stability is to predict the maximum limit to errors induced by measurements, simplifications of calculations, and schematizations of mathematical models" (Milani 1981:419 [translation ours]).

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In post-second-world-war diachronic linguistics, different models of stability seem to coexist, some implying the simple intuitive notion of 'stationary state', others the idea of minimal oscillations that do not alter the overall equilibrium of a system or - in a different version - of a grammar (cf. also Currie's considerations on stability and its relation to variability, in this volume). If elementary physical intuitions may ultimately be latent in such representations, the decisive role played by traditional linguistic ideas (like the notion of a 'dynamic statics of language' of the Kazan School and of the Prague School, or the more recent sociolinguistic conceptions of variability) is certainly indisputable. The meta-mathematical conception of stability also seems to have found its way into diachronic linguistics. It can be felt in Lightfoot's view that "languages are consistently changing gradually and in a piecemeal fashion, but meanwhile grammars remain in equilibrium, unchanged in their structural properties" and that nonetheless from time to time grammars "undergo more radical, catastrophic restructuring, corresponding to new parameter settings" (Lightfoot 1991:173). In fact, what Lightfoot has presented in his works is a conception of grammar as a meta-mathematical model of stability, in that the setting of parameters can be considered to determine the limits of possible fluctuations or variations with respect to predictions made by grammar. Conceptions of change are no less diverse than those of stability. General critical perspectives come from the productive debate on the role of structure in the study of change, which has affected historical research of the second half of XXth century. For example, it has been observed that there is an inevitable ideological component in every representation of change. As the French historian Burguière said (1971:iv), the dynamic models of change have developed out of the philosophical context of evolutionism and meet the expectations "d'une pensée militante qui attend de l'histoire une vérification expérimentale de l'idée de progrès"; besides, they project the system of values of the industrial world, "son culte du changement et de l'innovation". This ideological aspect, which could have the salutary effect of relativizing representations considered absolute and objective, has been almost completely overlooked in contemporary diachronic linguistics. Whatever the definitions of stability and change may be, the notion of variation is associated with both, in a way that raises the question of criteria for studying the amount and/or the nature of variation itself. Insofar as it can be 'kept under control' or even disregarded (either because it is of modest dimension or because it is unordered and chaotic) no real change is believed to be able to set in. An example of this view can be found in Lightfoot's models,

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where variation seems to be understood as a minor chaotic change. But such representations are not exempt from problems. More in general, it is possible to wonder whether 'variation' is a notion with a clear and strict definition in human sciences and in particular in linguistics and whether we explored all its possible implications for stability and change. The issues discussed so far call into question the position of both synchronic and diachronic linguistics with respect to themes of general epistemological nature. In the last decades linguistics seems to have been untouched by the vast epistemological debate that has shaken and perhaps rejuvenated other human sciences, like history and geography, and even "hard sciences" like mathematics. Yet linguistics could play a significant role in the general reflection on themes like stability, variation and change, in spite of biases like the prominence given by structural research to the aspect of structural invariance and the delay in facing as central the study of variation within structure. However, considering that the notions of stability, variation and change belong to a general inventory of conceptual tools that are not specific to linguistics, they must be interpreted, before being used, within this field of research. If they are considered properties or attributes, it is necessary to define the exact domain in which they hold. Here lie problems that occasionally come to the surface in various linguistic disciplines. A first dilemma is whether stability, variation and change should be considered internal or external properties of structures. In the first interpretation stability, variation and change are related to the shape of the structure, its inner balance or unbalance, its potentialities to persist or be altered, apart from the time factor (this meaning is particularly evident in Cherchi's, Deutscher's, Janse's, Rosenbach & Vezzosi's and Sornicola's papers, where it is also found in various combinations with the other). In particular, an example of an internal property is the notion of typological stability referred to, from different perspectives, in Deutscher's, Harris's and Justus's articles. On the other hand, the consideration of stability, variation and change as external properties leads to focus 'structure' as a function of time, i.e. in this case time is the main factor determining stability, variation and change of structure (this meaning seems to be predominant in Currie's, Loprieno's, Poppe's, Shisha-Halevy's and Sornicola's papers). Although the two alternatives can be found intertwined in various studies, the distinction has a logical interest that can help to clarify the notions in question. The two perspectives perhaps also imply different views of classic problems in diachronic syntax, which have been variously addressed in this volume, like the abrupt vs gradual nature of syntactic change and the

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possibility of syntactic change being caused by external factors (such as borrowings, literary influences, etc.). A second dilemma is whether stability, variation and change are properties of structures conceived as 'traditional techniques' (in the sense of Coseriu 1982), i.e. 'external' products of the discourse activity that can be observed in historical texts, or of structures conceived as mental objects belonging to grammars as theories of speakers' competences. An examination of the bulk of literature on linguistic change shows that the two perspectives, pursued in different scientific environments, involve different systems of assumptions, methods and results. Again, it may be useful to be aware of this bifurcation in order to better understand and compare the various approaches. The papers in this volume reflect either option. Benoist, Janse, Poppe, Rosenbach & Vezzosi, Shisha-Halevy, Sornicola refer to stability, variation and change as properties of structures conceived as traditional techniques, whereas Faarlund and Harris view these notions as properties of structures conceived as mental objects of grammars. Koopman & vand der Wurff, on the other hand, provide a comparison of the different results obtained from applying the two approaches. It may be useful in this context to review a number of theoretical implications of the two options that seem to be strictly interrelated, as they are relevant to the overall discussion. In the first approach, which usually adheres to historical models, (a) structure is considered as the product of the impact of a given socio-cultural context on discourse and indirectly on language; (b) a gap is envisaged between text and the underlying grammar/competence that is not believed easy to bridge; (c) the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic analysis of the phenomena of order does not necessarily assign any model of mental representation to structure, nor a fortiori is any attempt made at reconstructing diachronic sequences of mental representations of structures. Besides, following the route of Geneva structuralism (d) in this approach the relationship between synchrony and diachrony is often viewed as a problem per se. An interesting symptom of the latter opinion can be detected in the various indications of theoretical and methodological difficulties in reconstructing diachronic paths of order (cf. Benoist's, Poppe's, Shisha-Halevy's papers in particular). On the methodological level the articles of this group are also characterized by a more conspicuous interest in the analysis of registers and styles, as well as of possible cultural influences on continuities and discontinuities of WO. Another consistent set of assumptions seems to underlie the approach envisaging structures as mental objects related to grammars. Note that no

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necessary endorsement of the formal models in the generative framework is implied here. In fact, syntactic change can also be conceived in various functional models in terms of change in cognitive representations (see for example here Faarlund's and Harris's papers). Interestingly, however, scholars supporting this perspective from a functionalist stand often criticize the innatism of generative models and claim, with Harris' words, that "change be understood... rather as the result of language fulfilling its discourse and communicative functions" (Harris & Campbell 1995:45). To the extent that this approach is centred on structures as mental objects (or - in a different version - as cognitive representations) grammar is considered to be the locus of change. As a consequence, some important assumptions are made about two problems of unending theoretical interest and vital importance for the study of stability, variation and change, i.e. the conception of diachrony and the relationship between synchrony and diachrony. Diachrony is conceived as a sequence of grammars/systems of cognitive representations. Even more far-reaching is the idea that (apart from resorting to a model like reanalysis, which has the specific aim to explain syntactic change) diachrony can be studied in principle with the same theoretical tools employed for contemporary synchrony, where mental images of linguistic phenomena can be inferred by testing native speakers. Here lies a major dividing line in the approaches to understanding stability, variations and change. The adaptation of diachronic to synchronic models is another aspect where some functional approaches may come close to formal ones like generative grammar. In fact, in both directions of research, whatever their real or assumed discrepancies, an influence of the Prague School on the relationship between synchronic and diachronic methods can be detected, either directly (possibly, through Roman Jakobson) or indirectly (perhaps through the influential paper of Lehman 1968). A well-known passage from the Prague School Thèses seems relevant to this supposition. Drawing attention to the idea that the conception of language as a functional system must be applied not only to synchronic analysis of present-day phenomena, but also to the study of past stages of language, the Prague School scholars stated:

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On ne saurait poser de barrières infranchissables entre les méthodes synchronique et diachronique comme le fait l'école de Genève. Si l'on envisage en linguistique synchronique les éléments du système de la langue du point de vue de leurs fonctions, on ne saurait juger non plus les changements subis par la langue sans tenir compte du système qui se trouve affecté par lesdits changements. Il ne serait pas logique de supposer que les changements linguistiques ne sont que des atteintes destructives s'opérant au hasard et hétérogènes du point de vue du système. Les changements linguistiques visent souvent le système, sa stabilisation, sa reconstruction, etc. Ainsi l'étude diachronique, non seulement n'exclut pas les notions de système et de fonction, mais tout au contraire, à ne pas tenir compte de ces notions, elle est incomplète {Thèses, 8-9, [italics ours])

The emphasis on function rather than structure in the study of linguistic change is certainly a common heritage of all traditions of functionalism, but the idea that structural rearrangements determining a more stable equilibrium of the system underlie most changes - an idea that contains an element of teleology - seems to have more deeply affected the functional-typological approaches to diachrony. Reanalysis is a pivotal issue in contemporary views of change as aiming at a more stable equilibrium of grammar. Although the model had already been described in Delbrück's and Paul's works, it has gained a fundamental place in the study of diachronic syntax only in the last decades. Faarlund and Harris independently assert the double dimension of stability and change which characterizes reanalysis. It seems interesting, however, that - as in other contemporary studies - the main implicit perspective of investigation seems centred on change rather than stability. Of special interest in this respect is the paper by Koopman & van der Wurff. It is an attempt by scholars inclined to see structures as textual objects to discuss the alternative point of view which emerges in recent research on change in grammar. The authors address important theoretical and methodological problems, such as the abrupt vs gradual nature of change, and in particular the possibility to identify cut-off points in change of grammar. Consistent with the textual orientation of their approach, they detect - for the patterns of order investigated - a much slower path of change than is usually admitted and, more generally, argue in favour of the importance of gradualness and long-term coexistence of competing structures in processes of change. But the divergencies in modelling change might be - at least in part - an effect of the clash of theoretical paradigms. An interesting range of issues concerning the notions of stability, variation and change and their interrelations emerges from the articles in the volume. In some stability is considered a key concept, though to different degrees, with a focus either on its synchronic (as in Currie's and Poppe's papers) or diachronic (as in Deutscher's, Shisha-Halevy's, Sornicola's papers) dimensions. Despite

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these minor divergences, however, there is a common interest in pragmatic principles that contribute to stability and in factors which limit or resist change. Baudouin de Courtenay's conception of a 'static' vs. 'dynamic stability', which was defined with respect to phonetics, could find a continuation and a reformulation here for WO: "Static stability, i.e. resistance to changes at a given moment in the existence of a language. Dynamic stability, resistance to historical changes. A limit is placed on the changeability of WO" (for the original passage dealing with 'sounds' cf. Baudouin de Courtenay 1876-77:94). The notion of 'WO change' is addressed from different functional perspectives in various contributions, which raise a multitude of problems (cf. sections III and IV). It seems worth noting that, whatever the theoretical approach adopted, change is unanimously considered to be related to stability. In particular it is independently argued by many authors that in any process of change continuities and discontinuities are strictly interlaced, an idea that results from detailed observations of historical data. In some papers, however, the complicate interplay of permanence and alteration (or substitution) of structures is interpreted in the light of two models that have played a fundamental role in contemporary syntactic research, i.e. reanalysis and/or grammaticalization (for a discussion of their relations cf. Harris & Campbell 1995:92). A further leit-motiv of theoretical interest is the impact of the form function relation on WO change (cf. Faarlund's, Harris's, Justus's and Rosenbach's & Vezzosi's papers). Currie, Janse and Koopman & van der Wurff draw attention to the problematic definition of WO change from various perspectives. They indicate the crucial importance of analyzing textual and cross-textual WO variations in synchrony and diachrony for understanding change. A number of aspects of variation are discussed, like synchronic oscillations, multiple diachronic and diatopic variation, the permanence of patterns and their competition with others. The problematic relation between stability and variation is especially dealt with by Currie, whose contribution brings to mind Coseriu's thoughtprovoking aphorism "linguistic change doesn't exist". An issue addressed in all contributions is the impact of semantic and pragmatic functions (which are variously interpreted as 'theme', 'topic' and 'focus', or as perceptual and cognitive factors) on stability, variation and change of WO patterns. While there is a consensus on the general importance of these functions in determining stability, variation and change, the role ascribed to them is a matter of debate. Two main options emerge. According to some, pragmatic factors are initiators of WO change. This idea, which finds broader support in the volume, seems to reflect a widely accepted view in

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functional-typological literature, where it can be traced back to the influential paper of Vennemann 1974. Other contributors, however, maintain that semantic and especially pragmatic functions do not trigger WO change, but rather principles of linear structuring always present across time, and delimiting - in the Prague School terms - the 'field of tension' of a structure, i.e. its range of variability or flexibility; therefore as such they are factors of synchronic and/or diachronic stability. This dichotomy is interesting and poses a problem that perhaps deserves further scrutiny. Taking into account the issues discussed so far, the contributions have been arranged in four sections, respectively: I. Stylistic and pragmatic principles in stability, variation and change, II. Stability and diachrony, III. Reanalysis, grammaticalization and change, IV. Variation and change. The three articles in Part I. share the leit-motiv of the fundamental importance of stylistic and pragmatic principles for the understanding of synchronic variability and possibly trends of change. They reveal various interesting theoretical and methodological approaches and different nuances in their conclusions. Benoist's contribution examines - from a philological and functional standpoint - the fundamental stages of 'internal' and 'external history' in the formation of Modern Russian WO. According to the criteria of Prague School structuralism, diachronic representation is conceived as the analysis of synchronic states, each of which constitutes a stratum. The Praguian and more generally Pan-Slavic functionalist approach is evident in the attention paid to differences in register and style, as well as in the insistence on the interplay of syntactic and pragmatic functions and particularly in the central role given to intonation. The historical dimension emerges from the detailed presentation of the slow and complex development of the principles governing the WO in Modern Russian. With particular regard to the literary language, this process is studied considering the influence of external factors such as rhetorical normative models as well as foreign models - above all French - still in use up to the first decades of the XIXth century. Benoist underlines the limitations in the descriptions of the historical process under study, which have not taken into account these factors. The internal dimension of the process is also considered by analyzing the arrangement of the constituents of the main sentence, of the subordinate sentence and of phrases. Benoist questions the notion of 'freedom of WO' in Modern Russian as a general typological feature. He claims, on the contrary, that its validity is limited to the Lomonosov period.

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Loprieno's article considers a possible shift from VSO to SVO order in the long-term diachrony of Egyptian. This gradual shift reaches its peak in Coptic, the final stage of Late Egyptian. Loprieno makes use of current synchronic and diachronic typological models. However, he mentions some difficulties in describing Coptic as a SVO language. Furthermore, he addresses the theme of 'predictability' of change, and compares the trends of movement of Egyptian WO to analogous trends of other VSO languages that have likewise developed SVO patterns. Important historical problems are also discussed, such as the possibility of Greek influence on the WO patterns of Coptic, which makes Loprieno favour a productive and non-mechanical influence. The emphasis in this work is on the synchronic flexibility of the SVO structure in the life-span of Coptic. The author maintains that the SVO pattern has in synchrony a paradigmatic nature, which is not weakened by the existence of alternative structures with the VS pattern. In fact, these constructions have a relatively limited synchronic functional load. Special attention is given to a particular structure with the VSO pattern, the rear extraposition of S by means of the nci-marker. This occurs frequently and has the function to rhematize an informationally heavier S, with a symmetrical increase in the thematicity of the SV-predicate phrase. According to Loprieno, the nci-construction is no exception to the unmarked SVO order. In fact, it reorganizes patterns of information distribution in the sentence "according to the same pragmatic pressures that motivated the change from VSO to the SVO order in the history of Egyptian". This suggestion seems to imply the existence of mechanisms which conspire to recompose the theme rheme sequence of the sentence in synchrony and which also work in diachrony. This amounts to saying that pragmatic factors have a predominant explicative power. The symmetry suggested here between synchronic and diachronic forces is also interesting. Poppe's article highlights the importance of an 'overall pragmatic principle' for stability of WO within a given synchronic stage of a particular language. This point is demonstrated through an analysis of syntactic structures and their relative patterns of order in Middle Welsh, which are shown to be consistently governed by pragmatic principles (except in certain types of clauses). A special emphasis is given to performance-related factors; in particular, Poppe underlines that topichood is not an automatic process independent of the speaker's communicative intention, but that - on the contrary - the speaker's choice is crucial in selecting a constituent in order to assign topichood. Thus the overall pragmatic principle is to be understood as distinct from stylistic and random variatio, as well as from automatic selection

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for the fronting of constituents, or types of constituents, in specific syntactic contexts. Based on a corpus of stylistically differentiated texts, Poppe's analysis shows the considerable structural complexity of WO variation within a specific synchronic stage and in so doing opens problematic scenarios for the reconstruction of diachronic trends. In fact, the statistical data presented point to a conspicuous amount of variability in neutral main clauses, in which neither a basic nor a dominant order can be identified. 'Preferred' orders only emerge for negative main clauses and subordinate clauses with the format Conjunction + finite V. The only regularity identifiable for neutral affirmative main clauses is that V is preceded by (at least) one other constituent and a pre-verbal particle (or 'Verb-second' order according to another descriptive approach, Willis 1998). This structure, which has been a matter of hot debate in Welsh grammaticography (where it has been called 'abnormal sentence'), is of interest to diachronic typology, in that it marks an apparent discontinuity in the development of Welsh WO patterns. Poppe maintains that this structure "is abnormal only in comparison with dominant neutral VSO order in Modern Welsh, and presumably in Old Welsh as well", an opinion of methodological and theoretical consequence for the study of this supposed discontinuity, and of discontinuities in general. Being aware of the possibly deceptive character of some discontinuities - which in fact may fade away when they are investigated with attention to stylistic variation across text (cf. Currie's contribution), Poppe cautions against premature reconstructions of diachronic paths of WO and reinforces the point of view that - before sketching trends of change - syntactic phenomena should be studied synchronically and with reference to the complexities of their textual distribution (for some important refinements of Poppe's positions, mainly with regard to 'multiple frontings' and Verb-initial clauses, compare now Willis 1998). The articles in Part II. argue in favour of stability being considered central in the diachronic study of WO. On the basis of data from the Restsprache Akkadian, Deutscher addresses a problem which reverses a traditional approach of historical linguistics, predominantly oriented towards change, by drawing attention to why in the case he investigates no change at all occurs over two millennia. According to current typological models, Akkadian should be an ideal candidate for change, as it shows very inconsistent patterns of order. The fact that Akkadian goes against expectations is all the more puzzling since the language underwent a loss of case-endings, a factor traditionally (though not unanimously) believed a possible determinant of change from SOV to SVO order. Deutscher claims

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that, despite the 'unfavourable' conditions mentioned above, stability of WO was protected by other factors, such as semantic and pragmatic ones, which prevented ambiguities in the identification of S and O, as well as a syntactic factor like verb-agreement. Of special interest here is the idea that typological 'inconsistency' does not imply instability. The author refutes three lines of argument which attempt to predict and justify the development of harmonic patterns from conditions of typological inconsistency. In particular, he rejects the explanation based on processing mechanisms, arguing that the inconsistent and supposedly difficult-to-process Akkadian structures investigated can function perfectly (i.e. they are common and productive) - over the whole documented history of the language because of some notable syntactic factors, which are then carefully examined. Observing that "isolating word order from other structural properties of the language can create a misleadingly simplified picture", Deutscher concludes that the Akkadian case shows that stability can be accounted for by the complex functioning of structural devices. The fact that this complex functioning has often been ignored helps to understand "why so many of the crosslinguistic word order universals are observed more in the breaking than in the keeping". Shisha-Halevy's article is characterized by an approach that is decidedly critical of functional-typological models and their implications for the study of stability, variation and change of WO. The author's arguments are based on his philological experience of Egyptian and in particular Coptic. From the perspective of a linguist engaged in the study of 'linguistic diversity' rather than of 'universals', he brings up once more theoretical and methodological problems of syntactic analysis considered classic in various scientific traditions. He warns against the use of supposedly universal categories, as this may create the deceptive idea that languages can easily be compared; additionally this assumption leads to the levelling of specific features of languages. A general problem is addressed here that calls into question the possibilities and limits of linguistic description and comparison. This point is exemplified by the analysis of a number of structures from the long-term diachrony of Egyptian. The author suggests that a language like Egypyian can only be analyzed through a descending distributional procedure "from full-text level down". Another theoretical issue dealt with - which is more specifically related to WO - is the distinction between 'syntagmatic sequencing' and 'structural sequencing'. Order of constituents is denied the status of a "prime, independent, overruling, governing or motivating feature of syntax" that is endowed in itself with typological value. This is a radical position, with some

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important consequences of both theoretical and methodological import. One of particular interest is the impossibility to extrapolate WO patterns from structural patterning, a thesis that is in agreement with Deutscher's and Sornicola's appeal for the need to consider order and structure together. After reviewing constructions that are characteristic of various historical stages of Egyptian, Shisha-Halevy detects a "remarkable stability of sequencing within the enveloping diachronic system", though he underlines that the notion of 'stability' is not to be perceived as absolute. However, his main conclusions have implications for the possible time span of linguistic stability, insofar as the property described here can be observed over a period of four millennia. Stability is the key theme of Sornicola's article, which is devoted to an examination of WO patterns in main clauses in the history of the Romance languages, in particular French, Spanish, and Italian. The discussion sums up the results of syntactic-pragmatic and statistical analysis of corpora of texts which cover different chronological stages of the three languages, from the Middle Ages onwards. The results are discussed against the background of standard accounts from Romance linguistics. In addition, differences in register and genre are taken into account (for the contemporary stages, the variation of WO between spoken and written text is also considered). The author addresses various theoretical and methodological issues relevant to the study of stability, variation, and change in WO patterns. She argues, moreover, that such studies demand the use of dynamic models, which have to satisfy various prerequisites, mainly the necessity to consider order in close conjunction with structure and to adopt a perspective defined both 'microscopically' and 'longitudinally', in order to conduct detailed studies of WO in single languages or across a language family and over different chronological periods. Such a perspective, which stands in opposition to current typological models, will allow the description and evaluation of the nature and extent of oscillations in WO patterns over time. The microscopic and longitudinal analysis of the three Romance languages demonstrates a remarkable stability of the SVO order and of the pragmatic functions with which it is associated. This convergence of WO patterns between French, Spanish, and Italian over a long period a time would seem to contradict their conspicuous differences, and leads to a reconsideration of some problems of diachrony with their own long history, such as the path of change from Classical Latin to Romance. The articles in Part III. have in common the centrality assigned to reanalysis processes and/or paths of grammaticalization in WO change. Furthermore they all follow models that could be called 'pragmatic-typological', like those

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developed by Vennemann and Givón. They are characterized by the fact that pragmatic factors are considered main determinants for the initiation of mechanisms of change. In fact, the articles in this section, compared to others, show greater confidence in the view that pragmatic factors can decisively influence historical change. Faarlund analyzes two changes in North Germanic which he believes are both due to reanalysis. He assigns considerable importance to the discourse function of, and to the more general functional conditions for, a structure of order. In particular, he thinks that in many languages the weight of constituents and/or their discourse functions are responsible for the deviations from the basic and unmarked WO. The first phenomenon analyzed is the shift from OV to VO in North Germanic. According to Faarlund, the factor which has determined the process of change is the extraposition of O to the right of V when O is focalized and the O constituent is heavy. The author maintains that it is the relaxation of the conditions in the use of VO order which causes an increase in the frequency of this pattern, and the consequent reanalysis of VO as the basic form. After this process, the movement of O in the opposite direction is no longer possible and therefore the OV order disappears. A second point which deserves to be considered is the fact that in this case the change proceeds through an alteration of the order and not of the structure. In particular, the change leads to a better match of the new linear order with the principles of information structure. In contrast, what occurs in the second phenomenon investigated is a change of the structure, with the order remaining unaltered. The shift, observable in the history of Norwegian from Old Norse, is represented by Faarlund as a reanalysis, whereby an extraposed S was reinterpreted as complement of V, a process which was facilitated by the loss of case-endings. Faarlund also tackles an interesting theoretical issue which concerns the permanence of residual properties of Subjecthood in the post-verbal NP of the VS structure of Modern Scandinavian languages. His suggested solution uses a model of modularity from Autolexical Syntax. The harmonies of WO and their relevance for processes of change are at the core of Harris's work. This is a strictly typological theme with a broader cut and is tackled by combining typological methods with textual analysis. Two objectives are proposed: (a) to describe WO change from Old to Modern Georgian, (b) to show the relevance of 'construction reanalysis' for WO harmonies. In particular, this process is claimed to be the origin of the change in WO in two dyadic configurations in Kartvelian languages, i.e. the comparative adjective construction in Georgian and the V - Aux structure in Laz.

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Notwithstanding the difficulty in ascertaining the order of the major constituents in Old Georgian, Harris demonstrates that "most of the unmarked orders are those harmonious with VO", with Po and Vaux the only exceptions. In Modern Georgian, on the other hand, the main constituents appear in SOV order. The sequencing of the other constituents is far more complex, with numerous cases of ambivalence and multiple options. In the case of the linear relationship between the Standard of comparison and Adjective, where Old Georgian showed an Adjective - Standard order, in harmony with VO, Modern Georgian has an additional Standard - Adjective order. Harris claims that such a pattern has originated through a process of 'construction reanalysis', insofar as the comparative construction conforms to the pattern of the Adjective + Complement order. The same general process is said to be responsible for the V - Aux order in Laz. In this case the pattern develops in correlation with the order of the embedded clause and of the verb of the main clause. In effect, the reanalysis of the verb of the matrix clause as an auxiliary is a diachronic process found in various languages. The author gives examples from Japanese and compares them to the Laz ones. Of significant theoretical interest is the suggestion that processes of reanalysis like the ones described not only create, but also preserve and even extend WO harmonies. Justus's work raises a stimulating problem, which has not been explored in depth previously, i.e. grammaticalization of the first person imperatives functionally defined as 'directives' - in Indo-European languages. It concerns a complex process of change, studied along two paths: (a) the emergence of new mechanisms for the coding of first person imperatives from older verbal paradigms with different imperative suffixes for the grammatical person; this development was achieved through the creation of new auxiliaries gravitating around semantic nuclei such as 'let', 'get', 'give'; (b) the change of WO correlated to such a slow shift. This process of grammaticalization is accomplished over an extremely long period of time, as it spans from Hittite texts of the second millennium B.C. right up to contemporary English. Justus observes that it is part of a broader trend of innovation, which also affects the strategies of codification of the second and third persons of the imperative. The overall trend shows a long-term persistence of multiple coexisting strategies, which are often realized by variant morphosyntactic and semantic structures. Comparing the path of grammaticalization followed by directive auxiliaries in Indo-European languages to that of directive imperative structures of Japanese, Justus notes that in the former the new auxiliaries are placed at the beginning of the sentence, while in the latter directive auxiliaries are placed at the end. This conforms to typological expectations, insofar as the Japanese order is

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consistent with that of a V-final language, while the order of Indo-European languages reflects "the movement away from verb-final to verb-initial patterns". However, the author cautions against all-too-easy comparison of languages as well as against premature sketches of long-term trends, stressing the importance of taking into account the form - function relationship in diachronic analysis. Part IV deals with the relationship between variation and change. Synchronic variation and parameters underlying variability in linearization are the main themes addressed by Cherchi, in his discussion of one aspect of Kartvelian verbal morphology, i.e. the order of elements preceding the verbal root. The article takes up a theoretical issue of great consequence for modelling variation and change, i.e. the consideration of relationships between grammatical levels, and more particularly of phenomena in transition from one level to another. The author investigates alternative arrangements of pre-radical morphemes of the verb complex in Old and Early Middle Georgian, Mingrelian and Svan. These reflect aspects of the broader phenomenon of tmesis. However, the chief aim of the analysis is an investigation of orders deviating from those standard in tmesis, insofar as their study can help to understand "the limits and types of flexibility in morpheme ordering". This in turn constitutes a prerequisite to determining the parameters underlying variability. The range of variation in pre-radical constituent ordering is considerable. Similarities and differences emerge for the patterns of order in the three languages, which are partly due to differences in the inventory and function of pre-verbs. In particular, the author suggests that the flexibility of ordering is directly related to the size of the inventory of pre-verbs and their combinatorial possibilities. Variation of order may also affect the structures of individual languages - such as the asymmetry in Svan between the inner and the outer layer of pre-verbs, which the author believes to be related to a difference in the respective paths of grammaticalization. From a theoretical perspective, his conclusion is also relevant that the languages investigated cannot be placed along a single scale of grammaticalization insofar as the phenomena in question are "governed by multiple (and different) grammatical categories". Currie explores the implications of various sociolinguistic models for the understanding of WO stability and WO change. On the basis of a detailed syntactic, pragmatic and stylistic analysis of a corpus of Early Modern Welsh texts, Currie also calls attention to the importance of studies of the internal stylistic coherence not only within textual genres, but also within single texts. In fact, the frequency of absolute V-initial structures in his Early Modern Welsh corpus demonstrates differences not only across textual genres (like in

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INTRODUCTION

Modern Welsh), but also within the same textual genre, and even in the works of authors sharing the same cultural background. The author also considers the impact of discourse-pragmatic factors and the possible functional equivalence of absolute V-initial order with two other constructions, the dummy subject construction and the S(pers.pron.)V order. He believes that this interchangeability may have constituted a syntactic and stylistic resource that authors "could use to extend radically the range of absolute-initial verb order, and so develop a new prose style". Currie raises various interesting theoretical issues. A large portion of his article is assigned to discussions on the concept of stability. In particular, he emphasizes that this is difficult to define and not necessarily related to the concept of invariance, since - as has been proven in sociolinguistics - "stable patterns of variation" can exist. For Currie the interest of such a concept consists in providing "a starting point for investigating WO variation and change from a range of different perspectives". In his contribution Janse gives a multi-faceted description of convergences and divergences in the ordering of pronominal clitics from Ancient Greek and Classical Latin to Modern Greek and Romance languages, within a framework which combines the philological approach with grammaticalization models. His emphasis is on the multiple pathways of grammaticalization of the position of clitics. Orders are compared not only with regard to different structural environments in different chronological phases of a language, but also with regard to synchronic dialectal variations within a single language. Janse's analysis shows that the same processes may recur at different times in different languages, but also that a cascade of innovative patterns of order - with respect to a structure assumed as the starting point for the investigation - may sometimes emerge even within a single language. Variation therefore assumes a fundamental role in Janse's contribution. It implies not only synchronic oscillation, but also oscillations that will become grammaticalized diachronically. Instead of 'change', the author uses terms such as 'gradual evolution', 'development', 'survival', as he declares himself to be sceptical about models of abrupt change. The overall process described illustrates the divergences from Greek and Latin patterns of order - conceptually represented by the well-known 'Wackernagel Law', which Janse reinterprets in the light of pragmatic principles. The development of the multiple structural options of Modern Greek and of Romance languages is a process conforming to two main principles: (a) the evolution towards a system with a verb at its centre and

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pronouns floating around the verb, immediately before or after it; (b) the tendency to grammaticalize the position of clitics with respect to the verb. Koopman & van der Wurff address the theme of variability and optional--y in grammar, on the basis of two case-studies from the history of English syntax, i.e. the relative order of the Direct and Indirect Object and the relative order of Direct Object and verb. The authors examine a characteristically historical problem, that is to say the need to study the survival of older patterns in a phase where they are no longer dominant. This necessitates not only a reconsideration of the problem of gradualness, but also a discussion of models of variability and grammatical optionality different from those suggested within the framework of generative grammar. Koopman & van der Wurff present a detailed description of the two changes from Old to Modern English. This results in an interesting theoretical discussion on the adequacy of the models of WO change which use the notion of 'grammar competition'. According to the authors, this notion is far from being satisfactory, for more than one reason: it does not allow an in-depth study of the intricacy of historical data and does not stimulate research into the reasons for discontinuities of change. Instead, they identify two areas deserving further scrutiny: "the nature and locus of the competition between the two grammatical systems and the length of timespans that can be involved". The latter problem, involving the relationship between abruptness and gradualness, has important implications for Koopman's & van der Wurff s argument. In fact, the two changes examined are much slower than adherents of the theory of grammar competition would admit. The permanence of patterns and non-linear pathways in linguistic change is also focussed in the paper by Rosenbach & Vezzosi which concerns the genitival constructions in Early Modern English. On the basis of rich textual documentation, the authors detect a trend in the history of the s-genitive which contradicts the widely accepted account, and argue for a very gradual substitution of the inflected genitive by the of-prepositional phrase. Their results lead not only to a new proposal for the overall configuration of the change - with a stagnation and a successive rise in the frequency of the structure - but also for a new chronology of the entire process. This confirms the need for great care when determining chronological boundaries for linguistic developments, and for further reflection on the relationship between stability and change. The authors claim that stability and change are strictly interconnected and substantiate their conclusion with an analysis of formal and functional aspects of the genitival construction. They identify stability as a

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property related to form and change as a property related to semantic and pragmatic functions. The issues debated certainly do not exhaust the range of problems which may emerge from the study of stability, variation and change of WO patterns. The editors, however, hope that this volume will stimulate further research on these themes.

Rosanna Sornicola, Erich Poppe, Ariel Shisha-Halevy Naples, Marburg and Jerusalem, September 2000

REFERENCES Black, John. 1997. A Dictionary of Economics. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Burguière, André. 1971. "Histoire et structure". Annales 3-4.i-vii. Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan. 1876-77 [1972]. "Podrobnaja programma lekcij... v 1876-1877 uč godu, IKU, 1877" [A Detailed Program of Lectures for the Academic Year 1876-1877], quoted from the English translation in A Baudouin de Courtenay Anthology ed. by Edward Stankiewicz, 88-107. Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press. Coseriu, Eugenio. 1982 [1988]. "Linguistic Change does not Exist". Energeia und Ergon. Schriften von Eugenio Coseriu (1965-1987) ed. by F. Albrecht, J. Lüdtke & H. Thun 1,147-157. Tübingen: Narr. EPHU = Encyclopédie Philosophique Universelle, publié sous la direction d'André Jacob, Paris: PUF, II: Les notions philosophiques, volume dirigé par Sylvain Auroux, Tome 2. [1990]. Hawkins, John A. 1983. Word Order Universals. New York: Academic Press. . 1994. A Performance Theory of Order and Constituency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harris, Alice C. & Campbell, Lyle. 1995. Historical Syntax in Cross-linguistic Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lehmann, Winifred P. 1968. "Saussure's Dichotomy Between Descriptive and Historical Linguistics". Directions for Historical Linguistics ed. by W. P. Lehmann & Y. Malkiel, 3-20. Austin: University of Texas Press. Li, Charles N. 1977. "Introduction". Mechanisms of Syntactic Change ed. by Ch. N. Li, xi-xix. Austin: University of Texas Press. Lightfoot, David. 1991. How to Set Parameters: Arguments from Language Change. Cambridge (Mass.): The MIT Press. Milani, Andrea 1981. "Stabilità/instabilità". Enciclopedia Einaudi 13.418-452. Torino: Giulio Einaudi.

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Thèses = Mélanges Linguistiques dédiés au Premier Congrès des philologues slaves. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 1 [1929]:7-29. Vennemann, Theo. 1974. "Topics, subjects and word order: from SXV to SVX via TVX". Historical Linguistics I: Proceedings of the First Lnternational Conference on Historical Linguistics (Edinburgh 2nd-7th September 1973) ed. by J. M. Anderson & C. Jones, 1. 339-376. Amsterdam: North Holland. Willis, David W. E. 1998. Syntactic Change in Welsh. A Study of the Loss of VerbSecond. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

PART I STYLISTIC AND PRAGMATIC PRINCIPLES IN STABILITY, VARIATION AND CHANGE

LA FORMATION DES PRINCIPES DE L'ORDRE DES MOTS DU RUSSE MODERNE EN TANT QUE PROBLEME DE STYLISTIQUE LITTERAIRE ET DE LINGUISTIQUE

JEAN-PIERRE BENOIST Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (Paris)

0. Introduction Nous proposant de décrire la façon dont se sont constitués les principes qui régissent l'ordre des mots en russe moderne, plus que ces principes en euxmêmes, leur formation et leur évolution, plus que leur état actuel, nous avons adopté une démarche diachronique et analytique, progressive, comme le furent les recherches linguistiques russes dans ce domaine, ce qui provoquera dans notre exposé quelques allers et retours. Mais cette approche permettra de saisir dans sa complexité la constitution du système linéaire du russe moderne dans son ensemble, où sont liées syntaxe, disposition relative et absolue des mots de la phrase (linéarité), intonation (moyens prosodiques) et catégories pragmatiques. 1. Naissance du russe moderne Ce qu'il est convenu d'appeler Sovremennyj Russkij Literaturnyj Jazyk ("Langue russe littérale moderne" - littérale plutôt que littéraire -, comme pour l'arabe, car à l'époque où le terme a été formé il s'agissait en fait de distinguer cette langue de culture des différents dialectes russes qui coexistaient avec elle) apparaît comme une synthèse du slavon (vieux slave d'Eglise) et du vieux russe, synthèse qui subit, selon les époques, l'influence des langues anciennes ou occidentales (en particulier le français au XVIII). Sa formation dans l'ensemble de ses systèmes remonte à la deuxième moitié du XVIII et est liée à la naissance dans l'utilisation de la langue écrite de besoins langagiers nouveaux, littéraires ou thématiques, qui apparaissent avec le règne des souverains éclairés Catherine II et Alexandre I. Cette synthèse entraîne le rejet des traits extrêmes du slavon, trop étrangers à la spécificité du russe, qui resteront propres à la langue de l'Eglise, et de certaines formes du vieux russe,

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liées uniquement à la langue parlée, qui eux deviendront l'apanage du russe populaire. Cette formation de la langue moderne ne sera pas l'affaire de la seule seconde moitié du XVIII mais concernera également toute la première tiers du XIX, marquant la naissance de la littérature russe classique. 2. La théorie des "Trois styles" Le début du XVIII connut une tentative de mise en ordre de la langue sur une base stylistique, celle des "Trois styles" de Lomonosov, qui intégrait dans l'ensemble de la langue toutes les formes et structures attestées à l'époque, quelle que fût leur origine, en les catégorisant rigoureusement selon des critères 'stylistiques', en fait 'fonctionnels' puisque définis par les types de textes où elles devaient être utilisées. Outre les oeuvres de Lomonosov, exemples du style élevé, ce système global et diversifiant eut des applications dans les autres styles, même si le style élevé fut, quantitativement et qualitativement, le plus représenté, car c'était surtout lui qui était visé par le système, en tant que langue de l'abstraction et de la réflexion. Il faut dire que, parallèlement à cette tentative très contraignante de réglementation de la langue, continuait de régner, dans les styles inférieurs en particulier, l'extrême confusion des deux siècles précédents, caractéristique du moyen russe. Néanmoins le système de Lomonosov inspirera encore pendant longtemps bon nombre de distinctions à l'intérieur des différents registres de style du russe moderne. 3. Le problème de la phrase russe La nouvelle codification et l'uniformisation par élimination des variantes par trop slavonnes ou populaires portent sur les plans les plus discrets de la langue, ceux qui sont liés aux formes (lexicales, morphologiques) et à leur emploi (syntaxe de la phrase simple). Tout un domaine reste en dehors de cette réforme linguistique, c'est celui de la phrase (phonologie de la phrase, ordre des mots, syntaxe de la phrase complexe), où la conception de Lomonosov continuera de prévaloir pendant plusieurs décennies encore: se fondant sur le principe que l'ordre des mots ne remplit pas de fonction grammaticale (expression des relations syntaxiques) dans les diverses hypostases historiques du russe, langue à flexion nominale et à ordre des mots "libre", Lomonosov avait abordé cette question dans sa Rhétorique et non dans sa Grammaire; ainsi, selon lui, elle relevait de la "période" et non de la "phrase". En fait, il ne l'étudiait que dans les limites du style élevé, le seul style où la langue, outre sa fonction de communication, remplissait une fonction ornamentale, au service de l'art de l'écrivain. En tant que procédé oratoire du style élevé, la disposition des mots devait avant tout créer des figures, telles que la dislocation,

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5

l'imbrication, le chevauchement, le chiasme, ce qui excluait tout fonctionne­ ment linguistique. De ce point de vue, la confusion la plus grande règnait dans les autres styles aussi, puisqu'on y trouvait les séquences les plus diverses; par exemple, pour le syntagme nominal, l'ordre Substantif Adjectif caractéristique du vieux slave coexistait avec la séquence du vieux russe Adjectif Substantif, sans oublier les diverses dislocations des deux termes du syntagme (nous verrons plus bas que le russe moderne admet de pareilles séquences, mais pour une fonction linguistique pertinente, en cas de différence du rôle pragmatique de chacun d'entre eux). Sans doute est-ce la raison pour laquelle la conception lomonosovienne de la "liberté" de l'ordre des mots restera si vivace, même lorsque la distinction des Trois Styles et ses conséquences auront cessé de faire autorité. Elle était la seule référence dans ce domaine, et comme l'a dit le linguiste Vinogradov (1950), dans la seconde moitié du XVIII l'ordre des mots tel qu'il se manifestait dans les différents corpus de l'époque était la "question malade" de la langue russe nouvelle, alors que ses autres systèmes, eux, s'étaient déjà constitués dans leurs principes essentiels, même s'ils pouvaient encore susciter des polémiques avec les tenants de la tradition vieux slave. Les normes grammaticales du russe moderne (qui définissent la place du mot par sa fonction syntaxique) portent essentiellement sur les membres secondaires de la proposition, qui au cours du XIX perdent la liberté dont ils jouissaient dans la langue de Lomonosov et de ses contemporains, liberté qui ne se retrouve actuellement que dans la poésie et la langue orale. En parlant de normes grammaticales nous reprenons la distinction de l'Ecole de Prague entre position "grammaticale" et position "grammaticalisée" (on a affaire à l'ordre grammatical quand la fonction syntaxique du mot est définie par sa place; c'est le cas du français mais pas du russe). La première série de normes est restrictive: le syntagme contenant un membre secondaire ne peut être disloqué. Ainsi la phrase (1) (1)

On dal bilet Pavlu Il donna billet (ac.) Paul (dat.) "Il donna billet à Paul de théâtre"

v teatr dans théâtre (ac.)

est inacceptable pour le russe moderne, car le membre secondaire de la proposition v teatr doit être enchaîné à bilet, membre principal lié directement au sommet syntaxique, le verbe, dont il dépend. Autrement dit, du point de vue de la correction grammaticale, seront acceptables les séquences (2), (3) et (4):

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(2)

Bilet "Billet

v teatr dans théâtre

(3)

On "Il

bilet billet

(4)

On "Il

dal donna

v dans

on il

dal Pavlu donna à Paul"

teatr dal théâtre donna

Pavlu à Paul

bilet billet

Pavlu à Paul"

v dans

teatr théâtre"

et d'autres séquences plaçant le sujet On en fin de phrase par exemple, à condition que le membre secondaire v teatr ne soit pas séparé du membre dont il dépend par un autre membre de la proposition, quel qu'il soit. Cela signifie que les séquences chevauchantes sont interdites quand elles impliquent des membres secondaires. Néanmoins, si le membre secondaire est lui-même une tête de syntagme pour un autre membre secondaire, d'une profon­ deur syntaxique encore plus grande sur l'arbre de dépendance, il pourra être séparé du membre principal dont il dépend, comme dans la phrase suivante (5): (5)

Na nëm "Sur lui

byla était

seraja grise

ot à-cause-de

pyli kurtka poussière veste"

Une séquence comme (6): (6)

Na nëm "Sur lui

byla était

seraja kurtka ot pyli grise veste à-cause-de poussière"

serait inacceptable. On voit donc que les séquences d'encadrement sont possibles, à condition que le membre dominant absolu (ici kurtka) ne soit pas placé à l'intérieur du cadre. Les normes restrictives sont complétées par des normes de position, toujours pour les membres secondaires. Les membres secondaires non accordés (compléments) sont postposés, c'est le cas de v teatr et de ot pyli des exemples précédents; l'antéposition est caractéristique du membre secondaire détermi­ nant (accordé, quand il s'agit d'un adjectif ou d'un participe) comme pour seraja plus haut. Une séquence régressive de grande profondeur est fréquemment réaménagée en séquence progressive, mais une ponctuation spécifique s'impose, qui disjoint le substantif de son déterminant (7): (7)

Na "Sur kotoraja qui

nëm byla lui était pokryvala couvrait

kurtka, veste, vsë tout

seraja ot pyli, grise à-cause-de poussière, vokrug autour"

7

ORDRE DES MOTS DU RUSSE MODERNE

Il faut dire que ce réaménagement est devenue pratiquement une norme d'usage au cours du XIX siècle lorsque le déterminant est constitué par un participe tête de syntagme complétif, comme dans (7b). b.

Ljudi, "Gens

postradavshie aiant souffert

ot à-cause-de

xoloda froid"

La variante (7c), Postradavshie ot xoloda ljudi... semblerait aujourd'hui vieillie. Peut-être est-ce dû aussi au fait que le participe équivaut fonctionnellement à une proposition relative, qui elle est toujours postposée à son antécédent (au moins dans le discours écrit)? La rigueur des normes grammaticales connaît des dérogations dues à l'intervention du principe pragmatique, dont nous parlerons plus loin en détail, lorsque le membre secondaire et le membre principal dont il dépend ont des rôles pragmatiques différents: ainsi le syntagme bilet v teatr pourra être disloqué, avec position du membre secondaire au début absolu de la phrase (ce qui s'accompagnera d'une mélodie montante spécifique et même d'une pause). On aura ainsi la variante pragmatique (8): (8)

V "Dans/de

teatr on théâtre il

dal donna

bilet billet

Pavlu à Paul"

dans laquelle le substantif teatr constitue l'objet de l'énonciation, "ce dont on parle" (un Thème'). Il peut prendre une valeur contrastive, en admettant que l'auteur du don, "il", ait un autre billet, pour le cirque par exemple, où, lui, il ira. La phrase (8) se traduirait à peu près par "Pour ce qui du théâtre il donna son billet à Paul", ou même (voir plus loin) "Pour ce qui est du théâtre c'est à Paul qu'il donna son billet". Le membre secondaire accordé peut lui aussi être séparé du membre principal qu'il détermine; d'ordinaire ce dernier est placé au début absolu pour être thématisé, alors que l'adjectif reste en finale, comme dans la phrase (9): (9)

Sigary "Cigares

on il

vsegda toujours

pokupaet achète

samye les-plus

dorogie chers"

Cette phrase pourrait opposer des cigares et des cigarettes par exemple, ces dernières seraient bon marché (nous verrons plus loin la façon canonique dont le français exprime la thématisation). Cette différence des rôles pragmatiques de l'adjectif et du substantif est nette, elle peut être exprimée par une simple postposition de l'adjectif déterminant, sans la ponctuation que nous avons décrite plus haut: il n'a plus de thématisation du substantif, mais celui-ci n'appartient pas néanmoins au Focus de la phrase, puisque l'information que le

8

JEAN-PIERRE BENOIST

locuteur veut donner ne porte que sur la valeur des cigares que le sujet "il" a l'habitude d'acheter (la valeur contrastive serait tout à fait possible "chers et pas bon marché", comme le destinataire du message semble le croire). On aurait la variante (10): (10)

On vsegda pokupaet "Il toujours achète

sigary samye dorogie cigares les-plus chers"

4. La structure linéaire et prosodique de la phrase nouvelle Même si la conception nouvelle qui va fonder par la suite le fonctionnement de l'ordre des mots en russe, celle de Karamzin, est proprement linguistique dans ses définitions puisqu'elle s'appuie sur l'utilisation de la phonologie et de la linéarité de la phrase dans l'expression des rôles pragmatiques de Focus et de Topic, de Base et de Théme, elle aura une visée stylistique en soi, essentiellement littéraire: il s'agit pour l'écrivain et historien Karamzin de faciliter la compréhension du message langagier, de la phrase dans sa totalité linguistique, à son destinataire, le lecteur des oeuvres romanesques de la littérature russe nouvelle, dont il est lui-même un des représentants, le plus illustre en cette fin du XVIII siècle. Cette conception évidemment peu explicitée par Karamzin lui-même sera confortée au cours du siècle suivant par différents apports de la linguistique russe ou étrangère (allemande surtout de Paul, Steinthal, von Gabelentz et Amman avec les distinctions entre Sujet logique, puis psychologique, et Sujet grammatical, entre Prédicat logique, psychologique et Prédicat grammatical, à partir des positions aristotéliciennes; française de Weil sur la "liberté" de l'ordre des mots des langues anciennes, langues à flexion nominale, comme le russe). Néanmoins, pendant longtemps encore, la plupart des descriptions russes de la question, que ce soit dans des grammaires ou des études spéciales (Davydov 1816 ou Grech 1840), continuera à ignorer la nature linguistique de l'ordre des mots et en restera à une conception figée proche de celle de Lomonosov. En fait les catégories de la pragmatique moderne appliquées à l'analyse de l'ordre des mots (essentiellement la position réciproque des membres primaires de phrase) ne peuvent en rester à la dichotomie du Sujet et Prédicat logiques ou psychologiques comme chez Paul ou von Gabelentz: le linguiste doit montrer leur pertinence pour la langue qu'il décrit, en particulier dans une perspective typologique et contrastive. Mais pour que l'on puisse affirmer que les catégories pragmatiques sont pertinentes pour telle ou telle langue, il faut que les divers moyens qui les expriment dans cette langue (l'ordre des termes de l'énoncé et l'intonation, séparément ou en combinaison, pour le russe et le

ORDRE DES MOTS DU RUSSE MODERNE

9

tchèque; des particules spécifiques, pour le japonais; certains emplois des articles définis ou indéfinis, pour le français; la diathèse passive, en général) constituent des oppositions discrètes. C'est en ceci qu'une description réellement linguistique se différenciera de l'approche purement logicopsychologique héritée de l'Antiquité. 4.1 Les hésitations sur les principes nouveaux Enfin, pour clore ce tableau rapide de la naissance du russe moderne et en particulier de la façon dont se résoud la problématique confuse de l'ordre des mots tant dans sa pratique que dans sa théorie, il faut signaler le rôle joué par telle ou telle principe d'organisation linéaire propre aux langues étrangères, dont l'influence va se succéder dans lévolution du russe, latin, allemand et français. Nous nous arrêterons sur cette dernière langue car le modèle de la structure et de la linéairité de la phrase française s'imposera à bien des auteurs russes du début du XIX siècle en contradiction avec les principes mêmes de l'expression linéaire des rôles pragmatiques, créant un système parallèle difficile à analyser à l'heure actuelle faute de savoir comment les contemporains lisaient les énoncés en question. C'est le cas des syntagmes subjectal et objectai qui organisent toute la phrase quant à la place du sujet, en russe comme en français: ainsi jusqu'au premier tiers du XIX la séquence du français à fonction d'expression des relations syntaxiques Sujet Verbe Complément transitif, et sa conséquence, la séquence simple Sujet Verbe (Benoist 1993), pourront être employées en russe, alors que le sujet ne constitue pas le Topic, ce qui est en contradiction avec le principe d'organisation pragmatique de Karamzin, du Topic au Focus. Comme le fait remarquer Kovtunova, auteur de la première thèse de doctorat d'Etat sur l'ordre des mots du russe contemporain (1973), ces 'dèvian­ ces' se rencontrent fréquemment dans la prose de Pushkin, nourri, comme on le sait, de la tradition littéraire française, de Voltaire en particulier. Par exemple, dans le passage suivant extrait de la nouvelle Vystrel (Le coup de fusil): (11)

Silvio stal v "Silvio commença dans otvorilis', Masha vbegaet i s'ouvrirent, Macha entre et na sheju. sur cou".

menja pricelivat'sja. Vdrug dveri moi viser. Soudain portes s vizgom brosaetsja mne avec cri se-jette à-moi

Dans la deuxième phrase de (11) l'ordre neutre (d'expressivité nulle) serait, en russe contemporain, la séquence Verbe Sujet, c'est-à-dire otvorilis' dveri et vbegaet Masha: c'est l'organisation linéaire des énoncés qui décrivent

10

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la manifestation nouvelle d'un individu ou d'un objet du texte, même s'il a déjà été mentionné auparavant; il s'agit ici du changement de la position des portes et de l'arrivée de la jeune fille, bien connue du lecteur mais absente de l'épisode précédent. Les deux items sont contextuellement 'nouveaux', la nouveauté de leurs référents est définie par la nouveauté de la situation dans laquelle ils apparaissent. Ils appartiennent donc au Focus, avec le verbe, et sont affectés par la chute de la mélodie en position finale de la phrase. On doit se demander comment Pushkin, Karamzin et leurs contemporains intonnaient le gallicisme que constitue dans ces phrases la séquence Sujet Verbe (Complément): il ne s'agit pas d'une inversion à valeur expressive comme ce serait d'ordinaire le cas en russe contemporain pour les phrase où le Focus précède le Topic (l'expressivité n'est pas difficile à identifier parce qu'en général elle n'est pas limitée au seul ordre des mots mais fait appel à d'autres plans de la langue, le lexique en particulier). Les deux intonations sont théoriquement possibles: soit une mélodie analogue à la mélodie expressive, sur le Sujet, sans en avoir la fonction, simplement parce que le schème prosodique de la phonologie de la phrase nouvelle l'exigeait, soit une mélodie "automatisée" (Danes 1967) faisant porter la chute sur le Verbe final (à l'instar du français). Le plus souvent les séquences inspirées du français sont caractérisées par la présence en fin de phrase d'un syntagme complétif, dont le rôle pragmatique ne relève pas le moins du monde de la focalisation (la connaissance de son référent est donnée par le contexte précédent immédiat). Ainsi, dans Puteshestvie v Arzrum ("Voyage à Arzrum"), du même Pushkin, on trouve le passage suivant (12): (12)

Priroda "Nature xoloden, froid, lezhal s'étendait

okolo autour-de gory montagnes v dans

nas byla ugrjuma. Vozduh byl nous était maussade. Air était byli pokryty pechal'nymi sosnami i sneg était couvertes de tristes sapins et neige ovragah ravins".

La dernière phrase du passage (12) aurait sans doute à l'heure actuelle l'ordre des mots V ovragah lezhal sneg, qui correspond à la nouveauté de la "neige" dans la situation, pour les voyageurs. En revanche, les "ravins" qui appartiennent au paysage sont 'connus' par relation métonymique avec les "montagnes" environnantes, ils constituent normalement le Topic de la phrase. La 'vacuité' de l'information apportée par le prédicat de ces phrases les rapproche de la phrase nominale, phrase sans verbe, fréquente en russe dans les descriptions. On peut donc supposer qu'à l'époque de Pushkin elles étaient

11

ORDRE DES MOTS DU RUSSE MODERNE

intonnées comme les phrases contemporaines le seraient, avec la mélodie conclusive sur les Sujets, sans qu'il s'agisse d'inversion expressive (ce qui serait le cas actuellement). Il peut arriver d'ailleurs que le Complément, même si son 'ancienneté' dans le texte lui confère une 'vocation' topicale, constitue néanmoins le Focus de la phrase, lorsqu'il est exprimé par un groupe de mots de structure syntaxique complexe (syntagme déterminatif) et de poids lexical riche (adjectif descriptif, expressif). Dans ce cas, il est clair que la phrase était lue avec une chute de la mélodie sur ce groupe, le Complément ou ses Détermimants. Ainsi lorsque dans Pikovaja dama ("La dame de pique") Pushkin décrit la réception à laquelle assiste le héros, German, après une succession de phrases à séquence Complément Verbe Sujet, qui introduisent dans le récit les personnages nouveaux, il passe à une séquence Sujet Verbe Complément pour un énoncé analogue syntaxiquement et sémantiquement, sans doute parce que le Com­ plément est accompagné d'un adjectif important du point de vue narratif (13): (13)

Shuby i plashchi "Pelisses et capes

mel'kali passaient

mimo près de

velichavogo majestueux

shvejcara. portier".

La séquence contraire, possible, qui ferait du "portier" même 'nouveau' ('nouveauté' exprimée par l'article indéfini en français, "un majestueux portier") un Topic explicite (justifié Par le fait que ce personnage est lié métonymiquement à la demeure où il officie, et dans ce cas un article défini conviendrait aussi, à moins qu'il n'y ait plusieurs portiers!), 'gommerait' l'allusion à l'importance de la fonction de cet individu qui constitue une barrière devant le jeune homme pauvre mais ambitieux. S'y ajoute la description du luxe qui s'étale devant lui et qui ne lui est pas accessible. Malgré son origine étrangère, l'influence de l'ordre des mots français sur la disposition réciproque des membres primaires de la phrase ne sera pas limitée à une pratique ancienne. Elle faussera bon nombre de descriptions tout au cours du XIX siècle (et même dans de nombreuses études de la première moitié du XX siècle), jusqu'à ce que certains linguistes russes comme Krushel'nickaja, Sirotinina, Kovtunova, Raspopov et d'autres, à la lumière des travaux de différents représentants de l' Ecole de Prague d'après-guerre, tels Mathesius, Firbas, Danes, Sgall, ne prennent conscience de la spécificité de l'ordre des mots du russe, si proche de celui du tchèque, langue à flexion et de la même famille. Les recherches menées dans ce direction par des linguistes russes de la deuxième moitié du XIX comme Fortunatov (1856) ou Slanskij (1887) semblent n'avoir laissé aucune trace malgré leur lien avec les linguistes 'psychologistes' allemands auxquels elles font référence; il faut préciser

12

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qu'elles étaient destinées plus à des pédagogues qu'à des philologues et avaient une visée essentiellement scolaire. Encore imprécises quant à leur approche théorique, malgré l'appel aux procédés linguistiques qui seront plus tard spécifiques de l'étude systématique de la "fonction communicative de l'ordre des mots" (panel de questions, permutations, variation pertinente du contexte, traduction interne, paraphrasage), ces études ne pouvaient retenir l'attention des représentants du courant dominant de la linguistique russe de l'époque tourné davantage vers la diachronie et la description des formes. Ainsi seule l'analyse fonctionnaliste héritée de l'Ecole de Prague, de linguistes comme Jakobson et Karcevskij, a permis de définir la fonction de l'ordre des mots dans les langues slaves en général, en rompant avec toute conception extérieure ou a priori. Avec la théorie de la "Division actuelle" (traduction proposée par les linguistes praguois eux-mêmes), Mathesius (1942, dans son article novateur) est à l'origine de l'interprétation linguistique de l'organisation linéaire de la phrase des langues slaves. Il oppose ainsi l'articulation pragmatique de l'énoncé à son articulation syntaxique. Dans cet article il montre que l'ordre des mots de la phrase simple des contes fantastiques populaires slaves est régi par le principe de la succession Topic Focus (appelés différemment par lui), indépendamment de la fonction syntaxique de ces éléments, et, en particulier, qu'il est caractérisé par la succession Circonstance ou Complément Verbe Sujet (et non Sujet Verbe Circonstance ou Complément, comme ce serait le cas en français ou en anglais) quand il s'agit de présenter pour la première fois dans le récit tel ou tel personnage qui est exprimé par l'item du Sujet. Il faut souligner l'abondance des études contrastives avec les langues sans flexion et à article telles que le français et l'anglais. Ainsi Firbas (1966) insiste sur la différence de l'ordre des mots de la phrase simple tchèque et l'anglaise particulièrement dans le cas où le Sujet a le même rôle pragmatique que le Verbe (Focus complexe), compte tenu de la signification de ce dernier (existence, présence, apparition, arrivée, surgissement, c'est-à-dire les phases ingressives de l'existence): la 'nouveauté' du référent du Sujet est marquée en tchèque par sa postposition au verbe, en anglais par l'article indéfini. A partir d'une comparaison entre le russe, le français et l'italien (langue sans flexion nominale et avec article comme le français et l'anglais) nous-même avons montré (1993) qu'il fallait sans doute faire intervenir la 'pauvreté' des désinences verbales en anglais et en français (pour ce dernier au moins à l'oral), face à la 'richesse sonore' de la morphologie verbale de l'italien (qui permet également l'ellipse du pronom sujet).

ORDRE DES MOTS DU RUSSE MODERNE

13

5. Ordre des mots et prosodie dans la phrase russe contemporaine Les analyses des linguistes fonctionnalistes russes, inspirées par les recherches praguoises, insistent volontiers sur le rôle actif joué par Karamzin dans l'organisation linéaire de la phrase russe moderne. Celui-ci, à la foi praticien et théoricien (évidemment dans les termes généraux et philosophiques de son époque mais suffisamment clairs), assied le fonctionnement pragmati­ que de l'ordre des mots en russe moderne sur une phonologie de la phrase liée à la fonction stylistique nouvelle qu'il entend lui donner (après le système de Lomonosov, pesant et inadapté aux besoins nouveaux de la société russe): pour que le lecteur des genres nouveaux éprouve du plaisir, la phrase n'est pas déclamée mais est prononcée de façon naturelle, ainsi dirons-nous en termes linguistiques modernes que sa prosodie suit la courbe mélodique naturelle, fondée sur l'effort physiologique de la phonation, qui débute par la montée de la mélodie et s'achève par sa chute. Cette montée (identifiée comme intonème non conclusif par les théories contemporaines de l'intonation) coïncide avec le Topic (ou la zone topicale), alors que la chute (intonème conclusif, "accent de phrase" dans la terminologie linguistique russe et tchèque) marque le Focus (ou l'élément nominal du Focus complexe), c'est ce que Danes (1967) appelait la "place automatisée de l'accent de phrase". Ainsi se constituent peu à peu les principes de la phonolo­ gie de la phrase écrite du russe moderne. Lorsque le Focus repose sur un contraste, le contour conclusif s'associe à une forte intensité articulatoire de la syllabe et parfois à une durée notable de sa réalisation, c'est ce que traditionnellement les linguistes russes nomment "l'accent logique" ou "l'accent d'insistance". Certes, dans une approche littéraire sentimentaliste, Karamzin rompait parfois cette prosodie prosaïque par certaines mélodies particulières visant à créer à l'intérieur de la phrase un certain rythme, celui de la'blleprose", mais ceci est resté un trait spécifique de son écriture, qui avec le déclin du sentimentalisme disparaîtra de la prosodie de la phrase russe standard écrite. C'est donc à partir de la phonologie phrastique de Karamzin qu'il convient d'analyser les différents aspects de l'organisation linéaire du russe moderne et non à partir de schéma préconçu. En particulier, comme nous l'avons déjà vu, il faut cesser de considérer qu'en russe l'ordre des mots est libre, alors qu'il a une fonction contraignante, et si on peut parler d''inversion' ou d''ordre des mots expressif, émotionnel' ce n'est que lorsque les séquences en question

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constituent une déviance du schème intonatif ' automatisé', neutre de la langue écrite. On comprend que la phrase encore traditionnelle dans la deuxième moitié du XVIII, la phrase lomosovienne, destinée à une perception plus visuelle que sonore, plus mentale et plus abstraite que lisible et informative était indifférente à la composante intonative, donc à la linéarité fonctionnelle. 6. Les rôles pragmatiques en russe Les premières études fonctionnalistes russes de la deuxième moitié du XX siècle ne se préoccupaient que des différences particulièrement discrètes entre la 'connaissance', 'l'ancienneté' (contextuelle ou situationnelle, répétitive ou métonymique) caractéristique du Topic, et la 'nouveauté' (absolue ou relative dans un entourage nouveau) du Focus, elles retrouvaient ici mécaniquement les catégories grammaticales des langues à article comme les phrases suivantes (14) et (15) l'illustrent bien: (14)

Molodoj Jeune

chelovek ugnai homme(nom.) vola

mashinu voiture(accus.)

avec les distinctions référentielles du français "Le jeune homme vola une voiture", et (15)

Mashinu ugnai molodoj Voiture(accus.) vola jeune "La voiture vola un jeune homme",

chelovek homme(nom.)

énoncé qui est un non-sens en français. Il faut faire appel au passif: "La voiture fut volé par un jeune homme" ou bien "C'est un jeune homme qui vola la voiture" (s'il y a insistance, contraste possible sur l'identité du voleur). Le Focus contrastif est d'ailleurs fréquemment constitué par un item 'connu', à référence définie, qui renvoie à un individu mentionné auparavant et qu'il s'agit d'opposer à un autre individu également 'connu': "C'est le jeune homme qui vola la voiture (et non mon voisin)". La 'connaissance' n'est pas un obstacle en soi à la focalisation d'un élément. Si elle n'est pas immédiate (le plus souvent signalée dans ce cas par l'emploi d'un pronom anaphorique) et qu'elle participe à la situation nouvelle décrite par le verbe de la phrase, son référent constituera facilement avec celuici un Focus complexe et occupera de plein droit la zone finale, sous l'accent de phrase, qu'il soit sujet ou complément. On pourrait dire que son référent est 'réintroduit' dans l'univers du discours. Il est évidemment possible que les deux membres primaires Sujet et Complément de la proposition soient topicaux, le Focus est alors constitué par

ORDRE DES MOTS DU RUSSE MODERNE

15

le seul Verbe: les deux Topics occupent la zone initiale dans une disposition réciproque sur laquelle nous ne nous étendrons pas ici, le Verbe est mis en position finale sous l'accent de phrase, soit une phrase comme (16): (16)

Unizitel'naja procedura "Humiliante procédure(nom.)

Grigorja volnovala Grégoire(ac.) émouvait"

où les deux substantifs sont des Topics (le premier de connaissance 'immédiate' qui renvoie à l'énoncé précédent, la fouille à laquelle le héros est soumis; le second de 'connaissance' constante), c'est la disposition réciproque la plus fréquente. Mais cette phrase apparaît chez son auteur, l'écrivain bien connu Sholoxov, sous une forme différente, où seul le substantif de connaissance 'immédiate', 'connaissance' la plus liée au contexte précédent, qui assure la cohésion du texte, UniziteVnaja procedura est placé en position initiale. La phrase a l'aspect suivant (16a): (16) a. UniziteVnaja procedura "Humiliante procédure

volnovala émouvait

Grigorja Grégoire"

Ce qui ne signifie pas que le nom du héros est focalisé, l'accent de phrase affecte toujours le verbe, et il ne s'agit pas d'une séquence 'inversive', 'expressive': dans le cas de plusieurs Topics on évite fréquemment de charger la zone initiale afin de ne pas augmenter le degré d'enchaînement des phrases du texte et laisser plus de liberté au lecteur. La position médiane du verbe accentué est la solution la plus simple. Le russe du début du XVIII siècle, marqué par l'influence de l'allemand, dans des corpus de genre administratif, officiel, affectionnait la position finale du verbe (il s'agissait évidemment d'un système autre que celui de notre époque, en fait c'était une imitation de la position finale du verbe allemand). Il s'avéra rapidement qu'il fallait dépasser le cadre de la 'connaissance' et de la 'nouveauté' qui ne suffisaient pas à expliquer la disposition des membres primaires de l'énoncé dans la même phrase (14) par exemple. En effet Molodoj chelovek ugnai mashinu peut constituer une phrase (14a) dont les éléments nominaux sont tous 'nouveaux', comme le montrera sa traduction en français avec des articles indéfinis: "Un jeune homme vola une voiture". Le verbe lui aussi est 'nouveau' puisqu'il dénote une action dont l'auteur, un jeune homme, est 'nouveau', et dont l'objet, une voiture, l'est également. Il s'agit de ce que nous appellerons la séquence canonique de ce type d'énoncé, définie par son contenu sémantique et syntaxique, ainsi que le prouve l'impossibilité de permuter tel quel les deux substantifs et de faire porter la mélodie conclusive

16

JEAN-PIERRE BENOIST

("l'accent de phrase" dans la terminologie russe) sur le sujet molodoj chelovek, comme dans (15). La permutation, avec sa conséquence intonative, n'est acceptable pour cet énoncé qu'à condition que le complément mashinu soit affecté d'une référence définie ('connaissance' contextuelle ou situationnelle), c'est nécessairement la phrase (15). Nous voyons bien que l'ordre des mots de (14a), à la différence de celui, pourtant identique de (14), ne relève pas des distinctions pragmatiques que nous avons définies plus haut à la suite des linguistes tchèques. Le sujet molodoj chelovek de (14a) ne peut qualifié de Topic, il est d'ailleurs affecté d'une légère montée mélodique, moins forte que celle du Thème mais qui signale sa 'nouveauté' et sa place particulière dans les catégories de la "division actuelle" de la phrase. Ces caractéristiques sémantique et intonative ont été mises en évidence dans les travaux russes, qui ont conclu que dans un énoncé comme (14a) c'est son Rôle sémantique d'Agent (Cas profond des Grammaires de Cas) qui lui confère une fonction pragmatique spécifique, distincte du Topic. Dans nos propres recherches (1979, 1992) nous avons proposé le terme de Base: dans les phrases dont tous les éléments sont 'nouveaux' l'Agent (s'il y en a un dans l'énoncé), indépendamment de sa signification lexicale, est le point de départ de la communication et occupe donc la position initiale de cette phrase. Pour éviter toute confusion avec la théorie syntacticienne étrangère à l'esprit du russe, que nous avons d'ailleurs rejetée plus haut, rappelons que cette position n'est pas due à la fonction syntaxique centrale du Sujet dans l'énoncé en général et à l'emploi du nominatif pour l'exprimer, mais à la place la plus élevée que l'Agent occupe dans la hiérarchie sémantique de l'énoncé donné: selon une projection linéaire de cette hiérarchie, il a donc la priorité sur tous les autres Rôles. Les opérations linguistiques qui créent le Topic et la Base sont absolument différentes: le Topic est choisi à l'intérieur du contexte précédant la phrase où il occurre (ou bien dans la situation extralinguistique à laquelle il participe): il relève de l'avant-texte; la Base au contraire est imposée par le contexte interne de l'énoncé, à partir de son contenu sémantique (le sens du verbe détermine les Rôles sémantiques assurés par ses différents arguments, compte tenu d'un certain nombre de souscatégorisation lexicale de leurs référents '+ ou - animé', en particulier dans le cas de l'Agent). Dans les énoncés que nous avons qualifiés plus haut de 'phrases d'existence', dont le verbe exprime l'existence, la présence, l'arrivée dans un lieu, ce sont les divers Localisateurs, même 'nouveaux', qui ont la priorité (le Rôle des Agents s'estompe d'ailleurs puisqu'il ne s'agit que d'asserter la pré­ sence de leurs référents dans la situation, à l'instar d'une proposition

ORDRE DES MOTS DU RUSSE MODERNE

17

nominale): ces Localisateurs occupent par conséquent la zone initiale de la phrase. Pour être complet dans notre description des éléments non topicaux qui peuvent apparaître au début de la phrase, il faut citer le Thème, dont nous avons donné des exemples auparavant en parlant des cas de dislocation autorisée du syntagme nominal. La thématisation a un statut à part dans l'ensemble des catégories pragmatiques non focales du russe puisqu'elle est capable de briser des liens syntaxiques plus profonds dans la structure dépendancielle que les liens des constituants primaires de l'énoncé. Le Thème par son rôle pragmatique à part est d'ailleurs parfois confondu avec un Focus inversé tant il se distingue du Topic, qui relève lui du simple enchaînement du texte, et de la Base, automatisme sémantique. Enfin il faut dire que le russe oral, dont il sera question avec le paragraphe suivant, admet, dans une variante assez 'relâchée', une véritable anacoluthe quant à l'expression du Thème, puisque la thématisation peut entraîner une rupture complète des liens syntaxiques de la phrase: le substantif thématisé est au nominatif (cas asyntaxique ici). Si la langue écrite ne peut dire que (17): (17)

Etu devochku ja "Cette fillette(ac.) j '

ljublju aime"

en français courant "Cette fillette je l'aime", la langue orale, elle, admettra des variantes (18) et (19): (18)

Eta devochka "Cette fillette(nom.)

ejë ja elle(ac.) j '

ljublju aime"

où il y a une reprise par le pronom personnel au cas voulu par la construction du verbe, et (19)

Eta devochka ja "Cette fillette(nom.) j '

ljublju aime"

sans reprise. 7. Ordre des mots et oralité Se fondant sur la fréquence dans les réalisations parlées de phrase à accent de phrase non final (sauf s'il affecte le verbe), médian dans Sujet Objet accentué Verbe ou Objet Sujet accentué Verbe, et initial dans Objet accentué Sujet Verbe ou Sujet accentué Objet Verbe, certains linguistes russes contemporains, comme Kovtunova (1973, 1976), ont conclu que Vinversion,

18

JEAN-PIERRE BENOIST

définie comme séquence de la place non finale de cet accent, a une double fonction, expressive pour la langue écrite, et distinctive de la langue parlée. Une constation s'impose; lorsqu'un écrivain veut faire 'parler' ses personnages, il imite la langue parlée et un des premiers traits langagiers auxquels il fait appel est précisément cette position non finale du sujet et du complément accentués. Néanmoins il est clair qu'il y a ici une confusion fréquente entre le registre de style (style 'parlé') et le code spécifique de l'oralité, orientée le plus souvent sur un échange de messages, c'est-à-dire le dialogue. Dans le discours littéraire qui vise à imiter le discours d'autrui (''discours direct") les marques du code oral fonctionnent comme marques du style parlé. La phonologie du code oral est différente de la phonologie de l'écrit, essentiellement monologique. Des études récentes, russes (Nikolaeva 1982) et françaises (Bonnot et Fougeron 1982) ont montré que la séquence non "automatisée", définie comme "inversive" par Kovtunova, relève d'un fonctionnement pragmatique spécifique et non expressif, que nous avons défini nous-même au Congrès slavo-roman de Florence comme une insistance phrastique (puisqu'elle porte sur toute la phrase et pas sur un mot seul comme dans le cas d'un Focus contrastif, Benoist 1985). Nous avons également souligné que l'emploi de cette mélodie non finale est liée d'ordinaire à celui de structures phrastiques particulières comme la parataxe, et que l'insistance en soi est une intention pragmatique propre au dialogue, dont l'oralité est le canal naturel. La séquence Sujet accentué Verbe de la phrase (20): (20)

Papa "Papa

prishël est-arrivé",

dans le petit corpus oral (donc sans ponctuation) proposé par Nikolaeva (20a): (20) a. Otkroj "Ouvre

papa papa

prishël est-arrivé"

relève de la valeur de justification qu'a la deuxième partie de cette énonciation complexe, sans qu'elle soit exprimée par une subordination: il s'agit d'attirer l'attention de l'interlocuteur pour qu'il ouvre à son père. Dans un corpus écrit dépourvu de cette insistance, qui se contenterait de constater l'arrivée du Papa, on retrouverait l'ordre Verbe Sujet accentué, qui est la séquence canonique de la phrase d'existence dans ce code (21): (21)

Prishël Papa "Est-arrivé Papa"

ORDRE DES MOTS DU RUSSE MODERNE

19

en français "Papa est arrivé". Dans le code écrit, la causalité exprimée par la conjonction de subordination potomu chto ("parce que") se combine régulière­ ment à la séquence canonique (22): (22)

Otkroj, "Ouvre

potomu chto parce que

prishël est-arrivé

papa papa"

La phrase du discours oral est souvent insistante en soi, par exemple, quand la situation est inattendue, voire incompréhensible comme dans (23): (23)

De Goll' umer "de Gaulle est-mort" (exemple emprunté à Nikolaeva)

(dans le discours écrit on mettrait sans doute un point d'exclamation, mais avec la séquence canonique). C'est que le locuteur fait part d'une nouvelle à la fois inattendue et éprouvante à son interlocuteur (on connaît l'admiration et la sympathie que les Soviétiques ressentaient pour le Chef de la France libre). Au Colloque de Florence nous avons proposé comme équivalents français les particules d'insistance phrastique "C'est que", "Voilà que, Ne voilà-t-il pas que", qui expriment l'étonnement du locuteur face à la situation qu'il décrit. Pour un contenu analogue mais moins chargé d'émotivité (l'événement "tout seul" en quelque sorte), on aurait la séquence canonique des phrases d'existence (24): (24)

Umer Petrov Est-mort Petrov "Petrov est mort"

C'est la fréquence dans le discours oral, dialogique, de ces messages d'insistance phrastique qui explique la fréquence des séquences avec accent non final, à côté des séquences analogues à celles de la langue écrite, dont l'emploi est régulier dans les phrases simplement assertives.

20

JEAN-PIERRE BENOIST

ABSTRACT 1) In the middle of the XVIIIth century the stylistic distinction, still traditional for many essential linguistic levels (morphological, syntactical, lexical) at the beginning of this century, between the prevailing Church-Slavonic (Old-Slavonic) elements in poetic and abstract works and the properly Russian (Old-Russian) forms in prosaic novels begins to give way to a uniform ('standardized') language, the Modern Russian Language, with the exception of sentence organization (speech linearity), particularly word order. For example, for Lomonosov, the famous Russian philosopher and scientist, and author of Russian Grammar and Rhetorica, WO is a rhetorical device of "high style", characterized not only by Church-Slavonic sequences but also by ornamental figures such as chiasmus and dislocation. This rhetorical approach, just like the analysis of XIXth century Russian linguists, rests on the nongrammaticalization of Russian WO (syntactical functions are expressed by inflexional ends, WO is "free"). 2) A real revolution in Russian WO is accomplished at the end of the XVIIIth century by the Russian writer and historian, Karamzin: WO is no longer an ornament, but it must make for easier reading and understanding: it is the principle of WO communicative function, from Topic to Focus, which is founded on sentence phonology with conclusive intoneme denoting Focus in the sentence end, independently of syntactical functions, Subject or Object. If this principle is a linguistic device, its original aim is still stylistic. In fact it is the same narrative principle of WO of oral Pan-Slavonic tales. 3) Nevertheless the power of word order grammatical principle, particularly under the influence of the French sequence Subject Verb, is so great that the communicatively relevant sequence Verb Subject is never used by writers in the early XlXth century. That is to say WO was perceived later by XlXth and XXth century Russian linguists and grammarians as a relevant linguistic level: ordinarily they distinguish only 'natural', 'neutral' word order and 'subjective', 'inversive' only for syntactical and morphological reasons. 4) It is important to say that the stylistic origin of communicative WO in Modern Russian appears even now when we differentially study the totality of its language manifestations in the enunciative opposition written - monologue - historical and oral - dialogue - discursive; the latter term has another sentence phonology that does not allow communicative WO as in the written variant.

ORDRE DES MOTS DU RUSSE MODERNE

21

BIBLIOGRAPHIE Benoist, J.-P. 1979. Les fonctions de Vordre des mots en russe moderne. Thèse de doctorat, Institut d'Etudes slaves, Paris. . 1985. "La division actuelle dans la communication orale en russe contemporain", II Colloque slavoroman de Florence, Atti del Colloquio Lingue slave e lingue romanze. Firenze: Università degli Studi. . 1992. "La position initiale dans la phrase russe", Etudes de linguistique romane et slave dédiées à S. Karolak, Krakow. . 1993. "La séquence Verbe Sujet en russe, français et italien, ou les Icônes de la linéarité", Slovo 15, Paris. Bergel'son M. ., Kibrik A. E. 1981. "Pragmaticheskij princip prioriteta i ego otrazhenie v jazyke", IAN SSSR SUA 40, Moskva. Bonnot C , Fougeron I. 1982. "L'accent de phrase initial en russe est-il toujours un signe d'expressivité ou de familiarité?", BSLP, LXXVII, 1982-1, Paris. Dahl O. 1969. "Topic and Comment. A Study in Russian and General Transformational Grammar", Slavica Gothoburgensia, 4. Göteborg. Danes F. 1967. "Order of Elements and Sentence Intonation". To Honor R. Jakobson, The Hague-Paris. Davydov I. I. "Opyt o porjadke slov", Trudy Obshchestva ljubitelej rossijskoj slovestnosti, Ch. IV (1816), Ch. VII (1817), Ch. XIX (1819), Sankt-Peterburg. Ebeling C. L. 1958. Subject and Predicate, especially in Russian. s'Gravenhage. Firbas J. 1966. "On defining the Theme in Fuctional Sentence Perspective". TLP, 1, Praha. Fortunatov F. F. 1856. "O prepodavanii grammatiki russkogo jazyka v srednej shkole", Izbrannye trudy, 1957, Moskva. Fougeron I. 1989. Prosodie et organisation du message. Analyse de la phrase assertive en russe contemporain. Paris: . Klincksieck. Grech N. I. 1840. Chtenija o russkom jazyke. Sankt-Peterburg. Isachenko A. 1967. "Frazovoe udarenie i porjadok slov". To Honor R. Jakobson II. The Hague-Paris. Karamzin N. M. 1792. "O russkoj grammatike francuza Modrju". Moskovskij zhurnal. Moskva. Kovtunova I. I. 1973. Porjadok slov v sovremennom russkom literaturnom jazyke i formirovanie norm slovoraspolozhenija v XVIII- pervoj treti XIX v. IRJA AN SSSR, Moskva. . 1976. Sovremennyj russkij jazyk, porjadok slov i aktual'noe chlenenie. Moskva. Krushel'nickaja K. G. 1969. "O sintaksicheskoj prirode aktual'nogo chlenenija". Invariantnye sintaksicheskie znachenija i struktur a predlozhenija. Moskva. Lomonosov M. V. 1748. Ritorika. Sankt-Peterburg. Mathesius V. 1942. "Zakladni funkce poradku slov v cestine". SAS 7. Praha. Nikolaeva T. M. 1982. Semantika akcentnogo vydelenija. Moskva: Nauka. Sgall P. 1967. "Functional Sentence Perspective in a Generative Description". Prague Studies in Mathematical Linguistics 2.203-225.

FROM VSO TO SVO? WORD ORDER AND REAR EXTRAPOSITION IN COPTIC

ANTONIO LOPRIENO University of California, Los Angeles

0.

Historical introduction The history of Egyptian is usually divided into two main phases, 'Earlier Egyptian' and 'Later Egyptian', which are characterized by a major change from synthetic to analytic patterns (Junge 1985). Earlier Egyptian is the language of all written texts from 3000 to 1300  and survives in formal religious texts until the IIIrd century CE. It displays morphological affixes indicating gender and number in the noun as well as flectional deictic features in the verb. In verbal sentences, Earlier Egyptian exhibits the VSO-order: (1)

dd.jn shtj pn n hjm.t=f tn say.NARR peasant this to woman.FEM=his this[FEM] "Then the peasant said to his wife" (Eloquent Peasant R1.5, cf. Parkinson 1991:1)

Later Egyptian, on the other hand, is documented from the nineteenth dynasty to the Middle Ages (1300 BCE-1300 CE). Its latest stage is Coptic (Till 1970), the language spoken in Christian Egypt from the fourth through presumably the XIVth century CE, written in a variety of the Greek alphabet with the addition of a few Demotic signs to represent Egyptian phonemes absent from Greek. Coptic also differs from the earlier stages of the language because of the high percentage of lexical borrowing from Greek (Kasser 1991), whereas the impact of Greek on the shaping of Coptic syntax is still a matter of considerable scholarly debate.1 As a spoken, and gradually also as a written language, Coptic was superseded by Arabic from the IXth century onward, but it survives to the present time as the liturgical language of the Christian church of Egypt (Till 1970:29-39) and in the few linguistic traces it left in spoken Egyptian Arabic (Vittmann 1991). In general, the structuralist tradition of which Hans Jacob Polotsky is the most representative exponent tends to consider this impact relatively limited, cf. Polotsky 1950; Shisha-Halevy 1986:52. Within the generative or functionalist frame, on the other hand, a certain number of Coptic constructions are seen as the result of code-switching with Greek: Reintges, in press. For general observations cf. Weiss 1968; Nagel 1971.

24

ANTONIO LOPRIENO

Besides displaying a number of phonological evolutions, Later Egyptian, particularly in its latest phase, tends to develop analytic features: periphrastic SVO-patterns supersede the older VSO-formations, suffixal markers of morphological oppositions are dropped and functionally replaced by prefixai classifiers such as articles or relative constructions (Hintze 1950):2 (2)

a=k-tôrp m-p-eiôhe m-p-ent-a=k-jit=f n-cons PRET=you-steal ACC-the-field from-he-who-PRET=you-take=him in-violence "You stole the field from the one against whom you have committed violence" (Behlmer 1996:62)

(3)

Earlier Egyptian participle > Later Egyptian relative construction sdm. t > t3-ntj hr-sdm >t-et-sôtm hearing.FEM > the[FEM]-who on-hearing>the[FEM]-who-hear "the hearer"

Finite VSO-forms, therefore, appear replaced by a paradigm of SVOpatterns called "sentence conjugations" or "clause conjugations" (Polotsky 1960), depending on whether they function as main or as dependent clauses, which obtain from the grammaticalization as tense markers (Hopper & Traugott 1993:8-10) of what was originally a form of the auxiliary verb to do followed by the infinitive: (4)

Earlier Eg. VSO sdm.hr-f hear.AOR=he "he usually hears"

> > >

Late Eg. AUX-SVO hr-jr-f-sdm AOR-do=he-hearing

> Coptic TENSE-SVO > ša=f-sôtm > AOR=he-hear

In the unmarked order of verbal sentences, whether in the Earlier Egyptian VSO- or in the Later Egyptian SVO-order, the hierarchy of arguments is always SUBJ < OBJ < OBL (cf. Croft 1990:101-111). This order is modified when the NP-argument is conveyed by a clitic pronoun, which tends to move to the position immediately following V, regardless of its semantic role: (5) a.

b.

rdj.n wj h3s.t n h3s.t give.PRET me foreign country .FEM to foreign country .FEM "Foreign country gave me to foreign country" (Sinuhe  28-29, cf. Koch 1990:23) ntk dd n=f you giving[IMPERF] to=him "You are the one who brings it to him" cf. Parkinson 1991:21)

st it (Eloquent Peasant R 18.6,

In order to provide a more corpus-based, and therefore uniform description, I shall try in the following paragraphs, whenever possible, to choose my examples from a lengthy classical Coptic text, namely Shenute's De iudicio (Behlmer 1996).

25

FROM VSO TO SVO?

c.

mê e-ša=k-kô nsô=k an n-ne-khrêma QUEST that-AOR=you-leave after=you not ACC-the[PLUR]-property hm-pe-hoou m-p-mou in-the-day of-the-death "Do you not leave your wealth behind you on the day of death?" (Behlmer 1996:54)

Throughout the history of Egyptian, the predicate of verbal clauses, in its so-called 'second' or 'that-form', may function as the 'theme' of the utterance: (6) a.

b.

wnn jrf ti pf mj-m m-hmt=f ntr pf mnh that-be indeed land that how without=him god that excellent "And how is that land faring without him, namely this excellent god?" (Sinuhe  43-44, cf. Koch 1990:30) e=k-na-cine hôô=f tôn m-p-ete-mp=k-fit=f that=you-FUT-find self=it where ACC-the-which-NEG.PRET=you-bring=it nmma=k with=you "Where will you find what you have not brought with you?" (Behlmer 1996:54)

In general, Egyptian verbal syntax displays a comparatively high degree of topicalization and focalization phenomena (Loprieno 1988:41-52). Unmarked verbal phrases, i.e. VP that are neither topicalized as the marked theme of the utterance nor rhematized by the presence of a topic or of a discourse marker are, therefore, less frequent than in the majority of natural languages and mostly function as embedded or as modal clauses: (7) a.

b.

mw m jtrw zwr.t(w)=f mrj=k water in river drink.PASS=it wish=you "The water of the Nile is drunk (only) if you wish it" (Sinuhe  233-234, cf. Koch 1990:68) mh hr h3.t jw.t=k think [IMP] on rpse.FEM come.PROSP=you "Think of your corpse, and come back!" (Sinuhe  199, cf. Koch 1990:63)

In Coptic verbal sentences, the tendency to have verbal phrases function as marked theme or rheme of the utterance reaches its full development: in the former case, the VP is preceded by a relative marker e- or nt- and is described in Coptological literature as 'second tense' (Polotsky 1987:129-140); in the latter, the form is preceded by the subordination marker e- and is described as 'circumstantial' (Polotsky 1990:225-260): (8)

nt-a=n-jpo-f e=f-o that-PRET=we-beget=him while=he-be "He was born to us blind" (John 9,19)

n-blle as-blind

26

ANTONIO LOPRIENO

1. The SVO-order in Coptic The gradual historical affirmation of the SVO-order can indeed be seen as a predictable typological trend which Egyptian shares with a certain number of VSO- (and SOV-) languages:3 to choose an example within the same linguistic family, in Modern Standard Arabic the VSO-order of the classical language is being challenged by the SVO-order of both the Arabic dialects and of Standard European (Holes 1995:203-213); in a genetically different family, the SOV-order generally assumed for Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic has left room to the flexible SVO-order of many Germanic languages (Hock 1991:618-621).4 The dominance of the SVO-order in Coptic, however, is not as generalized as a cursory look at the basic clause structures would lead one to believe. On the one hand, a pure SVO-order only underlies the present conjugation, which in fact displays the etymological and syntactic structure of adverbial clauses. Compare the verbal clause in (9) and the adverbial clause in (10): (9)

f-sôtp hôô=f na=f m-p-šône m-p-nobe m-p-diabolos he-choose self=he to=him ACC-the-disease of-the-sin of-the-devil "He indeed chooses for himself the disease of the devil's sin" (Behlmer 1996:28)

(10)

epeidê se-hijn-rôme nim et-r-nobe because they-on-man every who-do-sin "because they are on every man who commits sins" (Behlmer 1996:14)

On the other hand, the SVO-order can be said to synchronically character­ ize Coptic verbal clauses only if we view the subject of the present conjugation as displaying "a synthesis of lexical and grammatical components" (ShishaHalevy 1986:159) and the conjugational basis as being located outside of the word order sequence of basic sentence components-in other words, if we treat the conjugational basis as a grammaticalized tense marker (Hopper & Traugott 1993:50-56) which does not modify the SVO-order: (11)

a=k-ouôm n-n-sarks m-p-laos m-p-noute TENSE[PRET]=you-eat ACC-the[PLUR]-flesh of-the-people of-the-god hn-ou-hre-n-oeik in-a-food-of-bread "You have eaten the flesh of God's people as bread" (Behlmer 1996:66)

For similar reasons, SVO is the most predictable alternative order in both non-rigid VSOlanguages (as is the case in classical Northwest Semitic languages), in which S is unstable because it occupies the slot between the two components of the VO-predicate, and in non-rigid SOV-languages (as in reconstructed Proto-Indo-European), in which this alternative allows the dominant SV-order to be restaured, cf. Croft 1990:53-63; Hock 1991:313-329. 4 The SOV-order of subordinate clauses in German or Dutch may be seen either as a "frozen" Proto-Germanic remnant or as an innovation motivated by nominalization, cf. Givón 1990: 212-214; 510-511.

FROM VSO TO SVO?

27

2. VSO-constructions There are nonetheless many Coptic constructions which indeed exhibit the VSO-order. These patterns are (a) the predication of existence of non-specific subjects: (12)

oun~hoeine e=u-raše e=u-mpša m-p-rime EXIST-some while=they-rejoice while=they-in-the-value of-the-cry "There are some who rejoice, although they would deserve to cry" (Behlmer 1996:87)

(b) the predication of possession, which is etymologically derived from the latter: (13)

mnta=f ce- mnta=f ke-cnmise NOT HAVE=he other-might NOT HAVE=he other-fighting power "He has no other might, he has no other fighting power" (Behlmer 1996:17)

and (c) the remnants of the Egyptian suffix conjugation: (14)

nanou-t-mntnoc eršan-ne-hbêue hôtr nmma-s be good-the-greatness if-the[PLUR]-thing[PLUR] join with=it "Greatness is good if deeds are combined with it" (Behlmer 1996:108)

Of these constructions, the easiest to explain from a typological point of view is the predication of existence of non-specific subjects, which, because of their relatively low status on the hierarchy of animacy (Croft 1990:111-117), tend in many languages to avoid the head position within the sentence: cf. in the English translation the presence of the dummy deictic adverb "there", which reinterprets the sentence in a localistic perspective and prevents the subject's access to the unmarked topic position (Givón 1984:139-145); cf. also "there is a man at the door" as the more usual form of "a man is at the door", as opposed to the unmarked character of the corresponding sentence with the specific subject in topic position: "my brother is at the door" vs. the marked status of the localistic alternative "there is my brother at the door". To a certain extent, the same explanation applies to the patterns of pos­ session, etymologically derived from the verb of existence (oun-, mn-) followed by a prepositional phrase indicating the possessor (ounta=f "he has" < "there-is in-his-hand", mnta=f "he has not" < "there-is-not in-his hand"). While these constructions retain a localistic feature in the form of a dummy adverb mmau "there", they appear to have completed the process toward a full lexicalization as verbal patterns, since the original subject of the existential

28

ANTONIO LOPRIENO

pattern is now reinterpreted as direct object and preceded by the accusative marker:5 (15)

p-ete-ounta=f mmau n-ou-noub mn-ou-hat he-who-HAVE=he there ACC-a-gold with-a-silver "he who has gold and silver" (Behlmer 1996:128)

As to the Coptic 'vestiges' of the Egyptian suffix conjugation, similar typological factors contributed to their preservation of the VS(0)-structure. In the case of adjective verbs, such as nanou- in (14) above, the reason is once again historical, since they too represent the grammaticalization of the existential predicate followed by a nominalized verb form (nanou=f "he is good" < "there-is that-he-is good"). Other instances of VS-verb forms also derive from underlying nominal patterns: the verb peja=f is a lexicalized relative form: "he said" < "that which he said (is)" (Reich 1924:285-288), the verb hna=f "he desires" finds its origin in the adjectival sentence "it is profitable for him" > "it is his desire (that)" (Sethe 1910:136-141). Finally, the verb meša=fis a relict of a negative pattern on its way to full lexicalization in classical Coptic: mešak ("you don't know") > "perhaps" (cf. Shisha-Halevy 1986:211): (16)

mešak e-u-meeue e-pai nci-net-ti je perhaps that=they-think to-that EXTR-those-who-give that "Perhaps the buyers think that... " (Behlmer 1996:52)

3. Rear extraposition : a multifunctional feature ? If all these forms can ultimately be considered to have a relatively limited functional yield at the synchronic level and thus not to infringe on the paradig­ matic nature of the SVO-order in Coptic, (16) introduces us to the synchronically most productive VSO-pattern which, because of both syntactic structure and pragmatic frequency, deserves the linguist's attention: the rear extraposition of the subject by means of the marker nci- in Sahidic and nje- in Bohairic (Westendorf 1965:137-138). In this type of verbal clause, the subject pronoun is left in its original syntactic slot but is cataphorically expanded by an extraposed nominal subject introduced by nei- (Shisha-Halevy 1986:157; Polotsky 1987:148-150; Polotsky 1990:179):

The same evolution is observable in contemporary Hebrew, where the constructions with yes l-"there is to X" > "X has," enl-"there is not to X" > "X has not" are followed by a direct object introduced, when specific, by the accusativ marker et: yihye lanu et ha-nesek bkarov "We will have the weaponry shortly" (Glinert 1989:179-181).

FROM VSO TO SVO?

(17)

29

se-ôš ebol nci-n-et-nehpe e-p-jinjê they-cry out EXTR-those-who-mourn to-the-vanity "The mourners cry out in vain" (Behlmer 1996:9)

In view of the extraposing function of nci-, which moves the subject to the right of the verbal predicate, it may seem surprising that this construction is wholly compatible with verb-first clauses of the type we touched on in the preceding paragraphs: (18)

ount=f-eksousia gar nci-p-logos m-p-noute e-joo=s je HAVE=he-power then EXTR-the-word of-the-god to-say=it that "for the Word of God has the power to say that... " (Behlmer 1996:49)

(19)

našô=ou be many=they našô=ou be many=they e-tre=u-bôk to-let=they-go et-hm-m-pêue

nci-n-et=f-na-r-joeis ero=ou hitm-p-kôht EXTR-those-who=he-FUT-do-lord to=them by-the-fire on nci-n-et-na-r-bol ero=f also EXTR-those-who-FUT-do-outside to=it ehoun e-m-ma n-mton inside to-the[PLUR]-place of-rest

which-in-the[PLUR]-heaven [PLUR]

"Numerous are those over whom it (= death) will have control by means of the fire, and numerous are also those who will escape it in order to go to the places of rest that are in heaven" (Behlmer 1996:20)

The nci-construction has often been considered to be particularly suited to three functional or especially stylistic environments (Morenz 1952:1-15). First, the presence of a prosodically rather long subject: (20)

f=shouort nci-p-meeue et-hoou nte-p=satanas et-hôš it-be cursed EXTR-the-thought which-evil of-the-Satan who-bring e-p-hêt m-p-rôme mmo=f ehoun ACC=it inside to-the-heart of-the-man "Cursed is the evil thought of Satan, who brings it surreptitiously into the man's heart" (Behlmer 1996:29)

(21)

f=smamaat nci-p-meeue et-nanou=f nte-p-joeis it-be blessed EXTR-the-thought which-be good=it of-the-lord e-p-hêt m-p-rôme et-neu ehoun which-come inside to-the heart of-the-man "Blessed is the good thought of God that enters the man's heart" (Behlmer 1996:31)

Second, a stress on the subject of the verbal clause: (22)

našô=ou e-pe-houo nci-n-šaje têr=ou be many-they to-the-excess EXTR-the[PLUR]-word all=them m-p-noute nt-a=f-taa=u na=n e=u-boethei of-the-god which-PRET=he-give=them to-us while=they-help

30

ANTONIO LOPRIENO

e=u-jimoeit hêt=n e-p-agathon while=they-lead heart=us to-the-good "Even more numerous are all of God's words, which he gave us for they are helpful and lead our heart to the good" (Behlmer 1996:163)

And finally, the desire to imitate a Greek syntactic model; cf. the adherance to the Greek model in the Boharic version of a biblical passage in (23a) as opposed to the unmarked word order of the same verse in Sahidic (23b): (23)

agiasthētō tò ónomá sou a. Bohairic (< Greek) b. Sahidic

(unmarked)

mare=f-toubo nje-pek-ran OPT=it-become holy EXTR-your-name mare-pek-ran ouop OPT-your-name become holy "Hallowed be thy name" (Matthew 6,9)

4. The nci-construction as rheme In the following paragraphs, we shall observe on the one hand that there is only a single functional reality underlying these apparently diverse environ­ ments of the nci=construction (cf. Zakrzewska 1993); on the other, that the nciextraposition does not represent an exception to the unmarked typological SVO-sequence; rather, it reorganizes the distribution of information patterns within the sentence according to the same pragmatic pressures that motivated the change from the VSO- to the SVO-order in the history of Egyptian. Let us start with the alleged desire to imitate the Greek word order. While a certain impact of Greek syntactic models on the development of Coptic stylistic patterns can indeed be detected (Nagel 1971; Reintges, in press), it remains nonetheless clear that linguistic interference generally operates productively within the grammatical and typological boundaries of the target language in a particular stage of its development,6 permeating the system through the more unstable components of grammar and lexicon (Kammerzell 1998:11-23). Consider (24), another example of difference between Bohairic (24a) and Sahidic (24b) in the rendition of a Greek verse: (24)

egéneto rhēma theoû a. Bohairic (< Greek)

a=f-šôpi nje-ou-saji nte-ph-nouti PRET=it-happen EXTR-a-word of-the-god "There occurred a word of God"

There are of course exceptions, mostly due to the desire to reproduce exactly the patterns of the linguistic model of the source language, especially when the latter is considered sacred: cf. e.g. the IInd century CE calque translations of the Bible into Greek by Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, as "orthodox corrections" of the IIIrd century  Septuagint version, which was written in productive Hellenistic Greek; cf. Sáenz-Badillos 1975:107-130.

FROM VSO TO SVO?

b. Sahidic

31

(unmarked) a-p-saje m-p-noute šôpe PRET-the-word of-the-god happen "The word of God occurred" (Luke 3,2)

While the argument can indeed be made that the Bohairic choice of the nje-construction was inspired by the Greek sentence structure (Nagel 1971:350-353; Kammerzeil 1998:19), we should observe that the information structure of the two Coptic versions is not identical: in the former sentence, the subject is non-specific ("a word of God"); in the latter, it is specific ('the word of God'*). We saw above that non-specific subjects tend to occupy a lower level on the hierarchy of topicality and to be, therefore, cotextually less expected or less predictable than specific subjects (Chafe 1976:38-43). Thus, whereas the Bohairic translation imitates the Greek version (rhēma theoû) in this feature as well, the definiteness of the subject in the Sahidic text is certainly connected with the preference for the SV-order displayed by the sentence (TENSE MARKER - pšaje - šôpe). From the informational point of view, it looks as if the extraposed subject of the nje-construction, at least in (24a), is less topical than its SV-counterpart: it has surrendered a portion of the expectedness of the subject in unmarked environments to the verbal phrase which occupies the head position in the sentence and which represents a combination of cataphoric subject and predicate (a=f-šôpi "it occurred"). A passage already quoted by Polotsky (1990:179) corroborates this finding: (25)

mar=ou-ouônh na=k ebol nci-n-laos p-noute OPT=they-reveal to=you out EXTR-the[PLUR]-people the-god mare-n-laos têr=ou ouônh na=k ebol OPT-the[PLUR]-people all=them reveal to=you out "Let the nations praise you, o God, let all the nations praise you" (Psalms 66,6)

In this case, it cannot be claimed that the Greek distribution of subject and predicate had any impact on the stylistic choice of the nci-construction in the first hemistich as opposed to the second. In fact, the Greek original exhibits a very similar pattern in the two portions of the verse, with the quantifier pántes being informationally salient in the second hemistich: (26)

eksomologēsásthōsán soi laoí ho theós eksomologēsásthōsán soi laoì pántes

Rather, the reason for the different treatment of the two forms in Coptic is to be sought in the cotextual distribution of attentional foci within the Coptic sentence. In the first hemistich, the theme is the "praise to God", and the extra-

32

ANTONIO LOPRIENO

position of the subject "the nations" allows it to be ascribed a certain degree of rhematic unexpectedness. In the second hemistich, the subject is now known and occupies, therefore, the unmarked thematic position at the head of the sentence ("all the nations"); chiastically, the rheme of the sentence is now the predicate ("give praise to you"), which resumes the theme of the first hemistich: (27) a. [give praise to you]THEME b. [all the nations]THEME

-

[the nations]RHEME [give praise to you]RHEME

Since this distribution of attentional foci is not present in the Greek text, we must posit that in a variety of cases functional reasons were at work in shaping the structure of a Coptic clause with nci-extraposition. This allows us to move to the second function scholars have attributed to its use, namely to stress the presence of a series of antithetical or parallel subjects (Morenz 1952:5-6). Now, the term 'stress' (Betonung) has of course a rather vague, or better diverse semantic scope. One can identify at least two types of linguistic 'stress' or 'emphasis', which we might label 'distinctive' vs. 'isolating' (Depuydt 1991), or perhaps 'assertive' vs. 'contrastive' (cf. Givón 1990:699-778), the supplementary prominence investing in the former case an informationally more expected, in the latter an informationally less expected portion of discourse. The higher information yield in the case of the subject on an nciconstruction belongs to the first type: 'emphasis' in the sense of communica­ tive salience, i.e. of rhematicity, not of communicative contrast, i.e. of focality. All foci are rhematic, but not all rhemes are focal (cf. Givón 1990:699-700). Rather than of emphasis on the subject, we should therefore speak in the case of nci- of its rhematization, with a parallel reduction of the stress on the predicate and its confinement to a more thematic function: [TENSE MARKERSV]THEME - nci-[S]RHEME. This redistribution is the reason why the nciextraposition appears particularly suitable when a series of identical or similar verb forms is thematically predicated of a sequence of different subjects. Compare (19) above, where the thematic continuity of the predicate is balanced by the informational novelty of the subject, which in the second sentence is pointed by the use of the adverb on "also", with (28), in which the SV-phrases represent the carriers of cotextual continuity as opposed to the assertive character of the extraposed subjects:

FROM VSO TO SVO?

(28)

33

se-ôš ebol nci-n-et-nehpe e-p-jinjê they-cry out EXTR-those-who-mourn to-the-vanity se-kôrš ero=f e-tre=f-ouošb-ou nci-net=f-oi they-ask to=him to-let=he-answer=them EXTR-those who=he-be e-kaa=ou n-toot=ou e=f-na-bôk in-hand=them while=he-FUT-go to-leave=them "The mourners cry out in vain, those who value him ask him to answer them, although he is going to leave them" (Behlmer 1996:9-10)

and (29), in which the nci-extraposition expands the subject of two semantically linked predicates: (29)

f-hejhôj ê f-hose nci-pet-eire m-p-agathon he-ache or he-suffer EXTR-he who-do ACC-the-good "He who does good is in pain and suffers" (Behlmer 1996:22)

5.

Topic and focus The higher thematicity of 'serial' portions of discourse may also underlie the preference for the topicalization of recurring subjects, with a structure [S]TOPIC - [TENSE MARKER -SV]COMMENT: (30)

p-mou gar ša=f-r-n-dikaios m-makarios (...) the-death in fact AOR=he-do-the[PLUR]-righteous as-blessed p-mou de on ša=f-r-n-refrnobe n-ebiên (...) the-death indeed also AOR=he-do-the[PLUR]-sinner as-poor "For death makes the righteous blessed, (...) and death also makes the sinners miserable" (Behlmer 1996:26-27)

and even for the fronting of focal morphemes such as etbe-ou or ahro= 'why?' in similar contexts. In these cases the verb, which no longer occupies the head position, tends to be conjugated in the 'non-topical' first tense rather than in the 'topical' second tense:7

7

This linguistic behavior also enables us to establish a syntactic hierarchy in the process which leads to the use of the nominal (or topical) transposition of the verb (Polotsky 1987:129-140): the head position of the verbal phrase seems to be the primary feature vis-à-vis the focality of the adverbial phrase, because a verb form which has the same pragmatic function but does not occupy the first position in the sentence tends to maintain its unconverted tense. Cf. ShishaHalevy 1986:88-93.

34

ANTONIO LOPRIENO

(31)

etbe-ou mp=i-r-hbêue ejn-na-nobe hn-henbecause-what NEG.PRET=I-do-thing[PLUR] on-my[PLUR]-sin in-some nêstia mn-hn-hen-šlêl etbe-ou a=i-ti fast with-in-some-prayer because-what PRET=I-give n-ta-mntrmmao n-ne-hiome auô ACC-my [FEM]-wealth to-the[PLUR]-woman[PLUR] and na-khrêma e-hen-titôn etbe-ou mp=i-ti my [PLUR]-property to-some-suit because-what NEG.PRET=I-give m-pa-oeik m-pet-hkaeit ê a-i-kte-pa-ho ebol ACC-my-bread to-he who-be hungry or PRET=I-turn-my-face out m-pet-šaat ê ahro=i a=i-obš=t e-hobnim of-he who-be needy or why=I PRET=I-forget=me to-thing every e-nanou=ou while-be good=they "Why have I not repented over my sins with fasts and prayers? Why have I given out my wealth for women and my properties for legal suits? Why nave I not given my bread to the hungry? And why have I turned my face away from the needy? And why have I forgotten all good deeds?" (Behlmer 1996:2).

Incidentally, it fits this analysis quite nicely that in the case of ton "where" the fronting of the focus, which is always the marked rheme of the sentence, is, if at all, only extremely rarely combined with the nci-construction (Till 1970:217; Shisha-Halevy 1986:158), which itself rhematizes the subject by transferring a portion of its thematic potential to the entire verbal predication: (32)

e=f-tôn tenou p-hêu m-p-nobe je that=he-wherenow the-advantage of-the-sinthat e=n-na-aa=f (Behlmer 1996:46) PRES=we-FUT-do-it "Now, wherein lies the value of the sin, that we should commit it?"

Similarly, the higher status of the subject of causative verbs on the socalled binding hierarchy-which is closely linked to the topicality hierarchy (Croft 1990:174-183)-, i.e. its more intimate connection with the verbal action8 also prevents them from licensing the nci-extraposition (Polotsky 1987:149). The latter, as we saw, triggers a reorganization of the information within the sentence by breaking the unmarked solidarity between the subject and the predicate to the advantage of the former. Thus, in spite of the semantic complexity and cotextual novelty of the subjects of the causative verb in (33), they do not undergo extraposition: As another example of the higher status of causative subjects on the binding hierarchy cf. the widespread grammaticalization of the third person masculine pronoun (*su-) into the verbal sprefix of causative stems in Afroasiatic (Eg. s-zwr "to let drink"), and especially of the causative conjugation in the Semitic domain (Akkadian saprus, Hebrew hif'il, Arabic 'af'ala): Loprieno 1986:142-144.

FROM VSO TO SVO?

(33)

35

p-kôht hôô-f ete me=f-ôšm mn-p-fnt ete the-fire self=it which NEG.AOR=it-extinguish with-the-worm which me=f-mou n-t-he et-sêh na-tako NEG.AOR=it-die in-the[FEM]-manner which-be written FUT-destroy n-tek-psuchê mn-pek-sôma hrai hn-amnte ACC-your[FEM]-soul with-your-body under in-hell "The unextinguishable fire and the immortal worm will indeed destroy, as it is written, your soul and your body in hell" (Behlmer 1996:63)

6. Prosodic length and informational weight The nature of the subject in (33) leads us to a discussion of the third function usually attributed to the nci-extraposition, namely its preferred use in presence of a 'long' or 'complex' subject (Morenz 1952:4-5). Is there a connection between functional rhematicity and prosodic weight? There is indeed a strong typological link between these two apparently unrelated features: "Moreover, in many languages, extraposition serves merely 'rhythmic' functions, putting 'heavy' or long NPs, which otherwise might excessively interrupt the flow of speech, at the end of the clause" (Hock 1991:316). What Hock calls "the flow of speech" tantamounts to the cotextually acceptable distribution of attentional foci within the spoken or written utterance. This distribution must provide a balance between thematic (or presuppositional, or topical) and rhematic (or unexpected, or focal) elements which enables the speaker or hearer to retrieve information in an economic way. When the subject is prosodically challenging-the quantification of this challenge being a combination of language-internal conventions, universal pragmatic tendencies, and cotextual constraints-its likelihood to function as a theme decreases, and Coptic tends in this case to reorganize the information in such a way that the predicate absorbs a portion of the subject's topicality. The subject, by virtue of its prosodie complexity, necessarily requires an amount of rhematic attention otherwise ascribed to the more unexpected or informative portion of the sentence, i.e. the predicate or its complements. Prosodie length and informational weight, therefore, engage in a cotextual dialectic relationship. In (25), for example, the subject of the sentence in the second hemistich, although prosodically longer (n-laos têr=ou "all the nations") than the subject of the first hemistich, nonetheless functions as theme, whereas the latter is extraposed as rheme (nci-n-laos "the nations"). This is because in spite of the additional information provided by the quantifier, n-laos têr=ou is treated in the Coptic version as cotextually more expected information than the bare n-laos in the first hemistich. In the Greek original, on the other hand, the quantifier functioned as the rheme of the second

36

ANTONIO LOPRIENO

hemistich. We should bear in mind that the promotion of the otherwise most likely topic of the sentence to rhematic prominence is a lexicalizing device (Shisha-Halevy 1986:157) which isolates the semantic subject without affecting the syntactic position of the basic components of the clause. Since it operates above the basic sentence structure, it is indeed compatible with second tense constructions, in which the predicative phrase is topicalized: (34)

nt-a=f-sibe gar an nci-p-noute hn-nef-hap that-PRET=he-change in fact not EXTR-the-god in-his[PLUR]-law "God did not change in his judgments" (Behlmer 1996:31)

The use of the nci-extraposition in second tense constructions is, however, predictably rare, since this pattern serves precisely the function of rhematizing an adverbial element. The extraposition, therefore, creates an informationally infelicitous tension between two rhematic elements, namely the extraposed subject of the second tense phrase and the adverbial rheme of the entire clause: "He, namely God (rheme 1), did not change in his judgments (rheme 2)".9 The nci-extraposition is generally not compatible, however, with focus constructions such as in (32) above, since the focus, as a promoted, or marked rheme, does not tolerate a competing overt rhematization. The lexicalizing expansion, which invests in this case a presupposed element, remains therefore unmarked. 7. Irregular uses of the nci-extraposition The so-called 'irregular uses' of the nci-construction (Crum 1939:252b) remind us that functional movements are always organized according to hierar­ chies (of animacy, topicality, etc.), rather than rigid rules. While the subject is the most likely argument to be rhematized, one can occasionally witness the nci-extraposition of a direct or prepositional object (the examples are from Crum): (35)

ti-sôtm ero=f I-hear to=him "To John I listen"

nci-iohannês EXTR-John

(36)

B a=i-têit=ou nje-ne-šêri e-ph-ouei PRET=I-give=them EXTR-your[FEM.PLUR]-child to-the-far "Your children I placed far away"

(37)

B thê et-a=u-ouôrp šaro=s nje-gabriêl this[FEM] who-PRET=they-send until=her EXTR-Gabriel "She to whom Gabriel was sent"

For examples of nci-extraposition with (both interrogative and non-interrogative) focus cf. Shisha-Halevy 1986:99.

FROM VSO TO SVO?

37

Example (37) is particularly interesting in that the lexicalizing expansion by means of Bnje- affects the object of a general (i.e. non-referential) third person plural verb form, which appears omitted in the surface structure of the sentence (*a=u-ouôrp mmo=f šaro=s "they sent him to her"). This is the Coptic surrogate for the passive construction (Polotsky 1990:181-184): 'they (non-referential) sent him" = "he was sent". The extraposition of the grammatical object and its deletion under relevance in the predicate phrase shows that its role as semantic subject was gradually invading the grammatical sphere. It also provides an insight into the next typological phase in the creation of an autonomous passive conjugation after the standard Coptic pattern in which the semantic subject of a passive surrogate is extraposed by means of the preposition hitn- ("through the hand of" >) "b" and occupies, therefore, a lower level than the subject in the hierarchy of salience: (38)

rôme nim -mou kata p-ent-a=u-toš=f man every FUT-die according to that-which-PRET=they-command=it na=n ebol hitm-p-noute (Behlmer 1996:19) to=us out through the hand of-the-god "Every man shall die according to what was commanded to us by God"

8. Conclusion Coptic displays a relatively flexible SVO-order, in which the basic syntactic sequence can undergo a variety of syntactic movements aimed at reorganizing the information foci within the sentence. In this article, we observed that one of these movements, the extraposition by means of nci-/nje-, rhematizes an informationally heavier subject and symmetrically increases the thematicity of the SV-predicate phrase. Unlike focal constructions (with a sequence FOCUS-PRESUPPOSITION or PRESUPPOSITION-FOCUS) and other rhematizing devices such as the use of the second tense of the verb, nci-extrapositions represent a semantic expansion of a pronominal element which maintains its original syntactic location in the basic sentence. By virtue of this expansion, however, the subject loses a portion of its usual cotextual expectedness by surrendering it to the verbal phrase. In this respect, extrapositions share many discourse features with other Coptic VS-patterns, such as the predication of existence of non-specific subjects (cf. English "there is a man at the door" vs. "my brother is at the door"), the predication of possession, which is etymologically derived from it ("he has" < "there is in his hand"), and a few remnants of the ancient Egyptian suffix conjugation in which various forms of nominalization seem to be at work ("he desires" < "it is profitable for him"). These constructions also show a higher degree of topicality than paradigmatic

38

ANTONIO LOPRIENO

verbal phrases and are frequently accompanied by the nci-extraposition. In general, Coptic verbal patterns that do not display the SV(O)-order tend to counterbalance the pragmatic impact of the word order change to VS(O) by redistributing the information patterns in the predictable sense of a THEMERHEME sequence, i.e. by increasing on the one hand the informational weight of the subject and on the other hand, symmetrically, the thematic expectedness of the head predicate.

REFERENCES Behlmer, Heike. 1996. Shenute von Atripe: De iudicio (Museo Egizio di Torino, Cat. 63000, Cod. TV). (= Catalogo del Museo Egizio di Torino, 8). Torino: Soprintendenza al Museo delle Antichità Egizie. Chafe, Wallace L. 1976. "Givenness, Contrastiveness, Definiteness, Subjects, Topics, and Point of View". Subject and Topic ed. by Charles N. Li, 25-55. New York & San Francisco & London: Academic Press. Croft, William. 1990. Typology and Universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crum, Walter E. 1939. A Coptic Dictionary. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press. Depuydt, Leo. 1991. "On Distinctive and Isolating Emphasis in Egyptian and in General". Lingua Aegyptia 1.33-56. Givón, Talmy. 1984-1990. Syntax. A Functional Typological Introduction. 2 volumes. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Glinert, Lewis. 1989. The Grammar of Modern Hebrew. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hintze, Fritz. 1950. "Konversion und analytische Tendenz in der ägyptischen Sprach­ entwicklung". Zeitschrift für Phonetik und Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft 4.41-56. Hock, Hans Heinrich. 1991. Principles of Historical Linguistics. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Holes, Clive. 1995. Modern Arabic. Structures, Functions and Varieties. London & New York: Longman. Hopper, Paul J. & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Junge, Friedrich. 1985. "Sprachstufen und Sprachgeschichte". Zeitschrift der Deut­ schen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft. Supplement VI, 17-34. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Kammerzeil, Frank. 1998. Sprachkontakte und Sprachwandel im Alten Ägypten. Habilitationsschrift Universität Göttingen. Kasser, Rodolphe. 1991. "Vocabulary, Copto-Greek". The Coptic Encyclopedia, vol. 8, 215-222. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. Koch, Roland 1990. Die Erzählung des Sinuhe. (= Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca, 17). Bruxelles: Éditions de la Fondation Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth.

FROM VSO TO SVO?

39

Loprieno, Antonio. 1986. Das Verbalsystem im Ägyptischen und im Semitischen. Zur Grundlegung einer Aspekttheorie. (= Göttinger Orientforschungen, IV.17). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. . 1988. "On the Typological Order of Constituents in Egyptian". Journal of Afroasiatic Languages 1.26-57. . 1995. Ancient Egyptian. A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. Morenz, Siegfried. 1952. "Die nci-Konstruktion als sprachliche und stilistische Er­ scheinung des Koptischen". Annales du Service des Antiquités de l' Égypte 52.1-15. Nagel, Peter. 1971. "Die Einwirkung des Griechischen auf die Entstehung der koptischen Literatursprache". Christentum am Roten Meer ed. by Franz Altheim & Ruth Stiehl, vol. I, 327-355. Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter. Parkinson, Richard B. 1991. The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant. Oxford: Griffith Institute & Ashmolean Museum. Polotsky, Hans Jacob. 1950. "Modes grecs en copte?". Coptic Studies in Honor of Walter Ewing Crum ed. by Michel Malinine, 73-90. Boston: The Byzantine Institute. . 1960. "The Coptic Conjugation System". Orientalia 29.392-422 . 1987-1990. Grundlagen des koptischen Satzbaus. (= American Studies in Papyrology, 27-29). Atlanta: Scholars' Press. Reich, Nathaniel 1924. "A Grammatical Exercise of an Egyptian Schoolboy". Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 10.285-288. Reintges, Chris. in press. "Code-Mixing Strategies in Coptic Egyptian". Lingua Aegyptia 6. Shisha-Halevy, Ariel. 1986. Coptic Grammatical Categories. (=Analecta Orientalia, 53). Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute. Sáenz-Badillos, Angel. 1975. "El hebreo del s. II d.C. a la luz de las transcriptiones griegas de Aquila, Simmaco y Teodoción". Sefarad 35.107-130. Sethe, Kurt. 1910. "Über einige sekundäre Verben im Koptischen". Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 47.136-146. Till, Walter C. 1970. Koptische Grammatik (Saidischer Dialekt). (= Lehrbücher für das Studium der orientalischen und afrikanischen Sprachen, 1). Leipzig: Verlag Enzyklopädie. Vittmann, Günther. 1991. "Zum koptischen Sprachgut im Ägyptisch-Arabisch". Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 81.197-227. Weiss, Hans-Friedrich. 1968. "Beobachtungen zur Frage der griechischen Komponente in der Sprache des Schenute". Probleme der koptischen Literatur ed. by Peter Nagel, 173-185. (= Wissenschaftliche Beiträge der Martin-LutherUniversität Halle-Wittenberg, 1968.1). Westendorf, Wolfhart. 1965. Koptisches Handwörterbuch. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Verlag. Zakszewska, Ewa D. 1993. "The Inner-Verbal Subject in Bohairic Coptic". Discussions in Egyptology 26.71-90.

CONSTITUENT ORDER IN MIDDLE WELSH THE STABILITY OF THE PRAGMATIC PRINCIPLE

ERICH POPPE Philipps- Universität Marburg

1.

The data, and some preliminaries Statistical data about the attestation of different word-order patterns in a number of Middle Welsh prose texts - Middle Welsh is roughly the period from 1200 to 1500 - indicates that with regard to the ordering of the constituents subject (S), verb (V), object (O), and adverbial phrase (A) in positive and pragmatically neutral main statements, no consistent, basic, or dominant, pattern emerges (for the terms, see Sornicola 1994:25). In negative main clauses the preferred order is NEG + V + (S) + ( nom ) (Watkins 1990, see (la)); in subordinate clauses with a conjunction (CON) and a finite verb it is CON + V + (S) + (Onom) (see (lb)). 1 (1) a.

b.

'ny chyuarchaf i well it ' NEG V "I shall not greet you". (PKM 2.8) Ac ual  byd yn llithiau y cwn, ef a welei uarchauc CON V "and while he was feeding the dogs, he could see a rider".

(PKM 2.3)

For positive and pragmatically neutral main statements one regularity emerges on the structural level beyond the obvious variability of the basic constituents, namely that the verb is preceded by (at least) one other constituent (C) and a pre-verbal particle (P) - the realization of which as a or  is conditioned by the syntactic status of the immediately preceding constituent as either S/O or A (see (2)).

Conjunctions which are in origin prepositions are combined with a subordinating particle  (as in (lb)); this is ignored for the purpose of my schematic presentation here.

42

ERICH POPPE (2) a.

Ac ar hynny y deu urenhin a nessayssant y gyt A S PV "and after this the two kings approached each other". (PKM 5.19) Ac ef a welei lannerch yn y coet S PV "and he could see a clearing in the forest".

(PKM 1.13-14)

b.

A chyghor a gymerth Madawc  PV "and Madog took counsel". (BR 1.18)

c.

A threigylgweith yd oed yn Arberth A P V "and one time he was in Arberth". (PKM 1.2-3)

This format is schematically represented in (3). (3)

(C4/3/2) C1 P V (S) (Onom)(A)2

A second format, the so-called cleft sentence, about which more will be said later (see § 2.3), is similar on the surface, but pragmatically different. My formulation here stresses the syntactic and pragmatic status of the pre­ verbal constituent(s), which is also reflected in the functional analysis suggested below; it has recently been re-formulated by David Willis (1997:151) with a different theoretical bias: "it is essentially a verb-second (V2) rule in that it requires the finite verb to appear in second position following an arbitrary phrasal constituent". As I hope to vindicate in § 2, a pragmatic principle governs the selection of the pre-verbal constituent(s). The pattern in (3) is traditionally called the 'abnormal order' in Welsh grammaticography, but it is abnormal only in comparison with dominant neutral VSO in Modern Welsh, and presumably in Old Welsh (see Watkins 1987) as well.3 The statistical analyses referred to above have shown that the pattern in (3) appears to be the dominant pattern in (at least) one specific textual register of Middle Welsh, the language of literary prose. Here it has been demonstrated to occur in texts of the so-called A personal pronoun as the direct object is regularly realized as an enclitic on P, as in the following example: minheu a'e [= P+Opron] kymmeraf yn Nawen (PKM 17.25-26) "I shall accept it gladly". For a further 'irregularity' of the abnormal sentence - from the perspective of Modern Welsh - in comparison with the so-called 'mixed sentence' with emphasis on a fronted constituent, i.e. the cleft-sentence (see § 2.3), cf. Richards (1938:105).

MIDDLE WELSH CONSTITUENT ORDER

43

Mabinogion-corpus, a body of eleven tales which deal with incidents in the legendary history of Wales, in historiographical texts (as indicated by a preliminary survey), and in hagiographical texts adapted from foreign sources.4 For a different textual register, the early poetry in the Book of Aneirin, Graham Isaac (1996:38) has recently suggested that [o]n the basis of both absolute statistical frequency, and grammatical distribution with respect to principle and subordinate clauses, the basic order of the poetry can be established as verb-initial, and specifically of the form VSO.

Since his data-base includes sentence-types other than positive main clauses, his results are not strictly comparable to those of the studies of the prose texts. Oliver Currie (this volume) has adduced further evidence for a split between the word-order systems of Middle Welsh prose and poetry respectively; he has, for example, identified thirty-seven examples of absoluteinitial word order in one-hundred positive declarative main clauses in the cywyddau of Dafydd ap Gwilym. 2. Functional analysis - the pragmatic principle in performance 2.1 Topicalization In the following I shall present the outlines of my hypothesis to explain the mechanisms underlying the selection of the pre-verbal constituent(s) in (3). I argue within a functional framework which posits a division of the clause on the pragmatic level into topic (or theme) and comment (or rheme).5 My contention is that the constituent(s) selected for the pre-verbal position(s) is (are) assigned topic function by the 'speaker'. In my understanding of the notion 'topic' I follow Tanya Reinhart (1983:6) who defines sentence-topics in terms of "pragmatic aboutness": [A]n expression will be understood as representing the topic if the assertion is understood as intending to expand our knowledge of this topic, in accordance with the second principle [viz. the PRINCIPLE OF RELEVANCE [which] states that discourse does not proceed arbitrarily but rather relates itself to and makes use of what is presumed to be known and 'intends, in general, to give or add information about what is a matter of standing or current interest or concern']. So the crucial thing here is not what can be assumed to be already known, but what can be assumed about the purpose of the utterance. 4

Cf. Watkins (1977/78), (1983/84), (1988), (1993), (1997) and Poppe (1989), (1990), (1991a) for texts from the Mabinogion-corpus; Poppe (1991a) for a preliminary survey of a text from a historiographical context; and Poppe (1993) and Fife (1996) for religious texts adapted from foreign sources. The pre-verbal particle would appear to function typically as the demarcation between the topic and the comment, but there may be problems here with the status of postverbal definite subjects, which require further investigation (see also fn 15).

44

ERICH POPPE

In her - and my - view a speaker has (relative) freedom to select a constituent in order to assign topichood to it - this is not an automatic process independent of the speaker's communicative intention, or in the words of Morgan (1975, quoted Reinhart 1983:7): "It is not sentences that have topics, but speakers". Admittedly there are some features that are prototypically associated with topics - thus they tend to represent old/given information,6 and certain roles and categories seem to be ordered hierarchically with regard to their potential for topichood, viz. subject > direct object > indirect object > N in PP (Reinhart 1983:34) or 1st person > 2 nd person > 3 rd person (Mallinson & Blake 1981:158). I would suggest, however, that such hierarchies reflect the statistical probability of these constituents' selection as topics, rather than an automatism or determinism according to which topics are selected.7 In (3) the pre-verbal C-position(s) can be filled with nominal or adverbial constituents; and nominal and adverbial topics have broadly similar, but not identical textual functions: Both establish points of reference and orientation.8 Adverbial topics typically provide the scene for the following assertion including, if present, a nominal topic - by defining its temporal and local, but also conceptual, background (scene-setting). The typical order of topical constituents (T) is therefore as in (4).

(4)

TA TN P V (S)(O)

The following table (5) uses two parameters, information status represented by the poles 'old/given' versus 'new' - and syntactic status - TN versus TA - to characterize in a somewhat simplified form the core or prototypical textual functions of topical constituents. (5) old/given new

TN topic continuity topic change

TA connective paragraph marker

But as Reinhart (1983:18) has reminded us "although in most cases the topics tend indeed to represent old information, this is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for topichood". See also Isaac (1996:39-106) for a discussion of a topic hierarchy and its applicability to the analysis of Middle Welsh word order. Compare Reinhart (1983:24): "Sentence-topics [...] are one of the means available in the language to organize, or classify the information exchanged in linguistic communication - they are signals for how to construct the context set [viz. assess by what you already know about the topic; store under an entry corresponding to this topic], or under which entries to classify the new proposition".

MIDDLE WELSH CONSTITUENT ORDER

45

In actual performance, some topics will be, so to speak, better representa­ tives of this category than others (compare, e.g., Duszak 1987; Sornicola 1988: 370-371, 376-378); and if one accepts the premises of prototype theory as a valid hypothesis to describe the structure of linguistic categories the less typical, marginal examples will not constitute evidence against the overall viability of the category (compare Kleiber 1993:76). On the whole, the interpretation of pre-verbal nominals and adverbials as topics with a range of specific intra- and extra-sentential functions is, I think, relatively straightfor­ ward, on the level both of the abstract pragmatic principle and of the actual textual performance.9 There is one special format which may require a brief comment here, the so-called gwneuthur-periphrasis in which the verbal phrase is broken up into a non-finite element, a verbal noun, in topic position - syntactically the object and a finite form of gwneuthur "to do" as auxiliary;10 the semantic core of the verbal phrase thus appears in sentence-initial position (see (6)). (6)

A guahanu a wnaethant OVN P Vaux "and they separated". (PKM 13.12)

I have suggested elsewhere (Poppe 1993:110) that this pattern, which typically occurs in narrative contexts and with a past tense,11 "presents a special format for continuous neutral narration in which no nominal participant of the verbal action has to be topicalized and where the subject typically will be recoverable from the immediately preceding sentence or a fronted adverbial expression". 2.2 Sentence-initial verbs Although the pattern given in (3) is statistically clearly dominant in the corpus under consideration here, there occurs in some, but not all, texts a small percentage of sentences with the verb in sentence-initial position, from about 2% to 10% (see (7)).

For examples of such analyses cf. Poppe (1989/90), (1989:52-58), (1991: 36-122, 269-303), (1991a:184-200), (1993:105-114); see also Isaac (1966:45-56) and, for a more general discussion, Fife (1988) and Fife & King (1991). For a dissenting view, see Shisha-Halevy (1995:149-156). For the semantics of this construction in Modern Welsh, with some remarks on Middle Welsh, see Fife (1986). See also Shisha-Halevy (1998:22-54) for further pertinent remarks on the use of this construction in Middle and Modern Welsh. The fronted verbal noun can also be the focus in a cleft-construction (see § 2.3); cf. Poppe (1993:111-112) for an example from direct speech.

46

ERICH POPPE

(7) a. 'y huant ulwydyn gyt a mi' PV "they were with me for a year". b.

(PKM 35.24)

A gwr a oed ar  keis hwnnw, sef oed y enw, Ronabwy.   doeth Ronabwy a PV S Chynnwric Vrychgoch, gwr  Vawdwy, a Chadwgawn Vras, gwr o Voelure yg Kynlleith,  ty Heilyn Goch "and a man was on this quest, Rhonabwy was his name, and Rhonabwy and Dynwrig Frychgoch, a man from Mawddwy, and Cadwgawn Fras, a man from Moelfre in Cynlleith, came to the house of Heilyn Goch". (BR 2.4-8)

This verb-initial order is found typically with forms of the verb bot "to be" (see (7a)) or, as David Willis (1997) has argued, "in the second pair of conjoined sentences" - as in (7b). The latter type he has convincingly explained as a special device for clausal coordination "in which the topic position is occupied by a null topic operator" (Willis 1998:13). Such apparent violations of V2 occur in other V2-languages as well, for example in Old Icelandic (see (8a)), with the same underlying structure as in Middle Welsh, and in Modern High German (see (8b)), with a different underlying structure (compare Willis 1997:156-169).12 (8) a.

b.

Olaf konungr hafpi stefny við lið sitt oc við bøndr oc reðv landraðym. SSg V3rd V 3 r d pl sg "King Olaf had a meeting with both his men and the farmers, and they all considered government policy". Das Gepäck ließ er fallen und rannte zum Ausgang. "He dropped the luggage and ran to the exit".

2.3 Cleft-constructions A construction which on the surface is in most cases similar to (3), is the cleft- or focus-construction as in (9).13 (9)

(form of bot) CFOCUS P rel V (S) (O)

Here one constituent is moved to the front and optionally marked by a form of bot "to be", and the rest of the assertion follows in a relative construction. This is a pragmatically marked format with the basic communica­ tive function to identify "that a certain focus item rather than other possible ones are correct" (Chafe 1976:35). Whereas topics are topics, the fronted

See now Willis (1998:102-133) for a more detailed discussion of verb-first constructions in Middle Welsh. There is no formal difference between P and Prel in Middle Welsh.

MIDDLE WELSH CONSTITUENT ORDER

47

constituents in the cleft-construction are marked comments (see (10) for an example of contrastive focus).14 (10)

Nyt ymywn ty yd oydynt, namyn ymywn palleu NEG A Prel V "it was not in a house where they were, but in tents". (PKM 31.11)

The contrast between (11a) with focus and (11b) with topic in sentenceinitial position is instructive with regard to the formal differences between the two constructions: (11) a. 'Miui a uyd gwassanaethwr hediw' C F o c u s R V3sg "(It's) I [and nobody else] (who) will be server today." (WLSD 7.30-31) b. 'Miui a gerdaf y gyt a chwi hyt y sened' $Topic P V 1 s g

"I shall go with you to the synod" (WLSD 9.31)

2.4 Left-dislocation In left-dislocations (LD) an element outside the syntactic frame of the clause is anaphorically taken up in the clause itself. The pragmatic function of such constructions is perhaps most adequately described with the words of Simon Dik (1981:13) as "a domain or universe of discourse with respect to which it is relevant to pronounce the following predication". Left-dislocated elements can be characterized as marked topics, which in Middle Welsh are typically followed by ordinary topics (see (12)). (12)

'Dy holl golledeu eiryoet, ' heb yr ynteu, 'o'ra wneuthum i ytti, mi a' e S P Opronl LD1 hennillafitt' (KLl 164-165) V "AH your losses, 'he said', which I have caused you, I will restore them to you".

3.

The synchronic stability of the pragmatic principle In the context of a comparison of sentences in Breuddwyd Rhonabwy which express the same or, at least, very similar information content, I have found that "variation in word-order and sentence types is remarkably infrequent" and I have suggested that this "seems to indicate that the selection of the fronted constituent does not depend on a purely stylistic principle of variatio" (Poppe 1990:458) - I would now reformulate that this situation is a result of the pragmatic principle's synchronic stability. One methodological See Poppe (1991:264-266) for a brief typology of focus-functions in Middle Welsh; for a general discussion of so-called it-clefts, cf., for example, Erdmann (1987) and Sornicola (1988).

48

ERICH POPPE

complication needs to be taken into account, however, that formulae and conscious parallelism/repetition are narrative devices which play an important part in the medieval Welsh narrator's technique (see Davies 1995:104-188) and Breuddwyd Rhonabwy is a particularly literate and structurally complex and polished text (see Slotkin 1989). Doris Edel's (1996:319-327) analyses of parallel scenes in Peredur yield similar results with regard to the use of word order and sentence patterns, but the same methodological reservations remain valid.15 The story of Lludd and Llefelys occurs in two different versions belonging to two different genres, the Brut-corpus and the Mabinogion-corpus, and the pragmatic principle is realized in both, i.e. the statistical dominance of pattern (3). There are some differences in the realization of individual pairs of sentences, however; the Brut-version prefers TA TS P V, whereas the Mabinogion-version prefers T A PV (S) (Poppe 1991a:173-176, see (13)). (13) a. Brut-version Ac gwedy henny wynt a kymerassant [...] A S PV "and afterwards they took [...]". (quoted Poppe 1991a:174) b. Mabinogion-version Ac odyna y kymerassant [...] A PV "and then they took [...]". ( 70)

4. Conclusion I have outlined here some aspects of the variation in the attested wordorder patterns in Middle Welsh, with regard to the ordering of the constituents S, O, V, A, and of the stability of what I term the pragmatic principle which governs the selection of the pre-verbal constituent(s)16 - in distinction from a notion of stylistic, and random, variatio or of an automatic selection for fronting of a constituent-type in specific syntactic contexts. Topic and focus are central parameters for the synchronic analysis and the integrated explanation of word-order phenomena in the specific literary register of Middle Welsh prose. I have not addressed the question of word-order changes in the history of Welsh here, only the principle which governs synchronic stability underlying surface variation within one subsystem of Middle Welsh. I think, however, that There is hardly any 'inexplicable' word-order variation in her examples, except perhaps in the case of the position of S in Pan doeth y dyd gyntaf kyfodi a oruc Peredur versus Tranoeth y bore Peredur a gyfodes y vynyd (Edel 1996:325), but see above, fn 5, for a brief reference to the question of the status of postverbal definite Ss. The ordering of post-verbal constituents is also susceptible to pragmatic principles, but this is beyond the scope of my discussion here.

MIDDLE WELSH CONSTITUENT ORDER

49

linguists need to have a firm idea about the syntactic situation which may have been the spring-board for further developments, 1 7 before they are in a position to discuss the direction in which syntactic patterns change over time.

ABBREVIATIONS BR = Richards (1948). KLl = Roberts (1975). PKM = Williams (1930). WLSD = Evans (1980). REFERENCES Chafe, Wallace L. 1976. "Givenness, Contrastiveness, Definiteness, Subjects, Topics, and Point of View". Subject and Topic ed. by  N. Li, 25-55. New York: Academic Press. Davies, Sioned. 1995. Crefft  Cyfarwydd. Astudiaeth  Dechnegau Narratif   Mabinogion. Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru. Dik, Simon C. 1981. Functional Grammar. Dordrecht: Foris. Duszak, Anna. 1987. "Prototypes, Sentence Topics and Word Order Typologies". The Nordic Languages and Modern Linguistics, 6 ed. by Pirkko Lilius & Mirja Saari, 147-62. (= Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference of Nordic and General Linguistics.) Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. Edel, Doris 1996. "The 'Mabinogionfrage': Arthurian Literature between Orality and Literacy". (Re)Oralisierung ed. by L. C. H. Tristram, 311-333. Tübingen: Narr. Erdmann, Peter. 1987. It-Sätze im Englischen. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Evans, D. Simon. 1980. The Welsh Life of St David. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Fife, James. 1986. "The Semantics of gwneud Inversions". Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 33.133-144. Fife, James. 1988. Functional Syntax. A Case Study in Middle Welsh. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lebelkiego. Fife, James. 1996. "The Syntax of the Middle Welsh Mair o'r Aifft". The Legend of Mary of Egypt in Medieval Insular Hagiography ed. by E. Poppe & . Ross, 237254. Blackrock: Four Courts Press. Fife, James & Gareth King. 1991. "Focus and the Welsh 'Abnormal Sentence': A Cross-linguistic Perspective". Studies in Brythonic Word Order ed. by J. Fife & E. Poppe, 81-153. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Isaac, Graham H. 1996. The Verb in the Book of Aneirin. Studies in Syntax, There is, of course, the additional question of registers, and it is not at all clear that Modern Welsh VSO continues the register in which Middle Welsh CT P V (S) (O) was dominant. For a discussion of problems relating to changes in word order between Middle and (Early) Modern Welsh, see Oliver Currie's contribution to this volume.

50

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Morphology and Etymology. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Kleiber, Georges. 1993. Prototypensemantik. Eine Einführung. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Mallinson, Graham & Barry J. Blake. 1981. Language Typology. Cross-linguistic Studies in Syntax. Amsterdam: North Holland. Poppe, Erich. 1989. "Constituent-ordering in Breudwyt Maxen Wledic". Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 36.43-63. Poppe, Erich. 1989/90. "The Position of Temporal Adverbials with nos as Core in Middle Welsh Sentences —A Functional Approach". Studia Celtica 24/25.117-129. Poppe, Erich. 1990. "Word-order Patterns in Breudwyt Ronabwy". Celtic Linguistics. Ieithyddiaeth Geltaidd. Readings in the Brythonic Languages. Festschrift for T. A. Watkins ed. by M. J. Ball, J. Fife, E. Poppe, J. Rowland, 445-460. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mittelkymrischen. Poppe, Erich. 1991. Untersuchungen zur Wortstellung im Temporalbestimmungen und funktionale Satzperspektive. Hamburg: Buske. Poppe, Erich. 1991a. "Word Order in Cyfranc Lludd a Llefelys: Notes on the Pragmatics of Constituent-ordering in MW Narrative Prose". Studies in Brythonic Word Order ed. by J. Fife & E. Poppe, 155-204. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Poppe, Erich. 1993. "Word Order in Middle Welsh: The Case of Kedymdeithyas Amlyn ac Amic" . Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 40.95-117. Reinhart, Tanya. 1983. Pragmatics and Linguistics. An Analysis of Sentence Topics. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Richards, Melville. 1938. Cystrawen y Frawddeg Gymraeg. Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgoî Cymru. Richards, Melville. 1948. Breudwyt Ronabwy. Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru. Roberts, Brynley F. 1975. Cyfranc Lludd a Llefelys. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Shisha-Halevy, Ariel. 1995. "Structural Sketches of Middle Welsh Syntax (I)". Studia Celtica 29.127-223. Shisha-Halevy, Ariel. 1997. Structural Studies in Modern Welsh Syntax. Aspects of the Grammar of Kate Roberts. Münster: Nodus Publikationen. Slotkin, Edgar M. 1989. "The Fabula, Story, and Text of Breuddwyd Rhonabwy". Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 18.89-111. Sornicola, Rosanna. 1988. "It-Clefts and Wh-Clefts: Two Awkward Sentence Types". Journal of Linguistics 24.343-379. Sornicola, Rosanna. 1994. "On Word-Order Variability: A Study from a Corpus of Italian". Lingua e Stile 29.25-57. Watkins, T. Arwyn. 1977/78. "Trefn yn y Frawddeg Gymraeg". Studia Celtica 12/13.367-397. Watkins, T. Arwyn. 1983/84. "Trefn y Constitwentau Brawddegol yn Branwen". Studia Celtica 18/19.147-157. Watkins, T. Arwyn. 1987. "Constituent Order in the Old Welsh Verbal Sentence". Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 34.51-60. Watkins, T. Arwyn. 1988. Constituent Order in the Positive Declarative Sentence in the Medieval Welsh Tale 'Kulhwch ac Olwen'. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft. Watkins, T. Arwyn. 1990. "Constituent Order in the Negative Sentence in the White

MIDDLE WELSH CONSTITUENT ORDER

51

Book Version of Kulhwch ac Olwen". Celtic Language, Celtic Culture. A Festschrift for Eric P.  ed. by A. T. E. Matonis & D. F. Melia, 247-252. Van Nuys: Ford & Bailie. Watkins, T. Arwyn. 1993. "Constituent Order in Main/Simple Verb Clauses of Pwyll Pendeuic Dyuet".Language Sciences 15.115-139. Watkins, T. Arwyn. 1997. "Constituent Order in the Main/Simple Verbal Declarative Clause in Math uab Mathonwy". Studia Celtica 31.195-217. Williams, Ifor. 1930. Pedeir Keinc  Mabinogi. Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru. Willis, David. 1997. "Clausal Coordination and the Loss of Verb-second in Welsh". Oxford Working Papers in Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics 2.151-172. Willis, David. 1998. Syntactic Change in Welsh. A Study of the Loss of Verb-Second. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

PART II STABILITY AND DIACHRONY

STABILITY AGAINST THE ODDS? THE SURVIVAL OF VERB FINAL ORDER IN AKKADIAN

GUY DEUTSCHER University of Cambridge

Why are the last ones always at the end?

0.

Introduction The question raised in this article is very simple, but one which is not often asked in historical linguistics. Whereas normally we try to explain why changes do occur, I ask why, perhaps contrary to expectation, hardly any changes happen over a period of two millennia. The Akkadian language emerges on the stage of history with word order patterns which, according to established WO typologies, could be regarded as very 'inconsistent'. Akkadian is verb final, but in most respects it behaves like VO languages. Given such inconsistency, we might expect that this situation would be unstable and quickly lead to changes. Nevertheless, throughout its long history, Akkadian shows little inclination for any changes in its word order. Even further 'incentives' for change, such as the disintegration of the case system, do not make Akkadian oblige, and the language remains stubbornly attached to its 'problematic' word order. In the following sections, after surveying the facts in a little more detail, I try to explain why the situation in Akkadian was actually less problematic than it may appear in theory. I conclude that it can be misleading to treat word order in isolation from other structural properties of the language. In short, I argue that there is more to life than word order and case systems. 1.

The facts: word order patterns in Babylonian Akkadian Akkadian is a Semitic language which was spoken in ancient Mesopota­ mia, probably from the beginning of the third millennium . It is attested in writing from ca. 2500 , and survives as a spoken language until ca. 500 , when it is replaced by Aramaic. There were two main dialects of Akkadian, Babylonian (spoken in southern Mesopotamia), and Assyrian (spoken in the

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north). In this paper, only Babylonian is considered, although I sometimes use the term 'Akkadian' as well, especially where general properties of the language are concerned. (There do not seem to be fundamental differences in word order patterns between Babylonian and Assyrian.) The text corpus which forms the basis of the investigation is comprised mainly of one genre of prose texts, namely letters. Letters were written on clay tablets, and they are attested from all periods of Babylonian. They deal with a variety of topics: personal, commercial, administrative, legal, and diplomatic. They contain various fixed formulaic expressions (especially greeting formulae), but are often written in very simple and colloquial style. I also consider legal documents (law codes and court protocols), which are more formal in style. The examples quoted in this paper are taken mostly from the two most richly attested periods, conventionally known as Old Babylonian (~2000-1600 , glossed as "OB"), and Neo-Babylonian: (~1000-500 , glossed as "NB"). All the statements made about Akkadian word order in this article concern only prose texts. I do not consider poetic texts at all, because, as one would imagine, word order (including the position of the verb) in poetry is much more flexible than in prose, and is determined more by the rhetorical demands of poetry than by the conventions of the spoken language. Akkadian word order is interesting because it is highly 'inconsistent'. Akkadian comes from a good Semitic home, with VSO word order and very 'consistent' VO patterns. But because of centuries of intimate cohabitation with the strictly verb-final Sumerian, Akkadian went astray: from the earliest documents it already appears as a strictly verb-final language. However, inside the phrase, the order of elements remains largely unchanged, and displays Akkadian's Semitic inheritance. The resulting situation is a language with strict verb-final order, but which otherwise behaves like VO languages.1 The following examples demonstrate the main word order patterns in Babylonian in the early periods. The verb follows the subject, the object (as full nouns), PPs and adverbials. The strict verb-final rule is valid both for main clauses and subordinate clauses:

It is natural to ask why Akkadian borrowed the verb-final order from Sumerian, but not other features such as postpositions. Sumerian itself has postpositions, but N-G and N-Rel order. (Is this in turn Akkadian influence?) Sumerian and Akkadian show signs of Sprachbund conver­ gence, but it is difficult to speculate on individual issues relating to borrowing, because these mostly occurred in prehistoric times.

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(1) OB

UGULA.MAR.TU dabāb-am suātu ana Sin-iqīšam šāpir general statement-c that .acc to Sin-iqīšam governor.of Suhi ublam Suhum he.took "The general took that statement to Sin-iqīšam the governor of Suhum"

(2) OB

inūna šāpir-ī ištu B ābili ana Sippar ana mahar when overseer-my from Babylon to Sippar to face.of Šamaš...Ulikam marşāku-ma Šamaš he.came I.ill.stative-P "When my overseer came from Babylon to Sippar, into the presence of (the God) Šamaš, I was ill."

(3) OB

summa awīl-um balum bēl kir-îm ina kirī if man-nom without owner.of orchard-gen in orchard.of awīl-im iş-am ikkis ½MA.NA kasp-am išaqqal man-gen tree-c he .cut down ½mina silver-acc he.weighs "If a man cut down a tree in (another) man's orchard, without the permission of the owner of the orchard, he shall pay ½ mina of silver."

The strict verb-final order has only two exceptions. The first is the object pronoun suffixes, which are a feature of the inherited Semitic structure: (4) OB

ana Jahruru-šaplT uštābil-šināti to Jahruru-šaplT Isent-them "I sent them to Jahruru-šaplī."

(5) OB

kasp-am lušābilak-kim-ma silver- let.me.send-to you(f.sg)-P "let me send you(f.sg) silver"

The only independent constituents which can follow the verb (initially only rarely) are finite sentential complements and some temporal adverbial phrases. These are also the only constituents which did undergo word order change during the history of the language, and they will be discussed in § 3.2 below. Apart from the two exceptions above, the verb-final order is very strict. No devices are ever used to bring the verb forward in the clause. Nevertheless when we look inside the phrase, the order of constituents is entirely the VO type. The following examples show the order Noun-Genitive, Noun-Relative, Noun-Adjective2 and some prepositions.

Dryer (1992) has shown that the order N- does not in fact have a statistically significant correlation with the order VO. Strictly speaking, therefore, N- should not be mentioned alongside N-G, N-Rel, and prepositions.

GUY DEUTSCHER

58 (6) OB (7) OB

šēp-am ahīt-am ana libbi āl-im la foot-c foreign-acc to heart.of town-gen not "don't let a foreign foot into the heart of the town"

tuserrebă you(pl).let.enter

ina ēribti girr-im mahrï-tim sa irrubam sTm-am asâmam-ma at arrival.of caravan-gen first-gen REL enters.3sg goods-c I.(shall).buy-P "at the arrival of the first caravan that comes in, I will buy the goods..."

These basic word order patterns remain stable throughout the history of the language.3 The following examples from Neo-Babylonian show the verb-final order, and the order of constituents within the phrase: (8) NB

Asarëdu sākin tēmi sa Kūti bīt abī-ja ana najjālu Asarëdu governor of Kutha house.of father-my to dispossessed inamdin he.(will).give "Asarëdu, the governor of Kutha, wants to give the house of my father to the dispossessed person"

(9) NB

25 GUR uttatu ana PN ana muhhika 25 kor barley to PN for you(m.sg) "I have paid 25 kor barley to PN for you."

(10) NB

ana muhhi ad-ê sa Bābili sa sarru bēl-ā ispur-a concerning oath-gen of Babylon REL king lord-my he.wrote-to me "concerning the oath of Babylon that the king my lord wrote to me (about)."

ēteţir Lpaid(perfect)

It is often claimed that such inconsistent combination of strict OV word order but otherwise VO patterns should be unstable. We could therefore expect that during the long history of Babylonian, word order changes would abound. (Sumerian, the original culprit responsible for the inconsistent word order, died out as a spoken language probably around 2000 , thus leaving Babylonian 1500 years to develop without any 'adversary' influence.) Moreover, from around 1000 , the case system started to disintegrate, a development which is often claimed to be a catalyst for changes in word order. But as mentioned above, Babylonian shows little signs of unease with its word order patterns, and they remain remarkably stable. I therefore return now to the opening question of the article. In the following sections, I try to explain why the apparently problematic word order in Babylonian did not result in instability and change. First, in § 2, I examine why the disintegration of the case system in an 'OV' language did not pose any serious difficulty. Then, in § 3,I try to explain why the 'inconsistent' word order was much less problematic than what we may be led to believe.

In the Neo-Babylonian period, as the language is dying, we can find a very small number of examples of verb-medial sentences in letters. These probably appear under Aramaic influence (von Soden 1995:227). In any case, their number is negligibly small.

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2.

Change because of disintegration of the case system? It has often been claimed that one of the main reasons for change from SOV to SVO word order in a language is the disintegration of its case system. This claim, however, has already been refuted (cf. summary in Harris and Campbell 1995:216ff.). Babylonian supplies further evidence that a language does not need to change its word order to SVO when cases disappear. But Babylonian also shows that a language does not even have to fix its (preverbal) word order at all when cases disappear. In Babylonian, both before and after the disintegration of the case system, the verb is in final position, but the word order before the verb is relatively free. Both SOV and OSV orders are very common. The following examples show SOV and OSV order in Old Babylonian: (11) OB

SOV (Subject-PP-Object-Adverbial-V) Sin-iddinam ina Bābili 1½ GÍN kasp-am ana SE-e Sin-iddinam in Babylon 1½ shekel silver-c to barley-gen sâm-im... iddin-ma buy.inf-gen he.gave-P "Sin-iddinam gave I½ shekels of silver in Babylon (in order) to buy barley."

(12) OB

OSV (Object-PP-S-PP-V-Indirect object pronoun) 1 ŠEGUR... ina bTt-i awīl-um... mahrī-ka liddin-su 1 kor barley from house-gen gentleman-nom front-your let.him give-to him "Let the gentleman give him 1 Kor barley from the house in your presence."

In the Neo-Babylonian period, the case system disintegrates, and the distinction between nominative and accusative disappears on nouns. (The genitive is still sometimes distinct.) But Neo-Babylonian remains verb-final, and moreover, pre-verbal word order remains flexible. Both OSV and SOV are still very common: (13) NB

(14) NB

OSV mīnamma sa ümu 10 GUR uţţatu ina libbi arrabu  işşur ikkalū why REL daily 10 kor barley fromit 'mouse'and bird they.eat "why is it that 'mice' and birds eat 10 kor barley from it daily?" SOV adû sarru bēl-ā kīnūtu sa ardi-su itti bīt now king lord-my loyalty of servant-his with house.of bēli-šu immar lord.gen-his he.(will).see "Now the king my lord will see the loyalty of his servant to the house of his lord."

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But why should a language adopt a fixed word order when its case system disintegrates? The usual arguments claim that free word order without case distinctions would cause ambiguity between subject and object, and thus lead to confusion. But Babylonian speakers evidently did not find the situation too confusing. The reason is that there were other means at their disposal which helped to distinguish between the subject and the object. I shall briefly list them here. First, even before any syntactic devices are used, pragmatic considerations can determine what is the subject and what is the object in most instances of natural discourse. In laboratory examples, the subject and object may be semantically interchangeable. But in common discourse, this is less often the case. Consider the OSV clause in (13) above: '[10 kor barley]o [the mice and birds]s [eat]v'. Even without any syntactic devices to distinguish the subject from the object, there is hardly any room for confusion about who does the eating and who is being eaten. After pragmatics, there are some syntactic features of the language which help to distinguish subject from object. In Babylonian, verbal agreement plays an important role in the identification of the subject. The verb agrees with its subject in person, number, and sometimes gender. For example, in (15) below, the singular third person verb determines that the "king" is the subject rather than the object. (As it happens, this interpretation is obvious from the pragmatic context anyway. It is the king who arrests people, not vice versa.) (15) NB

OSV PN bū-šu  ahhē-šu šarru uşşabbit PN father-his and brothers-his king seize(perfect).3sg "the king should seize PN, his father, and his brothers."

In fact, many clauses do not have an overt subject NP at all. Independent subject and object pronouns are hardly ever used. Pronominal subjects and objects are generally only coded on the verb, as for example in (4), (5), (6), (7), (9) above. Thus, clauses which contain both the subject and the object as full independent NPs are not very common in practice. Moreover, in addition to the obligatory subject agreement on the verb, resumptive object pronouns are often used as well. This amounts to optional 'object agreement', and it can help further to distinguish subject from object. The following two examples show how resumptive object pronouns are used in cases which otherwise would perhaps be confusing. First, in (16) below (from the Old Babylonian law code of Hammurapi), both the semantic content of the sentence and the word order may cause confusion. The subject ("obligation") and the object ("man") are in the 'wrong'

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thematic slots (i.e. reverse from prototypical) in terms of their animacy. The natural tendency therefore would be to parse the "man" as subject (rather than object, as it is here), and "obligation" as object. The OSV word order may also be confusing, because the general pattern in the law code is for laws to start with 'if a mans...', where the man is the subject, not the object. In this particular example, the subject and object are already marked by their case ending. But the object resumptive pronoun 'him' is used here as well, and this gives a secondary identification of the 'man' as an object rather than the subject ('obligation' is feminine). (16) OB

summa awīl-am e'ilt-um işbas-şu-ma assas-su... man-c obligation-nom seized.3sg-him-P wife-his if ana kasp-im iddin for silver-gen he.gave "If a financial obligation 'seized' a man (i.e. the obligation is outstanding), and he sold his wife... "

In example (17) from the Neo-Babylonian period, the word order flexibility itself may cause confusion. Here, the resumptive pronoun "him" is used to smooth the passage from an SOV order in the first clause ("kings Şillajao - asked"), to an OSV order in the second clause ("Bel-eţir0 - kings should ask-him"). The resumptive pronoun used in the second clause (but not in the first) makes the transition from the SOV to the OSV structure less confusing. (17) NB

sarru ū-.. ana muhhi dibba agâ Şillăja iš'al king father-your concerning matter this Şillăja he.asked enna Bēl-ētir rēs-sarri sarru liš'al-šu-ma now Bēl-ētir advisor king let.him.ask-him-P "your father the king would ask Şillăja concerning this matter, now the king should ask Bēl-ētir, the king's advisor "

Resumptive object pronouns often come in conjunction with topicalization of the object, and this results in even stronger marking of the object: (18) NB

altemû umma şābe-ja sa halqu ahū-ā I.heard quotative: men-my REL lost.stative.pl brother-my iptatar-sunūtu he.ransomed-them "I have heard: 'my men who were lost, my brother ransomed them"'

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Especially in the Old Babylonian period, we often find a high degree of over-determination of the object. In (19), for example, the combination of topicalization, resumptive pronoun, and a repetition of the full NP, may seem to us redundant: (19) aššum şuhări-ka sa taspur-am şuhăr-am suāti isahhurūniš-šu- OB about servant-your REL you.wrote-me servant-c this.acc they.(will)seek-him-P "Concerning your servant about whom you wrote me, this servantACC, they will seek him" (~ They will search for the servant about whom you wrote to me.)

We can therefore see that a combination of pragmatics and syntactic devices make the ambiguity between subject and object more an academic problem than a practical one. It is therefore misleading to isolate word order and case systems from other properties of the language. When we examine the whole range of relevant factors, it emerges that the need to fix the pre-verbal word order was not necessarily very pressing, even after the case system disintegrated. 3. Change because of inconsistency and parsing problems ? Perhaps a more serious reason why we could expect changes in Babylonian is its highly 'inconsistent' word order patterns. To understand why the situation again was less problematic in practice than in theory, it may be useful to refresh our memory on why we might expect inconsistent word order to be unstable. The explanations for why languages tend towards consistent word order patterns have been based on three main lines of argument, briefly summarized below: (I) Languages tend towards an abstract structural notion of consistency (or harmony) between the order of 'heads' and 'dependants' (also known as 'modifiers', 'operators' etc.). (II) Consistent word order patterns emerge as a result of repeated 'historical accidents'. For example, adpositions often emerge from serial verb constructions, and these would result in postpositions in OV languages, and prepositions in VO languages. Similarly, genitives often give rise to relatives so NG would give rise to NRel, etc. (III) Languages tend toward consistent word order because of processing considerations. Inconsistent patterns are more difficult to parse, and because they strain processing resources, languages tend to avoid them.

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Explanations based on (I) have largely been discredited, and need not detain us here. The diachronic explanations in (II) (as for example suggested in Aristar 1991) may be responsible for many cross-linguistic correlations. But in the case of Akkadian, these explanations are overruled by borrowing. The original Semitic 'consistent' VO word order may well reflect the cumulative result of grammaticalization and reanalysis. But once Akkadian borrowed verbfinal word order, and thereby introduced 'inconsistency', arguments based on (II) do not imply that changes in the position of existing structures should occur in order to regain consistency. In the case of Akkadian, therefore, the only reason why one might expect a development towards greater consistency would be because of arguments based on (III). Inconsistent word order patterns should pose more problems for parsing and processing, and therefore are likely to be unstable. According to recent literature on processing explanations (e.g. Hawkins 1994), the most severe processing problems are caused by heavier sentential phrases in 'inconsistent' positions. To explain why the Babylonian situation was less problematic in practice than in theory, I shall therefore concentrate on such heavier sentential phrases, namely relative clauses, complements and adverbial clauses. In § 3.1,I first look at relative clauses, and show how Babylonian copes with the apparent difficulties in processing which arise from their 'inconsistent' position. In § 3.2, I then discuss the position of adverbials and complements, which is the only area where Babylonian seems to 'behave'. 3.1 OV and postposed relative clauses Postposed relative clauses in a verb final language result in structures of the type: VP{NP{N Rel} V}, and in particular, in the word order: N [... V]REL V. This structure is generally claimed to be problematic from the point of view of processing. Nevertheless, this is the standard structure in Babylonian. Hawkins (1994:266) acknowledges that such structures do exist (he gives the German example in (20)), but he asserts that they clearly strain processing resources, and are therefore extremely rare in natural discourse (1994:267). (20) Wie soll ich also deinem Vater [der wochenlang im Ausland war] erklären, daß... "How should I then to your father [who weeks abroad was] explain, that... "

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Hawkins claims that even in languages whose word order patterns would naturally produce such structures, these are avoided in practice, by moving the verb forward. In German, for example, the head noun is often separated from the relative clause, and the relative moves to post-verbal position, giving structures such as (21): (21) Wie soll ich also deinem Vater erklären [der wochenlang im Ausland war] daß... "How should I then to your father explain [who weeks abroad was] that... "

But Babylonian does not seem to display any unease with the unmodified structures of the type N [...V]Rel V. They are very common and productive in older and younger periods: (22) OB

tuppa-ka ša tušābil-am ešme letter-your [REL you.sent-to me] I.heard "I heard (= was read aloud) the letter that you sent me."

(23) NB

uttatu  suluppū ša ina makkūru šaknū līmur barley and dates [REL in storeroom placed.stative 3pl] let.him.see "he should see the barley and the dates that there are in the storeroom"

(24) NB

pāni sipirtu sa PN u PN2 ana muhhi eleppăti anakâšunu face.of message [REL PN and PN2 concerning boats to you(m.pl) is-pu-┌ra┐ nidaggal they .sent] we.see "we are waiting for (=seeing the face of) the message that PN and PN2 sent to you concerning the boats"

Even multiple recursion of relative clauses in this way is found: (25) OB

assum eql-im ša PN ša šatamm-um ša aţrudaš-šu about field-gen of PNj [REL clerki-nom [REL I.sent-himj] ipluk-u-šum eqel-šu kinnā-ma hei.divided-sub-to himj] field-hisj you(pl) .assign .imperative-P "concerning the field of PNj which the clerkj whom I sent to you has divided (=marked off) for hiirij, assign hisj field."

If these structures are supposed to strain processing resources, why do they not create difficulties in Babylonian? Again, I think that isolating word order from other structural properties of the language can create a misleadingly simplified picture. In Babylonian, the apparent difficulties of processing are offset by a few syntactic features of relative clause formation. First, a special form of the verb is used in subordinate clauses, called the 'subordinative' (glossed here as "sub")- This forms helps prevent 'garden path' interpretations based on the confusion between the verb in the main clause and the subordinate clause. For example, in (25) above, the verb "divided" is in the

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subordinative form, marked by the -u- in ipluk-u-sum. Moreover, because the verb is always in final position, the verb in the relative clause (especially when it is morphologically marked as subordinative)4 marks a very salient final boundary for the relative clause. This means that there is in fact a clear marking both for the beginning of the relative clause (the relativizer sa) and the end of the relative clause (verb in subordinative). The second factor which helps the processing of relative clauses is the use of resumptive pronouns. In Babylonian, relative clause formation is based on resumption rather than on deletion, and this strategy is known to increase the ease of processing (Keenan 1985). In (25), we can see this strategy in the clause 'the clerk whom I sent", which in Babylonian has the structure "the clerk that I sent-him'. The third factor, which I already mentioned in the previous section, is the frequent use of topicalization. The topicalized NP, with its heavy relative clause, is taken out of the main clause. It is then referred back to either with a pronoun, or by repetition of the head noun, as in (25) above ("concerning the field that..., assign his field!"). Finally, it is precisely the flexibility in pre-verbal word order which can help to prevent processing difficulties. The relativized NP, whether Subject, Object, or PP, can often appear earlier in the clause. Thus, the immediate preverbal position of the relative clause, which seems to be the most difficult factor in processing, in fact does not occur so frequently. It is especially common for the object to be in initial position when it is relativized, as we can see in (26) and (27) below: (26) OB

O+REL-S-V eql-am ša Kubatim sa ana bilt-im esh-u [field-c of Kubatum REL to rent-gen assigned ,stative-sub]o PN Tris PNs he.cultivated "PN cultivated a field in Kubatum which is assigned for field rent"

(27) OB

O + REL-S-V ŠE eql-im ša ištu MU.3.KAM şabtāku [barley .of field-gen REL for 3 years I.own.stative]o PN ul iddin-am PNS not he.gave-to me "PN did not give me the barley of the field which I have owned for three years."

The subordinative is not always morphologically distinct from the independent form of the verb. Thus, in the same example (24), the verb "sent", which is syntactically in the subordina­ tive, does not actually show the subordinative morphologically.

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In (28) and (29), we can see variation in the positions of  and PP, with the relativized phrase standing in initial position: (28)

PP + REL-O-V

NB

ina nāri ša bīt ili ša niherra' --6 ittaši [from canal of temple REL we.dig] PP [water-our] o he.drew off (perfect) "he drew off our water from the temple canal which we are digging"

(29) NB

O + REL-PP-V

şāhē ša ana muhhi-šu illikūni ana kutallu [people REL against-him they.went.sub] o [to back] PP "he makes people who went against him return (to the back)"

usahhas he.makes return

In conclusion, we see again that what may appear to pose great difficulties when word order is considered in isolation in fact seems much less problematic when other structural factors are examined. 3.2 Complements and adverbial clauses The only area in which word order patterns undergo changes in Babylonian is the position of finite sentential complements and some adverbial clauses. In the Old Babylonian period, complements are overwhelmingly preverbal, as in (30). Post-verbal position is also found, as in (31), but much more rarely. (30) OB

kīma napišti māt-i eql-um-ma ul tīde COMP soul.of land-gen field-nom-P not you.know "Don't you know that the soul of the land is the field?"

(31) OB

ul tīde kTma kasap ekall-im  şibt-am not you.know COMP silver.of palace-gen and interest-acc ikaşşarū they .(will) .collect "don't you know that they will collect the silver of the palace and the interest?"

But in later periods, finite complements migrate to post-verbal position. From the Middle Babylonian period (ca. 1500 ), finite complements always have to come after the verb: (32) MB

bēl-ī īde kī ultu ēlâ diliptu mahratan-ni lord-my he.knows COMP since I.arrived trouble confronts.stative.fs-me "my lord knows that since I arrived, trouble has befallen me."

A similar development occurs with some finite adverbial phrases, mainly with the conjunction adi "until". In the older periods, adverbial phrases are almost always pre-verbal, as in (33). Only very rarely can adverbial clauses

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(only with adi) come after the verb, as in (34). But in the Neo-Babylonian period, adverbial phrases with adi are most often post-verbal, as in (35). (33) OB

adi şuhār-um ša še'-am ubl-am iqbi-am until servant-nom REL barley-acc he.brought-to me he.said-to me masiāku I.forget.stative "until the servant who brought me the barley told me, I had forgotten (these things)"

(34) OB

alik šurib-šu adi kunukka-ka ubbalak-kum go.imp.sg bring.imp.sg-him until sealed document-your he.brings-to you "go, bring him in (to prison), until he brings you your sealed document."

(35) NB

sarru pursû-sunu la iparras adi PN1 ana pan king decision-their not he(will).decide until PN1 to face.of sarr-i bēli-ja illakam-ma king-gen lord.gen-my he.comes-P "the king will not decide their matter until PN1 comes before the king my lord... "

This seems to be the only area where Babylonian makes concessions to the predicted processing difficulties. Dryer (1980:130ff.) shows that many languages which are otherwise rigidly verb-final make an exception for sentential complements (e.g. Wappo, Hopi, Persian, Yaqui). Hawkins (1994:298ff.) claims that pre-verbal finite complements (with initial complementizer) cause serious processing difficulties even in consistent verbfinal languages. He argues that this is the reason why otherwise strict verb-final languages use various strategies to place finite complements after the verb. On this issue, Babylonian is no exception, and word order change does occur in the predicted direction. It is not possible to gauge precisely the level of difficulty that pre-verbal finite complements caused in the Old Babylonian period. It is probably suggestive, nevertheless, that finite complements are fairly rare in Old Babylonian, especially compared to the ubiquitous relative clauses. What we can see is that when they do appear, finite complements are almost always in sentence-initial position, as in (36), rather than embedded between the subject and the verb. Embedded position, like (37) is attested, but much more rarely. (36) kXma 30 puhādīnēmetta-kunu ana  ābili la tublānim PN...iqbi'-am OB [COMP 30 lambs payment-your.pl to Babylon not you(pl).brought] PN he.said-to me "PN told me that you did not bring the 30 lambs, your payment, to Babylon." (37) PN kīma puhād nëmetta-ka ana ekall-im la tublam iqbi'-am OB PN [COMP lambs payment-your.sg to palace-gen not you.brought] he.said-to me "PN told me that you did not bring the lambs, your payment, to the palace."

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It was probably because of processing difficulties that finite complements migrated to post-verbal position in later periods. The change must have been relatively easy, because even in the older periods, the pre-verbal position of complements was not as rigid as that of other constituents. The synchronic variation in the older periods undoubtedly facilitated the diachronic shift in later periods. 4.

Conclusion Babylonian Akkadian demonstrates that languages have more to offer than word order and case systems. When word order is viewed in isolation (or at most in relation to the case system), the situation in Akkadian may seem problematic. But I suggested that the apparent difficulties are offset by various factors: pragmatics, verbal agreement, morphological distinction between verbs in main and subordinate clause, resumptive pronouns, and frequent use of topicalization. Thus, on closer inspection, the stability in Akkadian word order does not seem so unlikely after all. The Akkadian situation can also suggest why so many of the cross-linguistic word order universals are observed more in the breaking than in the keeping. At least in some cases, inconsistent word order patterns may only appear to cause difficulties because other structural factors of the language are ignored.

REFERENCES PRIMARY SOURCES Glossing Abbreviations: PN = Personal name. Sub = The subordinative mode of the verb. P = The Akkadian particle -ma, used for a variety of purposes, including emphasis and coordination. The examples quoted are from the following texts: (1) AbB 13:60 (2) AbB 1:18 (3) CH § 59 (4) AbB 1:7 (5) AbB 11:40 (6) AbB 7:50 (7) AbB 12:52 (8) Dietrich: 64 (9) CT 22: 105 (10) ABL: 202 (11) AbB 13:72 (12) AbB 13:72 (13) Streck, p.113 (YOS 3:137) (14) ABL: 521 (15) Streck, .133 (BIN 1: 93) (16) CH § 117 (17) Dietrich: 9 (18) Cole: 24 (19) AbB 9:18 (22) AbB 9:11 (23) Streck, p.91 (YOS 3:126) (24) Streck p. 89 (YOS 3,173:9), (25) AbB 11:174 (26) AbB 4:35 (27) AbB 4:93 (28) Streck, p.91 (BIN1: 44) (29) Dietrich: 48 (ABL 1255) (30) AbB 9:48 (31) AbB 13:65 (32) Aro, p.154 (33) AbB 2:93 (34) AbB2:106 (35) ABL 517 (36) AbB 2:75 (37) AbB 2:64.

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AbB = Old Babylonian letters. Fritz Rudolf Kraus, ed. (1964-1994) Altbabylonische Briefe in Umschrift und Übersetzung. Volumes 1-13. Leiden: E.J. Brill. ABL = Neo-Babylonian letters. Cuneiform edition: R. Harper (1892-1914) Assyrian and Babylonian letters. University of Chicago Press. Aro = Middle Babylonian letter (BE 7(1):43), quoted in Jussi Aro (1955) Studien zur Mittelbabylonischen Grammatik. Helsinki: Studia Orientalia 20. CH = Old Babylonian Law Code of Hammurapi. Quoted from: Martha T. Roth (1997) Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Cole = Neo-Babylonian letters: Steven W. Cole (1996) Nippur TV, The Early NeoBabylonian Governor's Archive from Nippur. Oriental Institute of Chicago Publications. CT 22 = Neo-Babylonian letters. Transliteration and translation in Erich Ebeling (1949) Neubabylonische Briefe. München: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Dietrich = Neo-Babylonian letters quoted from Manfried Dietrich (1970) Die Aramäer Südbaby loniens in der Sargonidenzeit. Neukirchen: Butzon & Bercker Kevelaer. Streck = Examples from Neo-Babylonian letters (BIN 1 and YOS 3), quoted from Michael P. Streck (1995) Zahl und Zeit, Grammatik der Numeralia und des Verbalsystems im Spätbabylonischen. Groningen: Styx.

SECONDARY SOURCES Aristar, Anthony R. 1991. "On Diachronic Sources and Synchronic Pattern: An Investigation into the Origin of Linguistic Universals".Language 67:1.1-33. Dryer, Matthew S. 1980. "The Positional Tendencies of Sentential Noun Phrases in Universal Grammar". Canadian Journal of Linguistics 25.123-195. Dryer, Matthew S. 1992. "The Greenbergian Word-Order Correlations". Language 68.81-138. Harris, Alice C. and Lyle Campbell 1995. Historical Syntax in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hawkins, John A. 1994. A Performance Theory of Order and Constituency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Keenan, Edward L. 1985. "Relative Clauses". Language Typology and Syntactic Description ed. by Timothy Shopen, 141-170. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Soden, Wolfram von. 1995. Grundriss der Akkadischen Grammatik. Roma: Pontificio Istituto Biblico.

STABILITY IN CLAUSAL/PHRASAL PATTERN CONSTITUENT SEQUENCING: 4000 YEARS OF EGYPTIAN (WITH SOME THEORETICAL REFLECTIONS, ALSO ON CELTIC)

ARIEL SHISHA-HALEVY The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 1. Egyptian The linguistic study of Egyptian, fully deciphered only about 150 years ago, is a young discipline: modern Egyptian linguistics, dating more or less from the work of Hans-Jakob Polotsky, is much younger still: no more than about half a century old. Coptic, the final stage of Egyptian, dead as a spoken language at some point after the XIIIth century AD, had been scientifically known in the West from around the XVIIth century. It is a curious and somehow sobering thought that Champollion le Jeune probably got the brainwave and forward push to the final decipherment of the hieroglyphic script by a wholly and deeply erroneous idea about diachronic word order correspondence. He believed (or took for granted) that Coptic f-sôtm "he is hearing" (roughly, "he + hear") was the inversion of a 'pan-Egyptian' sdm.f ("hear-he"),1 which, he thought, had the same tense form, but which - we now know - is in fact a cluster of homographs, drastically differing, formally and functionally, in tense form and syntactical status from one phase of Egyptian to another and within one and the same phase.2 The idea was wholly misguided,3 By Egyptological convention an  vowel is inserted between consonants in Egyptian words, to make pronunciation possible: [sedjemef] (in the present text, I transliterate as a simple voiced dental, d, the transliteration of a hieroglyph probably representing a voiced and emphatic dental-alveolar affricate). For a recent overview of the grammatical systems of Egyptian as a whole, bridging between different theoretical approaches, see Loprieno 1995. 2 In Middle Egyptian, for instance, we have the so-called prospective sdm.f ("that he [should] hear", "may he hear"), the substantival misleadingly named 'emphatic' sdm.f ("that he hears", as in: I know that he hears and especially in the Cleft Sentence type It's because of me that he hears), and the syntactically adverbial converbal so-called circumstantial sdm.f "...he hearing". All are distinct, and distinguished, formally, by syntactic-slot occupancy privileges resolved in close textual analysis, correlated, conjoint and coupled with such consonantal morphological features as can be observed. In Demotic we find only the fossilized remnants of the prospective sdm.f and a single case of the 'perfectai' sdm.f. In Coptic, only a lexically closed-list class of

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yet the confidence it gave him, and his conviction that Coptic and Egyptian were two phases of the same language were not unjustified, and led him to eventual success. Today we have a reasonably good synchronic resolution and, paradoxically, a sometimes seemingly sharper diachronic resolution - of nearly four millennia of uninterrupted evolution of a language (or rather an ensemble of dialects and language varieties), made visible to us in the written documentation of five or six distinct broad linguistic systems (in the sense of la langue as well as norme and usage). Roughly, with some arbitrariness and considerable overlapping, Old Egyptian ("OE", 2800-2200 ), Middle Egyptian ("ME", 2200-1500 ), Late Egyptian (or Neo-Egyptian) ("LE", 1500-700 ); Demotic, from the VIIth-VIIIth century  to the Vth century AD, and finally Coptic, 'Christian Egyptian', written in customized graphemic systems based on the Greek graphemes and several Egyptian ones, from the IVth century AD on, until its death as a spoken language: Arabic entered Egypt in the VIIth century AD, but Coptic probably lingered on until the XVIIth century. (Incidentally, Coptic is formally differentiated as 'Egypto-Coptic' in the current International Linguistic Bibliography. Roughly since the Fifties, Coptic Studies have moved away from Egyptology, a separation unfortunate for both Egyptology and Coptic studies, which has all but wiped out Coptic linguistics as a discipline). Most phases, as we conveniently and simplistically delimit them (ignoring here the relationships, complicated in Egyptian, between language phase and script phase, as well as the religious-political implications of traditional archaizing use of earlier phases) have considerable overlapping or 'mutual leaking' with preceding ones, as well as transitory stages, and of course numerous diasystems of registers and other linguistic varieties which become clearer as detailed description progresses. Some phases extend up to a thousand years, which makes the need for a finer subperiodization obvious (Junge 1985). Generally speaking, we witness the uninterrupted evolution of a language on one and the same terrain, in its first attestation cradled in a Neolithic culture, before the end of its life-span a paraclassical language, part of a pious and totally Christian civilization: very little secular literature is attested in Coptic. quality-expressing lexemes (e.g. nanou-f, nane-prôme "good [nexus] he", "good [nexus] theman" = "he is good", "the man is good") maintains what is comparable to the old sdm.f pattern. In earlier Egyptian, there were other #VERB STEM + THEME (PRO)NOUN# cases, with the stem marked by distinctive affixes: -n-, -in-, -k3- etc. - these disappeared earlier. 3 We find it expressed as late as Steinthal and Misteli (1893:283-284) in a still valuable typological sketch of Egyptian: stm paï-k sn "(es) hört dein Bruder" with paï-k sn stm "dein Bruder hört".

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The full informed story of first the decipherment of the script, then the century-long, slowly improving resolution of the individual grammatical systems and subsystems of the respective phases of Egyptian, is truly breath­ taking and still remains to be told in full. Beside clashes, often vigorous, between schools of thought and grammatical method (most notably, at the beginning of the century, the Paris and the Berlin ones, of which the latter finally prevailed, leading to the Polotskyan Jerusalem School and currently to descriptive, 'functionalist' and evolved generative approaches), it is also the story of a Hugo-Schuchardt-style scholarly dissent and creative individualism, as well of a progressive detachment from the Eurocentric-Semitic methodo­ logical and theoretical bias and an unfolding realization of the special intricacy of Egyptian as formulated in its own internal, not genealogically biased terms. As some of its historical landmarks may be considered Adolf Erman's Ägyptische Grammatik of 1901, Kurt Sethe's Der Nominalsatz im Ägyptischen und Koptischen (1916); Battiscombe Gunn's Studies in Egyptian Syntax (1924), Alan Henderson Gardiner's Egyptian Grammar (1957 3); A. Erman's Neuägyptische Grammatik (1933); Frank Lloyd Griffith's Stories of the High Priests of Memphis (1900) and Catalogue of the Demotic Papyri in the John Rylands Library, Manchester (1909), and Wilhelm Spiegelberg's Demotische Grammatik (1925); for Coptic, Ludwig Stern's Koptische Grammatik (1880), Hans-Jakob Polotsky's Études de syntaxe copte (1944), his "Coptic Conjugation System" (1960) and his Grundlagen des koptischen Satzbaus (1987-1990) and most recently Layton (2000) (see Loprieno 1995 for a detailed bibliographical inventory). 2.

Some idiosyncrasies Several properties and aspects of Egyptian and Egyptian linguistics must be pointed out here, as being of the highest theoretical relevance to the issue in point. I am hardly going to mention the genealogical assignment of Egyptian, still controversial and mysterious: is Egyptian part - a crucial, if not defining part - of a hypothetical Hamito-Semitic language family (the implicitly or explicitly consensual view at present), or is it a substrate - (or otherwise) formed Mischsprache, almost an analogue (mutatis time-depth and other mutandis) of Amharic as Semitic Stoff and African Form?4 This has an immediate bearing on such a far-removed issue as the structural typological nonIndo-European affinities of Insular Celtic, a question recently redeemed after a long period of near-disrepute. Formulating the query in terms of a non-geographical (or hyper-geographical) Sprachbund (cf. Shisha-Halevy 1995:§ 7), I find Egyptian the most striking term of compari­ son, far more significant than the currently used Arabic (cf. Vennemann 1995, 1997; Borsley

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• First, no vowels are allowed for in any of the graphemic systems up to (and not including) Coptic.5 Since consonantal formal (morphology signifiant) distinctions are rare, we have little inflectional morphology in the IndoEuropean sense (consonantal affixal formation should really be considered syntagmatics or syntax). Analytic Grammar in Egyptian thus means 'syntax netto'. We are, in the study of Egyptian, largely spared what De Boer felici­ tously called "la tyrannie de la morphologie" and "la superstition de la forme"', the theoretical higher rank of syntax (a realization agreed in structuralist general linguistic discussion since the first decades of this century, but never really implemented in actual descriptive work) is in Egyptian linguistics de rigeur. What we have to deal with are subtextual slots only, and applying 'structural ID' procedure is inevitable and crucial: the decoded-analytic identity-definition of an element and entity of language is effected only by the conjoint coordinates of positional (syntagmatic) and commutational localiza­ tion; its 'role-name', its analytic identity or individual essential profile consists of its simultaneous syntagmatic and paradigmatic coordinates. This is, I believe, of the highest relevance to the issue in point here, namely "word order through time": for it indicates that we must resort to patterning, with sequencing but one of its constituent distinctive features (and probably hyperpattern, placement of certain discourse-referred elements, such as discourse signals). The specific individual grammatical category is the signifié of a substitution class in a given syntactical slot, without any 'morphological back­ ground noise', and ideally without the biasing by a pre-eminent conceptualterminological tradition based on the morphological form-entity (consider, for a striking instance, the category of tense). The grammatical form is consequently a precise formal-relational feature or signal, in a sense the ideal grammeme, and the subtextual unit the 'pattern', defined as "a bounded (i.e. 1995). But the ambition to rephrase the 'contact' in an historical scenario (e.g. as a substrate phenomenon) must come to terms with the fact that Egyptian, while affording a very considerable time depth - greater than that of 'Semitic' alone - is hardly a straightforward 'language on a family tree'. I personally, following thirty years' descriptive work on Egyptian grammar, favour the Mischsprache hypothesis, for numerous reasons outside the scope of the present article. Incidentally, and in the context of the present issue, the alleged 'VSO' property of 'Semitic' (as exemplified by Arabic) or of Egyptian (so Hawkins 1983:320) is ohne weiteres conventionally associated with the Celtic (e.g. Brythonic) VSO 'basic word order'. But all these components of a schematic typological comparison are either simplistic, or inexact, or even a petitio principii, and there are in fact affinities more unambiguous, sharp and valid. Coptic does have seven graphemes for approximately represented vowel phonemes, yet it is significant that efforts to reconstruct the pre-Coptic Egyptian vowel systems have so far shed little additional light on the respective grammatical systems (cf. Polotsky 1964).

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delimited) sequence of categories", which in their turn may themselves be pat­ terns, reducible to constituent categories, and so on and so forth. Heuristically and technically speaking, the first and most important single analytic step is the isolation of delimitations (boundary signals); the analytical procedure is necessarily descending, from text-scope downwards. • The remarkable time depth, which affords a unique opportunity and special laboratory conditions for observing features and factors of diachrony at work; so, for instance, the periodic-cyclical nature of many changes in features and subsystems. However, the danger of the 'optical illusion of historical continuity' is in the case of Egyptian very strong and ever present: on this further below. We thus witness for instance the familiar synthesis - analysis (e.g. periphrasis) - agglutination-resynthesis evolution of junctural structure typol­ ogy. From this point of view, Coptic resembles in many respects the oldest Egyptian and completes a millennia-long cycle, with LE an analytical peak (the phase prior to OE not documented, that posterior to Coptic sadly non-existent). Another specific and, for me, especially fascinating case is the history, familiar from a European isogloss in a Romance-Germanic West European Sprachbund or at least isogloss, of the recurring neutralization of the opposition perfect (the nunegocentric, i.e. speaker's hic-et-nun, past/present statal complex tense) vs. preterite, neutralizing always in favour of the marked term, the perfect, which is de-pertinented, representing the category as a whole while the preterite disappears and a new periphrastic perfect enters the picture. The full cycle is observable not less than three times in the course of the history of Egyptian.6 • For Egyptian, text-linguistics is the only feasible linguistics, and textscope grammar is perforce the only grammar. The descending analysis from full text-level down is unavoidable; no textual subdivision is usually given (the a priori or intuitive 'sentence' and 'word' units are far more dubious and

The evolution of future tenses in Egyptian is another instance of analysis-to-synthesis cyclicity. It is instructive to compare its stages to the familiar Romance ones (Fleischman 1982); in Egyptian, so far as we can see, the 'spatial' future ("I am to go") is earliest, whereas the modality factor starts to play a role in the same formation only very late, from Coptic on, and then only in certain dialects (temporal-to-modal, never the other way round). The analytic "go" futures appear around LE, and end up by being the only tense-form in Sahidic Coptic, one of two (a tempus instans, intentional, typically interlocutive-sphere, opposed to an 'absolute', uncircumstantial, unconditional, non-subjective one) in the Bohairic dialect. In any case, in Egyptian there is no direct association between the evolving forms and change in word order (cf. Fleischman 1982:50).

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obfuscating than in the European linguistic systems).7 'Narrative tenses' (to take one instance) and narrative building-blocks and texture units in general must be carefully isolated, as the only Tempuslehre possible; needless to say, this is immediately instructive and eye-opening for the well-trodden 'nostratic' systems. Another example, perhaps less banal and directly relevant to the word order issue, is the concept of syntactic (or rather syntaxic) autonomy: the notion and feature-complex of 'ordination' (as so strikingly epitomized in the Eurocentric logic/rhetoric-based dichotomy, still going strong, of 'main' vs. 'subordinate', with 'superordinate' a real improvement, albeit still rarely ap­ plied)8 cannot be simply applied to Egyptian, where, for example, 'non-initial' may be the distinctive feature of a clause (as for example in a special apodotic clause-form, attested in some form throughout the history of the language). • An invaluable metalinguistic or 'technical' feature of Egyptian linguis­ tics, due to the special circumstances, constraints and slowness of its evolution, is its relative resistance to Eurocentric terminology and careless taxonomic compartmentalization: there has been so far little uncritical en masse and en bloc application of Western terminology (probably with the exception of Greco-Latin terminology applied to Coptic in the XIXth century). This happy state is rapidly, and alarmingly, changing at present, in the pretext of 'modernizing' Egyptian linguistics, as if forcing the models, buzz-words and general terminology that are en vogue onto a non-European system still only partly understood can replace patient text-based categorial analysis. Conse­ quently, there still exists the opportunity for a leisurely and careful considera­ tion of applicability and suitability of concepts and names for concepts, and for evolving internally rational, not imported conceptual and terminological systems. Clearly, this too is potentially beneficial for a re-examination of wellstudied languages and the general-linguistic models based on them.

7

Note a recent general discussion of 'sentence' in Kindt 1994. Somehow, Satzbegriff sounds better (since probably less committed) than 'notion of sentence' and 'clause' in the English abstract (for one thing, there's no need to distinguish the grammatically and logically based terminology). Then, grammatikunabhängig is not at all the same as 'syntax-independent'. Occasionally, moreover, Kindt does not seem to distinguish Satzdefinition from Satzsegmentierung. Unfortunately, the discussion, very interesting and lucid per se, of Satz in spoken German, cannot be immediately applied in the case of a language such as Egyptian, written, dead, so very different culturally; and here, once again, Kindt's approach is incorrigi­ bly Eurocentric and verb-clause-oriented: consider for instance the Vollständigkeit test by the presence or absence of the verb "be" (cf. Kindt 1994:37ff.). Cf.Shisha-Halevy 1995.

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3.

77

Word order: stability and variation over time At this point, I must confess to several doubts and even misgivings about the terms in which our workshop theme has been phrased. "Variation". In the structuralist semiotic methodological framework within which I operate, every formal feature - every signifiant (and sequencing, when pertinent and not conditioned, is certainly a constituent or constituent-part tagmemic signifiant) has its signifié, until the relatively rare case of free variation has been proven. We have thus only three conceivable synchronic situations obtaining between two or more elements: (a) opposition and full or partial pertinence; (b) environmental neutralization alternation (as typically encountered in a complementary distribution situation); or (c) the always provisionally (and, for a structuralist, reluctantly) stated case of 'free variation', that is, formal differentiation not correlatable in some way with a functional one. Still, this last state of things is, more often than not, a preanalytical petitio principii. "Over time"; diachrony. It is crucial to bear in mind what is so obvious, has repeatedly been pointed out, yet is as a rule ignored in the actual practice of our thriving Historical Linguistics, that one written phase of the language does not necessarily or usually evolve out of a chronologically preceding one: Literary Modern Welsh (in itself consisting of several sub-phases) did certainly not evolve out of Mabinogion Middle Welsh, any more than Vulgar Latin or Romance texts evolved (as representative of états de langue with distinct grammatical and lexical systems) out of the Classical Latin literary corpus. The realization that the 'single line of development' is a convenient fiction - this self-evident, seemingly trivial truth, but too often unheeded - is no less than crucial when we study diachronic syntax, for evolutively juxtaposing and comparing grammatical patterning in an historical sequence of attestation is an easy trap (as is, to take a rather worn-out instance, the case of quod and the accusativus cum infinitivo as exponents of clause substantivation in Latin and Romance). In Egyptian, major successive phases match more or less known periods of extralinguistic (social and political) turbulence, and did not evolve successively, certainly not in a straight route and at a constant rate. Extensive systemic areas and many features in all phases are not documented in preceding ones; we know little of the systemic context and pragmatic or textual context of evolution. Of course, this 'optical illusion' of evolutive continuity may ideally, almost metaphorically, be taken as valid, yet only panoramically, for blueprint resolution and therefore, in my opinion, to little use prior to synchronic system delineation: so many details are lost, systemic factors are inevitably taken as negligible, underplayed or downright ignored that one finds

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oneself in a practically model-reshaped or meta-linguistic world. (In parenthe­ ses, let me point out that the historical perspective, as truly envisaged by Saussure - this is now being made more and more manifest by the new Saussurean philology - focusses on viewing a synchronic systemic fact, a feature in a système des valeurs, in diachronic light, with a holographic effect, rather than a cinematographic 'animation' by the rapid shifting of juxtaposed 'stills'. And, of course, the full systemic feature must be fully formulated first. Moreover, linguistic change concerns most intimately, stems from and is effected in microstructures and subsystems). Lastly, and most importantly, 'Word Order". Linguistic sequencing is a complex issue, not exhaustible in schematic generalizing, often sweeping statements of 'word order' as used in current linguistic inquiry, let alone in terms of the arguments of an Eurocentric (deductive, logic-based, not empiri­ cally founded) verbal-predication 'sentence', viz. S[ubject], V[erb], O[bject]. Indeed, I see this as a deplorable obfuscation, almost a vulgarization of an intricate vital issue. First of all, this assumes - and unqualifiedly builds on the universality of a prime, hierarchically dominant verbal predication : this is a deeply rooted Eurocentric verb-centered grammatical thought, almost equating 'clause' with 'verb clause', and a 'no-verb' construction with 'verbabsence' or worse.9 Moreover, a basic distinction of actual syntagmatic sequencing and structural (not necessarily of adjoining elements: 'discontinu­ ous') sequencing is essential;10 elements representative of categories often 'reside' in actual locations that are structurally, albeit not typologically, a matter of coincidence.11 And then, sequencing or placement may be pertinent (pattern-distinctive) or, like almost any linguistic signifiant element, condi­ tioned: such distributional statement can only be formulated on the basis of precise oppositional and environmental study.12 The dominance of the verb and the 'verb clause' is nowadays more a presupposition of current General (often in the sense of universalist-typological) Linguistics, stemming from the blend of Neo-Grammarian Indo-European-oriented Sprachwissenschaft with the logic-based normative tradition, still associated with various current schools transformed from the original generative models of the Sixties and Seventies, than of the individual branches of modern descriptive Indo-European linguistics, especially of Greek, Latin and Indo-Aryan. For instance, the valential structure of verb lexemes; or many cases of mutation in Celtic. So for instance the location of some Indo-European case-endings, structurally a discontinu­ ous constituent of the verb, in the noun phrase. 12

It is frankly difficult for me to understand word order ('SV/VS') functional opposition outside the synchronic 'transsection' or 'still shot' of an individual linguistic system, as a grammemic linguistic sign which may subsequently be compared or contrasted (typologically) with correspondent signs in other languages or (diachronically) with other phases of the same

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My contention is, in brief, that (a) constituent ordering is not a prime, independent, overruling, governing or motivating feature of syntax. It is one of several cumulatively and conjointly definitive features of any pattern, already defined here as a delimited sequence of categories. Constituent ordering does not 'exist' absolutely, on its own, in a given language, as one of its typological traits. Sequencing is a grammeme (a tagmeme), a signifiant which, as I see it, rules out the validity or feasibility of isolating SVO/VSO word order schemes independently of precise patterning; (b) the universal applicability of the 'SV' model is unwarranted or else trivial;13 (c) the universal existence and then typological predominance in a given language of a verbal-predication 'sentence' which can be stated in the same terms as traditionally used for IndoEuropean is questionable and cannot be taken for granted. Frankly, I find it difficult to see how current word order typologies, synchronic or diachronic, can be maintained in the face of these objections. (Needless to say, a specific world-order or sequencing may constitute part or the whole of a descriptive statement, always resulting from a process of analysis). A final word on 'subject'. It will be noted that I refrain from using this term, even for verb clauses, just as I reject the a priori distinction of 'syntactic' and 'pragmatic' word order, as if the syntactic features of la parole, of a text and of its texture were in some way transcendental, abstracted or independent of its contextual or situational functions. 'Subject' (like 'Predicate'), originally a functionally conceived term, has been irretrievably impaired by its rigid association with the European-brand verbal nexus, in what is probably the most striking case of terminological distortion in syntax. ('Theme' is the nonrhematic constituent in any nexal interdependency, including verbal nexus, and 'agent' the 'first actant' in the valency matrix of the verbal and associated lexe­ mes). As usually applied, 'subject' - or the flaringly ethnocentric and internally language. In the synchronic system, sequence would thus be pertinent, not conditioned. Consequently, I cannot accept the thesis in Hopper 1986, which, as it were, puts the typological and diachronic carts, in tandem, before the synchronic-internal horses. Even supposing that 'universal basic word order' is at all a scientifically viable concept, a presupposition cogently questioned in Mithun 1987. The inbuilt (Indo-) European ethnocentric squint in Western linguistics and ever present in Western linguistic discussion, is now a very real danger of forcing an alien model on language in general. Consider the new term 'Euroversals' (see Kortmann 1997:33ff.), which might at first be conceived of as a welcome qualified restriction, yet still has potentially comprehensive universalistic associations and evocations in an 'imperialistic' epistemology. Observe that it is not systematization as such that I am advocating here against, its inevitable abstractive and idealizing components notwithstanding; what I would point out, following Hugo Schuchardt, is the absolutely crucial need to distinguish between internal and external systems, and let the former - especially the easily obliterated micro-systems - take priority, as data for the latter.

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contradictory 'grammatical subject' - is spurious, and constitutes a prime instance of advanced terminological conditioning. Incidentally, the exiling from syntax to pragmatics of the issues of information structure and the highlevel signification of macrosyntactic grammar such as narrative grounding and perspective is a lamentable sign of the times, associated with the per se welcome surge in sociolinguistic awareness, discourse analysis and the study of spoken language. But - if I may be excused some slight exasperated irony written language - and dead written language, too - has been known to present grammatical systems worthy of study, and by no means second-hand or reflected or deficient.14 4. Excurse: word order in Celtic At this point and by way of an excursion, I wish to make three brief observations on Brythonic Celtic, à propos of Graham R. Isaac's recent syntax of Old Welsh Poetry (Isaacl996); they concern slips of method which I believe are instructive for the issue at point here. First, the periphrastic analytic verbal constructions of Welsh (as important as and strikingly similar to their Egyptian correspondents from OE on), which turn out to be a trap for the word order typologist. For on p. 21 Isaac states, off-handedly, that Mae Siôn wedi darllen "John (has) read", (approx. "John-exists/is after-reading") is a case of SV sequencing, as if the existential/statal nexus exponent auxiliary mae did not exist. In fact, this is either a case of discontinuous 'mae..+ converb' rheme, or of a 'there exists' statement (mae) preceding its existant theme. Second, the Cleft Sentences Siôn sy wedi darllen, wedi darllen  mae Siôn focalizing respectively the theme and converb (approx. "[It is ] John who-is after-reading" and "[It is] after-reading that-is John"): Isaac sees these as straightforward cases of SV and VS respectively, again as if the relative and substantive conversion forms of "be" did not exist or structurally matter. Last, the Middle Welsh unmarked narrative verbal clause-form, the so-called 'Abnormal Sentence', '(pro)noun + α-verb', the vexata quaestio of MW syntax, which is generally presented as the main argument and show-piece for the SV order of MW in contrast to VS in the modern language. Yet again, this involves totally ignoring the relative-converter element a- (apparently just because it is not simply and transparently reflected in translation). See Jamieson 1993 for a welcome manifesto-like call on behalf of dead-language syntax, pre-eminently applicable to Egyptian linguistics. My own personal research experience fully corroborates Visser's caveat (apud Jamieson, 219 n 1), viz. that hastily pronounced 'errors' constitute the data for most insights into a dead language's syntax: in Coptic, it is a teaching and research commonplace that the apparatus of critical editions by insensitive editors is the place to look for the most significant forms and constructions. On non-attestation in a dead language, see also Shisha-Halevy 1986, Introduction.

STABILITY IN CLAUSAL/PHRASAL PATTERN

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5. Egyptian patterning In the main part of my exposition, I will now present and illustrate several striking patterning features of Egyptian throughout its history,15 with a focus on the evolution of sequencing. I would here draw attention to the remarkable stability of sequencing within the enveloping diachronic systems, in the framework of which the pattern in point is 'held' as evolution takes place: this is the dynamic, pluridimensional Structural (or Systemic) Diachronic Frame ("SDF"), which (as it were) contains the static synchronic syslérnes des valeurs, layered in chronological sequence. What is being followed over time is always the individual pattern, the key analytic unit isolated in a descending analysis from text-level; 'Word Order' is (as has been stressed) in-pattern category sequencing, a distinctive constituent feature of the pattern, and not a 'floating' placement property of individual elements: it is no more, no less 'important' (in the sense of 'essential' or 'basic') than other, categorial distinctive constituents of the pattern. Needless to say, 'stability' in this context has a relative applicability, but is no less remarkable for that. I must stress once again that in the following presentation there is considerable schematization and thus simplification, this being the main shortcoming of the typologicistical format of grammatical presentation. 5.1 Nexus types: no specific SDF The trait that I would choose as typologically most basic throughout the history of Egyptian is the predicative theme+rheme (i.e. predicative nexus) patterning. Three main predicative-nexus patterns are always in evidence, remaining practically unchanged in categorial constituency and in sequencing, from Old Egyptian through Coptic. (A fourth pattern eventually merges with the nominal-rheme one: see § 5.6 below). Note that patterns (I) and (II) below are not 'verb-less', but rather devoid of any formal association with the verbal nexus. From the earliest Egyptian onwards, pattern I supplies considerable parts of the verbal system by predicating converbs - subnexal finite or nonfinite adverbial verb-forms.

For Coptic, the only phase of Egyptian for which dialects are fully resolvable, I give Sahidic examples unless otherwise specified. Of all Coptic dialects, Bohairic (a northern dialect originally, by the Xth century extended all over Egypt) has most 'diaglosses' with Late Egyptian: cf. Shisha-Halevy 1981.

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(I) adverb-rheme nexus, adverbial and converbal rhemes, supplying the Present and (before Coptic and in Bohairic Coptic) non-modal Future tenses, from Late Egyptian/Demotic on a tense strikingly similar to the GrecoRomance Imperfect.16 In ME, and especially for substantival lexical themes, a prefixed formal thematic element jw characterizes an hic-et-nunc ('presentsituation'), discourse-syntactically unmarked status of the nexus, with a zero + nominal signalling its inclusion or otherwise discourse-syntactically marking. (ME) jw mtr.j m-hnw PRESENT-SITUATION- DEICTIC + testimony-1st sgl. [poss.] pron.+ in-+ residence "My testimony is in the Residence". jw hnw m sgr PRESENT-SITUATION-DEICTIC- residence + converb-marking preposition - being silent "The Residence is being silent." jw m pn n nsw hr m33 PRESENT-SITUATION- DEICTIC - army + demonstrative adj. + of (sgl.m.) - king + converbmarking preposition - watching "This army of the king is looking on." (LE) twj m-dj.k 1st sgl. - with - 2nd sgl. m. [poss.] pron. "I am with you." n3y.s g3b m mfkt plur. +3rd sgl. f. poss. article - leaf + predicate-marking preposition - malachite "Her leaves are of malachite.": incidental (i.e. non-essential circumstance-referred) nominal predication. (Dem.)p-t3 jr-hr-j m-qd wc.t cftj.t def. art. sgl. f. - earth + before - 1st sgl. [poss.] pron. + in-manner - zero-article - chest "The earth is before me like a chest." n3-hrd.w n-p3-lh m n-p3-hyr def. art. pl. - child + 'a-walking' (CONVERB) in - def. art. sgl. m. - street "The fool's children walk the street." (Copt.) f-mmau 3 sgl. m. them, pron-there "he is there"

16

In the component notation of Egyptian examples on the following pages , "+" indicates combination in general, while "-" marks close-juncture combination. Verbs of movement/posture and other intransitives have the "in" (m) converbs in the present tense; cf. the Modern Irish tå sé in-a- + verbal noun statal present conjugation. This is a typological trait of a considerably