αμέτι μουχαμέτι: Semantics

We have just looked at the development of the syntax of αμέτι μουχαμέτι, from an Ottoman Turkish noun phrase ümmet-i Muhammed "nation of Muhammad", to the Modern Greek adverb "come hell or high water"—which arguably has ended up, in a limited sense, as a noun comparable in function to σκοπός "purpose" or όρκος "oath". And we tried to account for the shift from noun, through exclamation, to adverb—and back to noun—by appealing to reanalysis and extension.

Reanalysis and extension also apply to semantic change, and in this post, I pick up from my second last post on Vasilis Orfanos' analysis of the semantic transition, over at the Magnificent Nikos Sarantakos' Blog. The debate that broke out between commenters on when the changeover happened is of particular interest, since it highlights the mechanism of how gradual the semantic change is.

To start with, what actually happened to "nation of Muhammad" to end up meaning "come hell or high water" is pretty clear, and I will quote Orfanos' analysis:

In Turkish there is an expression ümmet-i Muhammed, "nation of Muhammad", with which Muslims refer to the sum of their coreligionists. During Ottoman rule, it was also used as a warcry, which was interpreted by Greeks as an oath/commitment to attain victory. So it passed into Greek with the sense "at any sacrifice", as αμέτι μουχαμέτι—possibly through the influence of a folk etymology from the name Ahmed or the oath Μα το Μουχαμέτη "By Muhammad!"

Let's walk through the examples again, from a semantic rather than syntactic point this time. Unsurprisingly, the semantic and the syntactic development aligned closely.

To begin with, the expression refers literally to the Muslim nation (1, 5):

• Τον κύριο παρακάλεσαν να κάμη μερχαμέτι, Και να τους κάμη ολουνούς του Μουχαμέτ’ ουμμέτι "They begged the Lord to show compassion, and to make them all Muhammad's nation".

When the word acts as a war cry (as a vocative and then an exclamation), it expresses encouragement to action (4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13)—as well as its polar opposite, despair (3, 14, 15, 16):

• ιμέτι, Μωχαμέτη, ’Σ τον ντιν ντουσμάνη σήμερα να κάμωμεν γαϊρέτι, "Nation of Muhammad! Today against the infidel enemy we shall show endurance."
  
• Ορίστε, λεγ’ Αλήπασας, ιμέτι Μουχαμέτη, Χαΐρι δεν εχούμε ’μεις εφέτ’ απ’ το ντουβλέτι, "'See,' Ali Pasha says, 'By the Nation of Muhammad! We're not seeing any joy from the government this year!'"

Analysed at that level, the distinction between vocative and exclamation is not that relevant. The reanalysis is clearly when the expression is still a vocative—going from referring to Muslim troops being addressed, to an exclamation. The extension is, again, when the expression of encouragement is used without anyone explicitly being addressed; admittedly, that is clear in the expression of despair rather than the warcry.

The critical switch syntactically was when the expression was used in indirect speech: that allowed it to be reanalysed from an exclamation to an adverb (2, 10). The accompanying semantic shift is earlier: it is already inherent in a warcry, used in direct speech, that the exclamation indicates a commitment to do something, particularly in that it was followed by a command to do it:

• (6) Αμέτη, Μωαμέτη! Πιάστε τον τόπον δυνατά, "Nation of Muhammad! Fortify the place boldly."

The conflation with the oath μα το Μουχαμέτη "By Muhammad!" would have reinforced that notion of commitment. The use of the expression in indirect speech is an extension, rather than a reanalysis of that meaning of commitment: it is now separated from any notion of directly addressing people. Orfanos accordingly identified the song on Messolonghi (10) as critical to the development of αμέτι μουχαμέτι—"as an oath committing the besiegers to achieve their goals":

• Όλοι τους ωρκισθήκανε αμέτι Μουχαμέτη, στο Μεσολόγγι να εμβούν, να κάμουν κιαμέτι "They all swore, 'Nation of Muhammad!', to enter Messolonghi and cause havoc."

But αμέτι Μουχαμέτη does not actually mean anything intrinsically different in (6) and (10): the change is syntactic, not semantic. The essential meaning is still the same: "the subject is committing themselves to doing X".

From "They swear they will do X", it is an easy step to "they will definitely do X", "they will bloodymindedly do X". That is the shift in (12), where the modern use of the expression is obvious:

• αλλά ο Γαρδικιότης είναι Αμέτ Μουαμέτ κατά του στραβού, "but Gardikiotis is bloodymindedly against the blind man."

Again, the change here is syntactic: it has broadened the contexts in which the expression shows up. There is a slight change in meaning in (12), which is metonymic. X committing to doing Y contains the necessary implication that X feels strongly about Y. The semantic shift moves in (12) from commitment to an action, to indication of the associated emotion: Gardikiotis is not committing to doing anything as bloodymindedly as an Ottoman warrior: he just shows the same singlemindedness as an Ottoman warrior.

But this generalisation in meaning hasn't been followed since: αμέτι μουχαμέτι is still associated with intended action, rather than emotional state. What has been picked up by the expression, rather, is connotation, which leads to the meaning being strengthened.

The context is key to how the connotations took root; context, after all, is where connotations come from. Greeks who did not understand Turkish heard the cry in battle, preceding an undertaking to wreak havoc: "Ümmet-i Muhammed! We will burn them down!" The cry sounds something like "By Muhammad!", which cements the notion that it expresses a religiously fervent, bloodyminded commitment to do ill, made by hostile warriors. When the cry is reanalysed as a more generic adverb indicating commitment, those connotations come along with it: it has picked up the negative connotations of "being on the warpath", of unreasonableness, of disproportionate singlemindedness.

That, I hope, is revealing. The real change in αμέτι μουχαμέτι is syntactic, not semantic; the essential semantic reanalysis, from vocative to expression of commitment, is earlier (indeed, it happened in Turkish and not Greek), and it is not particularly drastic. Connotation, rather than semantic shift, has given the expression the force it now has; and connotation is a more subtle change than the syntactic reanalyses undergone by αμέτι μουχαμέτι.

Because the semantic change is not particularly pronounced, my godfather Tasos Kaplanis thought there was still a missing link between the 1820s songs with warcries (10) and the 1859 Modern Greek adverbial use (12):

What is impressive is that in most cases from the 19th century recorded in the post, the phrase has or could have the initial meaning it has in Turkish—until we reach Xenos (12) and Papdiamantis (17, 18), who record the phrase with more or less its modern meaning. […] I find this somewhat peculiar, and I still can't see the link between the popular records of the phrase (not just in folk song and older texts, but also Kolokotronis and Koutsonikas), and the literary or learnèd usage by Xenos and Papadiamantis.

In other words, in (10) the expression is still a Muslim warcry; in (12) it is a Greek adverb; and the transition between the two is not obvious.

I think the ensuing exchange is illuminating:

• Nikos Sarantakos thinks the songs of Messolonghi (10) and Xopateras (11) do provide the missing link: "they swore, amet moukhamet, they would conquer Messolonghi / they would seize the priest."
  
• Tasos thinks that (11) merely quotes the interjection. In fact, that's also how I'd interpreted it last post. As to the critical example (10), Tasos says:
  

  In the siege of Messolonghi, Legrand's misunderstanding ("By Muhammad!") could be a missing link—though I still don't see how we got from "By Muhammad!" to "stubbornly, wilfully, at any sacrifice", etc. And if you add a comma to edition, αμέτι μουχαμέτι turns back into ümmet-i Muhammed: "They all swore, Nation of Muhammed, they would enter Messolonghi."

  
  
• Maria retorts she too can see the transition clearly.
  
• Tasos answers: "OK, Maria, maybe I can't see it because I understand what the Turkish means."

Tasos wasn't saying that because he took offence, but because understanding Turkish really does get in the way of seeing how the meaning change happened: that's why I'm highlighting the exchange. Greek speakers clearly were starting not to understand what ümmet-i Muhammed means: that's what allowed them to distort ümmet as αμέτι. Greek speakers were starting to guess what αμέτι μουχαμέτι meant from context. That meant that the meaning shift was possible as a reanalysis, even if superficially the phrases looked the same: the meaning shift happened in Greek-speakers' heads, and had not yet undergone extension to new contexts. So if you actually do know Turkish, you will not initially notice a change at all.

It's not surprising that Sarantakos, like Orfanos, highlights (10) as a pivot: it displays a clear syntactic reanalysis, rather than the more subtle semantic shift, through indirect speech. Tasos retorts that the difference between "at any cost" and "Nation of Muhammad!" in (10) is merely a comma. But of course, that's precisely why (10) matters: syntactic reanalysis is exactly a matter of a missing comma—that is, a reinterpretation of the syntactic structure, which can be represented through intonation, and in print through commas.

Sarantakos also highlights (11) as a comparable instance. I said that in the last post I interpreted (11) like Tasos, with a disjoint exclamation: "'Glory to Allah', they cried, and 'Ameti Moukhameti': they would go seize the priest, to calm Crete down." The expression does look like (10), and could be construed in the same way, as indirect speech containing an exclamation: "and (Nation of Muhammad!) they would go seize the priest" > "and at any cost, they would go seize the priest".

I don't think that's what the composer of the song intended—because "Nation of Muhammed!" was conjoined with "Glory to Allah!" But that construal was clearly starting to be possible—and in a couple of decades, led to the unambiguous extension in (12). And I hope I've explained above how to get from "By Muhammad" to "at any sacrifice", through hostile connotation. ...Read more

άμε and άντε: Semantics Persistence in Modern Greek hortative particles

Vasilis Orfanos wrote a magisterial post on αμέτι μουχαμέτι, which I alluded to last post, and which am using to base the next post on. (Or maybe the post after that.) To acknowledge my debt, this is a post on a topic he requested from me a few weeks back. The topic in turn is in response to an earlier post I wrote on the etymology of α σιχτίρ, which involves a particle meaning "go!".

The post is about two of the four particles of Modern Greek meaning "go!", άμε and ά(ι)ντε. (άντε is the Standard form, but άιντε appears to be older.) Orfanos thinks that he has identified a nuance distinguishing the meaning of the two—particularly in older texts. I have the subjective impression that there is a different (though related) nuance distinguishing between them. I'm interested in hearing whether other Greek-speakers pick up on those nuances; and I'll propose (in my typical irresponsible way) that those nuances can be explained through persistence.

Persistence is a property that has been claimed of grammaticalisation—the process where content words turn into function words. But persistence can be said to apply in semantic change in general, and it's not a particularly surprising concept. The claim of persistence is that, when a word changes function and starts playing a new role, that some components of the meaning of the old word persist, and are inherited by the word in its new role.

To take one example: the going to/gonna future started off with a verb indicating motion towards; the will future started off with a verb indicating desire; the shall future started off with a verb indicating obligation. The notion of moving towards a goal with going to in its new function as a future marker—as Bybee & Pagliuca have argued; for example, in its stronger emphasis of preexisting intention, and on the apparent inevitability of the future event, in contrast to will futures.

Bybee, Joan L. & Pagliuca, W. 1987. The evolution of future meaning. Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 247–264. This paper by Steve Nicolle has a couple of examples from them towards the end.

To take a more concrete example: in many languages, a verb for "take" ends up being an accusative marker: "he takes a stick, breaks (it)" ends up interpreted as "he, (accusative) a stick, breaks"; that has happened in the African language Twi, with the verb-turned-particle de.

Example from Lord, Carol. 1993. Historical change in serial verb constructions. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Now, de has a seemingly arbitrary restriction, that you can only use it before objects that already exist: you cannot use if for an object that the verb brings into being. You can say "he de fire brought to his brother", but you can't say "he de letter wrote to me". With persistence, though, the restriction makes sense: you can only take things if they already exist. You can take a fire and bring it to your brother, but you can't take a letter and *then* write it to your brother. de in its new function is merely continuing to precede the kinds of objects that "take" precedes.

That's our linguistic theory; let's see how we can apply it. Our two particles, άμε and άντε, look like imperatives. They look so much like imperatives, that they have plural counterparts: άμε "you (singular) go!" has a plural αμέτε—which we're about to run into again in connection with αμέτι Μουχαμέτι. άιντε also has a plural άιντεστε. Both plurals are slightly odd: the regular plurals should have been άμετε (which apparently exists, though I've never heard it), and *άντετε. I can guess why they look like they do, but the plurals aren't the point of the article.

(For the record though, my guess is: *άγωμε-τε > *άγωμέτε > αμέτε, and άντε > άντες > άντεστε by analogy with βγες > βγέστε. I see the Triandaphyllides Institute dictionary thinks instead αμέτε is accented by analogy with ελάτε "come!"; *shrug* maybe.)

In fact, the plurals are Modern Greek linguistic creativity: the two words άμε and άντε look like singular imperatives (they end in -e), and they act like imperatives (πήγαινε στο πηγάδι "go to the well", άμε/άντε στο πηγάδι "go! to the well"). But historically they are not imperatives at all.

άμε originates in the Ancient 1st person plural subjunctive ἄγωμεν, "let us lead!" = "let us go!". (The switch from "lead" to "go" for ἄγωμεν in particular is already in the New Testament: Mark 1:38 "Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages", ἄγωμεν ἀλλαχοῦ εἰς τὰς ἐχομένας κωμοπόλεις.) In Early Modern Greek, a lot of compulsory final /n/'s got treated as optional, liaison /n/'s. That meant ἄγωμεν ended up as άγωμε, which now looked like an imperative, and could be applied to "you" rather than "us". But that's the final stage in a development that must already been underway for a long time beforehand.

The same development is underway right now for let's in English. Historically let's is let us, so it only refers to an action undertaken by us. But let's is gradually starting to be used as if the "us" is not there: let's you and him fight may be used in jest, but the seemingly redundant let's you and I (270,000 Google hits) clearly isn't. What's happening with let's is classic semantic bleaching: the "us" component of the meaning of let's is starting to fade away; the "this should happen" component remains.

The same looks like it has happened for ἄγωμεν: the meaning has shifted from the Classical "let us lead!", to Jesus' "let's go!", to a subsequent bleached "someone should go", to a refocused "*you* should go". The switch is certainly complete by ca. 1364, and the Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds, where the horse says to the donkey: ἄγωμε μὲ τὴν κάμηλον τὴν μακροσφονδυλάτην, "go with the long-necked camel!" (and certainly not "let's go with the long-necked camel": the point of the poem is pairs of animals argue about their merits, and one drives the other off the stage).

In fact, άγωμε is pretty out of place as a vernacular verb in 1364. The verb άγω is not supposed to have survived, and a distinct present subjunctive (άγωμε as distinct from the indicative *άγουμε) certainly should not have survived. That this subjunctive had survived this long indicates that people no longer realised it was a subjunctive at all: it was by then just a particle, like let's is starting to be. And as a particle, άμε was ripe for reanalysis as an imperative.

That's άμε. The other particle, άιντε ~ άντε, has been derived from the same verb, tortuously, as ἄγε δή, "go indeed!" or ἄγετε "you all, go!" The proposals doesn't make phonological sense, and δή looks particularly suspicious; but they serves a greater political goal—and Brian Joseph has already lambasted them for it:

Joseph, B.D. 1985. European Hellenism and Greek Nationalism: Some Effects of Ethnocentrism on Greek Linguistic Scholarship. Journal of Modern Greek Studies 3: 87–96. p. 91.

A Hellenic etymology of άιντε avoids the blindingly obvious etymology of άιντε, which is Turkic: Turkish haydı.

(The Triantaphyllides Institute etymology is from άμετε > άμτε > άντε. Less insane, but I don't particularly see the plural origin as necessary; and to their credit, they also allow the derivation I think obvious.)

Forms of hayda "go!" turn up not only in Turkish hayda ~ haydı, but also Crimean Turkish hayde, and Tatar aida "interjection of encouragement", eyde "listen! faster! go ahead!" They also turn up throughout the Balkans—as well as Russian and Czech, thanks to the Tatars and not the Greeks: Russian (г)айда (g)ajda, Czech hajdy.

The etymology of haydı is not settled. If it breaks down as hay + da, (h)ay could be either the interjection (h)ay "ah!", associated with compassion, terror, nostalgia or a call to attention; de would then be the particle de, expressing impatience (which Modern Greek knows as ντε, and which corresponds to Yiddish-flavoured alright already). But while hay de would explain haydı through vowel harmony, it wouldn't explain hayda.

Less problematically, haydı could originate from the verb ayda "to drive animals; to steal animals away from their owner". That verb has a much further spread into Asia, all the way to Tuva (Chagatai and Uighur haida, Tuvan aida, Tatar ayda, eyde, Crimean Turkish aida, Turkish hayda, Kazakh aida, Kirghiz aida). Not so coincidentally, that verb has the same meaning that ἄγω originally had. And the verb may ultimately be related to the interjection ay after all: ayda may come from "ay" la, "to shout 'hey!'".

Turkic data and etymologies from: Radloff, W. 1893–98. Опыть Словаря Тюркскихъ нарѣчій. St Petersburg: Glasunoff.

Those are our etymologies: άμε from "let's go", a exhortion—and, more remotely, from a verb for driving cattle; άντε directly from a verb for driving cattle (and possibly influenced by a particle expressing impatience). Both were tied up three thousand years ago with driving cattle, but their more recent past, and their distinct reference to "us" vs "you", should differentiate them. That's the point I was making last post about metaphorical accounts of language change: what the word meant 3000 years ago is not as important for persistence as what the word meant 1500 years ago.

So given persistence, we *could* expect that άμε should be more about encouragement, and άντε more peremptory: άμε as a more positive notion, and άντε as a more negative. FWIW, I get these Google counts for a common blessing and curse with the two particles:

	άμε	άντε	Ratio
στο καλό "to the Good"	13000	81600	1:6.3
στο διάολο "to the Devil"	6150	56500	1:9.2

Not an overwhelming difference, but it is something.

The distinction Vasilis Orfanos has observed from older Modern Greek texts and folksong is is different:

When we urge someone to leave from the place we are at and to go somewhere else, we have an itinerary in mind. From the examples I have gathered, mainly from older Greek texts and folk song, it seems to me that when we use άμε we are imagining them arriving at the end of the itinerary, while when we use άντε it's their departure that dominates in our mind. Of course as the years passed, the one usage influenced the other.

In other words, άμε emphasises the destination of movement, and άντε the origin of movement. In more crude terms (and not necessarily quite the nuance Orfanos is appealing to), άμε implies "get to X", άντε implies "go away from X".

If that distinction was in place, we can tell a story to explain it: given the egocentric perspective of language-speakers (which is just cognitive psychology, and not a character flaw), we want good things to happen to good people, but we want bad things to be away from us. If we're sending off both a good thing and a bad thing, we don't care where the bad thing ends up, as long as it's the hell away from us: that's the emphasis on the origin of movement, on "go away". The good thing, on the other hand, we want to succeed; and success is arriving where it set out to go: that's the emphasis on destination, on "get to X".

I'm not overwhelmingly convinced by my argument, but it's possible. A problem is, while άμε is limited to encouragement of movement (persistence yet again, since ἄγω was a verb of movement), άντε is used quite broadly, and can also be as a word of (pleading) encouragement: "oh, go on!".

(The range of meanings άντε can take is extraordinary, all the way to illocutionary exhortation: έξι, άντε εφτά "six, at most seven" is actually literally "six—oh, go on then, seven", meaning "go on, have it your way, I'll allow the number's closer to what you think than what I think". How the pragmatics works is another post. How closely the Greek range of άντε matches the Turkish range of haydı is another post still.)

I do still think that, when used specifically with respect to movement, and without a whining tone of voice, άντε is by default negative, "get away from here"; pleading, after all, is still closer to "I wish you'd go away" than "I hope you arrive safely." So I don't think the pleading sense of άντε is inconsistent with an emphasis of movement away from X, rather than towards X.

But that's me. What do you think? If you speak Greek, do either of our surmises on the connotations of άμε and άντε match your understanding of Greek?
...Read more

Pontic locatives

In the last post, I said—somewhat flippantly—that the locative adverbs of Pontic are neurotic; and John Cowan asked me to spell out how.

To do so, I've gone through the 60 pp discussion of George Drettas' 1993 grammar of Pontic, Aspects pontiques. I have to say, I don't like Drettas' grammar; as a friend said to me, "it's very French". By that, I don't just mean that it's *in* French—which makes it looking through a dark glass for me; it also means that it takes an approach to grammar which I'm unfamiliar with, and its exposition is rather too leisurely, and at times woolly.

On the other hand, it has the rare benefit among grammars of Modern Greek dialects that it treats the dialect as a linguistic system in its own right, and it does not merely list the ways it differs from Standard Modern Greek—as most dialect grammars do. Some of the paths Pontic grammar has taken are quite alien to the Standard dialect; so this is well-justified for Pontic. In fact, Drettas gives his Pontic in IPA; given my readership, I'm transliterating back to Greek.

I won't resist the comparison to Modern Greek locatives either. As I said last post, Standard Modern Greek is rather limited in its means of expressing location. A couple of prepositions: από (motion from, location away from), σε (motion to, location on), and I guess μέχρι/ώς (up to). The rest is done by adverbs: μπροστά, μέσα, πάνω, πίσω "front, inside, above, behind" etc. The adverbs can be prefixed with απο- , which still means "away from" (motion or location); so βάλ' το πάνω "put it up", βάλ' το αποπάνω "put it up from = put it over, put it above".

Pontic also has a limited repertoire of spatial prepositions: σ', ας, ους, corresponding to Standard σε, από, ώς. (Etymologically ας corresponds to Ancient ἐκ ~ ἐξ, which elsewhere survived as αχ ~ οχ.) It also has a list of adverbs to supplement them, quite similar to Standard Greek. So Pontic distinguishes between άν "up" and απάν "above", and κά "down" and αφκά "below"; the latter pair corresponds to κάτω and αποκάτω, and the former to πάνω and αποπάνω. (Etymologically πάνω is itself a compound of ἐπί + ἄνω "on + up", and Pontic άν is of course merely ἄνω.) So απάν, αφκά, and απές "inside" are primitive adverbs of Pontic that already include the απο- prefix etymologically.

But beyond those etymological instances, Pontic can also prefix απο- optionally to a productive range of locative adverbs. Those locative adverbs start with words for "here" and "there".

Pontic has three words for "here" and "there", ακεί means "yonder"; αδά means "here (close to me)", and ατού means "there (not close to me, though still nearby)". By default, ατού means "close to you"; but if you're next to me, I would use αδά and not ατού. The distinction corresponds to the three-way distinction in Latin of hic, iste, ille (and I render it here as "here, there, yonder")—but not to Modern Greek εδώ and εκεί. (ατού corresponds to Modern Greek αυτού "there", but αυτού is deprecated in the Standard, and I'm not aware that it is systematically distinguished from εκεί.)

Pontic can prefix these locations with από, and so far that is just like Standard Greek: Standard Greek αποδώ, αποκεί "over here, over there; from here, from there", Pontic απαδά, απατού, απακεί.

But Pontic goes further. "Here" and "there", whether or not with a "from" prefix, can be suffixed with the adverbs for "above, below, inside, behind", απάν, αφκά, απές, οπίς. So "Go away" in Standard Greek is φύγε από δω, "leave from here". In Pontic, it is φύγον απατουπές, "leave from there inside" (από + ατού + απές). "Come up!", "He fell down", and "Look in!" are έλ αδαπάν "come here up", έρουξεν εκιαφκά "he fell yonder down", and τέρεν ατουπές "look there inside". You can use the adverbs on their own (as you would in Standard Greek), but Pontic tends to insert the location as the starting point.

What gets even harder to pin down are the four additional particles that can be added on after the adverbs; they are impossible to gloss in Standard Greek, and not much easier to gloss in French. Drettas' 15 pp discussion does not leave me much clearer about what they mean, but I gather that:

• κες means "trajectory, direction, orientation, vector"
  
• κιάν means "space, volume moved through, space apart from"
  
• κα means "this is the new reference point of the discourse; this is a specific location"
  
• κεκά means "in the vicinity of"

I'm going to give examples from Drettas', which are supposed to illustrate how this all works, though some of them leave me even more confused:

• επίεν οκςςου-κές "he went out" (in the direction of outside)
  
• εκάθουμνες οκςςο-κά "we were sitting outside" (and "outside" is now the reference point for what I say next)
  
• αδα-κές "hither"
  
• πού-κες "whither?"
  
• οψές επέρασα ασην Αθήναν κες "last night I passed through Athens" (emphasis on going through Athens, following a path)
  
• οψές επέρασα ασην Αθήναν κιαν "last night I passed through Athens" (emphasis on getting away from Athens) [hilariously, a Pontic speaker used them to show Drettas the difference between κες and κιαν—but he glosses them identically]
  
• σύρεατεν σο φουρνίν κιαν "he threw her into the oven" ("at the oven movement-through")
  
• σύρεατεν σο φουρνίν κες "he threw her towards the oven" [I made up this example, hoping I got it right]
  
• εσύ αδα-κές μαναςςέσα πώς είσαι; "how did you end up here all alone?" (the subject is not still moving, but κές means she has moved)
  
• ατείν τα εικόνας-ατουν είχαν-ατ αφκα-κές, εσκάλεζαν κ' επέγνανε, καταφύιον εποίνανε και είχανε τα εικόνας εκειαφκά "they kept their icons downwards (= hiding them under the floorboards); they kept digging, made a shelter, and kept their icons down yonder [no added particle]"
  
• ατου-κιάν "over there" (across from here)
  
• ας εκείν την ημέραν κιαν "from that day forward..." (that day is set apart from the future)
  
• ο ήλιον αφκά-κιαν 'κι στεκ "the sun won't stay down" ("down", conceived as being within the space between the earth and the heavens, that the sun can move through)
  
• θα κόφτω και τεσόν το κιφάλ θα βάλ-ατ εκε-κά "I'll chop of your head, and I'll put it yonder (in my sack)" ("yonder" relative to the here-and-now, but "here" relative to the story's context: that is the reference point)
  
• αβούτο κείτ εκε-κά και 'κ' ελέπσ-ατο "it's sitting right there and you can't see it" (it's there, but "there" is now where we're focussing attention in the discussion, as the reference point)
  
• εκαλάτςςεβαμ εκε-κά κάτ ελέγαμεν "we were speaking there, we were saying something" (the action has a reference point as its location, so it is a specific instance)
  
• ποντιακά εκαλάτςςεβαμ ε-κές "we were speaking Pontic thither" (the action has a direction rather than a reference point as its location, so it is not specific: it is interpreted as "we used to speak in Pontic in general")
  
• πού-κεκα "where exactly?" (in the vicinity of where)
  
• έτρεξεν κ' έρθεν σον α-Εάνην κεκά "he ran up to St John's church" (lit. "he ran and went to the vicinity of St John")
  
• εκατήβαν εκεί σα χοράφ-εαμουν κεκά "they came down yonder, near our fields" (lit. "to the vicinity of our fields")
  
• ασό δρανίν απαν-κεκά ετέρναν "they looked from up on the roof" (lit. "they looked from the roof, in the vicinity of above")
  
• αδα-κά, ακε-κά, σο καφούλ οπισ-κεκά "right here, right there, behind that bush" (lit. "in the vicinity of behind the bush")

The distinctions are extraordinarily subtle, and I'm not sure I've quite got them. Often enough, it seems, κες means "towards" ("hither", "passed through") and κιάν means "away from" ("from that day forward", "into the oven"). But ποντιακά εκαλάτςςεβαμ ε-κές "we were speaking Pontic thither" does not involve any motion towards, but some notion of κες as a generic location; while the sun in ο ήλιον αφκά-κιαν 'κι στεκ "the sun won't stay down" is not yet away from the horizon, κιαν merely indicates that it *will* move away. And I'm sure I'm vague on the perspective shift introduced by κα.

Now that said, none of this is that unusual from the viewpoint of human languages: there are other languages that will say things like φύγον απατουπές, "leave from there inside", or will do perspective shifts like κα does, or will distinguish between vectors and spaces like κες and κιαν do. But there's nothing particularly Indo-European about how Pontic has done it: Pontic is regaining the subtleties of Ancient Greek prepositions, but it isn't using cases and lots of prepositions to do it. And John Cowan has surely been reminded of Lojban from about the third paragraph of this post; but I'm reasonably certain Pontic hasn't picked this behaviour up from Lojban either.

As will be no surprise to anyone, this looks like influence from Caucasian languages, as Drettas concludes: the neighbouring Laz has at least 48 different preverbs indicating spatial orientation and direction. (And "Laz" is what Pontians actually called themselves before the scholars renamed them after the Black Sea.) The picture of the Laz preverbs Sylvia Kutscher sketches is absurdly rich. Pontic's locative adverbs, its "above" and "inside" and "behind", are not ultimately alien from the rest of Greek even if their combinatorics are. Laz is certainly on a much more neurotic level still; Pontic does not make distinctions like dolo- vs. mola- (pouring into the mouth of someone lying down vs. pouring into the mouth of someone standing up; the bottle is in the basket vs. the cup is in the cupboard.)

But the parameters Laz appeals to, such as orientation, shape, and horizontal vs vertical (which Setatos before Drettas had suggested to explain κες vs κιαν)—all sound like they have rubbed off on their Greek-speaking neighbours. ...Read more

GTAGE: We have removed him John

The Golden Treasury of Anglo-Greek Expressions (GTAGE) at slang.gr (see my pretext for this thread) begins with the enigmatic syntax of the following idiom:

we have not seen him yet, and we have removed him John: ακόμα δεν τον είδαμε, Γιάννη τον εβγάλαμε.

The actually meaning of the phrase is rather more transparent: "we have not seen him yet, [but] we have [already] named him John". It's said to refer to rushing to conclusions, assessing an outcome before all the facts are in.

But what I have translated as "named" really is literally "removed". Why is naming associated with removing?

What's actually happened of course is that the verb  βγάζω is used more generally than "remove". This can be explained through an underlying difference between Greek and English: βγάζω does not mean just to take something out of a set; it also means to put that something into a bigger set. Not just "remove from", but "expose to"; not just "take out from", but "put out to".

English doesn't make that conflation, which is why the GTAGE translation can use remove incorrectly. You can βγάζω εφημερίδα, which is to put out a newspaper (publish it), whereas βγάζω την εφημερίδα with the definite article would be taken as taking out the newspaper (remove it physically). English does allow you to take someone out (e.g. to dinner); but that's always about accompanying someone into public view. The corresponding idiom in Greek is να σε βγάλω στην κοινωνία "to put you out into society"—to make them aware of the ways of the world.

Putting something out means exposing it to the world, which means making it known to the world. And the main way of making something known is by giving it a name for the world to use. The fuller expression for "naming someone" is τού έβγαλα το όνομα Γιάννης, "I put out for him the name John". The point of naming is not that I have something to call John by; it's publishing the name, so that the rest of the world has something to call him by too. The expression has been compacted into the small-clause ditransitive you see, τον έβγαλα Γιάννη "I put him out John"—i.e. "I published him (to be) John", just like "I painted him (to be) white".

The same notion of "putting out" as public knowledge can be seen in:

He/she took them out arseholes: Τους έβγαλε μαλάκες

This is not quite "he named them arseholes" (though it can mean that too); but it is "he put them out (to be) arseholes", "he publicised them (to be) arseholes". The sense here is "proved them (in public) to be"; we dodge the "naming" sense here, because "arseholes" is not a name, it's a description, and descriptions put out in public have to be proved to be accepted.

The same principle motivates the expression μη με βγάλεις ψεύτη, "don't put me out (to be) a liar", "don't prove me a liar": namely, "don't make it a commonly accepted judgement that I am a liar". The expression corresponds to English don't let me down. The premiss is that I have publicly sung your praises as a person able to see something through; you should "not make the public think I was lying", by not living up to those expectations.

So we have names being put out, and descriptions being put out; but putting out the name of someone means something different again:

Eye-removal beats name-removal: Κάλλιο να σου βγει το μάτι παρά το όνομα

Literally, "Better that your eye be put out than your name." The expression is playing with the double meaning of βγάζω, because βγάζω το μάτι σου really does mean removing someone's eye. What does putting out the name of someone mean? It can't be giving someone a name: the definite article implies this is not a newly coined name (it's not: "than that someone makes up a name for you").

This context is more obscure, but "name" here stands in for "reputation": people with a good or bad reputation are said to have a good or bad name (καλό, κακό όνομα). Which makes sense, since the name is the public label for the person, and is what public judgement of the person is attached to. "To have a name put out" means to get a reputation, to have one's name put out in circulation for public judgement. And in closed societies, having one's name put out for public judgement is not normally a good thing.

… Did you work all that out? Or, to quote GTAGE,

Have you removed edge; Έβγαλες άκρη;

Surprisingly perhaps, we're back to "taking out", rather than "putting out". The image is of a complicated shape, standing in for the problem, which the person is trying to work out. Working out the shape means extricating its edges from the jumble: not necessarily removing them physically from the jumble, but distinguishing them—removing them conceptually. The corresponding phrase in English, though with a slightly different image, is get to the bottom of this.

Although getting to the bottom of things is a responsibility not everyone is eager to undertake, if they have to live with the consequences:

Will I extract the snake from the hole; Εγώ θα βγάλω το φίδι από την τρύπα;

For a change, the translation is straightforward. It makes it to GTAGE because it's an image unfamiliar from English, but the image is clear: getting the snake out of the hole is to the public benefit of the farmworkers, otherwise the snake could strike them at any time. But the speaker doesn't want to be the one to have to do it; and the inclusion of the personal pronoun is emphatic. ("Will I have to get the snake out of the hole?")

If you don't live up to your expectations, though,

I don't have face to exit in society: Δεν έχω πρόσωπο να βγω στην κοινωνία

This unintentionally makes sense in English, because English borrowed from Chinese the concept of "face" as public reputation. Greek does not use πρόσωπο in that way as much, but this template of putting one's face out in public as confidence does turn up elsewhere; a variant of the expression is με τι μούτρα θα βγεις την κοινωνία; "with what sort of a face will you go out into society", using the vulgar word for "face".

The verb is not βγάζω "take out, put out", but the related βγαίνω "go out", though with the same kind of ambiguity GTAGE exploits for βγάζω: going out of a place (exiting), vs. going out in public. "Face" here is used as a vehicle of shame: if a person is embarrassed, their face will be blushing, and will give the person's shame away. It will not be a face that one can get away with showing in public, "that one can go out with in society". I'm assuming the concept of blushing is behind the Chinese notion of Face as well.
...Read more

Chantakites: Linguistic analysis

As I promised, I'm going to walk through the linguistic particularities of Manuel Chantakites' letter. This is pretty usual in the philological editions of Early Modern texts: there'll be a couple of pages in the preface enumerating linguistic oddities, working their way up from phonology through to syntax (and not getting far beyond syntax, or a 19th century understanding of linguistics). To Greek speakers this may well be obvious—no edition would go into this much detail. But particularly because of the Cretan dialect involved, I might as well go all the way through.

In the following, CSMG = Contemporary Standard Modern Greek. The sentence references to the text (repeated at the end) are given in brackets.

Phonology: There are a lot of final n's, as was the case throughout transcriptions of Modern Greek until the past century. This does not necessarily mean they were pronounced, or they were not. CSMG has dropped a lot of final n's, although there is still variability and debate about it. But final /n/ is dropped in αν "if" before consonants, where CSMG would retain it (7, 8, 18).

Final euphonic /n/ has extended analogically to infinitives, giving the innovating είσταιν (7) "to be" alongside είσται (9) (Classical εἶσθαι, with the regular vernacular sound change /sθ/ > /st/.)

πίκρα "bitterness", πικραίνω "to embitter" has been metathesised to πρίκα, πρικαίνω (2, 3, 4). That kind of metathesis is common (/#pr/ is easier than /-kr-/); I've even heard αρθιμός for αριθμός. CSMG has done away with these by etymological spelling.

γλήγορος "fast" for γρήγορος < ἐγρήγορος "alert" is common in non-standardised Greek. By contrast, the etymological αδέλφια, αδελφήν "siblings, sister" (13, 14) have not shifted to the Modern αδέρφια, αδερφή.

Clitic pronouns can have euphonic final /e/: τηνε "her" (to avoid final /n/ before a consonant) (2). In CSMG, that is now restricted to song lyrics, but it is still a prominent feature of Cretan.

/evo/ verbs display an epenthetic gamma: γυρεύγεις for γυρεύεις "you seek" (2). This is routine in non-standardised variants of Modern Greek.

Some of the routine aphaeresis of Modern Greek has not happened in this text, although as usual it's hard to know whether that's because the spelling is being archaic, or the change hadn't happened yet. So επρίκανες for πίκρανες "you embittered" (2), εδική for δική "proper" (3), ωσάν for σάν "as, when" (2), οπού for που "relativiser" (3). (But the Modern Cretan for που is απού, so the initial vowel was retained.) OTOH, νοίκια > ενοίκια "rents" (2), και εθάρρουν (4) vs. και θάρρουν (9).

By contrast, the text shows some instances of και "and" with the same initial vowel, οκαί (2, 8, 18). This was a short-lived innovation in Early Modern Greek, and it showed that forms like οπού and που coexisted—so that οκαί::και was remodelled by analogy to οπού::που.

Ancient χρυσοχόος "goldsmith" has been rendered as χρουσοχός (20): the variant χρουσός for χρυσός is entrenched in unstandardised Greek, and the hiatus of /oos/ has been eliminated. CSMG has reintroduced the ancient form.

Morphology: The stressed augment of ήμαθα "I learned" (16), ήκαμες "you did" (9), and ήλεγες "you were saying" (16, 17) are /i/ rather than /e/. The spelling analyses it as a "double augment", which occasionally turns up in Ancient Greek (mostly because the verb had a variant with an initial vowel already.) The /i/ augment has become regular in Modern Eastern Cretan, and this seems to be the start of it; it is still not regular, given έκαμα "I did" (3), έμαθα "I learned" (5). The augment of ήκουσα "I heard" (2) (Ancient ἤκουσα, Modern άκουσα) should be interpreted the same way, rather than as an archaic survival.

έναι (19) for "is" is transitional between ἔνι "is in", which is common in Early Modern Greek and underlies Cypriot έν, and CSMG είναι, which has levelled the stem to the other present tense persons (είμαι, είσαι, είναι).

εθάρρουν "I trusted" (4) retains the ancient imperfect ending, as does Modern Cretan. CSMG uses the Northern Greek ending -ούσα.

The genitive κυρού of κύρης > κύριος "master = father" (21) can be explained through the occasional Byzantine variant κυρός.

The infinitive survives only in restricted roles—here, only in the future construction θέλω + Infinitive (7, 8, 11). This future construction is contrasted with the literal meaning of θέλω "I want", which takes the subjunctive (18, 19).

The future construction of CSMG, θα + Subjunctive, has two antecedents in Early Modern Greek: either Conjugated θέλω + Infinitive Verb, or Infinitive θέλει + Conjugated Subjunctive (θέλω έλθει(ν), θέλει έλθω "I will come"). The CSMG construction comes from the second structure: θέλει έλθω > θέλει να έλθω (with the verb dependency explicitly as a subjunctive) > θε να έλθω > θα έρθω. Modern Cretan retains the first structure, with the main verb preposed: έλθει(ν) θέλω > να έρθει θέλω (with the infinitive reinterpreted as a subjunctive). Chantakites has the earlier infinitival construction, both in normal ordering (θέλω είσταιν "I will be" 7) and with the characteristically Cretan preposing (έλθει θέλω " I will come" 8, εγνωρίσει θέλω "I will know" 10)

The conditional construction, which parallels the future but uses past tenses on the main verb, is also present: ήθελεν είσται "would be" (9).

Lexicon: The letter uses πατέρας for "father" (1, 2, 16): it's the reflex of ancient πατήρ, and the neutral CSMG word. The marginal note to his wife at the end uses the Cretan word κύρης, "lord" (21). That suggests Manuel is being formal and aloof when addressing his father. The same goes for μητέρα "mother" (1) vs. μάννα "mum" (21).

Ξέρω "I know" is in its older form, ηξεύρω (< ἐξεύρω "I find out") (2, 16).

Σώνει "it saves" has the older meaning "it suffices" here (CSMG would used φτάνει) (3).

Θαρρώ "I have courage; I trust" has come to mean "I think, I reckon" in CSMG. The letter illustrates how this may have happened (4): "I have courage in you" > "I trust in you" > "I trust in you to make this happen" > "I trust that this will happen" > "I reckon that this will happen".

καύχα "girlfriend" (9) is no longer in use.

τυχαίνω "happen, happen by accident" (9) is used to mean "be appropriate".

άματα "when" (4) is a variant of άμα "when, as soon as" < ἅμα "together". The -τα suffix occurs with other Early Modern adverbs: αντίκρυ-τα "opposite", δίχωσ-τα "separately", είμη-τα "otherwise", and is an analogy with other adverbs ending in -τα (έπειτα "afterwards", ανεθάρρετα "bravely").

φλογοτομάς (4) is a folk-etymological recast of φλεβοτομάς "you cut your veins" after φλογο- "flame". The emotive context may have influenced this.

μηδέν "nothing" is used for μην "not (subjunctive), lest" (4). This corresponds to the use of ουδέν "nothing" instead of ου "not (indicative)" (9), which has resulted in CSMG δεν "not" (17) by aphaeresis.

CSMG οι δικοί μου "my own ones" means "my relatives"; this expression is already present as τους εδικούς μου όλους "all my relatives" (15). The letter rearranges Det Adj N Poss to Det Adj Poss N for emphasis, as CSMG allows: τους καλούς μου εδικούς και τους καλούς μου φίλους "my good friends and my good relatives" (11). But while CSMG allows τους καλούς μου φίλους, it does not allow *τους καλούς μου δικούς. This shows that οι δικοί μου has since been lexicalised, and the possessive can no longer be separated from the noun.

Dialect lexicon: πολλά is Cretan for πολύ "very" (2, 13, 14); the neuter plural used as an adverb is in fact the regular formation in CSMG (e.g. καλά "well"), and the standard language is archaic in retaining the neuter singular for πολύ.

Κατέχω "I possess" has supplanted ξέρω "I know" in Cretan; both are used here (οκαί κατέχεις καλά "and you know well") (3).

τίβοτας (16) is Cretan for τίποτε "anything"; it has developed in Modern Cretan into τίβοτσι.

τεσταμέντο (19) is of course an Italian loanword; Modern Cretan used the Turkish loanword βασιγιέτι (vasiyet).

χέρα "hand" (20) is the expected reflex of Ancient χείρ; it looks in CSMG like an augmentative (contrasted with χέρι < Ancient diminutive χέριον), but is in fact the normal Cretan word.

Syntax: The surname is treated as an apposition: τον Μανοήλ τον Χαντακίτην, "the Manuel the Chantakites" (1). That is a feature of colloquial Greek to this day, and it shows that First Name–Surname is not treated as a single unit.

Indirect objects appear in the genitive, as is common in southern Greek dialect and CSMG. This extends to full nouns, as in γυρεύγεις της νύφης σου νοίκια "you seek rents [to] your daughter-in-law" (2). While the phrase is still possible in colloquial Greek, it is on the decline: for full nouns the standard language prefers explicit prepositions, in this case γυρεύεις από τη νύφη σου νοίκια "you seek rents from your daughter-in-law". The other instance, πέψε το του κυρού μου και της μάννας μου "send it to my father and mother" (21) sounds less strange in CSMG.

Cretan often uses genitive (= dative) indirect objects where CSMG uses accusative direct objects; this is regarded as an archaism. An instance here is ευχαριστώ σου πολλά (10), "I thank you a lot", where CSMG has σε ευχαριστώ πολύ.

Clitic object pronouns moved from postverbal in Ancient Greek to preverbal in CSMG. There is a cline across Modern dialects as to how prevalent this is, and Cretan allows both placements. This text reflects that: πολλά με επρίκανες "you have embittered me a lot" (2), τούτον σου θυμίζω "I remind you of this" (7), but ευχαριστώ σου πολλά "I thank you a lot" (10).

I've already posted about the strange-looking use of να in ήκουσα να γυρεύγεις της νύφης σου νοίκια "I heard that you were seeking rents from your daughter-in-law" (2), and ήλεγες να εβγάλεις την νύφην σου "you were saying that you would kick your daughter-in-law out" (16).

One of the more distinctive features of this text is the use of και "and" to introduce not just new sentences, but verb complements. Again, this is a colloquial feature of Modern Greek (and other Balkan languages), largely curtailed in the standard, which would use ότι instead. So: κατέχεις καλά και μεγάλην πρίκαν της έκαμα εγώ "you know well that I have embittered her greatly" (3); ήμαθα και ήλεγες "I have learned that you have been saying" (16)

The letter uses the counterfactual conditional construction αν A όχι και (αν) B "if A, no and (if) B" (18), or όχι και (αν) B αμέ αν A "no and (if) B, but if A" (9), meaning "even if A, let alone if B". A is the counterfactual, exaggerated condition; B is the condition that actually applies, and which A exaggerates: "even if she were my whore, let alone my wife", "even if I had thousands of thousands, let alone what little I do have". This not survived into Modern Greek, which uses όχι on its own to introduce the actual condition as a small clause, without its own verb, and uses the explicit contrastive αλλά (ούτε) να "but (not even) that (= if)" to introduce the exaggerated counterfactual. So it is closer to όχι και (αν) B αμέ αν A as in (9):

• ότι όχι και ήτονε γυναίκα μου, αμέ αν ήθελεν είσται καύχα μου (lit. "that no and she were my wife, but if she would be my whore") > όχι γυναίκα μου, αλλά ούτε πουτάνα μου να ήταν (lit. no my wife, but not even my whore if she were"), "even if she were my whore, let alone my wife"
  
• αν έχω χίλιες χιλιάδες δουκάτα, όχι και α δεν έχω τίβοτας > ??αν έχω όχι τίποτα, αλλά και χιλιάδες δουκάτα "If I have not nothing, but thousands of ducats"

Moreover, the Modern expression is explicitly counterfactual, so (18) would in fact be αν είχα όχι τίποτα, αλλά και χιλιάδες δουκάτα, "If I had not nothing..." The older construction is not as fixed. Consistent with the use of αν rather than subjunctive να in the counterfactual, the old expression allows a conditional tense: αν ήθελεν είσται "if she would be", Modern αν θα ήταν, να ήταν.

ωσάν "as" is used anaphorically (5): έκαμες ωσάν ήθελες, "you did as you wanted [to do]". In Modern Greek, σαν cannot be used anaphorically, and όπως "as" would be used instead.

The ancient use of genitive after prepositions survives, possibly still in colloquial use, possibly as a learnèd construction: από χολής μου πολλής "from my great vexation" (8), ο Θεός μετά σας "God with you" (12). But the latter is a translation of the Ancient ὁ Θεὸς μεθ’ ἡμῶν, and contrasts with the modern με την χέραν μου "with my hand" (20), with its truncated Modern form με.

The expected article is omitted before "hands" in καταφιλώ χέρια της και τα πόδια της "I kiss her hands and feet" (14), though it is used before "feet". There's no clear reason for the inconsistency, and I think it a lapse. The omitted article in ωσάν άλλα πράγματα "like (the) other things" (18) is also odd.

The free word order of Και τούτον θέλω το γράμμα "and this _i I want the letter _i" (19) is unusual for Modern Greek.

Archaisms: Very few, and where you'd expect them. The date is in the dative: μηνί Μαγίω = μηνὶ Μαΐῳ "in the month of May" (22). The archaic δέ "but" has redundantly attached itself to όμως "but" (12), and ομοίως "likewise" also looks formulaic. The addressing of the latter has the formal πατέραν and μητέραν, and also the archaic spelling υιόν [ion] instead of γιον [jon] "son" (1)—though we don't have a diplomatic transcription, so we don't know if Manuel would have used a more modern rendering anyway. The reduplicated perfect ανωγεγραμμένος "aforesigned" (20) is formulaic (though contrasted with the dialectal με την χέραν μου "with my hand").

Discourse: The epistolary command ήξευρε ότι "Know (this), that…" is used a couple of times (2, 16). The modern verb does not have an imperative (*Ξέρε ότι), but its subjunctive equivalent can still be used with the same meaning (να ξέρεις ότι, "you should know that…")

(1) Εις τον πατέραν μου και την μητέραν μου πολλά προσκυνήματα από εμέναν τον υιόν σας τον Μανοήλ τον Χαντακίτην.

(2) Ήξευρε, πατέρα, ότι πολλά με επρίκανες, ωσάν ήκουσα να γυρεύγεις της νύφης σου νοίκια και να τηνε πρικάνεις. (3) Και σώνει την η εδική μου πρίκα οπού της έκαμα (οκαί κατέχεις καλά και μεγάλην πρίκαν της έκαμα εγώ). (4) Και εθάρρουν εις εσέναν, άματά ’μουν μιαν φοράν το παιδίν σου και εξενιτεύτηκα, να φλογοτομάς το αίμα σου να ποτίζεις την νύφην σου και ποτέ πρίκαν να μηδέν έχει από σένα. (5) Και εγώ έμαθα ότι έκαμες ωσάν ήθελες. (6) Και δοξάζω τον Θεόν. (7) Και τούτον σου θυμίζω, ότι, α δώσει ο Θεός, γλήγορα θέλω είσταιν αυτού· (8) οκαί, αν εμίσσεψα από χολής μου πολλής, έλθει θέλω, α δώσει ο Θεός. (9) Και θάρρουν ότι όχι και ήτονε γυναίκα μου, αμέ αν ήθελεν είσται καύχα μου, ουδέν ετύχαινεν να κάμεις ωσάν μού ’παν ότι ήκαμες. (10) Και ευχαριστώ σου πολλά. (11) Και, α δώσει ο Θεός να έλθω και εγώ αυτού, εγνωρίσει θέλω τους καλούς μου εδικούς και τους καλούς μου φίλους. (12) Όμως δε ο Θεός μετά σας.

† (13) Όλα μου τα αδέλφια πολλά καταφιλώ. (14) Και το περιπλέον την σπλαχνικήν μου αδελφήν την κερ-Αντωνίαν την Μαρμαράδαιναν πολλά καταφιλώ χέρια της και τα πόδια της. (15) Ομοίως και τους γαμπρούς μου και τους εδικούς μου όλους.

† (16) Ήξευρε, πατέρα, ότι ήμαθα και ήλεγες να εβγάλεις την νύφην σου από τα σπίτια της, α μου έρθει τίβοτας. (17) Κ’ ήλεγες το θέλημά σου. (18) Και εγώ λέγω, οκαί αν έχω χίλιες χιλιάδες δουκάτα, όχι και α δεν έχω τίβοτας, θέλω να είναι όλα εδικά της, τόσο σπίτια, ωσάν άλλα πράγματα. (19) Και τούτον θέλω το γράμμα να έναι τεσταμέντο και ό,τι γράφω να έναι στερεόν.

(20) Εγώ ανωγεγραμμένος Μανουήλ ο χρουσοχός έγραψα με την χέραν μου.

(21) († Τούτον, ωσάν το αναγνώσεις, πέψε το του κυρού μου και της μάννας μου.)

† (22) Εγράφη μηνί Μαγίω εις την πρώτην.

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Generalised use of να in Early Modern Greek

I've been reluctant to write this post for a couple of reasons:

1. It requires dropping a moderate amount of linguistic science;
   
2. I'm not prepared to do either the research or the bibliographic survey to back it up;
   
3. It's probably already been worked out by the Grammar of Mediaeval Greek people.

If the latter is the case, then it won't be the first time Notis is more up to date than I am. But I'll write, and I'll see who bites.

In a previous post, I mentioned that I'd like to do a detailed linguistic survey of the 1420 letter by Manuel Chantakites, and how its language differs from contemporary standard Greek (and for that matter contemporary Cretan). Readers remarked that the letter was remarkably readable. But there is one feature of the text that, although readable, is emphatically absent from contemporary Greek. It has to do with how να is used.

You can no longer say sentences like this:

• ωσάν ήκουσα να γυρεύγεις της νύφης σου νοίκια, "when I heard that you are asking for rent from your daughter-in-law" (Manuel is not physically present)
  
• ήμαθα και ήλεγες να εβγάλεις την νύφην σου από τα σπίτια της, "I have learned you've been saying that you would kick your daughter-in-law out of her houses"

The phrases would now be:

• σαν άκουσα πως/ότι γυρεύεις από τη νύφη σου νοίκια
  
• έμαθα πως έλεγες πως/ότι θα βγάλεις τη νύφη σου από τα σπίτια της.

I'm going to work through why this is an oddity, and what I think has happened. I am also going to tie it in to another expression which is just as impossible in Modern Greek:

• Τότε να είδες τα βουνά, να είδες και τους κάμπους / να είδες και τα δάσητα, να είδες τας λαγκάδας, "You should have seen the mountains and the prairies! You should have seen the forests and ravines!" (Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds 103-104)

Modern Greek would use after να not the perfective past (the aorist indicative, historically), but the imperfective past (the imperfect indicative, historically):

Τότε να έβλεπες τα βουνά, να έβλεπες και τους κάμπους / να έβλεπες και τα δάση, να έβλεπες τις λαγκάδες

And I'm going to claim these differences are related.

It will take a lot less time to say this if I presuppose you're all linguists, which you're not; I'm going to give the opaque summary here, and the semantics lesson under the fold.

Early Modern Greek να appears to have been used more broadly as a complementiser than its current distribution associated with events and dubitatives, contrary to its purposive etymology and indeed the further restriction on factual complements in Modern Cretan. This may be associated with a temporary generalisation of να to more "indicative" contexts, e.g. as a future marker, and its use with the historical indicative aorist in optative as well as evidential contexts.

Understood? No? Well, let's walk through this.

In Modern Greek, να is the main subjunctive marker; historically it is derived from ἵνα "in order to". να has displaced the Ancient infinitive, so verbs with να appear where Ancient Greek used the subjunctive, the optative, or the infinitive. One of its main functions, just like the infinitive's, is to introduce complements of verbs: phrases that are the objects of verbs. ("I like to watch", Μου αρέσει να κοιτάζω, φιλῶ βλέπειν).

But whereas the Ancient infinitive could introduce a broad range of complements, να is more restricted. Like the English infinitive, it mostly introduces events, things that happen; and unlike a lot of "indirect discourse" Classical infinitives, it does *not* introduce facts or propositions, pieces of knowledge. Those instead are introduced by ότι or πως. (Some complements also have που or και or nothing, but I don't want to get distracted.) So:

• Άρχισα να διαβάζω, "I began to study"
  
• Θέλω να διαβάσει, "I want him to study"
  
• Σε διατάζω να διαβάσεις, "I command you to study"
  
• Λέει πως διαβάζει, "He says he's studying"
  
• Νομίζω πως διαβάζει, "I think he's studying"

In fact, by switching between να and πως, you change whether a fact or an event is involved, and thereby you change the meaning of the verb. Which is pretty common across languages:

• Τον άκουσα να βρίζει, "I heard him swear" (I perceived an event)
  
• Άκουσα πως έβριζε, "I heard that he swore" (I perceived a claim = proposition, and not an event)
  
• Του είπα να διαβάσει, "I told him to study" (I spoke an event—which is reintepreted to: I commanded an event)
  
• Λέω να διαβάσω, "I'm considering studying" (lit. "I say that I should study": I spoke an event I will carry out—which idiomatically means I'm thinking aloud about doing an event, I'm making a commitment)
  
• Ξέρω πως διαβάζω, "I know that I'm studying" (I know a fact)
  
• Ξέρω να διαβάζω, "I know how to study" (I know an event—I know how to make the event happen)

There is an exception in Modern Greek where να can introduce a proposition. That means putting a proposition in a grammatical context which doesn't fit propositions; and the context is expressing doubt about the proposition:

• Πιστεύω πως διαβάζει, "I think that he's studying"
  
• Πιστεύω να διαβάζει, "I *think* that he might be studying"

You can't do that with more certain verbs: ??Ξέρω να διαβάζει, "I know that he might be studying". (Works in English, not in Greek.) And that exception makes sense because of comparable constructions, where the να-clause introduces an inference, rather than a certain fact—i.e., again, a proposition:

• Πρέπει να διαβάσει, "He must study" (an event that must happen)
  
• Πρέπει να διάβασε, "He must have studied" (a proposition that must be true)
  
• Να διαβάζει; "Might he be studying?"

The doubting clauses and the inferences are all tied together by the tenses they allow. Normally, να introduces a present imperfective or present perfective—the historical present subjunctive and aorist subjunctive. It can introduce the present imperfect—the historical imperfect indicative—in contexts much like the English conditional and the Classical optative: wishes, counterfactual conditions, future-in-past:

• Αχ να διάβαζε! "If only he'd study"
  
• Αν διάβαζε, θα πρόκοβε "If he'd study, he'd get ahead"
  
• Μου είπε πως θα διάβαζε "He said he'd study (= was going to study)"

I'm treating the future marker θα as an extension of να: it is derived from θέλω να "I want to" (like English will), and has similar tense restrictions.

The past perfective—the historical aorist indicative—is normally too "indicative" to appear with να. As it turns out, it never appears with events:

• *Άρχισα να διάβασα
  
• *Θέλω να διάβασε
  
• *Σε διατάζω να διάβασες

It only appears with propositions put in doubt, and inferences (which are intrinsically doubtful):

• Πιστεύω να διάβασε, "I think he might have study"
  
• Πρέπει να διάβασε, "He must have studied"
  
• Να διάβασε; "Might he have studied?
  
• Μου είπε πως θα διάβασε "He said that he will have studied (= must have) studied)"

So this is a reinterpretation of να, away from events and into doubtful propositions. We could speculate that the shift of πρέπει "must", from obligation to inference (deontic to epistemic), came first, because it would explain the shift from event to proposition; but the Ancient subjunctive also conveyed this sort of doubt as a main clause. Typically introduced by μη, but then the Modern equivalent is typically introduced by μήπως:

• μὴ ἀγροικότερον ᾖ τὸ ἀληθές εἰπεῖν: μήπως να 'ναι πιο αγροίκο να πούμε την αλήθεια: "it might be too rude to speak the truth"
  
• εἴπωμεν ἢ σιγώμεν; να μιλήσουμε ή να σιωπήσουμε; "should we speak or keep silent?"

So it could also be an inherited pattern. The tense usage though is an innovation: there's nothing in Ancient Greek to suggest using an "indicative" tense here.

The distribution of ότι/πως vs. να in complements—ότι/πως for facts and propositions, να for events—is pretty stable across Greek dialect. I don't know of any instances where να picks up more than doubtful propositions. In Modern Cretan at least, even that exception is rolled back: "He must be studying" is Πρέπει πως διαβάζει, just like Νομίζω πως διαβάζει and Ξέρω πως διαβάζει (I think/I know that he is reading). So in Cretan, the analogy has gone the other way: analogy has switched "must" from events to propositions, and analogy shifts its following complementiser from the event marker to the proposition marker.

And if you're historically minded, you can find justification for the distribution in the etymology of να: its ancestor ἵνα "in order to" introduced events, things you intended to do. The restriction of the past perfective is also neat, and this all suggests a clearcut system in place since the beginning of Early Modern Greek.

The examples at the start of the post (remember?) do not. The verse from the Quadrupeds shows the past perfective used with wishes, where Modern Greek would use the "optative" past imperfective:

• Τότε να είδες τα βουνά, να είδες και τους κάμπους / να είδες και τα δάσητα, να είδες τας λαγκάδας, "You should have seen the mountains and the prairies! You should have seen the forests and ravines!"

But that breaks the neat association between the indicative tense and doubt. The wish it introduces is still a proposition that hasn't happened, but doubt is not the point of a wish, and Modern Greek doesn't make that extension. Which means that the Modern restriction wasn't always in place: Early Modern Greek didn't distinguish between wishes and doubts, both could take a past tense after να, imperfective or perfective.

Chantakites' letter points to another breakdown. I've seen similar breakdowns in the Chronicle of the Morea, with ότι να used where Modern Greek uses just ότι (on which more below); but Chantakites' letter is more persuasive because its Greek really does look more unforced. And what Chantakites does is break down the Modern distinction between perceiving an event, with να, and perceiving a fact (second hand), through πως. Manuel is miles away from Crete, but

• ωσάν ήκουσα να γυρεύγεις της νύφης σου νοίκια, "when I heard that you are asking for rent from your daughter-in-law"

In Modern Greek, you can only use να after "hear" if you're directly perceiving an event: σαν σε άκουσα να γυρεύεις από τη νύφη σου νοίκια, "when I heard you ask(ing) for rent from your daughter-in-law". And you'd have to insert the direct object, σε "you": the syntax of the dependent clause is different, its subject is raised to become the object of the main verb, expressing perception ("I heard him ask" = "I heard the event in which he asked", "I heard him while he was asking"). Whereas what Chantakites said treats να just like ότι, with no raising of the subject.

What's going on? I think there's a hint in the other instance:

• ήμαθα και ήλεγες να εβγάλεις την νύφην σου από τα σπίτια της, "I have learned you've been saying that you would kick your daughter-in-law out of her houses"

The letter has some instances of what was to become the Modern Greek future construction, εγνωρίσει θέλω "to know I want" > θέλω να γνωρίσω "I want to know" > θα γνωρίσω "I will know" (and Modern Cretan να γνωρίσει θέλω). But that was the start of the future construction: until then in Early Modern Greek, as I've mentioned in earlier posts, the future was expressed with να.

• Michael Glycas: ὁ βασιλεὺς φιλάνθρωπος καὶ νὰ σὲ συμπαθήσῃ, "the kindly emperor's gonna pardon you"
  
• Continuators of Scylitzes: Ἐγὼ σὲ ἔκτισα, φοῦρνε, καὶ ἐγὼ νὰ σὲ χαλάσω, "I built you, oven, and I'll destroy you."

You might argue this construction is still there in Chantakites:

• Και εθάρρουν εις εσέναν … να φλογοτομάς το αίμα, "I trusted in you even to bleed your own veins" ("I trusted in you that you would bleed your own veins"?)

And you can also read the other instance of an odd να that way:

• ήμαθα και ήλεγες να εβγάλεις την νύφην σου από τα σπίτια της, "I have learned you've been saying that you would kick your daughter-in-law out of her houses"

This could be like the idiomatic Λέω να διαβάσω Modern construction: "I'm saying for me to read = I'm thinking aloud that I should read = I'm considering reading." Sounds odd to use it outside the first person, but it's possible. But it's likelier that this use of ήλεγες is literal: Manuel has heard reports of his father speaking, and να introduces what he was speaking, as a proposition rather than a figurative event: it is equivalent to Modern έλεγες πως, "you have been saying that…".

The Modern Greek would continue: έλεγες πως θα βγάλεις τη νύφη σου, "you have been saying that you will kick out your daughter-in-law". With a future tense construction. But θα βγάλεις used to be να εβγάλεις, with the old future use of να. So in 1100, this would have been: έλεγες ότι να εβγάλεις τη νύφη σου—with the ότι να combination you can see in the Chronicle of Morea:

• Ἐνταῦτα ἀπήρασιν βουλὴν ὅ<τι> νὰ ἀπελθοῦσιν, "there they made the decision to depart" (H 145)
  
• Κι ἀφότου ἐστερεώσασιν ὅτι νὰ τὸ πληρώσουν, "and after they affirmed that they would pay for it" (H 180)
  
• ὑπόσχεσιν τοῦ ἐποῖκαν / ὅτι νὰ βάλουσιν βουλήν, "they made him a promise that they would decide" (H 8546–7)
  
• (Jean de Catavas): Κι ὅποιος ἰδῇ ὅτι νὰ τραπῶ ἢ τίποτε δειλιάσω, / ἐχτρὸν τὸν ἔχω τοῦ Χριστοῦ, νὰ μὴ μὲ σφάξῃ εὐθέως, "and whoever sees that I turn or lose courage at all, I shall hold him to be an enemy of Christ if he does not kill me immediately" (H 4755–6)
  
• Τὸ ἀκούσει ὁ Ροῦσος ντὲ Σουλῆ ὅτι νὰ γένῃ ὅρκος, "when Rousseau de Sully heard that there would be an oath" (H 7927)

The first three phrases can be expressed in Modern Greek as either ότι θα, a future proposition, or να, an event (commitment): you can decide that you will do something, or decide to do something. If it's an event, ότι looks redundant: "they made the decision that to depart" (Modern πήραν απόφαση να αποχωρήσουν). That kind of redundancy can happen in Early Modern Greek, but I'm sympathetic to reading it instead as the old future: "they made the decision that they will depart" (Modern πήραν απόφαση ότι θα αποχωρήσουν).

The last two instances are verbs of perception, just as we saw with Manuel Chantakites hearing that his father was seeking rent. De Catavas' clause involves direct perception: Modern Greek allows both να and ότι, and would prefer να normally; but the absence of raising ("sees me turn", μὲ ἰδῇ (ὅτι) νὰ τραπῶ) suggests that the clause is really being introduced by ότι, and να is a future marker. The future sense is clearer in Rousseau de Sully's clause, which involves indirect perception: de Sully can't hear people making an oath, because he is agreeing for them all to take the oath that has just been proposed. So he really has heard "that there will be an oath", and that's what the Greek says: ὅτι νὰ γένῃ ὅρκος, Modern ότι θα γίνει όρκος.

Now the point of all that was, it is difficult to work out whether these clauses express events or propositions: the future να turns up with propositions, and makes them sound like events. The sequence ότι να sounds like two complementisers next to each other, and it would be easy to drop the first as redundant, or as a zero-complentiser. (Είπε πως θα παει "He said that he would go", Είπε θα πάει "He said he would go", which in Early Modern Greek would be Είπε να υπάγει.)

If it's difficult for us, it was difficult back then too. So it would be possible for the future (ότι) να in those contexts to be reanalysed as a propositional complementiser: Τὸ ἀκούσει ὁ Ροῦσος ντὲ Σουλῆ ὅτι νὰ γένῃ ὅρκος, "when Rousseau de Sully heard that there would be an oath" could lead to ωσάν ήκουσα να γυρεύγεις της νύφης σου νοίκια, "when I heard that you are asking for rent from your daughter-in-law". The reanalysis may not have generalised, and it certainly hasn't left any traces behind—especially given how Cretan has since got rid of the propositional να in Πρέπει πως διαβάζει, "He must be studying".

But it suggests that the distribution of να as a complementiser was messier, messed up by the use of να as a future marker—which pushed it towards more "indicative" meanings. The neater modern distribution of να, along with the neater distribution of past tenses after inferential να, may have have resulted from a subsequent cleanup of the language—speakers reimposing order on their use of να, rather than inheriting it.

Thank you if you've made it this far; this is properly a paper, but I'm not likely to write it, and it may already be a solved problem. I'm pretty sure it hadn't been worked through in the literature I read for my thesis. But given the spasmodic status of Early Modern Greek linguistics until fairly recently, that's not saying much.
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