ξε- in compounds and phrases

This post has been anticipated in comments already anyway; it's the reason why I got the accent of ξέμαγκας wrong.

One reason was given last post: it is much harder to predict where recessive accent goes for the -a(s) inflection than for the other inflections of Modern Greek.

• For masculine and neuter -o(s), feminine -si, and neuter -ma, recessive accent goes to the antepenult: παλιόκοσμος, κουτόχορτο, κεφαλόβρυση, παλιόπραμα
• for -us, feminine -o, neuter -i and other feminine -i, it goes on the penult: προπάππους, τρελοκαμπέρω, παπαδοπαίδι, γκαντεμοτύχη
• for -u and -e(s) it only ever goes on the ultima: ρεβυθοκαφές, ζουζουνοσκατού. (Kaliarda again: "shit-bug = fly")
• But because of mergers in both Ancient and Mediaeval Greek, -a(s) has some recessives go to the antepenult, and some go to the penult. That makes confusion possible.

The second reason, given two posts ago, involves the variability of prepositions. The default in Modern Greek is for accent to be recessive in a preposition–noun compound: παρά + παιδί > παράπαίδι "stepchild". Some prepositions leave the accent alone, in a distinct pattern: παρά + στρατός > παραστρατός "paramilitary".

The real reason why I got the accent of ξέμαγκας wrong is that I'd learned one pattern in my Greek, but not the other.

The recessive accent pattern shown in ξέμαγκας follows the rules inherited from Ancient Greek. (Ancient Greek would still produce *ἐκμάγκας because its -ας was long; but the accent would still be recessive.) And colloquial Modern Greek does have a productive pattern of adding ξε- to nouns, to indicate someone who has stopped being characterised by the noun. If that sounds like an ex-mangas, there's a simple reason for that: ex- and ξέ- are exactly the same prefix historically (kse- < ekse- < ἐκ, ἐξ ek, eks, as I explained a few posts ago.)

There's also a simple reason that I haven't drawn the analogy between ex- and ξέ- before: they are from different registers, and the usage of ξέ- before a noun is unusual: it is typically a verbal prefix, where it has the verbal meaning of "un-" as in "undo". That's why I was glossing ξέμαγκας as "un-mangas"; but un- for nominals in English means "not" more than "formerly" (as in unwell), so the gloss is misleading.

The pattern appears to be productive in colloquial Greek: Nikos Sarantakos brought up ξέπαπας "ex-priest", which is also recessive. But I could find no examples with that meaning in either the Triantaphyllidis Institute dictionary (no surprise there), or slang.gr. ξεμπούρδελο < μπουρδέλο for instance means not "a former brothel", but "a woman who looks like she has come out of a brothel".

I got the accent wrong because the recessive use of ξέ- before nouns, to mean "ex-", is not part of the Greek I've learned. I mean, I recognise it when I see it; but it's not part of my active vocabulary, it would not have occurred to me to coin a new ξέ- compound with a noun. Just a hole I happen to have in my Greek.

But there's a different pattern using ξέ- which I have learned, and that pattern is accent-retaining. slang.gr does have ξεμπράβο "un-bravo!", which is not accented recessively, for different reasons: μπράβο is an interjection, which is being quoted in the compound. I will talk about the different accent in quotative compounds later. That's not the pattern I had learned; but it is related, in that it also quotes what it prefixes.

The pattern is the phrase τι Χ και ξε-Χ;, "what X and un-X?", meaning "what do you mean, 'X?'" or "what's this 'X' crap you're on about?" The point of the expression is to dismiss the noun X that the addressee has used as appropriate or relevant. A similar expression is δεν έχει Χ και ξε-Χ "there's no X and un-X", which has the same point. (Cf. "there's no ifs or buts about it" in English.) And Χ και ξε-Χ can show up on their own as a dismissal in general:

• Καθήστε να διαβάσετε και άστε τα sos και ξε-sos "Sit yourselves down and study, and stop going on about crib notes [never mind the S.O.S. and un-S.O.S]" ("ncs_one", responding to a request for crib notes—which are called in Greek "S.O.S.")
  
• μήτε γνωρίζω τι θα πει Kollo και ξε-Kollo "I don't even know what Kollo and suchlike [Kollo and un-Kollo] means (poem by Napoleon Lapathiotis, 1922)
  
• Nikolas81: Οπα, εχω και'γω το ιδιο w/c kit της Τt ενα χρονο τωρα αλλα δεν μου εχει παρουσιασει κανενα προβλημα, αν οφειλεται σε αστοχια υλικου αφτο μπορει να συμβει και στις καλυτερες οικογενειες..... "Woah: I've had the same w/c kit from Tt for a year, but it hasn't shown any problems. If it's because of a fault in the maerial, well, that can happen even in the best of families."
  ThReSh: αστοχία και ξε αστοχία nikola αλλά αν καεί κάποιος στο χυλό φυσάει και τι γιαούρτι... (Literally) "Fault and Un-Fault, Nikolas, but if someone burns themselves on porridge, they'll blow on yoghurt." (Idiomatically) "It's all very well to talk about 'faults', Nikolas; but once bitten, twice shy" ("ThReSh" responding to "nikolas81")

The construction works by quoting a word the addressee has used; the speaker wants nothing to do with the word, after all. If the speaker is quoting X, and dismissing X and un-X, she can't reaccent un-X as a new word (recessively): she would be assuming linguistic responsibility for that new word. In the construction, "un-X" is still quoting the addressee's use of X. So the accent of X is preserved in the construction.

The most frequent example of the construction is τι μα και ξε-μά, "what do you mean, 'but'"—used to cut off someone raising an objection by saying "but…". At the best of times, you couldn't reaccent "un-but" as *ξέ-μα anyway: prefixing interjections is unheard of, and reaccenting prefixed conjunctions will just make them unrecognisable. (Same goes for ξεμπράβο.) You could argue the same for the following examples, quoting a conjunction and a proper name:

• ο πελάτης έχει πάντα δίκιο όταν - Α, δεν έχει "όταν" και "ξε-όταν". Ο πελάτης έχει πάντα δίκιο. Τελεία! "'The customer is always right, so long as…' Oh, there's no 'so long as' about it! [There is no 'when' and 'un-when'] The customer is always right, full stop!" ("peslac")
  
• Εμ Ίστωρ με αυτά που λες τι απάντηση περίμενες; Αυτά είναι κοτσάνες. Τι Τίτο και ξε-Τίτο μου λες. "Istor, with the stuff you say, what sort of answer were you expecting? That's nonsense. What is this 'Tito' crap you keep talking about? [What 'Tito' and 'un-Tito' are you telling me?]" (Nick the Greek, July 4 2006, 12:26 AM)

And these examples would likely not be accented recessively:

• Τι κομμουνιστές και ξε-κομμουνιστές; Επειδή δηλαδή θα πάω σε μια πορεία που οργανώνουν κομμουνιστές, έγινα κι εγώ κομμουνιστής, άμα δεν το θέλω; "What are you talking about, 'communists'? Because I'm going to protest organised by communists, am I supposed to have become a communist if I choose not to?" ("Thracian Without Jurisdiction")
  
• urba-nick: Τσαμπουκάς ο καιρός σήμερα.Μας έβαλε γκολ απο τα αποδυτήρια. "The weather was aggro today. It kicked a goal against us right from the changing rooms"
  Mikelangelo: Πιο γκολ και ξε-γκολ. Δε μασάμε μια. "What are you talking about, 'goal'? We're of sterner stuff than that now." ("Mikelangelo" responding to "urba-nick")
  
• Στους δρόμους, μερικές μέρες τώρα, γίνεται το έλα να δεις και πολλοί επίσης ασκούν κριτική στην Κυβέρνηση κύριε Μαγκριώτη. Ότι ποια επίταξη και ξε-επίταξη κάνει ο καθένας ό,τι θέλει στην χώρα. "For the past few days, it's been chaos in the streets; and many are criticising the government Mr Mangriotis, saying 'What requisition are you talking about? Everybody in this country does whatever they feel like.'" (Interview, Skai Radio, 2010-09-21)
  

But in these examples, a prime candidate for reaccenting is left with its accent preserved:

• lumoELENA: ελα ρε παιδια ο ηχος είναι αθλιος. Μου πήρε τα αυτιά το βίντεο. Κατεβασε το.......... "Come on guys, the sound is awful. The video has deafened me. Take it off."
  nikiforos1000: τι ηχος και ξε ηχος... ειναι φοβερος εδω ο μαλαμας "What do you mean, 'sound'? Malamas is tremendous in this." ("nikiforos1000" responding to "lumoELENA"; unaccented, but the space in ξε ηχος shows this can't be a recessively accented *ξέηχος: ξε and ήχος are treated as two separate phonetic words)
  
• τί άμμο και ξε-άμμο μου λες τώρα / εδώ το θέμα είναι αν θα πάμε διακοπές, που και πότε "What 'sand' are you talking about? The question is, are we going on holidays, where, and when?" (LIA KALEMIDOU, commenting on a photo of "Ti amo" written on sand)
  
• Τι κρίση και ξε-κρίση; Κρίση μπορείς να έχεις όταν τα πράγματα βαδίζουν με μία στοιχειώδη τάξη και αρχίζει και χάνεται αυτή (η τάξη). "What do you mean, 'crisis'? You have a crisis when things proceed according to a rudimentary sense of order, and that order starts to be lost." (Periklis Vanikiotis, "There will be blood", Marketing Week Online, 2010–10–29)

Compare the made-up Modern, accent-preserving ξε-κρίση "un-crisis" with Ancient recessive ἔκκρισις "separation, secretion", which is the same word etymologically. (κρίσις is etymologically first a separation, then a distinguishing, then a judgement, then a trial, then a deciding point.)

So, I knew the Χ και ξε-Χ pattern, which is accent-preserving; I did not know the use of ξε-Χ to mean "ex-X"; and I accented ξεμαγκας according to the former pattern. They are semantically related, after all. But thanks to Nikos Sarantakos for exposing the gap in my command of accentuation, and launching me down this path. Which is not done yet: there will be at least two more posts of slang.gr data.

As an added bonus,

How does the Χ και ξε-Χ expression work?

Well, if the addressee's use of X is being ridiculed, and the speaker denigrates both X and un-X, maybe the speaker's saying that both X and the opposite of X are irrelevant—in other words, the entire scale of comparison of X, the entire mental framework, is inapplicable.

Nice try, though overintellectualised, but wrong; but remember, ξε- is a verbal prefix above all, and it means not un- as in unwell, but un- as in undo.

What it is referring to is a Greek convention of juxtaposing verbs with their opposites, to indicate repeated, futile activity. The notion is that if you do X, then do the opposite, undoing X, you're going to have to redo X, over and over—and that this is a waste of time. ράβω–ξηλώνω "I sew and unravel" is the canonical example; and it is applied very far from knitting:

• Ένα τραγούδι έγραψα για σένα. / Μια μελωδία, ετοιματζίδικο κλισέ. / Ράβω και ξηλώνω μέχρι να μου βγει. / Μια απλή μελωδία από Μι. "I wrote a song for you: a tune, a tossed off cliché. I sew and unravel until I can get it out, a simple tune in E." (Song lyric, Kostas Lemonidis)
  
• Γι'αυτό ρώτησα για να μην ράβω-ξηλώνω αν πχ οι τελευταίοι catalyst υποστηρίζουν 1680Χ1050..., "So that's why I asked, so I don't keep sewing and unravelling, whether the latest Catalyst models support 1680×1050 resolution." ("Fonzi", querying on setting up a PC monitor)
  
• Από αντιπροσωπία πόσο περίπου θα πάει μαζί με τοποθέτηση, ξέρει κανείς?? (δεν είμαι για να ράβω και να ξηλώνω αυτόν τον καιρό) "Does anyone know how much it will cost approximately from a dealership, including installation? (I'm not prepared to go sewing and unravelling at this time.)" ("Alestros", on installing a ceiling light in a VW)

The expression is generalised by turning it into the template "Χ και ξε-Χ", where X is a verb, and ξε-X, undoing X, is the opposite action; for example,

• φίλε, κάνεις τόσο κόπο, γράφεις ξεγράφεις απλά και μόνο για να πείσεις εμένα και τον εαυτό σου πως φταίει το ΕΔΑΔ;.. Στο λέω ξανά, ειλικρινά δεν με ενδιαφέρει ποιος φταίει! "Friend, you're expending so much effort, you write and unwrite, just so you can convince me and yourself that it's the European Human Rights Tribunal's fault? I'm telling you again, I honestly don't care whose fault it is!" ("Kyriacos")
  
• Της ΦΑΚ που λέει και ξελέει μόνη της πως ζει στην γυάλα της και πιστεύει πως σε τέτοιους ζοφερούς καιρούς με την επίθεση που δέχετε ο λαός από ΕΕ-ΔΝΤ-Κεφάλαιο το πανεπιστήμιο μπορεί να έχει ένα πιο ανθρώπινο μέλλον. "The Independent Student Movement, which says and unsays [keeps saying] of its own accord that it lives in a bubble, and which believes in such miserable times, with the people being attacked by the EU, the IMF and Capital, that the University can have a more humane future." ("Liakos13"; but the more usual meaning of λέω και ξελέω is "I say and then unsay, I contradict myself")
  
• Από αυτό που είπε, άρχισε ο παπάς να διαβάζει και να “ξεδιαβάζει” σ’ένα βιβλίο, και όπως διάβαζε, ο βράχος ανοιγόταν σιγά σιγά μέχρι που ανοίχτηκε εντελώς και εμφανίστηκε ένας βωμός με χρυσές εικόνες αγίων. "Saying that, the priest started reading and unreading in a book, and as he was reading, the rock slowly opened until it opened up completely, and an altar appeared with golden icons of saints." (Translation of short story by Xosé Filgueira Valverde)

There are many instances of "X and un-X" where the activity of X really is undone; that's what tends to be the meaning of φτιάχνω και ξεφτιάχνω "I make and unmake" or most instances of λέω και ξελέω "I say and unsay". But the examples given here have eliminated the "undo" component of the meaning, and are left with the sense of futile repetition. This is common in semantic change ("bleaching"): an expression which has the meaning or connotation of both A and B ends up meaning just B. In the example with "read and unread", even the notion of futility is bleached (because the spell works), and we're left with just repetition.

From "say and unsay" = "keep saying in vain, keep saying without convincing me", it is a short step to "say-and-unsay X, which does not convince me". From there, it's a neat linguistic trick of Greek to drop the verb, and transfer the template to the noun being said. τι Χ και ξε-Χ, after all, has no verb, unlike its English counterpart what do you mean, X?.

• τι Χ; is shorthand for τι εννοείς, Χ; "what do you mean, X?" or τι λες, Χ; "why do you say X?"
• τι Χ και ξε-Χ is similarly an economical way of saying τι λες Χ και ξε-λές Χ; "why you do say-X and unsay-X", i.e. "why do you keep saying X in vain, without convincing me?"
• And ξε- here is still undoing a verb, rather than referring to an ex-noun. The verb just happens to be left out.

If you've read papers I wrote while I was still writing papers (which is highly unlikely), you may recognise this as illocutionary negation, which is a topic I've worked on before in Greek: "I don't deny X, but I deny that you should say X." ...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

Going from X = Going past X

Way, way back, Tipoukeitos asked if I could comment on the seemingly illogical use of πάω από Χ "to go past X", which has attracted opprobrium from at least one Modern Greek language maven. ("Language maven" is not intended here as a term of praise.) What is seemingly illogical about the construction is that it literally means "to go from X", but X is the destination and not the origin of going. So how can such an expression have come about? If you're going to X, how can you say you're going "from X"?

I have no idea if someone has already worked this out, and I'm not going to bother checking, because the explanation is fun and simple. You may have already worked out what is going on yourselves; if not, this will be quick.

I start by noting that Modern Greek is pretty impoverished when it comes to prepositions. In contrast to the prodigious combinatorics of prepositions and cases in Ancient Greek, and the neurotically precise locative adverbs of Pontic, Standard Modern Greek makes do with very little: από for motion from (or distance from), σε for motion to (or proximity to), and a few adverbs for clarification. Ancient Greek could deal with motion past by a simple παρά; but that is not available to the modern language.

So with the limited means of "from" and "to", Modern Greek needs to convey a notion of a temporary destination. What it does is not particularly uncommon in colloquial, vivid language: it has come up with an expression that is economical, but that is not the obvious way to say it. That is what makes it vivid language, the first time you see it: like a punchline to a joke, you have to think about it to get it. The expression conveys the notion of a temporary destination, which will then also serve as a point of departure later on. So X is both a destination and an origin.

To achieve this, X is marked as a destination in one way, and an origin in another way. It is marked as an origin by the preposition, "from". It is marked as a destination by the context, because the expression only works if you're not already at X. That's what makes you have to think about it, in classic punchline mode—that is, in conversational implicature:

• Πάμε από την Πανεπιστημείου "We're going from University St"
  
• But we're not already at University St
  
• So we're going to have to go *to* University St, so we can then go *from* University St to somewhere else
  
• So we're going to stay at University St only briefly: we're going past University St

You also use this expression to emphasise this X is part of a route: you go to X precisely in order to get to somewhere else, so X is the origin for your ultimate destination. Hence Tipoukeitos' example:

• θα πάμε από Πανεπιστημίου γιατί η Ακαδημίας είναι κλειστή "We'll go *via* University St because Academy St is blocked off."

In fact από "from" is the way Modern Greek expresses "via".

Now expressions like this, with odd prepositions after verbs, work by analogy with other verbs. Prepositions are quite flexible in their meaning, according to the verb that governs them: English prepositions' meanings are so hard to pin down because they are determined by verbs.

There is a verb where "from = past" is already well established in Modern Greek, and it is of course περνάω, "to go past, to go through". In fact, "from" after περνάω has the same shade of meaning there as well, compared to the normal expression:

• Πάω στην Πανεπιστημίου "I'm going to University St"
  
• Περνάω την Πανεπιστημίου "I'm passing through University St"
  
• Πάω από την Πανεπιστημίου "I'm going past University St"
  
• Περνάω από την Πανεπιστημίου "I'm going past University St"

Normally, you go to (πάω σε X) a destination; by saying "from", you're making the destination an origin as well. Normally, you go through, or overtake a tangent (περνάω X); by saying "from", you're making the tangent an origin—which implies you're stopping by there long enough for the tangent to become an origin. If you don't say "from", X remains a tangent, and you can't be stopping there:

• Πέρασα από την Πανεπιστημίου να δω το Γιώργο "I went past University St to see George (at University St)"
  
• Πέρασα την Πανεπιστημίου να δω το Γιώργο "I went through University St to see George (at the next street)"

Cf. Tipoukeitos' example:

• θα πάω απ' την πεθερά μου πρώτα να πάρω τον μικρό "I'll go by my mother-in-law's first, to pick up the kid".

And because περνάω/πάω από is strongly associated with places as origins, you can't use it with persons:

• Πάω στο Γιώργο "I go to George"
  
• Πάω στου Γιώργου "I go to George's (place)"
  
• ??Πάω από το Γιώργο "I go from George"
  
• Πάω από του Γιώργου "I go past George's"
  
• Περνάω το Γιώργο "I overtake George"
  
• ??Περνάω του Γιώργου "I pass through George's"
  
• Περνάω από του Γιώργου "I go past George's"
  
• Περνάω από το Γιώργο Not "I pass from George", but "I go past George's"
  

As for the purported illogicality of the expression—language is not formal logic: if it was, you wouldn't get defeasible implicatures (assumptions by your listener about what you mean, which may turn out to be wrong), and you wouldn't get the exploitation of defeasible implicatures (punchlines—you assumed I meant X, when I actually meant Y, so I momentarily tricked you in what I said). Defeasible implicatures is what makes language vivid.

And as we saw, the expression makes sense just fine, once you allow that people can both go to a place, and (then) from that place. Maybe you can't do that in Language Maven World; but Language Maven World is not a place you want to spend a lot of time in anyway. ...Read more

A Turkish etymology for both α and σιχτίρ?

Language advisory

In the last obscenity-filled post on this blog, Pierre left a comment on α σιχτίρ "fuck off", which is derived from Turkish:

The Turkish is sıçdırmak ( ﺼﭽﺩﺭﻣﻕ ) with a chim, rather than a kha, and it gets "shit" right back into the context. Actually, it is a causative form and means "to make (someone? / yourself?) shit" and it appears to be imperative. My guess is that "ey sıçdır" is all Turkish and means "Go take a shit."

In fact, there really is a Turkish verb sikmek "to fuck" ("Turkic cognates include Azeri sikmək and Uzbek sikmoq"), and this discussion thread goes through the diffusion of siktir into the Balkans and Armenian.

What I did *not* know from the thread though, is that the interjection siktir in Turkish has a variant hassiktir. And that makes me look at the α in α σιχτίρ, and speculate whether it too is Turkish in origin—and not Ancient Greek, as is normally assumed.

α in α σιχτίρ or ά γαμήσου corresponds to get in get fucked or get lost. It's a hortative particle, and I think what is commonly assumed about its origin is wrong.

Modern Greek has four similar hortative particles.

• άμε is a verb in origin; it's derived from Classical ἄγωμε "let's go", but in Modern Greek is used as "go!", as an exhortation. We know that because in Early Modern Greek, ἄγωμε was used to mean "go!" instead of "let's go": (ἄγωμε μὲ τὴν κάμηλον τὴν μακροσφονδυλάτην "go with the long-neckled camel!", Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds 768)
  
• άντε has been argued (tortuously) to be a verb in origin as well: ἄγε δή "go indeed!" The etymology makes no sense, and though the Triantaphyllides dictionary vacillates, and the other dictionaries are unrepentant, the obvious derivation is from the Turkish exclamation haydi. (I have 12 pages of an uncompleted paper arguing this; there are straightforward cognates throughout Turkic, and in Russian and Ukrainian via Tatar.) Notwithstanding its origin, άντε does act in some ways as a verb, including picking up a plural ending (άντεστε), and taking subjunctive complements (άντε να δεις "go to see, go and see")
  
• The other two particles are άι ~ άει and α. They are assumed to be related; this is the entry from the Triantaphyllides dictionary on the pair:
  

  α² & άι interj.: before exclamation (cf. άντε); depending on context and intontation expresses (a) indignation, annoyance, dismissal; "go, get": (with an imperative or να + subjunctive with a comparable meaning) α/άι πνίξου / παράτα μας / χάσου / να χαθείς "go drown! / go leave us alone! / get lost!" / || (with σε "to", article and noun) α/άι στην ευχή / στο διάβολο / στο καλό "to the blessing! / to hell! / to the good!". α/άι στη δουλειά σου "to your business": "mind your own business, continue what you are doing". || friendly reproach: ~ να χαθείς! "get lost!" (b) exhortation: Άι στο καλό, παιδί μου, και πρόσεχε "go to the good (farewell), my child, and be careful": go on, go to the good [= farewell]. || wondering about what will happen: α/άι να δούμε πώς θα τα βγάλουμε πέρα "let's see how we get through this". α/άι να δούμε τι θα γίνει "let's see what will happen". [α: truncation of άι· άι: άε < Ancient ἄγε "onwards!" (imperative of ἄγω "go") deleting intervocalic [ɣ] and diphthongised]
  

  
  (It's α², to distinguish it from the interjection "ah!", α¹.)
  

Now, unlike άμε and άντε, άι and α do not act like independent verbs. They are prefixed to imperatives, which means they are not verbs with a dependent verb: they are acting like interjections—or serial verbs. άμε can't precede an imperative; άντε can, because άμε is not an interjection and άντε is. (άι and α do precede the subjunctive as well, but the subjunctive is also used as a gentler command; so it's consistent with άι and α behaving as interjections.)

• άμε/άντε/*άι/*α να δεις ποιος είναι "go to see who it is"
  
• *άμε/άντε/άι/*α δες ποιος είναι "go, see who it is"

They also cannot appear on their own as verbs (or for that matter as interjections): they must always introduce something.

• άμε/άντε/*άι/*α "go on!"

And άι/α has no flexibility with what prepositions it can take: it cannot take από "from", meaning "go past":

• άμε/άντε/*άι/*α από την αγορά "go past the market"

The only prepositional phrase άι/α can take is σε "to" with a definite article:

• άμε/άντε/άει/α στο διάολο "go to the devil" (to hell)

Surely that means άι/α is behaving like a verb here? Well, no. If it is a verb, why the constraint on having a definite article?

• άμε/άντε/*άι/*α σε κανένα μπουντρούμι "go to a dungeon"

Now, it turns out that you can use σε phrases with a definite article on their own, as an oath, a blessing or curse, hoping that someone ends up there. You can't leave the article out if you do that: it won't be the same oath:

• στο καλό!/στο διάολο! "to the good" (farewell), "to the devil"
  
• *σε καλό!/*σε διάολο! "to good" (farewell), "to a devil"

These expressions of course imply "go!", but they have still settled into a template of requiring a definite article, and expressing wishes. άι/α is being prefixed to those established expressions: that does not mean it is acting as a real verb. You can't use άι/α before στο if an oath is *not* involved:

• άμε/άντε/άι/α στο διάολο "go to the devil"
  
• άμε/άντε/??άι/*α στο γιατρό "go to the doctor"

Which suggests that, whatever άντε was originally, it is now (also) a verb; and whatever άι used to be, it is now not behaving as a verb, but just an exclamation, a particle introducing verbs and oaths.

In fact, that's reason enough to suspect άι did not start out as a verb at all, but as an interjection—such as, say, I dunno, the Turkish interjection hay. The thing is though, there are several instances from the Historical Dictionary of Modern Greek (Modern dialect dictionary) of "missing link" particles in dialect, between the verb ἄγε and άι:

• Leucas: άγε, Lesbos: άγι, Sikinos: έγε
  
• Cyprus: άγι̮α
  
• Thessaly, Cephallenia, Cyme, Leucas, Siphnos etc. άε
  
• Maina: χάε

Still, multiple causation does happen, and the very similar exclamation hay! may have encouraged άγε > άι to be restricted to exclamation-like use.

But there's something interesting about the Triantaphyllidis definition. In all its examples but one, it uses άι and α interchangeably. All the examples I've given have been interchangeable as well, although I hesitated over ??άι/*α στο γιατρό "go to the doctor". The one time Triantaphyllidis does not use α but only άι, is in the following pair:

• *άμε/*άντε/άι/α στο καλό "oh, to the good" (euphemism for "oh, to the devil" = "well I'll be! what the deuce!")
  
• άμε/άντε/άι/*α στο καλό "go to the good" (= "farewell")

στο καλό is ambiguous between a literal blessing, and a euphemistic curse. άι can be used both the bless and to curse. α is not used to bless: only to curse. Curses such as can be found at slang.gr:

• α σιχτίρ "get fucked!"
  
• α γαμήσου "get fucked!"
  
• α να χαθείς "get lost!"
  
• α στο διάολο "go to hell!" > ασταδγιάλα ~ ασταδιάλα
  
• α να σε γαμήσω "I'm gonna fuck you!" (not as foreplay, but as one man threatening another—hence the joke reply given there by Vrastaman, "I'd rather we just stay friends".)
  

  There's a further complication that the phrase is actually used as a deferred threat: "A peculiar expression said (usually twice) instead of 'I will fuck you' during stand-offs, but usually with a desire to avoid trouble with someone who is trouble anyway. Like 'count yourself lucky', but leaving everything open, especially if the other talks back." (Halikoutis) (Pritsapirdulas adds in comments: "We also say it (1) when something is broken and we can't fix it; (2) when we react to something startling us.") But a curse it still is.

  
  
• α πάγαινε ~ α πάαινε ~ ρε α πάαινε "get lost", where Standard Greek has retained this dialectal imperative "be going" only in the context of this curse:
  

  ρε α πάαινε: an abbreviated form of the expression "pardon me sir/madam, could you possibly relocate yourselves a smidgeon in the opposite direction from me? I thank you in advance for your understanding." It is used to show beyond doubt that the speaker is not disposed to be serviceable towards his interlocutor, and that the discussion is probably coming to its definitive conclusion right about now:
  

  —Pardon me sir, could you please park a bit further on, so my car can fit in too?
  —Ρε α πάαινε, wanting to park, no less! As if you had a car back in your village, you FUCKING HILLBILLY! (acg)

So α is used consistently in contexts reminiscent of α σιχτίρ "get fucked!" I suspect now that Greeks heard both hassiktir and siktir, reanalysed the former as a sixtir, and related the a back to άι—but only in contexts to do with cursing, like the original hassiktir. This would have been helped along by the existence in Greek of α¹, the interjection "ah!"

• In the expression α γεια σου "ah your health!" ~ α μπράβο "ah bravo" = "that's more like it!", it's not immediately obvious which of the two α is involved; it could be either the pure exclamation α¹ ("aha! that's more like it!"), or the hortative α² (ά μπράβο = άντε μπράβο: "go on! that's more like it!") The restriction of α otherwise to curses makes me suspect the former, but I'm being schematic there.

...Read more

GTAGE: Screw you and your car jack!

Language and slang.gr advisory

Greeks on email have inevitably received at least twice joke emails that feature Greek phrases literally translated into English, to hilarious effect. (For moderate to small values of "hilarious".) The humour lies in the fact that the Greek phrases are idioms, which cannot be translated literally, or that English and Greek have different semantic maps for their vocabularies. Less often, and less amusingly, the humour lies in the fact that a word of Greek kinda sounds like a very different word of English.

Email is not the only venue for Greeks to play with the literal interpretation of idioms. The blog Λεξικό της αργκό (Slang Dictionary), based on a book of the same name, translates slang idioms literally into pictures.

It occurred to me when I got one of those emails yet again last year, that they are an excellent resource for linguistic pedantry. These joke translations offer excellent grounds for explaining why the literal translation doesn't work—and in the process, exploring the pragmatics and semantics of Greek that make them not work. In other words, a great way of posting on Hellenisteukontos without having to do any research.

I was going to start with the list I received in November, but when I got around to it, the list of idioms just wasn't juicy enough. That may be because the list was generated by the second-to-third–generation diaspora, whose command of Greek is certainly not as juicy as in the motherland. The marvelous slang.gr has come to my rescue, not for the first time: user vrastaman, with the aid of other regulars, has posted a extensive listing of such literalisms—as he calls it, a Golden Treasury of Anglo-Greek Expressions (GTAGE): copious, occasionally illustrated, and, unusually, bidirectional.

I'm not going to post today about the titular idiom, we have not seen him yet, and we have removed him John. I want to bundle together several idioms using βγάζω, But I want to get a post out on the idiom I deal with here today, while it is still on the front page of the Magnificent Nikos Sarantakos' Blog.

As it turns out, I've been thinking about this idiom for a while, because it's a nice illustration of implicature and speech acts. Before I explain what that means, the idiom:

Don’t you defecate us you and your cricket: Δεν μας χέζεις εσύ και ο γρύλος σου!

The idiom means "I rebuff your expression of concern." Really. It does.

In classic GTAGE fashion, a figurative use of a word is taken literally: γρύλος is the insect "cricket", but it is also a car jack, since car jacks look like a cricket's legs (I guess). The line is the punchline of a joke, and that's the context Sarantakos brought it up in: a post on punchlines that have become proverbial. Proverbial enough that political cartoonists can use them to express their resentment at the current relation of Greece to the European Union:

Greece, on the torture rack of a car jack, is shown the European Negotiations To Determine A Bail-Out Mechanism. Greece's response: "You, and your car jack!"—meaning, like I said, "I rebuff your expression of concern."

The phrase as cited in GTAGE actually means "why don't you shit on us, you AND your car jack". Not that that's any clearer. I'll explain the reference, but my main point is the oddity of "why don't you shit on me" as an insult: if I want to express my anger at you, why on earth would I invite you to do something bad to me?

The joke explanation first. The phrase is glossed in slang.gr, though under the variant άι σιχτίρ κι εσύ κι ο γρύλος σου—with the much more normal insult άι σιχτίρ "Fuck off" (σιχτίρ is Turkish, άι is probably from Ancient ἄγε "lead! (go!)" The explication is from user acg:

Punchline of an old widely-known joke, now used independently following the Zeitgeist and constituting a separate and officially recognised entity, utilised to describe a situation whereby the subject is wound up and peeved over something on their own, despite the absence of any hint indicating that what they are fretting over will in fact go pear-shaped.

For those who have formerly lived in a fishbowl and do not know the joke: a guy has a flat tire in the forest, at the dead of night, and has no car jack to lift the car up. He sees a farmhouse 500 m away and heads off.

As he's walking, he thinks and mutters to himself: "It's a farmhouse, he's bound to have tools. Surely he'll have a car jack. Wouldn't it be something if he has a car jack and refuses to give it to me. I just want to borrow the thing for half an hour, it's not like I'm going to steal it. Why, the bastard! That bloody miser! Yeah right, you jerk, as if I'm going to make off with your crappy car jack. You just wait until you need something from me, and then I'll straighten your tie for you alright! What kind of an arsehole does this guy think he is, anyway? Refusing to help me in the middle of the night, when the bastard should be coming out and changing my tire himself! But it's my fault for sitting around and begging him in the first place!"

He knocks on the door, and as soon as the villager opens, he says, "why don't you and your car jack just fuck off!"

Right. That's the joke. Hence, "I rebuff your expression of concern." (And also, "My action of rebuffing you is irrational", but I don't think that's the meaning the cartoonist had in mind.)

But why would "fuck off" be rendered as "why don't you shit on us"? (And as it turns out, rendered *more* appropriately?)

Time to drop some science on you. Statements can be true or false. Other things people do with words, other speech acts, can't sensibly be true or false. It's nonsense for a command like "open the window" to be true or false: it something you do or refuse to do. But a command does have felicity conditions, conditions under which it makes sense. If I tell you to move the building with your bare hands, my command is not meaningfully false; but it is pointless, because commands presuppose a preparatory condition, that the action is in fact possible. It's similarly pointless for me to tell you to wash the car while you're already washing it: that's the propositional content condition, that the command has to involve a future action.

When people say something that doesn't make sense, or seems pointless, our first assumption isn't that the person's insane. We assume that when someone tells us something, it is somehow relevant; and when it doesn't immediately seem to be relevant, we try and work out some hidden meaning, which makes the utterance relevant at a deeper level. If we didn't do that search for hidden meaning, there'd be no figures of speech, and no wit. In fact, figures of speech and wit delight us, precisely because they makes go to the extra effort of working out what their point is.

Commands have another felicity condition, the sincerity condition: "the speaker genuinely wants the hearer to perform the requested act". As a corollary of that, if I want you to do X—especially if I want you to do X to me, then X must be something I would want to happen: it is something desirable or useful to me.

Which brings us to "why don't you shit on me". (I'll come to the "us" later.) "Why don't you shit on me" does not sound like something I would want to happen. Yes yes, I have heard about paraphilias, but the point of those kinds of predilections is that the victim gets some sort of kick out of it, so they do want it to happen after all. We have no such context here, so the command seems to be pointless. Like "kill me now" is.

"Kill me now" has a well established figurative meaning, which isn't about commands at all; I leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out how we get from the literal to the figurative meaning. But "why don't you shit on me" does still have a command as its figurative meaning. Let's start ratiocinating.

If literal defecation isn't what is meant, what figurative meanings of χέζω can we use to make sense of this? Here's the Triantafyllidis Dictionary entry:

1. (literal meaning) 2. (metaphorical) a. insult someone vulgarly; b. used to express indifference, contempt; c. (passive) show great cowardice [cf. English shit oneself]

The meaning we want is 2b; but that still violates the desirability condition:

• Why don't you express indifference/contempt towards me?

Why would you seek out contempt? Let's try something else: If I want you to do X, it may be because that stops you doing the opposite of X. That doesn't help yet, but let's try it:

• Why don't you stop expressing interest/esteem towards me?

… For the English-speakers in the room: that already sounds more plausible, doesn't it? And it's a classic trick of indirect language, using double negation of X to say X ("he's not unkind"). It sounds more plausible, because while we don't want bad things to happen to us, there are times we can have too much of a good thing happen to us.

In particular, the other person may be doing something *they* think is good to us, and we don't. Let's try to get that in there.

• Why don't you stop doing things to express interest/esteem towards me?

And because we command something when it is desirable to us, we make that relevant by doing this equation:

I want you to do something pleasing to me.

• I want you to stop doing things displeasing to me
  
• I want you to stop doing things to express interest/esteem towards me
  
• Ergo, the things you are doing to express interest/esteem towards me are displeasing to me

That chain of reasoning underlies "why don't you shit on me". In fact it makes it better than "fuck off" in expressing the joke's sentiment: by asking you to treat me with contempt, I am explicitly rejecting your shows of respect. The English equivalent would be something like "do me a favour, and stop giving a shit about me."

Does that look algebraic to you? Well, if you're Greek, think of the tone of δεν με χέζεις. It's impatient dismissal. You could paraphrase it equally well (though less pungently) as δεν με παρατάς "why don't you leave me alone". And "why don't you leave me alone" is explicitly rejecting someone's show of interest.

There's one more peculiarity to the expression: why "us" and not "me"? I'm guessing here, but this is an equivalent of the English Royal we: by claiming the angry sentiment not just for herself, but for herself and her (absent) posse, the speaker bolsters the authority of the statement: "I , and everyone like me, think you should fuck off." The tenor is quite different though: this is a colloquial artifice in Greek.

The "car jack" is not the form of the expression I was familiar with, btw. The form I knew was δεν μας χέζεις ρε Νταλάρα, "why don't you shit on me, Dalaras", referring to the renowned singer George Dalaras. From Sarantakos' thread, I find this was itself a punchline, in a joke by Harry Klynn. The punchline was so prominent in the early '90s, commenter Ilefoufoutos [e-fufutos] had conjured up a scenario that it might end up in Babiniotis' dictionary, and attract lawsuits from the litigation-happy singer.

I don't know what the joke was, but Dalaras is earnest and serious enough as an artist that the reaction is plausible. (Not for me, I love his rebetika; but I found the reaction says a lot.) To quote another artist who was at times earnest—but not this time:

What that oure Hoost hadde herd this sermonyng,
He gan to speke as lordly as a kyng.
He seide, "What amounteth al this wit?
What shul we speke alday of hooly writ?

Or, as the Pig said to the Deer at around the same time (vv. 428–429):

Ήλθεν και άλλη φιλόσοφος μείζων της αλωπούτζας
και έχανε το στόμαν της και έχεσαν οι πάντες.
Here's a new sophist, greater than the fox!
Her mouth's agape, and everybody shits!

…What an… unfortunate note to finish on. If only I could claim it was a one-off…
...Read more

Deictic force of Hellenistic demonstratives

Quick note: Ἐν Ἐφέσῳ notices from the linguistics literature that the meaning of demonstratives in Modern Greek depends on their position: αυτό το μπουτάκι "that-one the pork-joint" is more physical deixis ("that pork joint which I'm pointing at"), whereas το μπουτάκι αυτό "the pork-joint that-one" is more discourse deixis ("that pork joint which I mentioned before").

He considers this may shed light on the use of demonstratives in New Testament Greek—and commenter Carl Conrad notes this is already known of Classical Greek, complete with Smyth reference.