Grammar as Interpretation: Greek Literature in Its Linguistic Contexts

269 Pages·1997·11.447 MB·English

by  Egbert J. Bakker

MNEMOSYNE
BIBLIOTHECA CLASSICAB ATAVA
COLLEGERUNT
J.M. BREMER• L F.J ANSSEN• H. PINKSTER
H.W . PLEKET• C.J. RUIJGH• P.H. SCHR{JVERS
BIBLIOTHECAEF ASCICULOSE DENDOSC URAV IT
C.J.R UijGH, KLASSIEKS EMINARIUMO, UDE TURFMARKT1 29,A MSTERDAM
SUPPLEMENTUM CENrESIMUM SEPIUAGESIMUM PRIMUM
EGBERTJ . BAKKER (ED.)
GRAM1v.lARA S INTERPRETATION
GRAMMAR AS
INTERPRETATION
GreekL iteraturien its Li,nguistCico nt:exts
EDITEDB Y
J.
EGBERT BAKKER
BRILL
LEIDEN · NEW YORK · KOLN
1997
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grammar as interpretation : Greek literature in its linguistic
contexts I edited by Egbert]. Bakker.
p. cm. - (Mnemosyne,b ibliotheca classica Batava.
Supplementum, ISSNO 1 69-8958 ; 171) .
Includes bibliographical references and mdexes.
ISBN 9004107304 (alk. paper)
1. Greek literature-History and criticism-Theory, etc.
2. Language and culture-Greece. 3. Greek language--Grammar.
4. Rhetoric, Ancient. L Bakker, Egbert]. II. Series.
PA3074.G73 1997
880.9'00 l-dc2 l 97-8219
CIP
Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufbabme
[Mnemosyne / Supplementum]
Mncmosyne : bibliotheca classica Batava. Supplementum. -
Leiden; New York ; Koln : Brill.
Friiher Schrirtenreihe
Reihe Supplcmentumz u: Mnemosync
171. Grammar as interpretation. - 1997
Grammar as interpretation : Greek literature in its linguistic
contexts / ed. by EgbertJ. Bakker. - Leiden; New York· Koln:
Brill, 1997 '
(Mncmosyne: Supplcmentum; 171)
ISBN9 CH>4-0l 730-4 Gcwebe
ISSN 0169-8958
ISBN 90 04 l 0730 4
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CONTENTS
Notes on Contributors ······.·.··.·· ······.·.·.·. ...·.·.·.·.·.·· ···············v·ii· ·····
Introduction
J.
F,gbert Bak/r,er •• . . •• • •• • •• • • • • • • • • • • • •• • • • • • •• • • •• •• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • •• • •• • •• • ••. ... l
Chapter One Verbal Aspect and Mimetic Description in
Thucydides
EgberJt . Bo.klrer.. • . • . • • . .• ••• . • • • • • . • . .• . • . • . . • . . . • . • • • . . •. . . . . . . .. • •.. . • . • . . . • . ..• .. . • 1
Chapter Two Interpreting Adjective Position in Herodotus
Helma,D ik .. . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . .. . . . .. . .. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .. . . . . . .. . .. .. . .. . .. . . 55
Chapter Three Towards a Rhetoric of Ancient Scientific
Discourse: Some Formal Characteristics of Greek Medical
and Philosophical Texts (Hippocratic Corpus, Aristotle)
PkuipJ . van der Egk .. . ... . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . .. . .. . . . .. . . . . ... . . 77
Chapter Four The Grammar of the So-Called Historical
Present in Ancient Greek
J.
C. M. Sitlr:ir,agT ldP. . StJJrk•• • • • . . . • . • . . . . . . • . • . • . • .• . . .. . . . . • •. .. . . . . . • •.• •• 131
Chapter Five Figures of Speech and their Lookalikes: Two
Further Exercises in the Pragmatics of the Greek Sentence
S. R. Slings .. . . . . .. ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . .. .. . . . .. . . . . . . ... .. .. . .. . . . .. . .. . . 169
Chapter Six Modal Particles and Different Points of View
in Herodotus and Thucydides
Gerryc . Wo .kJrer•• • • • • • • • •• • • • • • • •• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • ••• ••• • • • • • • •• 215
Index Locor um .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
General Index ...... ... ... . .. .. . . . . .. ......... ....... ............ .......... ... ..... ........ 259

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
J.
Egbert Bakker is Associate Professor at the University of Montreal.
He has published linguisticsa nd Formulasin Homer:& ala-t#ya nd the
Descriptioon f tJu GreekP article" Per' (Amsterdam 1988) and Poetryin
SpeeckO· rali!,a nd HomericD iscours(eI thaca 1997), and he is co-editor
of Written Voices,S pokenS igns: TraditionP, erformancaen, d the Epic Text
(Cambridge, Mass. 1997).
Hehna Dik is Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago. She
is the author of Word Orderi n .AncientG reekA: PragmatiA&c counto f Word
OrderV ariatioinn Herodotu(sA msterdam 1995).
Philip van der Eijk is Lecturer at the University of Newcastle upon
Tyne and holds a Wellcome Trust University Award in the History
of Medicine in the Classical World. He has published AristotelesD. e
insomniisD. e divinationpee r somnum( Berlin 1994), and co-edited Ancient
Medicinei n its Sodo-CulturalC ontext( Amsterdam 1995).
J.
C. M. Sicking is Professor of Greek at Leiden University. He is
the author of GriechischVe erslehr(eM unich 1993), and co-author of
Two Studiesi n Attic ParticleU sage( Leiden 1993) and Two Stud.i.eins the
Semanticos ft he Verbi n ClassicaGl reek( Leiden 1996).
S. R. Slings is Professor of Greek at the Free University of Amster
dam. He is the author of A Commentaryo n the Platonic Clitophon
(Amsterdam 1981) , and co-author of SomeR ecentl,F oundG reekP oemr
(Leiden 1987), The Poet'sI in ArchaicG reekL yric (Amsterdam 1990),
and Plato'sA polog;o fS ocrates(L eiden 1994).
P. Stork is Lecturer at Leiden University. He has published The
AspectualU sageo f the Dynamicl '!finilivein Herodotu(sG roningen 1982),
and is co-author of Two Studieso ft he Semanticosf the Verbi n Classical
Greek( Leiden 1996).
Gerry C. W akker is Lecturer at Groningen University. She has
published Conditionsa n.d.C onditionalsA:n lrwestigatioonf Ancient Greek
(Amsterdam 1994).

INTRODUCTION
J.
Egbert Bakker
Amidst the many changes in the interpretation of ancient Greek texts
that have taken place in the past decades perhaps none has had so
many potential consequences as the shift in interest from the "what"
to the "how'' in the production of meaning. The conception of an
cient texts as messages with a referential object that has to be recon
structed through philological interpretation has long receded in favor
of an attitude that pays due attention to the meansb y which ancient
discourses bring their message across, or even to the mediumin which
their intended public is addressed. For example, we now readily
acknowledge that ancient historians are narrators in addition to their
stating the facts we might want to verify; we realize that what hap
pens in a Platonic dialogue, even in an Aristotelian treatise, is more
than philosophical exposition; we begin to accept that in some cases
our notion of "text" has to be handled with circumspection, as in
the case of Homer and poetry of the archaic age; and, perhaps most
important, we begin to realize the importance of the human voice,
a speaker addressing a public, in the reality constituted by many of
the discourses that have come down to us in the form of text.
Given the fact that in all these developments the way in which we
use language is the central issue, it is surprising that the conception
of language and grammar that still prevails in the philological pro
fe ssion does not seem to have really changed since the days of
AltertumswissenschIatf lm. ay perhaps not be too misleading to say that
grammar in philology reflects a conception of language that is rep
resentational and sentence-bound. Our grammars most commonly
used for teaching and reference tend to present the facts of the lan
guage as a matter of sentential syntax, and they tend to explain the
use of grammatical elements in terms of the properties of the reality
thought to be the referent of the text. This referent may be the physical
reality denoted or invoked by the text, or the thoughts of its author.
We do not have to go into the many controversies related to the
business of interpretation in the posnnodern age to see that such a
conception of language, which posits meaning outside the text, is
one-sided at best. More precisely, the represent.ational and sentential
2 INTRODUCTION
view of Ian e and grammar goes back to a hermeneutics that fe~
guag · · · · al r. Today's hermeneuttc
critics today would accept m its ongin ,orm. .
practice would require a conception of grammar that d~es due Jus-
tice to the physical features of the discourse~ recorde~ m many of
our texts or to the requirements of presentabon to which any com
municati~e transaction whether spoken or written, is subjected. Any
amount of attention t~ such medial or communicative factors will
soon reveal that grammar is often deployed fo~ reasons ~at e~y
transcend the scope of any single sentence or its referenbal obJect.
This is not to say that no important studies on these issues have
appeared since the time of the s~dard reference grammars.~ ther,
it means that such studies have either not crossed the boundanes of
"linguistics"a s a specialized subdomain within the profession or failed
to communicate the importance of their findings to wider issues of
inteipretation.
On the assumption that in many of our texts language is used in
ways that often differ substantially from the function ascribed to it in
traditional philology, the contributors to this volume all hold that the
modem critic cannot afford to ignore advances in areas of research
explicitly devoted to language and grammar in its actual social use.
The essays collected in this volume thus have all in common that
they privilege language over its referent in the production of mean
ing. Their authors attempt to show how the study of such "gram
maticaP'p henomena as tense, word order, or particles can be brought
to bear upon issues of inteipretation. The genres and discourse types
discussed in this way include historiographical narrative, scientific
discourse, tragedy, and Platonic dialogue.
In aski_ngw hy and in which contexts a Greek author prefers one
gramman~ form over another, seemingly equivalent form, the au
thors of this.v ?lume also share a stance with regard to the notions of
S9/,ea n~ s9listicsa s they are commonly used in classical philology. In
one philological understanding of the concept, "style" seems to be
used whenever the language user is thought to have had a choice
between two or mo " · al " ·
re eqwv ent expressions. Terms frequently
encountered for such stylisticc hoices are ''vivid', " . ,, Th
or expressive. ese
or si miIa r terms may or ma t b r. Ii . .
• • Y no e ,e atous for a given case in a
given context, but it seems more pertinent to ask, h .b. aks
of vividne li • w en a en c spe
~ or ~eliness, whether the explanatory potential of our
grammarsi s not SlDlplyd epleted· the . . .
r. • • commurucative or medial rea-
sons 1or prefemng the " • .d,, r.
more ,onn over the "less vivid" one
VlVl
may lie outside the domain of traditional grammar so that either
. '
important cues provided by the language itself are missed or the
interpretation is left to the perceptiveness of the individual critic.
A second important sense of "style" relates to the obvious "liter
ariness" of the language of many of the texts in our corpus. In this
respect, style is commonly seen as what makes language literary,
distinguishing it from the artlessness of ordinary discourse, and setV
ing as a "dress" for the author's thought. This aesthetic understand
ing of style and stylistics is related to the referential view of language,
in that the idea of dress or adornment implies that style can be
removed, leaving a naked body, a plain text with a purely referen
tial, representational function; or it could imply that it is possible to
write without a style, producing plain speech: a matter of pure con
tent, and no form.
Each of the chapters that follow addresses in some way or another
the interrelated issues of representation, "vividness,'' or aesthetics. In
Chapter One, Bakker discusses the use of tense in Thucydides. The
meaning of tense, and the difference between the aorist and the
imperfect in particular, has traditionally been discussed in referential
terms: events referred to with an aorist form are thought to be punc
tual in nature, and actions referred to with the imperfect tense durative.
This referential, semantic distinction, however, is hard to substanti
ate in many individual instances, and, accordingly, critics have often
contented themselves with an author's apparent viewo f an event as
either durative or punctual: an ultimately arbitrary criterion. And
Thucydides in particular seems to be a narrator who often does not
behave according to the rules of our grammars. On the basis of an
analysis of the use of tense by speakers who do not narrate but who
react in words to the concrete situation sWTouncling them, Bakker
argues that tense can be used in narrative as a means to state the
relative distance of the events narrated vis-a-vist he consciousness of
the narrator. In Thucydides, such an analysis leads to a distinction
between two modes of narrative presentation, one that is overtly
mediated by the historian as narrator, and one in which events are
shown mimetically, as if they have been perceived on the spot.
In dealing with point of view in narrative and with the discourse
function of tense, Bakker's essay has obvious links with the e~ys
by Sicking and Stork (Chapter Four) and by Wakker (Chapter Six).
Sicking and Stork deal with the so-called historical present in Greek
narrative, a phenomenon whose treatment has suffered in particular