Third Person Reference in Late Latin: Demonstratives, Definite Articles and Personal Pronouns in the Itinerarium Egeriae

382 Pages·2015·12.52 MB·English

by  Mari Johanne Bordal Hertzenberg

Mari Johanne Bordal Hertzenberg
Third Person Reference in Late Latin
Trends in Linguistics
Studies and Monographs
Editor
Volker Gast
Editorial Board
Walter Bisang
Jan Terje Faarlund
Hans Henrich Hock
Natalia Levshina
Heiko Narrog
Matthias Schlesewsky
Amir Zeldes
Niina Ning Zhang
Editor Responsible for this volume
Volker Gast
Volume 288
Mari Johanne Bordal Hertzenberg
Third Person Reference
in Late Latin
Demonstratives, Definite Articles and
Personal Pronouns in the Itinerarium Egeriae
ISBN 978-3-11-037836-8
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-040194-3
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-040209-4
ISSN 1861-4302
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A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
♾ Printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Germany
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Acknowledgements
This is a revised version of my doctoral dissertation, which I defended in Octo-
ber 2012. I wrote the dissertation as a PhD fellow on the project Pragmatic Re-
sources in Old Indo-European Languages (PROIEL) at the University of Oslo.
In writing my dissertation – and later in revising it – I benefited from the
help of many people. First, I am indebted to my PhD supervisor, Dag Haug, for
his constructive feedback, support and encouragement. He led me into the fas-
cinating world of Latin linguistics, and has taught me much of what I know
about Latin and linguistics.
I am moreover grateful to my former colleagues in the PROIEL project, Eirik
Welo, Angelika Müth, Hanne Eckhoff and Tatiana Nikitina, as well as PROIEL
affiliates Federico Aurora and Øyvind Strand. Special thanks are due to Hanne
Eckhoff and Tatiana Nikitina for comments on selected chapters of the disserta-
tion, which I benefited greatly from.
The present book has also benefited from the feedback of my dissertation
evaluation committee, which consisted of Monika Asztalos, Tore Janson and
Silvia Luraghi. Tore Janson and Silvia Luraghi offered me insightful observa-
tions and valuable suggestions at my doctoral defence.
Furthermore, I would like to thank the series editor, Volker Gast, as well as
an anonymous referee, whose criticisms and suggestions significantly improved
the manuscript. All remaining errors, of course, are my own responsibility.
The book would never have been completed without the support of my fam-
ily and friends. My biggest debt I owe to my parents for their loving care and
tireless support throughout my life. My grandfather secretly taught himself
Latin and was perhaps the only one outside the academic world who under-
stood what I was actually doing in my PhD project. I know that he would have
been very proud of me today. I am grateful to my friends for making life full of
fun and lending me shoulders to cry on whenever things get rough. Last, but by
no means least, thanks to Kjersti for being who she is.
Contents
Acknowledgements | v
1 Introduction | 1
1.1 Previous Research | 2
1.1.1 The Nature of Demonstratives, Definite Articles and Personal
Pronouns | 2
1.1.2 The Interrelationship between the Demonstratives in Late
Latin | 4
1.1.4.2 On the Rise of the Personal Pronoun | 16
1.1.4.3 Ipse – ‘barbarisme à la seconde puissance’? | 16
1.1.4.4 Why Ille was Eventually the Preferred Definite Article / Personal
Pronoun | 17
1.1.5 Causal Factors behind the Changes of Ille and Ipse | 18
1.1.6 Research Questions | 19
1.1.6.1 Theoretical Issues | 19
1.1.6.2 The Interrelationship between the Referring Expressions | 20
1.1.6.3 Are Ille and Ipse Definite Articles and Personal Pronouns in the
Itinerarium Egeriae? | 20
1.1.6.4 How did Ille/Ipse Become Definite Articles and Personal
Pronouns? | 20
1.1.6.5 The Causes behind the Changes | 21
2 Theoretical Foundations | 22
2.1 Definiteness | 22
2.1.1 Definiteness as Uniqueness | 23
2.1.2 Definiteness as Familiarity | 25
2.1.2.1 Familiarity in Heim’s (1982) File Change Semantics | 25
2.1.3 Definiteness as Inclusiveness | 27
2.1.4 Definiteness as Identifiability | 28
2.1.4.1 Lyons (1999): The Grammaticalisation of Identifiability | 29
2.1.5 Evaluation of the Proposals: Definiteness as the Identifiability of
Discourse Referents | 30
2.2 Accessibility and the Choice of Referring Expression | 35
2.2.1 The Variables Determining Accessibility | 36
2.2.1.1 Givenness Status | 36
2.2.1.2 Distance to the Antecedent | 38
2.2.1.3 Antecedent within the Current Frame/Sequence/Paragraph? | 39
viii | Contents
2.2.1.4 Animacy | 40
2.2.1.5 Antecedent Topicality | 40
2.2.1.6 Syntactic Function of the Antecedent | 43
2.2.1.7 Form of the Antecedent | 44
2.2.1.8 The Type of Clause in which the Antecedent Occurs | 45
2.2.2 Other Variables that May Influence the Choice of Referring
Expression | 46
2.2.2.1 Competitors to the Role of Antecedent | 46
2.2.2.2 Type of Head Noun in the Anaphoric Noun Phrase | 47
2.2.2.3 Syntactic Function of the Anaphor | 48
2.2.2.4 Topicality of the Anaphor | 48
2.2.2.5 Backward and Forward Saliency | 48
2.2.3 Correlations between Accessibility and Various Referring
Expressions | 49
2.2.4 Accessibility and Grice’s Maxim of Quantity | 51
2.3 Definite Articles, Personal Pronouns and Demonstratives | 55
2.3.1 Definite Articles | 55
2.3.2 Personal Pronouns | 56
2.3.2.1 A Note on Null Pronouns | 58
2.3.3 Demonstratives | 58
2.3.4 When has a Demonstrative Become a Definite Article or a Personal
Pronoun? | 64
2.4 Intensifiers | 67
2.5 Summary | 70
3 Methods and Data Extraction | 71
3.1 The PROIEL Corpus | 71
3.1.1 Text Selection | 71
3.1.3.4 The Topic Guesser | 81
4 Full NPs, Overt Pronominal Forms and Null Pronouns | 89
4.1 A Restriction on pro | 91
4.2 Non-Anaphoric Uses | 94
4.2.1 New Referents | 94
4.2.2 ANCHORED Referents | 95
4.2.3 Inferable Referents | 96
4.2.4 Generally Known and Generic Referents | 97
4.2.5 Referents that are Present in the Immediate Situation | 99
4.3 Anaphoric Uses | 99
Contents | ix
4.3.1 The Choice between the Subject Anaphors | 100
4.3.1.1 Form of the Antecedent | 101
4.3.1.2 Syntactic function of the Antecedent | 104
4.3.1.3 Antecedent Topicality | 108
4.3.1.4 Topicality of the Anaphor Itself | 110
4.3.1.5 Animacy | 112
4.3.1.6 The type of Clause in which the Antecedent Occurs | 114
4.3.1.7 The Presence or Absence of Competing Referents | 117
4.3.1.8 Distance to the Antecedent | 121
4.3.1.9 Summary and Discussion of the Data | 125
4.3.2 The Choice between the Non-Subject Anaphors | 135
4.3.2.1 Form of the Antecedent | 135
4.3.2.2 Syntactic Function of the Antecedent | 138
4.3.2.3 Topicality of the Antecedent and the Anaphor | 140
4.3.2.4 Animacy | 143
4.3.2.5 The Type of Clause in which the Antecedent Occurs | 145
4.3.2.6 The Presence or Absence of Competing Referents | 147
4.3.2.7 Distance to the Antecedent | 149
4.3.2.8 Summary of the non-Subject Anaphors and Discussion of the
Data | 152
4.3.3 Differences between the First and Second Part of the Itinerarium
Egeriae | 158
4.4 Summary | 163
5 High Accessibility Markers: Pronominal Forms | 166
5.1 Is Pronominal Ipse an Intensifier in the Itinerarium Egeriae? | 167
5.2 A Note on Is | 172
5.3 Non-Anaphoric Uses of the Pronominal Forms | 173
5.3.1 New Referents | 173
5.3.2 ANCHORED Referents | 176
5.3.3 Inferable Referents | 179
5.3.4 Referents that are Present in the Immediate Situation | 180
5.4 Anaphoric Uses of the Pronominal Forms | 182
5.4.1 The Choice between the Pronominal Subject Anaphors | 183
5.4.1.1 Form of the Antecedent | 184
5.4.1.2 Syntactic Function of the Antecedent | 188
5.4.1.3 Antecedent Topicality | 192
5.4.1.4 Anaphor Topicality | 193
5.4.1.5 Animacy | 198
x | Contents
5.4.1.6 The Type of Clause in which the Antecedent Occurs | 200
5.4.1.7 Position in the Anaphoric Chain | 202
5.4.1.8 Tendency of the Referent to be Picked up in the Later
Discourse | 204
5.4.1.9 Distance to the Antecedent | 208
5.4.1.10 The Presence or Absence of Competing Referents | 210
5.4.1.11 Summing up the Pronominal Subject Anaphors | 211
5.4.2 The Choice between the Pronominal non-Subject Anaphors | 217
5.4.2.1 Form of the Antecedent | 217
5.4.2.2 Syntactic Function of the Antecedent | 220
5.4.2.3 Syntactic Function of the Anaphor | 223
5.4.2.4 Antecedent Topicality | 226
5.4.2.5 Anaphor Topicality | 228
5.4.2.6 Animacy | 229
5.4.2.7 The Type of Clause in which the Antecedent Occurs | 232
5.4.2.8 Position in the Anaphoric Chain | 233
5.4.2.9 Tendency of the Referent to be Picked up in the Later
Discourse | 235
5.4.2.10 Distance to the Antecedent | 237
5.4.2.11 The Presence or Absence of Competing Referents | 238
5.4.2.12 Summing Up the Pronominal non-Subject Anaphors | 239
5.5 Are Ille and Ipse Personal Pronouns in the Itinerarium
Egeriae? | 241
5.5.1 Anaphoric Ille and Ipse | 241
5.5.1.1 Antecedent in the Same Sentence | 242
5.5.1.2 Antecedent in the Previous Sentence | 247
5.5.1.3 Antecedent Further Away | 251
5.5.2 Non-Anaphoric Ille and Ipse | 255
5.5.3 On the Context of Origin of the Personal Pronouns | 258
5.6 Differences between Part One and Part Two of the Text | 259
5.7 Summary | 260
6 Low Accessibility Markers: Full NPs | 263
6.1 Is Adnominal Ipse an Intensifier in the Itinerarium Egeriae? | 264
6.2 Non-Anaphoric Uses of the Full NPs | 267
6.2.1 New Referents | 267
6.2.2 ANCHORED Referents | 268
6.2.3 Inferable Referents | 272
6.2.4 Generally Known Referents | 273