GEOFFREY HORROCKS CLITICS IN GREEK - A DIACHRONIC REVIEW Dr. Grorrrey Horrocks St. John’s College, Cambridge Introduction This paper examines the distribution of clitic pronouns (and, toa lesser extent, connectives) throughout the history of Greek. In the earliest texts there is a strong tendency for these elements to appear in second position within sentences regardless of the semantic/syntactic relationships they have with other constituents. What we sce in the history of Greek is a progressive shift towards "head - dependence” in the sense that clitics creasingly appear adjacent to the heads of the syntactic phrases which govern them. This might be interpreted in more general terms as a kind of "morphologisation” process; items which originally had a distinctive syntactic distribution, and were phonologically cliticised to any sentence - initial element, come to have something of the status of affixes (though attached to lexical heads rather than to roots or stems). A particular issue is the ordering of object clitic pronouns, with same dialects {including standard Modern Greek) exhibiting prociitic pronouns with finite verbs, others (including Cypriot) enclitic pronouns. An account of the dialectal division is offered in terms of levelling after a period of variation, I. Pre - Classical and Classical Greek ‘Wackernagel (1892) long ago established that the "second” ition in a sentence was the natural position for “clitic” 35CLITICS IN GREEK - A DIACHROMIC REVIEW elements in the earliest attested Indo - European languages, and Wackernagel’s "law" has since been universally accepted by Indo - Europeanists and amply confirmed by subsequent research (cf. ¢.g. Watkins 1964). Early Greek provides innumerable examples of clitie connectives and pronouns in second position in clauses. This frequently involves a separation between the clitic and the word or words with which it forms a meaningful expression, and often "disrupts" syntactic phrases. Consider the examples in (1). (Di. Kat opt elde Gnact téxva éxyevoueva (Hat. 1, 30, 4) ii. év 66 01 EAdooovt xp6ve... yon aden inter (Hat. VI, 63, 2) It is important to note that the earlier the Greek, the more likely itis that whole sequences of clitics will appear in second position, and that when such sequences occur, connectives invariably precede pronouns, as in (1) ii., (cf. Delbriick 1893, Watkins 1964). Greek also shares with Vedic and some other languages the Possibility of placing verbs in second, i.e. enelitic, position, following a sentence - initial connective and certain other elements. Verbs are unaccented in main clauses in Vedic, so this position must have been a natural one for such elements in the carly Indo - European languages, assuming that Vedic represents the inherited state of affairs. This cendency for verbs to be drawn to second position by initial deictic or anaphoric connective elements is well exemplified in Mycenaean. (2) o-de-ka-so-to a-ko-so-ta (5+ dexato Alxoitas) (PY Pn 30) Where there is a sequence 0° clitics already in second position, the verb follows them, (3) Kat ré pot pqar ndxn Tpdeoaw apyyew (Hom, A 521) an ancient pattern, as the following Mycenaean example shows. (4) da-mo-de-mi pa-si ko-to-na-o ke-ke-me-na-o o-na-to e-ke-e 36 GEOFFREY HORROCKS (damos - de - min - phasi ktoinddn kekesmendén onaton ekhehen (PY Ep 704) In post - Homeric Greek, however, there is a progressive tendency to distribute clitic elements within a sentence instead of concentrating them in the position immediately after the first non - clitic word (cf. Dover 1960, 1Sff). The first step involves the development of *procitic” status for certain classes of words such as the definite article and prepositions. In the earliest Greek, ‘as exemplified by the Homeric corpus, what was later to become the definite article has the function of a demonstrative pronoun, and enjoys a corresponding syntactic autonomy. Similary, what are later to become prepositions and (obligatorily prefixed) verb particles sometimes exhibit the properties of autonomous adverbs. Once the shift in the status of these items takes place, articles and prepositions come to be treated phonologically as a part of the first word for the purpose of clitic placement. This may be interpreted as showing that they were not always felt to be sufficiently “word - like” to host a following enclitic connective or pronoun. Consider the example in (5). (5) x6 10d norayod yap ot odK éiIv Céwp popéeoBat (Hat. IX, 49, 3) Much more important, however, is the general tendency for non - connective clities to become distributed among the syntactic phrases which constitute a sentence. In the following example from Thucydides, clitics come in second position in each of two constituents of the sentence. (6) Kai (np0¢ uév rods tpdxovg Tod uerépovs [ dobeviis dv gov 6 26yos ein. Thue. VI, 9, 3) ‘After the initial connective comes the prepositional phrase “topic” with clitic wv, followed by the "focus" &o¥evic with clitics iv ov and the residue of the sentence consisting of subject and copula, The clitics come second in their respective phrases, but it is important to note that a somewhat more sophisticated 37CLITICS IN GREEK - A DIACHRONIC REVIEW notion of “initial’ and "second” position is now called for, namely one that is sensitive to phrasal boundaries within sentences, ‘One obvious effect of distributing clitics "by phrase" instead of concentrating them in a single sentential position is that they are very often found in close proximity with the words with which they form a meaningful expression. It is in fact a characteristic of Classical Greek that clitic pronouns in particular frequently come to stand not so much in second position in the phrases they belong to but in second position with respect to the head constituents of those phrases. Typically, of course, the clitic will represent an argument of the verb that is the head of the verb phrase / sentence. This kind of grouping is illustrated in (7). (1) Gore robtov dginui at, « BOOippov (PI. Euthyphro, 9¢) where the initial sentence connective is followed by the topic ‘obtov, which is in turn followed by the residue of the sentence, in this case a simple verb form and a clitic in “second” position with respect to it. The clitic represents the direct object of the verb in question and forms a semantic and syntactic unit with it. This kind of "head dependency" for clitic pronouns is, of course, characteristic of the Modern Greck language, and, as noted in the introduction, part of the purpose of this paper will be to trace the development of this pattern and the elimination of the older construction. Sometimes the potential conflict between the “original” and the "more modern” distribution of clitics results in a repetition Of the item in question. The first example of dv in (8) is in second Position with respect to the sentence as a whole (treating the Proclitic sentence connective as forming a single phonological word with tpic), while the second instance occurs as a dependent of the head of the main clause, the verb éhou.t. (ds tpic dv nap’ doniba ativan (BELoy Gv ( WaALOV H te- keiv dxag. (Eurip. Med, 250). 38 GEOFFREY HORROCKS Dover (1960, 18f.) has noted that we must be wary of trying, to motivate the drift towards "distributed" and ultimately head = dependent clitics, exclusively by reference to a desire for syntactically coherent sense groups because of the huge number of examples in which clitics continue to appear in positions where they do not “belong” from the semantic point of view. Consider (9) Soxodat 6¢ 'ACnvator (Kai todts wor ob 6pBis Boure dat ((Xen) Resp. Ath., 3, 10) where the clitic pronoun, which is a complement of Soxoda, ‘appears in second position with respect to the subordinate clause which depends on that verb (assuming that xai todto forms a single phonological word initially in that clause). Consider also, (10) penapripnra: wav bi (wai év épzi por ro A6you (Wem, 37.23) But notice that in each case the clitic has attached to the ‘most emphatic constituent of the sentence. This is really no different from the Thucydidean example in (6), except that the clitie pronoun here appears in second position within the focal constituent of the sentence even though that focus is not itself initial. This is exactly parallel to the freedom of positioning seen in (7) where the clitic appears second with respect to the head verb, even though that verb is not phrase - initial. We should then perhaps think in terms of Classical Greek exhibiting a dependence of clitics on " prominent constituents”, and treat this as a stage on the path from the inherited positioning exemplified in Homeric Greek to the exclusive head - dependence of the Modern language. In the absence of an explicit sentential focus, which may or may not be phrase / clause - initial, cities attach to the head of the phrase they belong to, as the most prominent available constituent; if there is such a focus, however, clitics may attach to that. That said, there is without doubt a growing tendency in the Fourth century for lities which denote arguments of a verb to 39