Negation and Polarity in the Greek, Gothic, Classical Armenian, and Old Church Slavic Gospels

Abstract

This paper presents a preliminary analysis of the comparative syntax of negation in the Greek gospels as well as the Gothic, Classical Armenian, and Old Church Slavic versions translated from the Greek. In addition to the issue of negation per se, I will examine the employment of negative polarity items that occur in the various clause types we will investigate.

Adversative Conjunction and Neighboring Discourse Features in Old Church Slavic (Codex Marianus), with Comparative Notes on the Same Phenomena in Greek, Gothic and Classical Armenian*

“…Goth. þan in (27b) is not the clause‐initial temporal demonstrative ‘then’ but rather the second‐position discourse articulator (Klein, in preparation).…”

“…Each of these passages involves pure narrative sequence, in (23c) extending over three consecutive verses. Aside from iþ , the Gothic renditions corresponding to že in these passages include ‐[u]h þan , a discourse foregrounding marker of narrative sequence (Klein 1994, in preparation), and nih , the final segment of which represents a simple post‐negation conjunction ( *ne k w e , cf. Klein & Condon 1993: 47–51).…”

“…Also unexpected is the Armenian adversative aył in (30e). In (30c) Gothic þanuh þan should be analysed as þan + −(u)h þan , with first‐position, temporal subordinating þan ‘when’ followed by discourse‐sequential ‐(u)h þan , and in (30e) þanuh is also discourse continuative (Klein 1994, in preparation).…”

“…They generally signal background information involving the verb ‘be’ and other stative verbs and do not forward the actual movement of the story line. Many are matched in Gothic by ‐(u)h þan , which has been in part grammaticalized in this role (Klein 1994, in preparation). Some are associated with what may be called stock‐taking, essentially summing up a preceding argument.…”

“…An additional feature of a is the frequency with which it is associated with lexical repetition (63/158 = 39.9%). Such repetition, which may also be considered a form of concatenation, is characteristic of what I have elsewhere termed ‘discourse articulation’ (Klein, in preparation), which typically correlates with nexus at syntactic levels higher than that of the word or phrase. Although lexical repetition is an exponent of cohesion in discourse, it must be contrasted with gapping, which normally signals even tighter cohesion.…”