The pragmatics and semantics of the bare partitive genitive in Ancient Greek

Abstract

The present paper aims to investigate the main semantic-functional and discursive properties of partitives on the bases of the bare (independent) partitive genitive in Ancient Greek. Contrary to previous views that the bare partitive genitive (b-PG) primarily encodes the part-of-relation I claim that this meaning of the b-PG has been lost in Ancient Greek. Instead, I claim that the b-PG encodes undetermined instantiations of a set descriptive and restrictive in nature and compatible with kind-or subkindreferring NPs/DPs. It allows the speaker to make no commitment as to the quantity, referentiality and semantic role of these instantiation(s); this/these instantiation(s) have inherently narrow scope (e.g. with negation). These semantic properties determine the discursive function of the b-PG. I claim that the b-PG detracts the focus of attention from the actual participant and links it to the descriptive set or kind/subkind this participant belongs to; the actual participant is extremely backgrounded and its reference is never stored in the discourse model. The b-PG allows the speaker to zoom out from the actual participant and view it schematically in terms of one of its hypercategories (subkind, kind, characterizing/descriptive set). This function of the b-PG explains its frequent occurrence with the verbs of consumption or desire. It explains, furthermore, its use in the predicative position and in headings. As to the diachronic perspective, it is claimed that the foregroundedness of the respective hypercategory and extreme backgroundedness of the subset indicate that the b-PG develops semantically towards pseudo-partitivity.

The Independent Partitive as an Eastern Circum-Baltic isogloss

“…Analogically to the previous property, this property is already found in the ancient Indo-European languages (Seržant, 2012a), and represents rather a common inheritance in Baltic and Russian. At the same time, the ablativecase-marked direct object nps of Mordvin (as in ex.…”

“…Wherever possible, historical-comparative evidence from genetically related ancient and conservative languages outside the area has been adduced in order to establish the values of the properties in the respective proto-languages. The Proto-IndoEuropean ip(g) of which the Slavic and Baltic ip(g) are the immediate descendants has been quite exhaustively discussed in the literature (inter alia, Bauer, 2007;Dahl, 2009;Nachmanson, 1942;Napoli, 2010;Seržant, 2012aSeržant, , 2012bSchwyzer and Debrunner, 1950;Luraghi, 2003: 60ff). For the ip(g) of Proto-Finnic, the data from Mordvin -a non-Finnic Finno-Ugric languageprovide a more archaic state of affairs with respect to the ip(g), and, hence, can and have been used for diachronic considerations (Kiparsky, 1998).…”

“…In any event, this development cannot be related to the Finnic development of the partitive case from an ablative for diachronic reasons. Debrunner, 1950;Seržant, 2012aSeržant, , 2012b.5 The ip(g) is also an established category in all old and some modern Slavic languages such as Old Church Slavonic, Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, Polish (Miklosich, 1926: 427). Given the autochthonous origins of the category in each of these language branches, a question emerges whether language contact still may sufficiently be argued for.…”

“…which are conducive of decreased referentiality. This functional property of the ip(g) is well attested already in the ancient ie languages (cf., inter alia, Luraghi, 2003: 60ff;Napoli, 2010;Seržant, 2012a) and, hence, must have already been present in the ancestor language, namely, Proto-Indo-European (henceforth: pie). This property is thus inherited in Baltic and Slavic.…”

“…in the ancient IndoEuropean languages (Bauer, 2007: 134;Seržant, 2012a;differently Dahl, 2009: 37-41 andNapoli, 2010, see, however, Fn. 13 above), Baltic and, to a much greater extent, Russian/North Russian introduce restrictions on the occurrence of the ip(g) sensitive to the boundedness value of the predicate.…”