Enjambement of Narrow Focus + Verb in Homeric Greek
Résumé
The aim of this talk is to present preliminary results of our investigation into the prosodic, syntactic and information-structural properties of those combinations of Narrow Focus and Verb in Homeric Greek where the Narrow Focus is placed at the end of one verse while the Verb follows at the beginning of the next, cf. (1). These instances constitute a subtype of integral or necessary enjambement (Kirk 1966, Higbie 1990).
(1)τὸν δ’ ἕτερον ξίφεϊ μεγάλῳ [κληῗδα παρ’ ὦμον]Narrow Focus
[πλῆξ’]Verb, ἀπὸ δ’ αὐχένος ὦμον ἐέργαθεν ἠδ’ ἀπὸ νώτου.
(Hom. Il. 5.146–147)
Their existence is especially intriguing as there are otherwise reasons to believe that the prosodic links between Narrow Focus + Verb are tighter than with any other information-structural configuration, since, as a rule, they have to be continuous (Matić 2003: 619–625, Bertrand 2010: 351–356): Compared to other pairs of constituents, the sequence Narrow Focus + Verb exhibits a higher rate of non-caesural breaks and lower rates of caesurae and line-ends; there are also significantly more liaison phenomena (elision, resyllabification, latent segments, onset gemination, epic correption). Prosodic breaks between Narrow Focus and Verb arguably constitute boundaries between phonological phrases (φ-phrases) at the most (cf. Foley’s [1990: 81–82] hierarchy of verse-internal prosodic breaks). However, Homeric hexameter verse ideally corresponds to exactly one clause in syntax, i.e. also one basic information-structural domain, as well as one intonational phrase (ι-phrase) in phonology (Devine & Stephens 1994: 400, but cf. Allan 2009, Bakker 1997: 50, 147f.). A line end separating Narrow Focus from Verb may thus imply a promotion of the break to the status of ι-phrase boundary.
Starting from this hypothesis, we examined all 87 instances of Narrow Focus + Verb in enjambement that can be retrieved from Bertrand’s reference corpus on Homeric information structure, which consists of Iliad books 5, 22 and Odyssey books 1, 9, 20 (Bertrand 2010). We compared them to the same number of instances of Narrow Focus + Verb that were (a) placed within the same metrical colon, (b) separated by a caesura of Fränkel’s (1926) type C, (c) separated by a caesura of type B.
Our results suggest that both information-structural factors as well as reasons of cognitive or prosodic processing may lead to an increase in prosodic boundary strength: Separation by a caesura of type B or verse end is more likely with contrastive foci as in (2). Additionally, enjambement is favoured by cases where one of the elements is informationally heavier, such as presentative clauses like (3). Likelihood of enjambement however also increases together with the syntactic complexity as well as the number of morae of the Narrow Focus constituent. Interestingly, the presence of a negation within the clause seems to favour enjambement too, cf. again (2). – The example instances illustrate that the actual occurrence of enjambement can be put down to a single driving factor in some cases, but requires a multifactorial explanation in others.
(2)Κύκλωψ, οὐκ ἄρ’ ἔμελλες [ἀνάλκιδος ἀνδρὸς ἑταίρους]NFoc
[ἔδμεναι]V ἐν σπῆϊ γλαφυρῷ κρατερῆφι βίηφι.
(Hom. Od. 9.475–476)
(3)ἣ μὲν γάρ θ’ ὕδατι λιαρῷ ῥέει, ἀμφὶ δὲ [καπνὸς]NFoc
[γίγνεται]V ἐξ αὐτῆς ὡς εἰ πυρὸς αἰθομένοιο·
(Hom. Il. 22.149–150)
References
ALLAN, R. J., 2009, “Orale elementen in de Homerische grammatica: Intonatie-eenheid en enjambement”, Lampas, 42, p. 136–151.
BAKKER, E. J., 1997, Poetry in speech: orality and Homeric discourse. Ithaca & London, Cornell University Press.
BERTRAND, N., 2010, L’ordre des mots chez Homère: structure informationnelle, localisation et progression du récit. PhD Dissertation. Paris, Université Paris 4 Sorbonne.
DEVINE, A. M. & L. D. STEPHENS, 1994, The prosody of Greek speech. New York & Oxford, Oxford University Press.
FOLEY, J. M., 1990, Traditional oral epic: the Odyssey, Beowulf, and the Serbo-Croatian return song. Berkeley, Los Angeles & Oxford, University of California Press.
FRÄNKEL, H. F., 1926, “Der kallimachische und der homerische Hexameter”, NAWG, 1926, p. 197–229.
HIGBIE, C., 1990, Measure and music: enjambement and sentence structure in the Iliad. Oxford, Clarendon Press.
KIRK, G. S., 1966, “Studies in some technical aspects of Homeric style”, YClS, 20, p. 73–152.
MATIĆ, D., 2003, “Topic, focus, and discourse structure: Ancient Greek word order”, StudLang, 27, p. 573–633.