RRL, LXV, 3, p. 249–260, Bucureşti, 2020
THE CASE OF OLD CHURCH SLAVONIC
ANDREA DI MANNO1
Abstract: In this paper I will discuss the role of the Old Church Slavonic textual connector že (‘Ø, and, but’) in the structuring of discourse. The hypothesis that considers it an adversative/additive conjunction, established in the practice of lexicographers and grammarians, will be rejected and it will be shown that že is best defined as a development marker, since its core function is to signal the interruption of a preceding thematic chain and the beginning of a new one. Particular attention will be devoted to the mismatches between the Old Church Slavonic translation of the Gospel and its Greek Vorlage.
Keywords: Old Church Slavonic, textual connectors, discourse, translation, development marker.
1. INTRODUCTION
With the rise of pragmatic and functional approaches to language, the interest in particles has considerably increased, even in the branch of linguistics that is usually called Indo-European studies. Starting with Klein (1978) and Klein (1985) on Vedic, analyses aiming to study the function and the role played by particles in the text/discourse organization have been carried out mostly on Latin (Kroon 1995) and Ancient Greek (see Bonifazi et al. 2016, with bibliography, Denizot and Spevak 2017), but also on Gothic (Klein and Condon 1993, Ferraresi 2005, Klein 2018, Kleina to appear).
As far as Old Church Slavonic (OCS) is concerned, the literature is not so vast. In particular, researchers focused mostly on the connector a (Efimova 2000, 2004, Kleinb to appear), while only a single work has been devoted to OCS nъ (Efimova 1997); as for the other connectors, not much work has been done in this field so far.
In this paper I will focus on OCS že (En. ‘Ø, and, but’). After discussing some preliminary issues in Section 2, I will provide a fine-grained analysis of OCS že (Section 3), focusing especially on the mismatches between the Slavic and the Greek versions of the text. I will leave Section 4 for some general conclusions.
1 Sapienza Università di Roma, [email protected].
2. PRELIMINARY REMARKS
2.1. Terminology
As it is known, one of the major problems that every research on particles has to face is a terminological one. Because of the variety of theories and methodologies employed in the study of particles, no consensus has been reached on what particles are and how they should be named. In this paper I will leave those terminological issues aside, and focus only on the terms that I will employ.
Particle will be a cover term for all those elements which may not contribute to the propositional, truth-conditional content of a clause (Kroon 2011: 176), while I will use the term textual connector to refer to those particles that have a specifically connective function, i.e. connecting the segment they appear in to another segment in the text. A textual connector increases the cohesion of a text and facilitates the process of decoding, making the relations holding between textual segments explicit and helping the hearer/reader with the segmentation of the text2.
These textual segments are usually defined (at least in a Discourse Grammar framework) as acts and moves, where an act is “the smallest identifiable unit of communicative behaviour” (Kroon 1995: 65) and a move is “an autonomous monological contribution to a communicative interaction and may consist of only one act or of several related acts, which all may, but need not have the form of a full grammatical clause”
(Kroon 2011: 182).
2.2. OCS and Greek: the corpus
OCS is the first documented Slavic language, with texts dating from the tenth to the end of the eleventh century3. The texts are virtually all translations from Greek and there is a certain pessimism in the literature about the possibility of separating Greek features from native Slavic ones (see e.g. MacRobert 1986, Večerka 1997). It should be noted, however, that the first translations of the Gospels are far from being slavish translations of the Greek Vorlage, as the employment of dual to render Greek plural forms, as well as supine and nominalizations to render Greek substantivized infinitives, shows (see Seliščev 1951: 29–31).
As far as textual connectors are concerned, although most Greek connectors have regular translation equivalents (δέ – že, En. ‘Ø, and, but’; γάρ – bo, En. ‘for’, ‘since’; οὖν – ubo, En. ‘therefore’, ‘then’, etc.), these correspondences are far from absolute, as will be shown below.
For the analysis of že I used data from the Codex Marianus4, a Glagolitic tetraevangelion in scriptio continua, showing some punctuation marks (mostly puncti and combinations of puncti). This choice was made mainly for two reasons: Codex Marianus is
2 On discourse segmentation, see Bonifazi et al. 2016:IV.3.
3 For more details, see Picchio 1991:103–143.
4 In addition to Codex Marianus, the other manuscripts referred to in this paper are the following: Codex Zographensis, a Glagolitic tetraevangelion; Codex Assemani, a Glagolitic evangeliary; Sava’s Book, a Cyrillic evangeliary. All these manuscripts are part of the OCS canon, and thus are of Macedonian or Bulgarian provenance and date back to the end of the 10th or beginning of the 11th century.
one of the oldest translations of the Gospels (the equally archaic Codex Zographensis has more lacunae, and is therefore around 5000 words shorter) and, as said above, the oldest translations are more accomplished and show less Greek interference; the second reason is that Codex Marianus is available electronically with token-level alignments with the Greek source text in the TOROT treebank5. At this point, a caveat is in order: the Greek text used in the TOROT treebank is the Tischendorf edition. Unfortunately, we do not know the exact manuscripts from which Marianus was translated, but we do know that it shows more affinity with the Majority text (or Byzantine text-type) – see (1) and Metzger (1968) –, so all the instances of že in the Marianus have been checked against the Byzantine text-type6.
(1) Mk 3,32
καì λέγουσιν αὐτῷ (Tischendorf) rěšę že emu (Marianus)
εἴπον δὲ αὐτῷ (Byzantine text-type)
‘And they told him.’
Here not only OCS že translates (as in the majority of cases) Greek δέ, but also the tense of the verb shows more affinity with the Byzantine text-type: while the Tischendorf edition has a present tense, both Marianus and the Byzantine text-type have an aorist. The affinity between Codex Marianus and the Byzantine text-type is even more evident from Table 1, where every occurrence of že in Marianus (N=1442) has been checked against its equivalent in both the Tischendorf and the Byzantine text-type editions.
Table 1.
Equivalents of že in the Tischendorf and in the Byzantine text-type editions Equivalents of že
δέ καί οὖν τε Other No equivalent
Tischendorf 1071 55 168 10 11 127
Greek
edition Byzantine 1173 16 176 10 9 58
The first row shows the Greek equivalents of OCS že in the Tischendorf edition, while the second one shows data from the Byzantine text-type. A Pearson χ2 test for independence tells us that the two distributions are not equal (χ2 = 52.18, df = 5, p-value = 4.955e–10)7. The analysis of the standardized residuals shows that the cells contributing the most to the discrepancy between the two distributions are the ones in the columns ‘δέ’,
‘καί’ and ‘no equivalent’: in particular, we can see that the data in the Byzantine row are more consistent, since they have a positive value in the cell of δέ (4.57), while they have
5 For the TOROT treebank (https://nestor.uit.no) see Eckhoff and Berdicevskis (2015).
I would like to thank dr. H. M. Eckhoff for kindly providing me with the dataset.
6 In the edition of Robinson and Pierpont (2005), accessible on biblehub.com; the English translation is the New International Version (NIV), accessible on biblehub.com; line breaks are indicated with a double slash (//), while headlines of paragraphs are in superscript.
7 The null hypothesis that there is no association between the variable ‘edition’ and the variable ‘equivalents of že’ is tantamount to saying that the two distributions are equal, the variable
‘edition’ being futile to explain the variable ‘equivalents of že’. Thus, rejecting the null hypothesis, we conclude that the two distributions are not equal.
negative values in the other two cells (and namely –4.69 for καί and –5.24 for ‘no equivalent’). In other words, in the Byzantine text-type we have more instances of že translating its regular equivalent δέ, and less instances of že translating καί or not having a Greek equivalent.
3. ŽE
Codex Marianus has 1442 occurrences of že. As already shown in Table 1, in the vast majority of cases (1173) it translates Greek δέ, En. ‘Ø, and, but’; in 176 instances οὖν, En. ‘then’, ‘therefore’; in 16 cases it translates Greek καί, En. ‘and’; in 10 τε, En. ‘and’; in 5 μέν, En. ‘Ø’, ‘whereas’; in 2 instances γάρ, En. ‘for’, ‘since’; in 1 μέντοι, En. ‘yet’,
‘however’, ‘Ø’; in 1 τότε, En. ‘at that time’, ‘then’; and in 58 cases it has no equivalent in the Greek text.
The Slovník jazyka staroslověnského (Kurz and Hauptová 1958) and the Staroslavjanskij slovar': po rukopisjam X-XI vekov (Cejtlin et al. 1999) describe že both as a conjunction with additive, adversative and copulative functions and as an intensifying particle. Vaillant (1977: 220) considers it to be a calque from Greek and Ickler (1977) defines it as a “marker of topic switch”.
In general, že is the most generic of OCS textual connectors, since its constant lies in marking an advancement in the text: it has a purely intersentential function, like its Greek counterpart δέ, which is defined by Runge (2010: 18) as a development marker. It is used in monologues and in narrative sections and it is often combined with transitions in conversational turns within dialogic sections. It signals that what follows is to be interpreted as a distinct discourse unit or sub-unit (i.e. as a distinct move or act), as a progression in the plot or in the line of reasoning. As for Latin autem (En. ‘but’,
‘however’), “its structuring role is based on a different coherence principle, that of continuity and discontinuity of the linear information structure. The linear information structure of a discourse naturally evolves along various concurrent thematic strands of information, involving continued reference to, for instance, the same person, location, time, situation, and circumstances” (Kroon 2011: 185). The interruption of one of those chains causes a transition in the discourse structure and the new thematic chain is formally marked, in OCS, by že.
In the remainder of this section I will briefly illustrate the ‘canonical’ case (i.e., when OCS že translates Greek δέ) and then I will provide a more fine-grained analysis of the cases where there are mismatches between the OCS text and the Greek one.
(2) Lc 7,2–6 ‹2› Sъtъniku že eteru rabъ bolę zъlě umiraaše · iže bě emu čъstenъ · ‹3›
slyšavъ že o ºisě · posъla kъ nemu starъcę ijudeisky · molę i da prišedъ ºspstъ raba ego · ‹4› oni že prišedъše kъ ºisvi · molěaxǫ i tъštъno ºςτljǫšte ěko dostoinъ estъ · eže ašte dasi emu · ‹5› ljubitъ bo ºjęzkъ našъ · i sъnьmište tъ sъzъda namъ · ‹6›
ºisъ že iděaše sъ nimi · ešte že emu nedaleče sǫštu otъ domu · posъla kъ nemu drugy sъtьnikъ ºglę emu ·
‹2› There a centurion’s že servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. ‹3› The centurion heard že of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. ‹4› When they že came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, “This man deserves to have you do this, ‹5›
because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue.” ‹6› So Jesus že went with them. // He was not far že from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him.
In this narrative section there are five že (corresponding to just as many δέ in the Greek text). The function fulfilled by že is that of segmenting the text into five different moves (roughly corresponding to the segmentation achieved in the translation by using full stops): a) there is a sick servant; b) the centurion sends for Jesus; c) the elders of the Jews talk with him; d) Jesus goes with them; e) the centurion sends his friends towards Jesus.
Moreover, it can be noted that že is not to be considered a marker of topic switch (in v.
3 there is no topic switch, as confirmed by the ellipsis of the subject; similarly in v. 6): the frequent occurrence of že in situations of topic switch is nothing but a corollary of its more general function described here. It turns out to be even more evident in the next example.
(3) Mt 15,22–27 ‹22› i se žena xananeiska otъ prědělь těxъ išedъši · vъzъpi ºgljǫšti
· […]· ‹23› onъ že ne otъvěšta ei slovese · I pristǫpьše učenici ego molěxǫ i ºgljǫšte · [...] · ‹24› onъ že otъvěštavъ reče · [...] · ‹25› ona že prišedъši pokloni sę emu ºglšti · [...] · ‹26› onъ že otъvěštavъ reče · [...] · ‹27› ona že reče […] ·
‹22› A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out […]. // ‹23›
Jesus že did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him […].
// ‹24› He že answered […]. // ‹25› The woman že came and knelt before him. […]
she said. // ‹26› He že replied […]. // ‹27› [...] she že said. […].
In dialogues že signals the alternation of the speakers’ turns, as in (3). However, in v. 23 it may be observed that it signals a change neither of the topic, nor of the subject: had this been the function of že, we would have expected another one after učenici (En.
‘disciples’) – from the fact that the translator used i we may infer that v. 23 as a whole has to be considered a single move, formed by more than one act. Moreover, it should be noted that the third person pronoun onъ is always followed by že (at least in the Gospels): since OCS is a pro-drop language, the third person subject pronoun is used mainly as a contrastive topic (or as a focus), which is exactly what we would expect at the beginning of a new move.
This employment of že with personal pronouns is what has led to the contrastive reading of this textual connector, which seems to be underspecified for this function.
(4) Mt 5,27–34 ‹27› Slyšaste ěko rečeno bys drevъnimъ · ne prěljuby sъtvoriši · ‹28›
azъ že ºgljǫ vamъ · ěko vьsěkъ iže vьzьritъ na ženǫ sъ poxotijǫ · juže ljuby sъtvori sъ nejǫ vъ ºsrdci svoemъ · ‹29› ašte že oko tvoe desnoe sъblažnaatъ tę · izьmi e i vrъzi otъ tebe · uněe bo ti estъ da pogybletъ edinъ udъ tvoixъ · a ne vьse tělo tvoe vъvrъženo bǫdetъ vъ ǵeonǫ · ‹30› i ašte desna tvoě rǫka sъblažnaatъ tę usěci jǫ · i vrъzi otъ tebe · uněe bo ti estъ da pogybletъ edinъ udъ tvoixъ · a ne vьse tělo tvoe vъvrъženo bǫdetъ vъ ǵeonǫ < ‹31› rečeno že bystъ · iže ašte pustitъ ženǫ svojǫ · da dastъ ei kъnigy raspustъnyję · ‹32› azъ že ºgljǫ vamъ · ěko vьsěkъ puštajęi ženǫ svojǫ razvě slovese ljuboděinaago · tvoritъ jǫ prěljuby děati · i iže posъpěgǫ poemletъ prěljuby tvoritъ · ‹33› paky slyšaste · ěko rečeno bys drevьniimъ · ne vъ lъžǫ klъneši sę · vъzdasi že ºgvi klętvy tvoję · ‹34› azъ že ºgljǫ vamъ · ne klęti sę otъnǫdъ ·
Adultery ‹27› “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ ‹28›
But (že) I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. ‹29› If že your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. ‹30› And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. // Divorce ‹31› “It has been said že, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ ‹32› But (že) I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. // Oaths ‹33› “Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but (že) fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.’ ‹34› But (že) I tell you, do not swear an oath at all.
This is a passage from the ‘Sermon of the mount’, a collection of sayings and teachings of Jesus spanning from Mt 5,1 to Mt 7,29. In monologues, the subdivision into moves realized through že helps with the organization of the discourse: on the one hand, it helps the speaker to keep track of the various parts of the reasoning, on the other hand it helps the listener in the process of decoding. In particular, it should be underlined the adversative nuance deriving from the use of the first person pronoun (vv. 28, 32, 34); the employment of paky (En. ‘again’) instead of že in v. 33; the fact that vv. 29 and 30 are connected by means of i: this is so because the two verses constitute together a single move, where Jesus exemplifies how a man can commit adultery.
In the following, I will illustrate some cases where OCS že does not correspond to Greek δέ.
Out of 176 occurrences of že translating Greek οὖν (En. ‘then’, ‘therefore’), 164 are found in the Gospel of John8.
(5) n 18,30–31 ‹30› otъvěštašę že (Ø) i rěšę emu · ašte ne bi bylъ sь zъloděi · ne bimь prědali ego tebě · ‹31› reče že (οὖν) imъ pilatъ · poiměte i vy · i po zakonu vašemu sǫdite emu · rěšę že (οὖν) emu ijudei · ne dostoitъ namъ ubiti nikogože ·
‹30› “If he were not a criminal,” they že replied, “we would not have handed him over to you.” // ‹31› Pilate že said, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” // “But we have no right to execute anyone,” they že objected.
Codex Marianus has a lacuna spanning from Jn 18, 14 to Jn 18,29. Vv. 30–31 represent a dialogical sequence, with three exchanges between Pilate and the Jewish leaders who bring Jesus to him. The three turns, as in (3), are introduced by OCS že, while Greek has no connector in the first instance (see below) and in the other two instances employs οὖν, often said to be an inferential connector9. All the other instances of že instead of οὖν in the Gospel of John belong to the types seen in (2), (3) and (4). Although the translator could have used the regular equivalent to Greek οὖν (OCS ubo, which is a strong inferential
8 The extensive use of οὖν from the author of the fourth Gospel is one of the features that led Abbot to write a separate grammar for the Gospel of John (Abbott 1906).
9 For a short survey of the various interpretation that Greek οὖν has received, see Westfall (2016: 284–287).
marker similar to English ‘therefore’), he rightly decided to employ OCS že, since the context was more appropriate.
In (6) I will illustrate the 11 instances of že instead of οὖν outside the Gospel of John.
(6) a. Lk 13,17–18 ‹17› […] < ºkc < ‹18› ºGlaaše že komu podobno estъ ºcsrstvie ºbžie · i komu upodobljǫ e <
Then (že) Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to?”
b. Lk 3,7 ºglaaše že isxodęštiimъ narodomъ · krъstitъ sę otъ nego · ištędiě exidъnova · kъto sъkaza vamъ běžati otъ grędǫštaago gněva ·
John že said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”
c. Mt 18,29 Padъ že klevrětъ molěaše i ºglę · potrъpi na mьně i vьse vьzdamь ti ·
“His fellow servant fell že to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’”
d. Mt 24,26 ašte že rekǫtъ vamъ · se vъ pustyni estъ · ne iziděte · se vъ sъkrovištixъ ne iměte věry ·
“So (že) if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or,
‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it.”
e. Mt 27,17 sъbъravъšemъ že sę imъ · reče imъ pilatъ · kogo xoštete otъ oboju otъpuštju vamъ · varavvǫ li · ili ºisa naricaemaago ºxa ·
So (že) when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, “Which one do you want me to release to you: Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?”.
f. Mt 27,21–22 ‹21› otъvěštavъ že iǵemonъ reče imъ · kogo xoštete otъ oboju otъpuštǫ vamъ · oni že rěšę varavvǫ · ‹22› ºgla imъ pilatъ · čto že sъtvorjǫ ºisa naricaemaago ºxa · ºglašę emu vьsi · da propętъ bǫdetъ ·
‹21› “Which of the two do you want me to release to you?” asked the governor.
“Barabbas”, they answered. ‹22› “What že shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called the Messiah?” Pilate asked. They all answered, “Crucify him!”
(6.a) is the beginning of the ‘Parable of the mustard seed’. In many modern editions it is the introductory verse of a new paragraph and, according to the old way of segmenting the Gospel, it is the beginning of an Eusebian section as well10. Moreover, at the end of v.
17 Marianus has a cross-shaped interpunction sign with a ligature meaning ‘the end’ (<ºkc <),
10 Eusebian sections (also called Ammonian sections) are the system of dividing the four Gospels used between late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. It is traditionally believed that these divisions were devised by Ammonius of Alexandria, between the end of the 2nd century and the beginning of the 3rd. Every Gospel is divided into numbered paragraphs (Matthew having 355, Mark up to 241, Luke 342 and John 232) and these are written in the margin against the beginning of the section (Parker 2008: 315–316), with a second number which provided a cross-reference to parallel passages in other Gospels. In Slavic manuscripts, the Eusebian apparatus was used until the 17th century (Schenker 1995: 265 n. 334).
explicitly signalling the end of the preceding section and thus a strong break11. In (6.b) the verse is at the beginning of an Eusebian section as well, although it is not explicitly signalled in the Slavic manuscripts12. The preceding verses (3,4b–6) are a quote from Isaiah 40:3–5. While οὖν connects the verse to the preceding discourse, že introduces it as a new move.
(6.c) is part of a narrative section: the function of že is the one illustrated in (2). The verse in (6.d) represents a new argument put forward by Jesus in its discourse pronounced in the Gethsemane: after having announced great tribulations (vv. 15–24), in v. 25 he affirms “See, I have told you ahead of time”. With v. 26 starts a new section, where Jesus announces the return of the Son of the Man: že marks the transition to this new argument.
In (6.e) the textual connector points at a new narrative move, added to the preceding ones (27,15 na vьsěkъ že denь … 16 iměše že tъgda …), which continues in the following ones (19 Sědęštju že emu … 20 Arxierei že … 21 otъvěštavъ že …). Moreover, in this case Greek οὖν adds an inferential nuance: in v. 15 the writer informs the reader that every year, during Passover, Pilate used to set free a prisoner, chosen by the crowd. The reader, knowing that the plot has reached exactly the point related to the Day of Passover, makes an inference: ‘the crowd will gather to decide who to set free’: οὖν makes this inference explicit, as does ‘so’ in the English translation.
In (6.f), the connector in bold is related to the first question of Pilate, since it signals a new development with respect to that one: its function is similar to what I discussed in (4)13.
Half of the 16 occurrences of že translating Greek καί14 are instances of že signalling the alternation of turns in dialogues as in (2). Another group15 is formed by the cases in which že indicates a new move in the evolution of the narration.
(7) a. Mc 6,44 ědъšixъ že bě xlěby · pętь tysǫštь mǫžь · The number of the men who had eaten was five thousand.
b. Lc 2,52 · isъ že spěaše prěmǫdrostijǫ i tělomъ i blagodatijǫ · otъ ºbа · i ºčlkъ <
ºkc <
And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.
Both in (7.a) and in (7.b) the OCS translator employs že to signal a new move, following in both cases a long descriptive section tied together by a chain of i, as a summary or conclusion of the preceding discourse. Both verses, in fact, act as a break between what is said before and what is said in what follows.
The instances of že with no equivalent in Greek are distributed as follows:
a) že is used to signal a new move, co-occurring with a temporal adverb: jegda
‘when’ (Mt 21,40; Lk 11,24), ješte ‘yet, still’ (Mt 17,5; Mk 12,6), poslědь ‘then, afterward’
(Mk 12,22; 16,14), with the locutions po sixъ ‘after this’ (Jn 5,1), po tomъ ‘after that’ (Mk 4,17; 4,28; 4,28; Lk 8,12; 16,7; Jn 5,14; 11,7; 13,5; 19,27), vъ utrěi denь ‘the next day’ (Jn
11 Similarly in Lk 19,12; Mk 16,19; Mt 10,16; Mt 24,15.
12 Similarly in Mt 13,18 and Mk 3,31.
13 In the Staroslavjanskij Slovar’ (Cejtlin et al. 1999) similar cases are indexed under the use of že as an intensifying particle. A unitary interpretation of the facts seems to be more suitable.
14 In particular: Mt 21,27; 22,20; Mk 12,34; 13,2; Lk 7,4; 18,42; 19,64; 20,8.
15 In particular: Mk 3,7; 6,54; 11,14; 12,3; 16,11 and Mt 21,35.
1,35; 1,44; 12,12); or with the adverb těmь ‘therefore’ (Mt 7,20; 12,12; 14,7; 19,6; 23,31;
27,8; Mk 2,27; 8,25; 10,8; Lk 7,7; 11,28)16;
b) it signals a new move, as in (2): Mt 27,5617; Mk 9,7; 14,59; 16,13; Jn 1,41; 1,48;
5,15; 7,32; 11,56; 21,4; 21,11 or a new argument, as in (4): Mt 26,54; Mk 14,2518; Jn 2,10;
4,22; 5,7; 8,35; 9,25;
c) že is used to keep track of the turns in a dialogue: Mk 10,28; Jn 9,41; 9,28; 18,30;
20,16; 20,16; 21,5.
Two cases deserve particular attention:
(8) a. Mt 13,19 vьsěkъ iže slyšitъ slovesa ºcsarestviě · i ne razuměvaatъ · prixoditъ že nepriěznь i vъsxytaatъ sěnoe vъ ºsrdci ego ·
When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil oneže comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart.
b. Mt 22,25 bě že vъ nasъ sedmь bratriję · i prъvy oženь sę umьrětъ · i ne imy sěmene · ostavi že zenǫ svojǫ bratru svoemu ·
Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left že his wife to his brother.
In (8.a) že isolates the left dislocated constituent (with the genitive pronoun ego functioning as a reprise) from the rest of the sentence. It should be noted that Zographensis does not have že, while Assemani and Savvina Kniga do not show this passage. In a similar way in (8.b) že isolates a participle from the rest of the clause, without pronominal reprise:
this seems to be an example of pseudo-parataxis19 of OCS, which, according to Caldarelli (2005: 238), has “the purpose of recalling the attention of the beneficiary of the message on particular features of the message itself, and more generally it aims to gain a supplement of attention”.
I will lastly consider the instances of že translating Greek τε20. In six of these occurrences the function of že is to signal the beginning of a new move in the narration (Mt 28,12; Lc 12,45; 21,11; 21,11; Gn 4,42; 6,18); in three instances (Mt 22,10; 23,12; Gn 2,15) the new act represents an apposition to a pronoun in the main clause: že specifies that it is a
16 The Staroslavjanskij Slovar’ (Cejtlin et al. 1999) has different entries for the majority of those adverbs + že (e.g., one finds both těmь and těmьže). Večerka (1989: 43) notes how
“[z]usammen mit einigen Adverbien der Zeit, der Art und Weise u. dgl. […] bildet das adjunktive že teilweise bereits eine usuelle Verbindung”. As far as the translations of the Gospels are concerned, they seem to maintain a compositional meaning, so they will be dealt with consequently.
17 In this passage it is not clear whether vъ nixъ že is to be read as a relative pronoun or as a demonstrative pronoun + že, indicating the start of a new move. Without any doubt, it was from similar cases that started the grammaticalization of the new OCS relative pronoun iže, formed by the demonstrative pronoun i + že. Similarly in Jn 5,4.
18 In this passage Zographensis does not have že, while in Marianus it is preceded by a strong interpunctive mark (<).
19 For the term, see Caldarelli (2005: 235).
20 The instances of že translating μέν indicate the beginning of a new move in narrative sections (Lk 3,18; Mt 25,15; Jn 11,6) or of a new argument in monological sections (Mt 26,24; Mk 14,21); this is true also for the cases where it translates Greek μέντοι (Jn 21,4) and τóτε (Mt 27,58), while it indicates the beginning of a new argument when translating Greek γáρ (Lk 7,28; 19,26).
parenthetical remark, clarifying what the pronoun refers to (and thus, it is not to be considered part of the main line of narration).
There seems to be only one exception (9):
(9) Lc 2,16, i pridǫ podvigъše sę · i obrětǫ marijǫ že i osifa · i mladenecъ ležęštъ vъ ěslexъ ·
So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.
Zographensis has a stop between že and i; Assemani does not have že; Sava’s Book is like Marianus. In this case there is no pronoun which allows to explain the whole as an apposition, and the punctuation prevents us from considering marijǫ že i osifa i mladenecъ ležęštъ vъ ěslexъ as a unit detached from the verb (i.e., as if there were a pause between the verb and the object, to convey astonishment and expectation). Probably, in this case the employment of že has the function of presenting Mary and Joseph as a whole (as the parents) and to keep them separated from the baby, who was lying in the manger.
4. CONCLUSIONS
In section 3, we have seen how že is a purely intersentential connector (perhaps with the exception of the last few examples). Its main function is to signal the beginning of a new move, which develops the line of narration or the line of reasoning (in monological sections). As its Greek equivalent δέ, and following Runge (2010), I defined it as a development marker. Contrasting the OCS translation with the English one, it can be noted that the New International Version (NIV) usually does not translate Greek δέ at all. This is so for one reason: the English language does not have a development marker. However, this function is achieved by means of another device, namely punctuation marks and the visual organization of the text. In fact, on the one hand, contemporary editions make use of paragraphs with headlines – see e.g. (4) –, while ancient manuscripts had Eusebian sections marked in the margins, thus not interrupting the scriptio continua; on the other hand, the start of a new move, marked with a textual connector in Greek or Slavic (be it δέ or že), and thus having a fundamental role in the organization and in the segmentation of the text, is indicated by means of a full stop or of a line break in the NIV translation – see e.g. (3).
Moreover, it has been noted how the adversative nuance traditionally associated with že and its function as a marker of topic switch are in reality determined by the contexts in which the connector operates, and thus are not to be considered as core properties of the connector. In fact, both are corollaries of the fact that že typically marks the start of a new thematic chain, which, under appropriate conditions, may be read as contrastive.
Lastly, from the study of že it is undeniable that the translators of the Gospels did not follow the Greek text slavishly: they introduced the connector whenever it was felt necessary and especially in the Gospel of John they used it instead of ubo to translate Greek οὖν.
As a conclusion, it can be said that from the study of particles in OCS (and, of course, in other ancient languages) we can gain a better understanding of how that language worked. This seems to be especially true for a language with free word order, where the
role of the functional and pragmatic structuring of the discourse was more prominent than in a language with rigid syntactical order, as e.g. English.
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