The case of Mesokemic

At first sight, the Mesokemic determination system seems to be rather similar to the Sahidic one. On a closer inspection, however, one will find that there are some peculiarities that are specific to this dialectal variety only, moreover, there seems to be a certain variation among the individual manuscripts as well. Three phenomena will be

110 But cf. Shisha-Halevy’s description for the p-series, as “deictically inert, non-phoric, properizing” (1994:

235).

discussed here: the pi-determination, the demonstrative reinforcement, and the use of nen- in Codex Schøyen.

The pi-determination in Mesokemic has already been addressed by Ariel Shisha-Halevy in a paper published in Chronique d’Égypte (1983), in which his observations were based exclusively on Codex Scheide. Further important manuscripts presenting this dialect only appeared after he had written this study and the new data will inevitably adjust our understanding of Mesokemic. Nevertheless, his statements are the only suggestions as to how the Mesokemic determination system can be analyzed, so I started my research in his footsteps and first examined his collection of data.

Shisha-Halevy (1983: 317) lays down that the Mesokemic determination system differs from that of Sahidic and Bohairic (he makes no comparison with the Fayyumic one as the latter has not been investigated in a required degree). Accordingly, pi-determination in Mesokemic is “neither «affective» as in Sahidic, nor a higher-deixis article, as in Bohairic, nor is it as a rule text-anaphoric. It is mainly encountered in 3 roles: as a categorical-notional or generic determinator (…); as a cataphoric determinator, of a noun expanded by n-ø- or et- (…); thirdly, as a «paradigmatic» determinator, i.e. indicating an item in a closed set of several.”

I find the following objections to his assumptions. Although these “roles” nicely describe several contexts in which pi-determination appears in Codex Scheide, they do not outline a consistent system of its use. The third “role” appears to be the most problematic for at least three reasons: firstly, many of the cases cited by Shisha-Halevy as cases for a cataphoric use are at the same time strong anaphoric contexts. Secondly, it has not been explained why a noun expanded by an (attributive?) n- is to be considered to fulfill a cataphoric role. And finally, there are numerous cases in which the noun expanded by either an attributive modifier or a relative clause has a simple definite article instead of the pi-determination.

Moreover, I built a comparative table of the pi-determined cases of the two codices containing the Gospel of Matthew (Codex Scheide and Codex Schøyen) and found that besides sharing many of the occurrences, the two manuscripts show several places where one or the other preferred an alternative determination. Ignoring the cases when the data in Codex Schøyen is only reconstructed, the codices agreed in 45 cases and differed in 84 cases (the numbers are not to be taken too seriously as I did not checked all the individual cases, but they might give an impression about the proportion). Two kinds of conclusion can be drawn from these facts: either the above established rules of pi-determination are

not specific enough, or the grammars of the two codices are basically divergent.

Unfortunately, the shared occurrences do not seem to show a consistent systematism either.

What is more, Codex Glazier apparently do not have pi- in singular (except for the fixed expression of pise), but only makes use of ni- five times in the whole manuscript, which is extremely strange viewing that the language of Codex Scheide and Codex Glazier are otherwise very closely related.

I only have a tentative suggestion for the pi-determination in Codex Scheide and Codex Schoyen: maybe it shows the affectivity of the noun phrase, but not in the Polotskyan sense, i.e. because of the presence of a laudatory or a depreciative attribution but rather in terms of emphasis. It would be worth observing whether the informational status of the individual phrases are marked within the sentence (contrastive topic, focus), which resulted in an alternative prosodic realization of the phrase (or a part of it) and was reflected by the replacement of the article with a vocalized allomorph. This suggestion is, of course, entirely speculative and needs careful testing. One cannot exclude the possibility either that prosodic factors mingled with categories suggested by Shisha-Halevy. A prosodic explanation, however, would also account for the fact that otherwise closely related manuscripts are so different in the written realization of this phenomenon.

Turning to our second topic, it is remarkable that Mesokemic, at least in Codex Scheide and in Codex Glazier, has a high frequency of demonstrative reinforcement, an otherwise not too frequent phenomenon in Coptic. In this configuration a noun determined by a demonstrative article is followed by a demonstrative pronoun (pei-… pei). Codex Scheide has overall 13 occurrences (both in singular and plural), while Apostelgeschichte in Codex Glazier has 11 occurrences in total. Interestingly, Codex Schøyen never uses this reinforcing strategy.¹¹¹

Although the Sahidic Gospel texts show no traces of such a strategy, and as far as I remember, I hardly ever met a construction like this in a manuscript, some of the reference grammars mention the construction, citing relevant examples for it. Layton, in his chapter about determinators, dedicates a section to the illustration of how these grammatical elements may appear in various combinations (2000: §61). Among the cases he also lists the combination of a ‘nearer demonstration plus nearer demonstration’ citing an example from the Shenoute corpus tenou xn-tei-rompe tai “now in this very year”). No

111 According to the index of P. Mil. Copto the demonstrative article (in one of its three allomorphs) occurs 12 times in the manuscript. I checked all the cases, but found no such case of doubling. It is to be noted, however, that the context is heavily damaged practically everywhere in this fragmentary manuscript.

information is provided, however, about the frequency or degree of markedness of this construction. Shisha-Halevy (2007a: 416) also cites two examples from the Bohairic corpus he used, but without translation or additional comments.

Chris Reintges (2004: 136), discussing the functions of the demonstrative pronoun pai (§4.1.1.2), not only mentions the existence of such a configuration, but also provides a functional description of it. He claims that this “appositional” use, when a demonstrative pronoun follows in apposition an already demonstratively determined noun phrase, appears

“in the context of emphatic deictic reference”. In two out of the three examples he quotes, the translation is similar to that of Layton’s: “this very thought”, “on this very day” which seems to be a focalizing reinforcement, i.e. insisting on identification. In the third example he cites focalization seems improbable, but a contrastive topic interpretation is plausible (viz. “As for this thing, …”).

As the frequency of this pattern is considerably high in the same text, and it is also noteworthy that two manuscripts from the same dialectal variety show this peculiarity, it is worth observing whether the claims about emphatic use can be confirmed. I checked the 13 places in Codex Scheide and tried to classify the data from this respect. I collated them with Codex Schøyen and with the Sahidic version in Horner’s edition. In the parallel texts, normally a demonstrative article can be attested or even less (e.g. in 24:14 Codex Schøyen displays a simple definite article). In many cases an explicit or implicit contrast or some sort of emphasis can be argued for, for instance in (70).

(70) xn-tei-ou¥h tei xach nte-ou-alektwr moute

0

in-DEM.SG.F-night DEM.PRON.SG.F before CONJ-INDF.SG-rooster call

k-ne-aparni mma-i n-¥amnt n-sap [Matt 26:34 C. Sheide]

2SG.M-FUTI-deny DOM.1SG for-three ATTR-occasion

‘In this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times’

However, in at least three of the cases (13:14, 13:53 and 19:1), this use has no obvious reason: the phrases are used anaphorically, with no special emphasis or contrast. According to the editor of Codex Scheide (Schenke 1981: 38) the ‘Pleonasmus der Demonstrative’

can be related to the fact that the text was translated from Greek, and this structure intends to reflect the original word order (definite article + noun + demonstrative). It might have been the case, but as it is also noted by Hans-Martin Schenke, in three cases, the source text had an alternative order or determination, and there are numerous other cases in the text, I suppose, when Greek showed the above configuration but Coptic failed to imitate it.

To conclude, even if the construction was inspired by Greek patterns, it seems to be

reanalyzed as a reinforcement strategy within the Coptic sentence. The true question is, whether it survived independently or it remained an idiomatic construction of the translated Biblical literature.

The third mysterious phenomenon to be observed is the occasional use of nen- for a plural definite article in Codex Schøyen. While this manuscript is abundant in nen-, Codex Scheide and Codex Glazier seemingly have none. This form of the plural article is not exceptional of course, but its distribution in Codex Schøyen differs from the one in the other dialects. In Sahidic it hardly ever appears, although Bentley Layton (2000: §52f) notes that Nn- optionally occurs before a vowel, e.g. Nnaryh ‘the rulers’ (Luke 12:11).

The form nen- is well-known from Bohairic and Fayyumic. In these dialects, however, it is exclusively used attached to the head noun in possessive constructions mediated by N-. It forms a paradigm with p- and t- in this context, and its use, evidently, is syntactically conditioned.

What we see in Mesokemic, more precisely in Codex Schøyen, is the following: nen- appears side by side with n-, as a pure variant of it, thus not forming a paradigm with the singular definite articles. (Note that the long article ne- and the ni- form are also present in the system.) I examined all the data to explore what are the conditions of the use of nen-, but with no positive results. Apparently no phonological or morphological constraints can be established: it appears before vowels as well as before consonants, with sonorants just as well with obstruents. The syntactic/distributional constraints, first recognized for Boharic, are not met either: nen- freely occurs both in possessive constructions and in absolute use, with antecedent noun phrases of a relative clause as well as independently of any constructions it may be embedded in. The last possibility that remains as to explain its distribution is semantics. However, neither does a stronger deixis/anaphoric use, nor affectivity/emphasis seem to be involved when it appears – at least not in a systematic fashion. This strange phenomenon is either another example for lack of normalization or, which I consider more probable, we are far from fully understanding the marking of determination in this variety.