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UDC 811.124+81-119
Philologia Classica. 2018. Vol. 13. Fasc. 2
How to Express Surprise without Saying "I'm Surprised" in Latin
Elena V. Zheltova
St. Petersburg State University,
7-9, Universitetskaya nab., St. Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation; e.zheltova@spbu.ru,
elena.zheltova@m ail.ru
For citation: Elena V. Zheltova. How to Express Surprise without Saying "I'm Surprised" in Latin.
Philologia Classica 2018, 13(2), 228-240. https://doi.org/10.21638/11701/spbu20.2018.204
The paper focuses on the ways of expressing mirative semantics in the Latin language. Mira-tivity is a grammatical category which expresses the speaker's unprepared mind, a deferred realization of a situation and concomitant surprise. These values can be conveyed by both lexical and grammatical means. The paper analyses only grammatical phenomena, without taking into consideration any lexical devices (such as the verb (ad)mirari), and shows that in addition to the basic meanings of time, mood etc. these grammatical phenomena, in certain contexts, express the semantics of abruptness and surprise. Since their primary meaning is not mirative and appears as a "side effect", they should be called mirative strategies rather than mi-ratives stricto sensu. Such strategies may be reflected through morphological categories of time and mood (e.g. Praesens coniunctivi, Futurum indicativi, Imperfectum indicativi), auxiliaries (particles, conjunctions) or syntactic constructions (Accusativus exclamationis, Infinitivus in-dignantis). Their mirative meaning is contextually conditioned and in some cases is only possible in interaction with other grammatical categories (verbal person, number, etc.). The study investigates pragmatic and stylistic functions of these phenomena and shows that the choice of a strategy in some cases is directly related to the genre of work and the style of speech. The genre distribution of mirative strategies we suggested allows us to consider them not only as linguistic entities to express modal meanings, but also as a stylistic device.
Keywords: Latin, mirativity, surprise, unprepared mind, deferred realization, Accusativus exclamationis, Infinitivus indignantis, ^m inversum.
1. Introduction1
The paper aims at revealing grammatical means to express the semantics of surprise in Latin. In my study, I will briefly describe the state of the art and then will try to show which devices the Latin language uses to convey the main mirative values.
Mirativity is a grammatical category which covers the speaker's unprepared mind, unexpected new information, and concomitant surprise (Aikhenvald 2004, 195). The linguistic devices to encode mirative values may be of both grammatical and lexical nature.
The ways to express mirative meanings do exist in every language but differ in their grammatical status. Thus, Russian can express unpreparedness of one's mind to accept a situation and, accordingly, a concomitant surprise by lexical means such as interjections
1 Hereby I express my deep gratitude to Barbara Wehr, Tatiana Nikitina and Evgenij Filimonov for their valuable suggestions, and to Irina Nagovitsina for the proofreading of this paper.
© St. Petersburg State University, 2018
(nado zhe 'wow'), adverbials (vdrug 'suddenly', otkuda ni voz'mis 'out of nowhere'), a parenthesis okazyvayetsia 'it turns out' (Khrakovskii 2007 2) etc., while some Balkan and Middle Eastern languages have special verbal forms to convey such meanings (Lazard 2001, 361).
The term "admirative" was coined by the folklorist O. Dozon in the late 19th century. Dozon singled out some special forms of the Albanian verb which express not only indirect evidential meanings (i.e. inferentive and reportative ones), but also a kind of emotional assessment of the reported fact.3 Hence originated the unusual form of the term with the semantics of admiration. In the modern works on the topic, however, the term "mirative" is preferred (DeLancy 1997; 2001).
Since markers of mirativity often coincide with those of evidentiality, the interrelation between these two categories is one of the most topical and discussible issues in recent studies. In the earlier works, mirative was treated as one of the evidential meanings while in the latest studies, it is considered to be an independent category in its own right.4 Nowadays, quite a few scholars maintain the latter viewpoint but still agree that in a number of languages both evidential and mirative values can be expressed by the same cumulative markers. As Khrakovskii argues (Khrakovskii 2007, 608), language meanings, being independent entities, may be realized in different ways: a grammatical marker can sometimes express only one meaning, but sometimes — and this is crucial for this study — it can express cumulatively two or even more meanings belonging to different grammatical categories. Having analyzed the parenthesis okazyvayetsia 'it turns out' in Russian, Khrakovskii also showed that the Russian language, without having special grammatical markers of evidentiality, does have, however, a grammatical means of expressing admi-rative, since parentheses belong to the grammar rather than to the lexicon of a language (Khrakovskii 2007, 621).
Now I turn to the question how mirativity can be expressed in Latin. In my opinion, Latin does not have any special markers of mirative values but the semantics of unexpectedness, unprepared mind and concomitant surprise may be expressed by the speakers with the help of not only lexical — such a possibility exists in all languages — but also grammatical means, if one sticks to a broader understanding of a grammatical system which may include not only suffixes, clitics or particles, but also auxiliaries and free syntactic forms (Anderson 1986, 275). Since such grammatical tools usually have primary meanings different from the mirative ones, they should be called not miratives stricto sensu, but mirative strategies or mirative extensions of some other categories.5
In this study, I will try, first of all, to single out mirative strategies in Latin, then, to reveal morphosyntactic conditions/restrictions on the use of these tools (for instance, a mirative value of a certain form with a different primary meaning can arise in the context of a particular person, tense-aspect or verb class and may not appear in other contexts), and,
2 Храковский В. С. Эвиденциальность, эпистемическая модальность, (ад)миративность, в сб.: В. С. Храковский (ред.) Эвиденциальность в языках Европы и Азии. Санкт-Петербург, Наука, 2007, 600-629.
3 For more detail, see Friedman 1986, 180-182; Plungian 2011, 458 (Плунгян В. А. Введение в грамматическую семантику: грамматические значения и грамматические системы языков мира. Москва, РГГУ 2011).
4 About the discussion see DeLancy 1997; 2001; Khrakovskii 2007; Plungian 2001, 355; 2011, 486487. For a brief overview of the viewpoints on evidentiality see Zheltova 2017, 313-317.
5 As suggested by A. Aikhenvald (2004, 207).
finally, to show that the choice of a given mirative strategy may be determined by the genre or stylistic peculiarities of a given text. I will take into consideration only grammatical tools so that the sentences with the verbs mirari or admirari and alike will stay beyond the scope of my paper because they are purely lexical elements of the Latin language. It should be stressed that these verbs function as main predicates of clauses and express surprise as their primary meaning, accordingly, they violate the important criteria for identifying mirative strategies.6 The main point in the distinction between mirative strategies and lexical expressions of surprise is that typically, mirative strategies are grammatical forms or syntactic constructions with a mirative "side effect" while for lexical expressions, mirative value is the most crucial and, very often, the only possible meaning.
2. Accusativus exclamationis and other exclamatory sentences
with mirative semantics
Exclamatory sentences may express the speaker's or writer's unbelief, surprise, relief, indignation, misery, or disgust about a certain state of affairs. H. Pinkster (2015, 361-368) singles out two types of exclamatory sentences with the subject in the Accusative. The first one is called evaluative and consists of two subtypes: 1) a noun or a personal pronoun modified with the evaluative adjective, or 2) a noun with evaluative meaning, all the constituents of both subtypes being in the Accusative, Ex. (1), (2):
(1) Edepol mortalis malos! (Plaut. Bac. 293)
"Wicked wretches, by my troth" (transl. by H. Th. Riley).
(2) O audaciam! (Ter. Phorm. 360) "The impudence!"
This type is traditionally characterized as Accusativus exclamationis and can express a variety of emotions — fear, indignation, misery etc.The second type in the classification of Pinkster — the so called non-evaluative — also has two subtypes. The first one consists of a "head noun and some form of deictic expression, either the pronoun hic 'this' or the adjective of quantity or degree tantus 'such'. Such phrases may or may not contain the enclitic particle -ne" (Pinkster 2015, 365). Pinkster considers them to be incomplete exclamatory accusative and infinitive clauses, Ex. (3), (4):
(3) Huncine hominem, hancine inpudentiam, iudices, hanc audaciam! (Cic. Ver. 5. 62) "What a man, what shamelessness, gentlemen judges, what audacity!"
(4) Tantamne patientiam, di boni! Tantam moderationem, tantam in iniuria tranquilli-tatem et modestiam! (Cic. Phil. 10. 7)
"Such patience! O ye good gods! such moderation! such tranquillity and submission under injury!" (transl. by C. D. Yonge).
6 These criteria were first elaborated for the evidentials. It is Anderson who suggested the important conditions for identifying archetypal evidentials. The conditions imply that "evidentials are not themselves the main predication of the clause, but are rather a specification added to a factual claim about something else" (Anderson 1986, 274-275). I think, this holds for miratives, too. Consequently, the verbs mirari and admirari cannot be treated as mirative strategies in spite of their overt mirative connotation, because they are themselves the main predication of the clause.
The second subtype of the non-evaluative type is the exclamatory accusative and infinitive clause found in Early Latin (especially Plautus and Terence onwards) which, however, is not very popular. The clauses of such type may also contain the enclitic particle -ne, attached to the first and most salient word of the sentence,7 Ex. (5), (6):8
(5) Magistron' quemquam discipulum minitarier? (Plaut. Bac. 152) "Is it possible that any pupil is threatening his tutor?"
(6) Ad illum modum sublitum os esse mi hodie! (Plaut. Capt. 783) "Is it possible that I was fooled like that today?"
There have been numerous attempts to explain the use of the accusative in excla-mations.9 The arguments for regarding it as an object of an omitted verb of saying do not seem convincing. There was an alternative attempt to explain the numerous cases of the so called "unexpected" use of the accusative both in Ancient Greek and in Latin, including Accusativus exclamationis, from the pragmatic point of view, to be exact, as a marker of focus (Zheltov, Zheltova 2008, 133-139).10 With this approach there will be no need to look for the omitted verb of saying. On the other hand, if one still looks for the semantic relations between the verb to be supplied from the context and its complement (or sentential complement),11 these relations will not be the same in the evaluative and non-evaluative types. As Pinkster convincingly argues, in case of the evaluative type, a relation can be expressed explicitly by a verb like puto 'to consider',12 which governs an object and its complement (the so-called double accusative), but this is not the case either for the first subtype of the non-evaluative type, nor for the exclamatory accusative with infinitive clauses. Both subtypes of the non-evaluative type imply another kind of semantic relations, which could be expressed explicitly — and this is of great importance for this study — by a verb like miror 'I am surprised' (Pinkster 2015, 366). To sum up, if we admit the omission of a governing verb, it would be a verb expressing surprise, therefore, both subtypes of the non-evaluative type can be treated as mirative strategies. To corroborate my hypothesis, I would refer to the famous "traditional" Latin grammar by Hofmann and Szantyr, where the latter construction is referred to as Infinitivus indignantis (admirantis) which supposedly depends on the omitted verb of affect (Verbum der Gemutzbewegung) (Hofmann, Szantyr 1972, 366).13 The second term — Infinitivus admirantis — which is applied to the phenomenon under consideration, as one can see, refers to the semantics of surprise or admiration which is likely to be intuitively realized by both speakers and
7 Typically, a pronoun or an adverb. The precise status of the particle -ne is unclear (Pinkster 2015,
366).
8 The examples are taken from Pinkster (2015, 365).
9 See Hofmann, Szantyr 1972, 48-49.
10 Желтов А. Ю., Желтова Е. В. Классические языки и типология ролевого маркирования. Hyperboreus 2008, 14 (1), 118-140.
11 Lindsay (1936, 75) argues that "from phrases like crucior lapidem non habere me, ut illi magistri cerebrum excutiam' (Plaut. Capt. 600) ... is but a step to the Inf. of Exclamation as 'sicine hoc te mihi facere' (Plaut. Pers. 42)".
12 In this case, Ex. (1) could be as follows: puto mortalis malos 'I think, mortals are bad'.
13 As far as I know, P. Cuzzolin was the first to notice that "this infinitive expresses what in other languages, currently spoken, corresponds to the category of mirativity" (Cuzzolin 2017, 31).
scholars who gave this label to the infinitive.14 As regards literary genres which prefer this mirative strategy, it is mostly Roman comedy, which is obvious from the examples given above and maintained by scholars (Hofmann, Szantyr 1972, 366).
3. Coniunctivuspotentialis and Futurum indicativi with polemical or
repudiating value
Now I turn to the second phenomenon which, to my mind, admits of a mirative interpretation. This is a potential subjunctive in polemical or repudiating questions.15 In the questions of this type, the speaker seems to emotionally repeat someone's words whose meaning is in conflict with his ideas, and thus demonstrates his unprepared mind. Consequently, we deal with one of the typical mirative values — unpreparedness to accept information. The fact that the speaker seems to echo someone's words implies one more meaning which the potential subjunctive may convey: the reportative evidential meaning. As it has been pointed out in the Introduction, combining evidential and mirative semantics is very often found in the languages with grammaticalized markers of these two categories. Examples are given in (7), (8):
(7) Tuis dignum factis feceris, / ut amici inter nos simus. — Egon' tuam expetam amicitiam? aut te visum aut auditum velim? (Ter. Ph. 430-432)
"You'll be doing what's worthy of you, so that we may be on friendly terms. — What, I seek your friendship, or have any wish to see or hear you?"
(8) Hunc ego non diligam, non admirer, non omni ratione defendendum putem? (Cic. Arch. 18)
"Should not I, then, love this man? Should I not admire him? Should not I think it my duty to defend him in every possible way?" (transl. by C. D. Yonge).
It is well known that Latin subjunctive may have a whole array of connotations including uncertainty, disbelief, doubt, etc., which creates the polyphony of speech.16 It may depend not only on the type of the sentence, i. e. declarative, imperative, exclamatory or interrogative, but also on the person. If the subject is first person, as in (7) and (8), such questions commonly ask for the reason why one should or should not do something. Taking into account the preceding directive expression which can be either explicit or implicit, one can see deontic rather than potential use of the subjunctive here (Pinkster 2015, 486). In case of a second person subject, the subjunctive demonstrates the overtones of uncertainty associated with dubitative sense of this mood, as exemplified in (9):
(9) Tu agris, tu aedificiis, tu argento, tu familia, tu rebus omnibus ornatus et copiosus sis, et dubites de possessione detrahere, adquirere ad fidem? (Cic. Catil. 2. 18)
"Will you be rich in lands, in houses, in money, in slaves, in all things, and yet hesitate to diminish your possessions to add to your credit?" (transl. by C. D. Yonge).
14 Blatt also emphasizes that the infinitive clause without a governing verb may express surprise or regret, and this value may be supplied from the context (Blatt 1952, 259).
15 Similar functions of both Infinitive exclamatory clauses and the Subjunctive clauses were highlighted by Lindsay (1936, 75).
16 This polysemy is attested to the Albanian admirative (Friedman 1986, 180-181).
Nevertheless, independently of which overtone one can see in these subjunctives, they, at the same time, allow mirative reading.
Mirative connotation may be also expressed by independent ut-clauses which function as indignant questions as well. Pinkster (2015, 347) notices that in such clauses "a possible reaction to an idea expressed by another person or someone's action is rejected as outrageous or preposterous." Interestingly, ut-clauses may alternate with the repudiating questions in the subjunctive without ut, which allows to consider them as synonymic ones, as in Ex. (10):
(10) Egone illam ut non amem? Egone illi ut non bene velim? / Me potius non amabo quam huic desit amor. / Ego isti non munus mittam? Immo ex hoc loco iubebo ad istam quinque perferri minas (Plaut. Truc. 440-444).
'Should I not love her? Should I not wish her well? I'd rather not love myself than that she should be lacking in love. Should I not send her a present? No, this very instant I'll have five minas brought over to her..
Interestingly, unpreparedness of a subject to accept the state of affairs and concomitant surprise can be expressed by a polemical question with the verb in the present or the future indicative as well. The examples are provided in (11), (12):
(11) Salta sic cum palla postea. — Ego saltabo? Sanus hercle non es (Pl. Men. 197-198).
"Do dance afterwards with the mantle on in this way. — I — dance? I believe, you're not in your senses" (transl. by H. Th. Riley).
As Gratwick (1993, 159) stressed in the comment on this passage, sanus is "a key theme in the sequel. Men is offended. because the suggestion is incompatible with his heroics in the context."
Such sentences may contain the enclitic particle -ne attached to the most salient constituent, Ex. (12):
(12) Tun tibi hanc surruptam dicere audes, quam mihi dedit alia mulier, ut concinnandam darem? (Pl. Men. 732- 733).
"Do you dare to say — pointing at the mantle — that this was stolen from you which another woman gave me, for me to get it trimmed?" (transl. by H. Th. Riley).
As it has been pointed out, the precise status of the particle -ne is unclear but it occurs frequently both in the exclamatory and in the interrogative sentences where it is used as a means of focusing attention on the most important constituent. This function of the particle -ne is underlined by lexicographers (see e. g. OLD s. v.) and confirmed by O. Spevak (2010, 199) who investigated Latin particles from a pragmatic perspective.
As is clear from the examples above, both strategies under consideration are typical for the emotional scenes in Plautus' and Terence's plays, and also occur frequently in the letters and speeches by Cicero, that is, in the genres which use a common language (sermo vulgaris or sermo cotidianus). It also worth noting that the use of the polemic subjunctive as well as present/future indicative with the same meaning is limited to the 1st and 2nd person forms, i.e. a live dialogue.
4. Mirative use of the particle ecce
As we have seen, Latin particle -ne may contribute to the mirative strategies. Particle ecce, in my opinion, may also be regarded as such in some contexts. OLD reads that ecce has two meanings: 1) calling attention to something visible/perceptible/invisible, or to a fresh item (in enumeration), and 2) (in vivid narrative) introducing a new event, usually sudden and surprising one, especially after the temporal clause, after plpf. or imf. clause, roughly equivalent to the inverted cum clause (OLD, s. v.). The first definition corresponds to the emphatic and representative functions while the second one seems to be very close to that of a mirative, Ex. (13): 17
(13) Discubitum noctu ut imus, ecce ad me advenit mulier, qua mulier alia nullast pulchri-or (Plaut. Merc. 99-100).
"When at night we went to rest, behold, a female came to me, than whom not another female is there more charming" (transl. by H. Th. Riley).
Sometimes this particle combines with the adverbs subito, repente, de improviso etc., which can strengthen its mirative meaning, as exemplified in (14):
(14) Et ecce de improviso ad nos accedit cana Veritas (Varr. ap. Non. 243. 1). "And here suddenly, a white-haired Truth approached us."
It is worth mentioning that particle ecce occurs frequently in sentences with the pronoun tibi in the function of Dativus ethicus, Ex. (15), (16):
(15) Epistulam cum a te avide exspectarem ad vesperum, ut soleo, ecce tibi nuntius pueros venisse Roma (Cic. Att. 2. 8. 1).
"When I had been eagerly expecting a letter from you as usual till evening, lo and behold a message that slaves have come from Rome" (transl. by E. S. Shuckburgh).
(16) Cum dixisset Vitulus, ecce tibi caldis pedibus quidam navicularius semustilatus ir-rumpit se in curiam (Var. Men. fr. 411).
"As soon as Vitulus stopped speaking — here you are! — bursts into the Curia on burning feet a half burnt boatbuilder."
Since ecce has various connotations in different contexts, it will be interesting to find out what genres and what contextual conditions determine its functioning as a mirative strategy. I suppose, some statistical data could be useful here.
As regards the combination ecce tibi, the database PHI-5 provides 27 occurrences ecce tibi, mostly in the orations, philosophical works, and letters by Cicero (17 occurrences in total), the other examples were found in the works by Vergil, Ovid, Plinius the Elder and some other authors. There are only 9 examples out of the 27 within the database that allow mirative reading, 7 of them being in Cicero's orations, one in the Rhetorica ad Herrenium and one in the fragment of Varro's Menippeae. The remaining examples represent an em-
17 Interestingly, B. Wehr calls this function of ecce "Surprisative" (Wehr 1984, 98; 134-135) and reveals a similar meaning in the conjunction et when used in apodosis (Wehr 1984, 171), as in Petronius' passage: sed quomodo dicunt — ego nihil scio, sed audivi — cum Incuboni pilleum rapuisset, et thesaurum invenit (Petron. 38. 8). The same holds for the combination et ecce (Wehr 1984, 134-135): Et ecce terrae motus factus est magnus (Mt. 28. 2).
phatic or a representative function. It is clear, therefore, that this mirative strategy is also typical for the literary genres which admit of elements of the colloquial speech (sermo cotidianus).
If one regards the occurrences of ecce or ecce tibi in view of their setting, they normally go after temporal clauses (as a rule, the clauses with Cum historicum/temporale) which describe a background action or circumstances, the main predicate of a sentence being in Praesens historicum or in Perfectum indicativi. Consequently, the particle ecce which functions as a contrastive focus with regard to the information in the temporal clause, provides a piece of new information which moves the discourse further. The pragmatic function of this mirative strategy, to my mind, is obvious here.
5. Cum inversum as a mirative strategy
The OLD, as it has been mentioned, defines the particle ecce as roughly equivalent to the inverted cum-clause, i. e. to Cum inversum. This means that both the particle ecce and the inverted cum-clause may express similar (viz. mirative) meanings.18 In Russian, the conjunction "kak vdrug" corresponds best of all to Latin Cum inversum and is normally used as its translation.
Smith (1975, 54) stresses that Petronius makes frequent use of this device, usually in the Cena to emphasize some new inanity of Trimalchio, see Ex. (17):
(17) etiamnum loquebatur Menelaus, cum Trimalchio digitos concrepuit ad quod signum matellam spado ludenti subiecit (Petron. 27. 5. 2).
"Menelaus had scarcely ceased speaking when Trimalchio snapped his fingers; the eunuch, hearing the signal, held the chamber-pot for him" (transl. by W. C. Firebaugh).
Mirative value of the Latin cum-clause may be strengthened by such adverbs as subito, repente, ex improviso. Examples are given in (18), (19).
(18) ... hic cursus fuit,
Cum subito adsurgens fluctu nimbosus Orion
In vada caeca tulit penitusque procacibus Austris
Perque undas superante salo perque invia saxa
Dispulit; huc pauci vestris adnavimus oris (Verg. Aen. 1. 534-538).
"Thitherward
our ships did fare; but with swift-rising flood the stormful season of Orion's star drove us on viewless shoals; and angry gales dispersed us, smitten by the tumbling surge, among innavigable rocks. Behold,
we few swam hither, waifs upon your shore!" (transl. by Th. C. Williams).
(19) Romae interim plerumque obsidio segnis et utrimque silentium esse, ad id tantum intentis Gallis ne quis hostium evadere inter stationes posset, cum repente iuvenis Romanus admiratione in se cives hostesque convertit (Liv. 5. 46. 3).
"At Rome meanwhile the siege was for the most part languishing and all was quiet on both sides, the Gauls being solely concerned with preventing the escape of any enemy
18 B. Wehr also applies the term "Surprisative" to Cum inversum and observes its evolution in the Romance languages (Wehr 1984, 181-193).
through their lines, when suddenly a young Roman attracted the wondering admiration of fellow citizens and foes" (transl. by B. O. Foster).
Sometimes mirative overtones which arise due to the unpredictability of a situation in the sentences with Cum inversum are reinforced by the particle ecce. It may also function as a mirative strategy per se, as it has been shown in Section 4. The combination of Cum inversum with ecce is exemplified in (20):
(20) Execratus itaque aniculae insidias operui caput et per medium lupanar fugere coepi in alteram partem, cum ecce in ipso aditu occurrit mihi aeque lassus ac moriens Ascyltos (Petron. 7. 4. 4).
"I cursed the cunning old woman, and covered my head, and began to run through the brothel to another part, when just at the entrance Ascyltos met me, as tired as I was, and half-dead" (transl. by M. Heseltine).
Interestingly, mirative meaning and overtones of unexpectedness and abruptness associated with Cum inversum were realized already by ancient scholars, for instance, by Servius in his comments to Virgil's Aeneid (Aen. 1. 535),19 Ex. (21):
(21) Ipse Orion magnitudine sua multis oritur diebus, et ideo eius etiam apud peritos est incerta tempestas: unde dictum est 'cum subito adsurgens' ad excusationem non praevisae tempestatis. (Serv. In Verg. Aen. 1. 535)
"Orion himself increases for many days, and thus even the experienced men are not confident in weather which he sends: hence it is said 'when suddenly rising' to justify an unexpected storm."
The PHI-5 database provides the following statistic data about cum with different extensions: there are 5 out of 7 mirative uses of cum ecce, 57 out of 87 uses of cum subito, and 28 out of 38 uses of cum repente. These data allow us to observe some patterns.
Firstly, it is obvious that not every combination of cum with specified adverbs or particles guarantees the semantics of abruptness or surprise. In (22) and (23), I give examples of a non-mirative use of these combinations:20
(22) namque eodem quo antea modo circa munimenta cum repente Capenates Faliscique subsidio venissent, adversus tres exercitus ancipiti proelio pugnatum est (Liv. 5. 13. 9).
"For the men of Capenae and Falerii had suddenly arrived to relieve the city, and as on the former occasion, the Romans had to fight a back to back battle round the entrenchments against three armies" (transl. by C. Roberts).
(23) Quid proderit facilitas tua, cum ecce id nullo modo Latine exprimere possim propter quod linguae nostrae convicium feci? (Sen. Luc. 58. 7. 1).
"Yet what good will your indulgence do me, if, lo and behold, I can in no wise express in Latin the meaning of the word which gave me the opportunity to rail at the poverty of our language?" (transl. by R. M. Gummere).
Secondly, there are certain morphosyntactic conditions which determine the mira-tive sounding of cum in combination with the adverbs (particles). One can observe that the subordinate clauses with cum appear in postposition — never in preposition — with
19 See the passage in Ex. (18).
20 Both examples contain the verbs in the subjunctive which is never used in the cum-clauses.
respect to the main clause and include the verb in the indicative mood (normally, in Praes-ens historicum or Perfectum indicativi). Importantly, such occurrences of cum are not witnessed in indirect speech, thus creating, as it were, the effect of presence and the illusion of the instant reaction to an event.
Thirdly, one can draw a tentative conclusion about what literary genres are associated with this kind of mirative strategy. The data are as follows: cum ecce is found in the works of 3 authors, mostly in the Metamorphoses by Apuleius; cum subito occurs in the works of 19 authors, mostly in the Cicero's treatises (not in the letters), in the Virgil's Aeneid, in the Ovid's Metamorphoses and Fasti, in the Petronius' Satyrica and in the Argonautica by Valerius Flaccus, cum repente is used by 9 authors, mostly by Titus Livius and Tacitus. The statistics indicate that this mirative strategy, unlike the previous ones, is characteristic of the historic prose, epos, and adventure novels.
6. Imperfect of a truth just recognized21
Sometimes the speaker's surprise comes as a result of a "deferred realization". Aikhen-vald explains it as "a post-factum inference made on the basis of something that the speaker had previously witnessed but only later could realize what it had meant" (Aikhenvald 2012, 468). The deferred realization is part of a mirative domaine and may be expressed by means of special affixes which can also function as markers of inferential evidentiality in the languages where these categories are grammaticalized (Aikhenvald 2012, 468). As regards Latin, the meaning of deferred realization seems to be conveyed by the imperfect tense. So far, I have not found any special remarks concerning this function of Latin imperfect in the grammars, nor in "traditional",22 nor in the "modern" ones.23 However, in the grammars of Ancient Greek and in the comments on Greek authors, it is called the "imperfect of a truth just recognized" or "imparfait de découverte".24 J.-C. Carrière (1994, 95), for instance, found an example of such use in Hesiod's poem, see (24):
(24) Oùk apa |ioûvov er|v Epiôœv -yévoç, àÀA' èni -yaîav e'iai ôùœ... (Hes. Op. 11-12)
"So, after all, there was not one kind of Strife alone, but all over the earth there are two" (transl. by H. G. Evelyn-White).
As Carrière points out, the imperfect indicates the discovery, in the present, of something that pre-existed, but was not known: the mankind knew only one personification of Strife, but it turns out to be the two ones (Carrière 1994, 95). The imperfect er|v highlights a (false) opinion rather than a real fact of the existence of only one goddess of Strife on the Earth. The newly recognized truth is unexpected and thus surprising.
21 I would like to express my gratitude to Vsevolod V. Zelchenko who first drew my attention to this phenomenon in Ancient Greek and gave me valuable advice.
22 Riemann 1892; Blatt 1952; Kühner, Stegmann 1966; Hofmann, Szantyr 1972 inter alia.
23 I failed finding it even in the most comprehensive modern grammar by Pinkster (2015).
24 Goodwin, 269; Smyth (1956, 426): "The imperfect... is often used to denote that a present fact or truth has just been recognized, although true before"; Humbert (31972, 138): "Le caractère et l'évaluation de la durée dans le passé dépendent, plus encore que pour le présent, du point de vue personnel de celui qui parle. Quand on emploie l'expression: f|\i9iot; yàp |a9a «(Je le vois !) Tu n'est qu'un imbécile!» on s'étonne de la bêtise de l'interlocuteur qui a pu passer inaperçue jusqu'au moment qu'on s'en avise : mais cette durée passée se soude au présent". Moorhouse 1982, 192-193. Jordaan 2013, 10-11, 65.
This mirative strategy proved to be less frequent in Latin than in Ancient Greek. I found only 7 examples: 3 occurrences in the Plautus' plays and 4 in the Gospels.
Let us first analyze the passage from Plautus' Merchant (Ex. 25):
(25) Divom atque hominum quae spectatrix atque era eadem es hominibus, spem speratam quom obtulisti hanc mihi, tibi grates ago. ecquisnam deus est, qui mea nunc laetus laetitia fuat?
domi erat quod quaeritabam: sex sodales repperi,
vitam, amicitiam, civitatem, laetitiam, ludum, iocum (Plaut. Merc. 841-846).
"Thou who art the overlooker of Gods and of men, and the mistress of mortals as well, inasmuch as thou hast indulged me in this hope that I entertained, I do return thee thanks. What Deity is there now that is joyous with gladness like mine? That was at home which I was in search of. There did I find six companions, life, friendship, my native land, festivity, mirth, and jollity" (transl. by H. Th. Riley).
Eutychus, a friend of Charinus, is looking for the missing girlfriend of Charinus and suddenly discovers her in his own house where she has been hiding all that time. Only at this very moment did he realize the truth, which is the reason for his surprise and joy. Realization of the truth relating to a certain moment in the past is expressed by the imperfect although one could expect the present tense in this situation.
The same holds for the passage from the Gospel, Ex. (26):
(26) Et ecce velum templi scissum est a summo usque deorsum in duas partes, et terra mota est, et petrae scissae sunt; 52 et monumenta aperta sunt, et multa corpora sanctorum, qui dormierant, surrexerunt 53 et exeuntes de monumentis post resurrectionem eius venerunt in sanctam civitatem et apparuerunt multis. 54 Centurio autem et, qui cum eo erant custodientes Iesum, viso terrae motu et his, quae fiebant, timuerunt val-de dicentes: "Vere Dei Filius erat iste!" (Matth. 27. 51-54).
"And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. 52 The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, 53 and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. 54 When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, "Truly this was the Son of God!"
The author describes the most dramatic moment in the Gospel — the death of Jesus — which caused cataclysms and supernatural phenomena. It is not until these events that the centurion and the guard realized that they saw the God's son. The post-factum understanding of truth is expressed by the verb erat.
This strategy, as one can see from the examples, is characteristic of popular literary genres.
7. Conclusions
I have found 5 mirative strategies in Latin and tried to show that mirative values of unexpectedness, unprepared mind, past deferred realization and concomitant surprise may be expressed by grammatical means: syntactic structures, verbal tenses and moods, special particles and conjunctions. It is worth stressing that all these grammatical tools also perform other functions in the language, so the connotations of unexpectedness, amazement and surprise can be treated as the extensions of other grammatical categories
rather than as independent categories. One should also keep in mind that, as it holds for other cases of grammatical polysemy, mirative overtones are context dependant and may arise as part of a whole cluster of various connotations.
I tried to show that the choice of a particular mirative strategy may depend on the genre, consequently, mirative devices — in addition to their epistemic, modal or pragmatic functions — also perform as stylistic ones.
This approach to some linguistic phenomena in Latin helps to reveal the polysemy or even the polyphony of some linguistic categories which acquire various soundings in different contexts. It also extends our knowledge of the expressive possibilities of the language allowing us to get a better insight into the emotional domain and to hear the intonation in live speech preserved by the dead language.
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Received: August 13, 2018 Accepted: October 17, 2018
Как выразить удивление в латыни, не говоря «я удивлен»
Елена Владимировна Желтова
Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет,
Российская Федерация, 199034, Санкт-Петербург, Университетская наб., 7-9;
e.zheltova@spbu.ru, elena.zheltova@mail.ru
В статье исследуются способы выражения миративной семантики в латинском языке. Миратив представляет собой особую грамматическую категорию, которая выражает неготовность говорящего к восприятию информации, отложенное понимание ситуации и сопутствующее этому удивление. Данные значения могут передаваться как лексическими, так и грамматическими средствами. Автор статьи фокусирует внимание только на грамматических явлениях, не включая в рассмотрение высказывания c глаголами типа (ad)mirari, и показывает, что, помимо основных значений времени, наклонения и проч., они в определенных контекстах выражают семантику неожиданности и удивления. Поскольку миративное значение не является для них основным, а проявляется по большей части как «побочный эффект», их следует называть не ми-ративами stricto sensu, а миративными стратегиями. По своей природе последние могут относиться к морфологическим категориями времени и наклонения (e.g., Praesens coniunctivi, Futurum indicativi, Imperfectum indicativi), к служебным частям речи (частицы, союзы) или представлять собой синтаксические конструкции (Accusativus exclamationis, Infinitivus indignantis). Их миративное значение является контекстно обусловленным и в ряде случаев возможно только во взаимодействии с другими грамматическими категориями (глагольного лица, числа и т. п.). Автор пытается выявить прагматические и стилистические функции рассматриваемых явлений и показывает, что выбор стратегии в ряде случаев напрямую связан с жанром произведения и стилем речи. Жанровая дистрибуция миративных стратегий, предлагаемая автором, позволяет рассматривать их не только как языковые сущности, служащие для выражения модальных значений, но и как стилистические средства.
Ключевые слова: латинский язык, адмиративность, семантика удивления, отложенное понимание, неготовность к восприятию ситуации, Accusativus exclamationis, Infinitivus indignantis, Cum inversum.
