Pronomen Abundans and Pronomen Coniunctum. A ... - DWC

44 PRONOMEN ABUNDANS AND PRONOMEN CONIUNCTUM
entstanden zu sein brauoht". This observation was made by Ljungvik 142
at the time when the struggle about the question whether the pronomen
abundans was a Semitism or not, was at its oulminating-point. A modern
soholar like Ljungvik denied this, but in denying it he immediately plaoed
the idiom under a different head: he called it a vulgarism. A younger
member of the Swedish sohool, whioh has done so muoh to enlarge our
knowledge of Post-Classioal Greek, however, has asked 143: "Kann ein
grammatisohes Phänomen in sioh "volkstümlioh" sein, kann also das
"Volkstümliohe" ihm als solohem anhaften 1"
In this ohapter we are not going to answer the question whether the
pronomen abundans had a oolloquial touch. I do not think that this is
very important right now. It is important, however, to ask whether this
idiom did occur in oolloquial speeoh or not.
2.6.1. Olassic period
It cannot be proved that the pronomen abundans was in use in oolloquial
speech during this period. lts ooourrenoe in the texts is not frequent
enough. On the other hand, the instances oocur in the kind of texts whioh
may have undergone some influenoe from the spoken language 144. It is
true that the instanoes are very few, but it would not be oorreot to think
that Greek was spoken in absolute aooordanoe with the "rules of grammar" .
We should not negleot the faot that this grammar has been based on
the language whioh is used in the texts. It is quite possible that this
"Nachlässigkeit" 145 ooourred more of ten in the spoken language and that
it penetrated into the texts just a few times, viz. only when the author
oaloulated for a oertain effeot. Thus the pronomen abundans may be
"one of those nioeties of literary Greek" 146 and at the same time an
idiom whioh was oommon in colloquial speeoh. And there is another proof
of the faot that it was not just a literary nioety. The pronomen abundans
is fairly frequent in the LXX and the NT. When we tried to explain the
frequenoy of its ooourrenoe, we said that the Semite translators and
authors eagerly embraoed this idiom 147. If this idiom was a literary nicety
whioh had appeared in the literary texts only ten times (or 50 times,
if neoessary, oounting all the texts lost to us), these Semites would have
never known of it! We have a distorted picture of the Greek language
of that period, but they had not: they had learned their Greek by hearing
and reading it. If these people actually had the idea that they were writing
Greek, when they wrote down a pronomen abundans, then they must
have got this idea from the spoken language.
142 Ljungvik, Stud., p . 27.
143 Rydbeck, p. 186.
144 Cf. 1.7.
145 Cf. 1.1.
146 Cf. 1.7.
147 See 2.4.2.2 and especially 2.4.4.4.