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

PART II
EARLY MODERN GREEK
1. INTRODUCTION
The sudden transit ion from the Koine to Modern Greek may be surprising,
but is necessary, as it is impossible to study the eventual development
from the pronomen abundans to the Modern Greek pronomen
coniunctum without having any knowledge of the way in which the relat.
clause is formed in the modern language. It will not be, however, the
situation in the present-day language which will be studied. The investigations
will be confined to the texts ofthe 12th and following centuries.
1.1. The texts
The reason why we do not make use of earl ier texts is very simpIe:
it is not until the 12th century that the popular language formally appears
in literature. One gets, of course, glimpses of it in earlier texts - and we
shall see some of them in the third part of this study -, but one has to
wait until the 12th century before texts are found which have shaken
off the chains of the conventional Koine and Atticism. It is not until
this time th at the spoken language, which had been developing silently
and latently during many centuries, is able to break down the wall of
opposition erected against it. It should not be expected that the spoken
language appears in its pure form. The language used in the texts is
written language, and especially at this time this means that it is still
full of learned elements. The relat. pronoun 8ç ij ö, for instance, does still
occur, although we can be sure that it was obsolete in colloquial speech
sin ce a long time. The first texts written in a language which resem bles
in a higher or lesser degree (depending on the education and the scope
ofthe author) the spoken language are poetical. It is not until the 14th-15th
century that one finds prose-texts as, for instance, the Assizes and the
Chronicle of Machairas, which give a fairly good picture of the spoken
language of their period 153. It will be clear that this is a disadvantage
for one who is occupied with a study on the syntax of the relat. clause.
Relat. clauses do not appear in poetry as of ten as in prose, and, what is
even more important, the relat. clauses which do appear in poetry are
less complicated in structure. This is why the pronomen coniunctum is
not found so of ten in the earlier texts, whereas the texts of the 14th
and following centuries are teeming with ex am pIes of it.
153 Both works have been written in the local dialect of Cyprus. The island
was such an outlying district that it was free from the influence of the literary
language of Constantinople.