THE FUNCTIONS of the SYRIAC PARTICLE D

THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SYRIAC PARTICLE d-

1. Introduction The Classical-Syriac particle d-), known from earlier stages of Ara- .is very widespread and performs diverse functions ,די and זי maic as Most of these have been carefully treated in the traditional descriptions of Syriac grammar1. Some of these traditional compositions are admirably accurate and ex- haustive. The different details concerning are, nevertheless, arranged there in what may nowadays seem an old-fashioned manner. They are scattered in various chapters and sections, mostly within short, unsatis- fying treatments of syntax, often without an attempt to find the unifying principle which might bring them all together2. The present study attempts to offer a solution for the above mentioned shortcomings — presenting the whole issue of the Syriac particle in a unified manner, and using for this purpose Tesnière’s notion of the translatif — the morphological marker of syntactic operations3.

2. The Diverse Functions of the Syriac Particle The Syriac particle fulfills various syntactic functions, such as breaking up genitive constructions and introducing subordinate clauses — relative, adverbial, content clauses, etc. This diversity of functions may be illustrated by the following examples:

1 See, for instance, T. NÖLDEKE, Compendious Syriac Grammar (trans. J.A. Crichton), London, 1904, Sections 69, 155, 205, 209, 235-236, 239, 341-371, 372-373 (= NÖLDEKE, Grammar). See also A. UNGNAD, Syrische Grammatik: Mit Übungsbuch2, Hildesheim, 1932, rpt. 1992, Sections 11, 15, 53b (= UNGNAD, Grammatik). 2 But cfr T. MURAOKA, Classical Syriac: A Basic Grammar with a Chrestomathy (Porta Linguarum Orientalium, Neue Serie, 19), Wiesbaden, 1997 (= MURAOKA, Classi- cal Syriac), which is a modern treatment of Syriac grammar, and which, as such, offers a special focus on syntax, ‘which is an area where Syriac, with its only deceptive simplic- ity, appears to be capable of expressing rather intriguing subtleties and niceties’ (MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. xv). The particle is appropriately presented there as ‘a linking word of vague nature’ (MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. 21), and is then treated in various sections, mainly Sections 73, 76-78, 91, 98, 111. Since it is a basic grammar book, not a monograph on the particle , the different treatments of this are still scattered in different sections. 3 For a discussion of the translatif see L. TESNIÈRE, Éléments de syntaxe structurale2, Paris, 1965, p. 80, 82-83 (Chapter 38 [Sections 7-8], and Chapter 40) (= TESNIÈRE, Éléments). For a treatment of the translation as a syntactic operation see TESNIÈRE, Éléments, p. 359 ff. See also Section 3 below. 260 A. WERTHEIMER

– 4 ‘And he wrote to him thus: (that) the letter of your loyalty which [you have sent] to me I have received.’5 The first serves as the marker of direct speech (Section 6.2.4 below); the second breaks up the genitive construction (Section 5.1 below); the third marks the beginning of an elliptical relative clause (Section 6.1.2 below). Note that English would not use any form equivalent to the first , and would then use the preposition of and the relative pronoun which (or else no relative clause at all) for the remaining two appearances of , respectively. Hebrew would not use ש-/אשר and של any equivalent for the first either, and would then use (or else no relative clause) respectively. What is so special about Syriac is the fact that it uses the same form, namely , for all these roles, and for many others — a fact which sometimes leads to a certain ambi- guity. – 6

‘Instead of the crucifixion of death it was appropriate that he should be honoured [or: he deserved that he should be honoured], and it was right that he should be worshipped by them, especially because they saw with their own eyes everything which he was doing.’

– 7

‘And they were considering (that) what they should do to him. For they were distressed, because they realized that most of the people (who) [were] of them believed in him.’

4 Syriac quotation from UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 56*, lines 17-18. 5 The underlined parts of the examples in this study are those directly involved in the structures in question. Within the translations, round brackets signify words in the original which are superfluous in the English translation; square brackets signify words which do not appear in the original Syriac. An attempt was made to translate accurately (also providing the literal translation) those parts of the sentences which are directly involved in the patterns in question. The translation of the less relevant parts of the sentences is not always literal. 6 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 57*, lines 12-14. 7 C. BROCKELMANN, Syrische Grammatik: mit Litteratur, Chrestomathie und Glossar (Porta Linguarum Orientalium, 5), Berlin, 1899, p. 13*, lines 8-10 (= BROCKELMANN, Grammatik). THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SYRIAC PARTICLE d- 261

3. Tesnière’s Translation and Translatif Tesnière uses the French term translation8 for the syntactic operation which transfers a word from one grammatical category to another9. The translatif is the morphological marker of such translation10. These syntactic operations may take place either within the simple sentence or within the complex sentence11. To illustrate, a translation ‘of the first degree’12, i.e., within the simple sentence, takes place in: ‘the king’s house’, where the substantive ‘king’ serves as the attribute of ‘the house’. Since the position of the attribute is ordinarily held by an adjective (as in: ‘the big house’), the substantive ‘king’ is, according to Tesnière’s view, transferred to the category of adjectives. This translation is marked by him as O>A (O= substantive, A= adjective)13, and the translatif is ’s14. Another example of the same kind is: ‘a rainy day’, where O (rain) > A (rainy), a translation marked by the translatif -y. In ‘run quickly’, ‘quick’, which is an adjective, becomes, so to speak, an adverb: A>E (E = adverb)15. This translation is marked by the translatif -ly. A similar process may take place within the complex sentence, involving the subordination of a verb. This is a translation of the second degree16. Such a syntactic operation involves nominalization, i.e., turning a verb (marked by the letter I)17 into another part of speech — a noun (substantive or adjective)18. Thus, for instance: ‘He heard that they would come’, where ‘that’ is the translatif marking the nominalization of the verbal sentence ‘They would come.’19 The nominalized sentence

8 Not to be confused with the English word ‘translation’, which is not a syntactic term. 9 TESNIÈRE, Éléments, p. 364: ‘…la translation consiste donc à transférer un mot plein d’une catégorie grammaticale dans une autre catégorie grammaticale, c’est-à-dire à trans- former une espèce de mot en une autre espèce de mot.’ 10 TESNIÈRE, Éléments, p. 80. 11 TESNIÈRE, Éléments, p. 386. 12 TESNIÈRE, Éléments, p. 386, Chapter 164, Section 13. 13 TESNIÈRE, Éléments, p. 64. 14 It should be emphasized that ‘king’ does not become an adjective: there is no real change here into another part of speech; but ‘king’ here fulfills a role which is generally fulfilled by an adjective. See also G. GOLDENBERG, Nominalization in Amharic and Harari: Adjectivization, in S. SEGERT and A.J.E. BODROGLIGETI (eds), Ethiopian Studies Dedicated to Wolf Leslau: On the Occasion of his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, Wiesbaden, 1983, p. 170 (bottom), including footnote no. 1 there. 15 TESNIÈRE, Éléments, p. 64. 16 TESNIÈRE, Éléments, p. 386, Chapter 164, Sections 14ff. 17 TESNIÈRE, Éléments, p. 64. 18 More accurately: letting the verb fulfill the role which is regularly fulfilled by a noun — cfr footnote no. 14 above. 19 Bearing in mind that a finite verb is syntactically the equivalent of a sentence, as it includes a pronominal element, a verbal lexeme, and the predicative relation which binds 262 A. WERTHEIMER becomes a complement clause (= an object clause), fulfilling the role which is regularly fulfilled by a substantive (‘He heard the news’). Hence this translation would be marked by Tesnière as I>>O. Similarly, in ‘They are repairing the window which you broke’, the relative clause is the product of the translation I>>A (since a relative clause is basically an adjective clause, i.e., it fulfills the role which is regularly fulfilled by an adjective)20. The translations of the first and second degree are described by Tesnière in identical terms and symbols (the only difference is in the ar- rows, which are either single [>] or double [>>], respectively). This identity of terminology originates from the conception of the complex sentence as an elaboration, or complication, of the simple sentence: To create a complex sentence, one of the elements of the simple sentence is substituted by a subordinate clause21. To illustrate the complication in question, consider the following two sentences: (1) He heard the news. (2) He heard that there was an accident. The subordinate content clause in sentence (2), ‘that there was an accident’, is obviously of a more complex nature than the substantive ‘the news’ in sentence (1), but they fulfill the same syntactic role: both of them are complements of the verb ‘heard’. Since this role is regularly fulfilled by a substantive (in the simple sentence), we may describe the parallel translation in sentence (2) in Tesnière’s symbols I>>O. In other words, it is possible to syntactically analyze the most complex sentence in terms of a simple sentence.

4. The Syriac Particle as a Translatif The notion of Tesnière’s translatif may be used to overcome the difficulties created by the diversity of functions which the particle fulfills these two. See G. GOLDENBERG, On Verbal Structure and the Hebrew Verb, in M. BAR- ASHER (ed.), Language Studies, I, Jerusalem, 1985, p. 323-324 (in Hebrew). 20 The words ‘translation within the simple/complex sentence’ may be somewhat mis- leading. A translation of the first degree such as ‘the king’s house’ may indeed occur within a complex sentence too (for instance: ‘I understand that this is the king’s house’). But since ‘the king’s house’ has nothing to do with the process of subordinating a clause (in the above mentioned sentence, it is the verb ‘is’ which undergoes subordination), one does not regard it as part of the translation of the complex sentence. Only translations involving subordination of verbs belong with complex sentences. 21 Cfr TESNIÈRE, Éléments, Chapters 134, 151, 239, for a treatment of this kind of complication. Note that this is not necessarily the chronological order in which sentences are formed by speakers of a language: this is merely an organized way of explaining syntactic phenomena, moving from the simpler structures towards the more complex ones. THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SYRIAC PARTICLE d- 263 in Syriac (Sections 1, 2 above). Instead of enumerating the different roles of this particle, one may describe as a translatif — a marker of various syntactic operations within simple and complex sentences. The following sections elaborate on the various manifestations of the particle as a translatif of the first and second degree, and show the close relation between these roles.

5. as a Translatif of the First Degree — within the Simple Sentence

5.1. Periphrastic Genitive Constructions One of the most widely recognized roles of the Syriac particle has to do with the breaking-up of the close genitive construction (= annexion = smixut, such as — ‘a/the king’s house’, with the governing noun in the construct state), forming two possible periphrastic constructions: (1) the simple periphrastic pattern: — ‘a/the house of a/ the king’ (2) the double periphrastic pattern, with a proleptic pronoun: — ‘his-house of the king’22. In either case, the translation in question is O>A, that is, the substantive , when marked by the translatif , becomes, so to speak, an adjective — or, rather, fulfills the role which is regularly fulfilled by an (attributive) adjective, as in ‘a/the great king’23. Goldenberg shows24 that in genitive constructions is actually the ‘pronominal head’, i.e., it fulfills the role of the governing noun. Thus the noun preceding is in apposition to it. For instance: governed governing apposition (‘a/the house of a/the king’),

22 The distribution of these two patterns (1 and 2) has been amply treated elsewhere and need not concern us here. The present study refers to the two nominal elements forming the different genitive constructions in terms of governing for the first element (the one which takes the construct state in the close construction), and governed for the second (the one capable of taking the genitive case — not in Syriac). Another possible terminology could be the Hebrew nismax and somex, respectively, or Goldenberg’s ‘head’ and ‘modi- fier’ (G. GOLDENBERG, Attribution in Semitic Languages, in Langues Orientales Anciennes Philologie et Linguistique, 5-6 (1995), p. 3 [= GOLDENBERG, Attribution]), respectively. 23 See further examples for these different patterns in NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Section 205 B,C. In the close construction , the governed substantive has also gone through the translation O>A — but, since it is not marked by , this is beyond the scope of the present study. 24 GOLDENBERG, Attribution, p. 4-5. 264 A. WERTHEIMER where the genitive relation exists between and , not between and The phrase is thus the syntactical equivalent of . Goldenberg further claims that patterns such as (which in Section 5.3 below are referred to as elliptical) are prior to periphrastic genitive constructions such as . On the whole, the present study accepts this theory, but is conducted from a different viewpoint than Goldenberg’s: For Goldenberg, is one of the main components of the genitive relation; he does not view it as a translatif at all.

5.2. Double Periphrastic Genitive Constructions with a Prepositional Governing Word Due to the nominal, substantival origin of prepositions, the relation between a preposition and the substantive following it is genitival in nature. The preposition and the following substantive form a close genitive construction — a smixut. This is clearly manifested in Semitic languages which mark case, such as Arabic: bu« XO ‘the boy’s house’ bu« lÄ ‘with the boy’ where bu« takes the genitive case both when it follows a governing substantive in the construct state and when it follows a preposition25. The preposition is thus considered as the governing substantive in the construct state. In Syriac it may likewise enter the double periphrastic pattern ([2] in Section 5.1 above), with the proleptic pronoun, in the same way substantives do (examples in the following paragraph). Double genitive constructions with prepositions in the role of governing substantives are known from other Semitic languages as well. Con- ,’in his-place of the man‘ במקומו של האיש sider, for instance, the Hebrew meaning: ‘instead of the man’, where in the compound preposition place’) is still evident. But in‘ = מקום) the substantival origin במקום Syriac even basic prepositions such as (‘on’, ‘about’) and (‘from’, ‘by’) enter this construction — for instance: – ∞26 ‘He was filled with anger at Habib’ (literally: ‘on-his of Habib’).

25 See also NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Section 246. 26 W. CURETON (ed.), Ancient Syriac Documents: Relative to the Earliest Establish- ment of Christianity in Edessa and the Neighbouring Countries, from the Year of our Lord’s Ascension to the Beginning of the Fourth Century, Amsterdam, 1864, rpt. 1967, p. , lines 2-3 (= CURETON, Ancient Syriac Documents). THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SYRIAC PARTICLE d- 265

– 27 ‘when she reached Jesus’ (literally: ‘at/with-his of Jesus’). – 28 ‘and he was loved by the shepherd’ (literally: ‘from-his of the shepherd’). The translation which has taken place in these sentences is, once again, O>A (cfr Section 5.1 above), marked by the translatif . The governed substantive plays the role of the attribute, a role which is usually fulfilled by an adjective29. Thus every genitive construction, even with prepositions, has to do with the attributive relation30. To round off this discussion, consider the following sentence: – 31 ‘And also Pilatus, the prefect, wrote and notified Albinus, my prefect, about these things which you have written to me [about]’ (literally: ‘on their of these, which you wrote to me’). Once again, is an example for the double periphrastic genitive construction with a governing preposition. The governed word here is the demonstrative pronoun (‘these’), and thus the translation which has taken place here is Pronoun > Adjective. Since a pronoun is, by definition, a substitute of a noun (cfr Latin pro-nomen), or, more accurately, of a substantive, we may describe this translation, too, as: O>A.

5.3. Elliptical Genitive Constructions: Substantivization of the Gov- erned Noun Elliptical genitive constructions are those in which the governing noun is missing, and only the governed noun appears, following . For instance: – 32

27 John 11:32. 28 BROCKELMANN, Grammatik, p. 31*, lines 18-19. 29 Although one automatically expects a preposition to be followed by a substantive. 30 ‘There is nothing new in the recognition that genitive construction, in the notional (or “abstract”, or functional, or conceptual) sense of genitive case, is the syntactical ex- ponent of attributive relation…’ (GOLDENBERG, Attribution, p. 2). 31 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 56*, line 19 - p. 57*, line 3. 32 BROCKELMANN, Grammatik, p. 20*, lines 19-21. 266 A. WERTHEIMER

‘and he buried him in a big grave… the one in which they used to bury [the people] of the house [= family] of Ariu, the forefathers of king Abgar’s father.’ = ‘[the people] of Ariu’s house’. The missing governing noun could be something like (‘people’): . The governed element is a product of the translation O>A, marked by the translatif , with a governing noun such as Now it undergoes another stage of translation, as the governing noun is deleted, and the governed takes its place — a position regularly occupied by a substantive. This second stage translation is therefore A>O. Unlike the first stage, which is marked by the translatif , the second stage — the substantivization — is unmarked. The translatif of the first stage, i.e. , keeps its position preceding . This kind of two-stage translation is what Tesnière terms ‘double translation’, which is one of the types of ‘multiple translations’33. The two stages of the translation described above would be marked by him as O>A>O. He cites Greek, Latin and French examples for such syntactic operations ‘with the second translation without marker’ (i.e., without translatif)34. The following example seems of the same type as the previous one, but is actually different: – 35 ‘These powers are not of human beings’ (that is, ‘are not human’). undergoes the translation O>A (marked by , becoming an attribute meaning ‘human’. But it does not undergo a further translation (A>O), since it does not move to the position of the governing substantive. In other words, there is no ‘double translation’ here. The governing substantive actually appears in the sentence, and the syntactic operation which separates it from the governed is not a translation. Rather, here becomes part of the predicate (with

33 TESNIÈRE, Éléments, p. 474 ff. 34 TESNIÈRE, Éléments, Chapter 215. Tesnière claims there that this kind of translation (with the second stage unmarked) is rather rare ‘dans les langues’, because it requires ‘un certain effort d’abstraction’. In spite of this required effort which he refers to, this pattern is rather frequent in Syriac. Cfr NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Section 209A (‘Nouns with , when Governing-noun is not expressed’), with many examples there. But cfr also GOLDENBERG, Attribution, p. 4-5, especially Section 4 in p. 5, according to whom there is no ellipsis here at all, since is the ‘pronominal head’ of the genitive construction (See above, end of Section 5.1). 35 BROCKELMANN, Grammatik, p. 13*, line 21. THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SYRIAC PARTICLE d- 267

as its subject!). The special negation with serves to negate alone, without negating . Thus, in spite of the fact that does not appear with , the latter does not occupy its position. The position remains empty, yet, since appears earlier in the sentence, it is still understood to be the governing substantive.

5.4. Translations of Cardinal Numbers to Ordinal Numbers

Numerals are, by definition, nominal36: cardinal numbers are substantives, whereas ordinal numbers are adjectival. Beside the regular set of ordinal numbers ( , , , etc.), there exists another set, which is constructed by adding the translatif to masculine cardinal numbers (translation O>A): + (= ‘two’) yields (= ‘second’) + (= ‘three’) yields (= ‘third’) etc. These forms appear in Genesis 1, for instance: – 37: ‘the second day’, – 38: ‘the third day’, – 39: ‘the fourth day’, etc. Structurally, these, too, are periphrastic genitive patterns, although semantically they are not as clear as the ones discussed in the previous sections: ‘the day of (the) two’(?), ‘the day of (the) three’(?), etc40.

6. as a Translatif of the Second Degree — within the Complex Sen- tence

Within the complex sentence marks the beginning of subordinate clauses. These are the products of nominalizations — through which verbs (= sentences, cfr footnote no. 19 above) are made to fulfill the role usually fulfilled by nouns. There are two types of nominalization: substantivization (I>>O) and adjectivization (I>>A) — according to the two

36 NÖLDEKE, Grammar, p. 95-98 lists them under nouns (cfr his table of contents, p. xix-xxii) — together with pronouns, ‘nouns in the stricter sense’, and particles. 37 Gen. 1:8. 38 Gen. 1:13. 39 Gen. 1:19. 40 But cfr (Gen. 1: 5): ‘the first day’ (literally: ‘day one’), without such translation. See also GOLDENBERG, Attribution, p. 11 (top), where is analyzed as ‘N of 2’. According to this, the genitive relation actually exists between and the governed numeral (cfr above, end of Section 5.1, and footnote no. 30). 268 A. WERTHEIMER types of nouns — substantives and adjectives, respectively. Thus marks the beginning of relative (adjectivized) clauses (Section 6.1) and other nominalized (substantivized) subordinate clauses (Sections 6.2, 6.3).

6.1. Relative Clauses

6.1.1. as a Translatif Marking the Beginning of Relative Clauses Another widely recognized role (cfr Section 5.1) of is that of opening relative clauses41. A relative clause is the product of a translation of the second degree — in which a verb (= a sentence) is adjectivized (I>>A) and made to fulfill the role usually fulfilled by an adjective. (Compare, for instance, the following two sentences: adjective ‘The yellow car looks very impressive.’

relative clause ‘The car, which you have painted yellow, looks very impressive.’ The reverse word order tends to obscure the identical role played by both underlined elements, but in Syriac there is no such problem of reverse word order). The Syriac , which functions in such sentences as a relative particle42, is the translatif marking the nominalization of the verb.

Ordinary relative clauses are fairly abundant in Syriac. The following few examples should be sufficient43: – 44 ‘Lead your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac.’ – 45 ‘Stretch out (your hand and get) for me the coin which I dropped’ (literally: ‘which fell from me’)46.

41 Sometimes it is even wrongly referred to as ‘a relative pronoun’. See, for instance, NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Sections 69, 235-236. Cfr footnote no. 42 below. 42 Not a relative pronoun — because it does not stand for a noun, as a real pronoun should. Cfr footnote no. 41 above. See also end of Section 5.2 above. 43 See also NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Sections 341ff. For the special kinds of relative clauses see the following sections below. 44 Gen. 22:2. 45 MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. 55*, line 15. 46 Part of the translation is from MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. 55*, note 5. THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SYRIAC PARTICLE d- 269

– 47 ‘and he found a ship which was standing by and getting ready and wait- ing for the wind to blow so that it could travel.’

Genitive constructions and patterns involving relative clauses are strongly related to each other48. This relation becomes evident, among other things, by the use of the same particle, namely , in both types of constructions — the genitival and the relative. Moreover, in both types the translation produces A, i.e., an adjective or another part of speech which fulfills adjectival function: the governed noun in the genitive relation is adjectival (O>A, see Section 5.1); so is the relative clause, which is actually an adjective clause (I>>A)49.

6.1.2. Elliptical Relative Clauses Quite often in Syriac the translatif marks the beginning of an elliptical relative clause. The only part left of this kind of clause is a prepositional phrase. Since the verb (or the copula) is missing, it is sometimes difficult to identify such an utterance as a clause. To illustrate: – 50 ‘as Gabriel’s word to Mary’ (literally: ‘which [was said] to Mary’, or: ‘which [he said] to Mary’).

47 W. WRIGHT (ed.), Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles: Edited from Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum and Other Libraries with English Translations and Notes, Amster- dam, 1871, rpt. 1968, p. , lines 9-10 (= WRIGHT, Apocryphal Acts). 48 For an elaborate discussion of this relation see GOLDENBERG, Attribution, p. 11ff, who shows that, as in genitive constructions (cfr end of Section 5.1 above), patterns involving relative clauses include a genitive relation between and the relative clause; the antecedent is in apposition to . Hence the pattern antecedent + + relative clause is actually the periphrastic construction (cfr GOLDENBERG, Attribution, p. 11-12. See also periphrastic genitive constructions, Section 5.1 above). The non-periphrastic relative con- קרית חנה struction (i.e. the verbal smixut, such as the Akkadian din idinu and the Hebrew .does not exist in Syriac (דוד In addition to this, cfr I. AVINERI, Syntax of the Syriac Language according to the Translation of the Pentateuch, unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1973, p. 189ff. (Section 2.062) (in Hebrew) — where he refers to the render- ing of Hebrew genitive constructions by Syriac patterns involving relative clauses, for instance: :rendered by ,אם כל חי Gen. 3:20 rendered by: (see below, Section 6.1.2, for such ,ברית עולם and Gen 7: 7 structures). See also his reference there to NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Section 355. .ל + (אשר =) ש- = של ,Cfr also Hebrew, where, as has been well established 49 50 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 53*, line 4. 270 A. WERTHEIMER

is an elliptical relative clause, marked by the translatif . The missing part is a verb, and the elliptical clause stands for something like: (‘which was said to Mary’) or: (‘which he said to Mary’). The translation here is still I>>A, as in Section 6.1.1, but the verb is then deleted. It is the particle which marks as a subordinate relative clause, the product of a translation of the second degree.

Syntactically, the phrase (‘as his word to Mary’), without , would be entirely different than the sentence in question (although semantically they are the same): the translation here would be O >A (O standing for ‘Mary’), marked by the prepositional translatif . This would be a translation of the first degree, within the simple sentence, and would be the attribute of It is also important to note that in the reconstructed phrase (‘as his word which he said to Mary’), is a relative clause, in which the prepositional phrase functions as an adverbial complement of the verb , the product of the translation O>E with the translatif

Some further examples for elliptical relative clauses are: – 51 ‘For by means of this [person] who is dear to you more than anything, your love of the Lord-of-all became known’ (literally: ‘your love which [is] to/with the Lord…’). – 52 ‘And [God forbid that] I should deprive myself of eternal life’ (literally: ‘of life which [is] for ever’). The phrase is so similar to a periphrastic genitive construction (such as , without ), that one could easily confuse the two. Nevertheless, there is a difference between them: is the product of the translation O>A, whereas is the elliptical product of the translation I>>A (both translations with as translatif. See also end of Section 6.1.1 above).

51 MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. 47*, lines 1-2. 52 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 54*, lines 10-11. THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SYRIAC PARTICLE d- 271

6.1.3. Substantivized Relative Clauses53 Substantivized relative clauses are relative clauses without antecedent. The relative clause itself, marked by , moves to the position of the antecedent: in other words, it is substantivized (A>O)54. Once again, there is a double translation here (cfr above, Section 5.3, for a parallel phenomenon with genitive constructions): A verb/sentence undergoes translation of the second degree, I>>A, and becomes a relative clause marked by the translatif ; then it undergoes the translation A>O (at this stage it is not a translation of the second degree, because it is no longer the verb which is involved in it) — a translation which remains unmarked (i.e., without translatif. The only marking may be said to be the word order — the fact that this phrase is not preceded by an antecedent). The complete, double translation is I>>A>O, with only the first stage marked55.

To illustrate: – 56 ‘whoever strikes a man, and [if] that man dies, he will be put to death’ (literally: ‘Who strikes a man…’). In this sentence, Ephraem refers to Exod. 21:12: .מכה איש ומת מות יומת is a relative clause occupying the position of the missing antecedent. A possible antecedent could have been or (‘man’).

Likewise in – 57 ‘and he who did not lie in ambush for him’ (literally: ‘and who did which is also a ,ואשר לא צדה :not…’) — referring to Exod. 21:13 substantivized relative clause.

53 Note that unlike the case of genitive constructions, in which ‘elliptical’ and ‘substantivized’ refer to the same phenomenon (Section 5.3 above), in relative clauses ‘elliptical’ and ‘substantivized’ are two different patterns, described in different sections (6.1.2 and 6.1.3). 54 As explained above (end of Section 5.1), GOLDENBERG, Attribution, p. 11 ff. de- scribes this pattern in totally different terms. 55 Cfr TESNIÈRE, Éléments, p. 618-620, especially p. 620, Section 5. 56 R.M. TONNEAU (ed.), Sancti Ephraem Syri in Genesim et in Exodum Commentarii (Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, 152; Scriptores Syri, 71), Louvain, 1955 (Latin translation in vol. 72), p. 150, line 16 (= TONNEAU, Sancti Ephraem Commentarii). 57 TONNEAU, Sancti Ephraem Commentarii, p. 150, line 16. 272 A. WERTHEIMER

An additional example: – 58 ‘My son, do not tell everything which you hear, and [that] which you see do not disclose.’ Note that here is the complement of the verb Indeed, substantivized relative clauses no longer fulfill the role of attributes in complex sentences; rather, they are either subject clauses (as in the first two examples in this section), or object clauses (as in the current example and in the following one). It is possible to view within as referring to as well (‘everything which you see’) — in which case is not substantivized (and serves as the antecedent, see Section 6.1.4 below).

The same is true for – 59 ‘My son, do not loose a knot that is sealed, and do not seal one that is loosed.’60 Here, too, one may regard as the antecedent of as well — though this is not necessarily so. As opposed to the examples above, the subject clause (the glose) of the Syriac cleft sentence is ordinarily unmarked by a translatif, although it, too, is a product of a translation61. That is why such cleft sentences are termed ‘imperfectly transformed’62. This subject clause may be one of two types: a substantivized relative clause, and a non- relative ‘content’ clause63. The first type is relevant to the present discussion (the second type will be treated below, in Section 6.2.2). To illustrate:

58 F.C. CONYBEARE, J. RENDEL HARRIS and A. SMITH LEWIS, The Story of Ah¸ ik¸ ar from the Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Greek and Slavonic Versions, London, 1898, p. , lines 5-6 (= CONYBEARE, Ah¸ ik¸ ar). 59 CONYBEARE, Ah¸ ik¸ ar, p. , line 7. 60 Translation from CONYBEARE, Ah¸ ik¸ ar, p. 60. 61 G. GOLDENBERG, Imperfectly-Transformed Cleft Sentences, in A. SHINAN (ed.), Pro- ceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies, 1973, I, Jerusalem, 1977, p. 132 (= GOLDENBERG, Imperfectly-Transformed): ‘The absence of a relative marker with the verb does not really affect its syntactically nominal status.’ 62 Originally so by GOLDENBERG, Imperfectly Transformed, p. 127-133. See also A. WERTHEIMER, Special Types of Cleft Sentences in Syriac, forthcoming in Journal of Semitic Studies, Autumn 2001, Section 2.1 (= WERTHEIMER, Special Types). 63 G. GOLDENBERG, Tautological Infinitive, in Israel Oriental Studies, 1 (1971), p. 50 (= GOLDENBERG, Infinitive). THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SYRIAC PARTICLE d- 273

– 64 ‘The palace is [already] built, and it is [only] the roof [which] is missing (to it).’ The subject clause of the cleft sentence is , which is a substantivized relative clause (‘[the part] [which] is missing’), the product of the double translation I>>A>O, unmarked by any translatif.

The following sentence is somewhat problematic: – 65 ‘He will build for you [a palace] which [is] better than mine’ (literally: ‘than that of mine’). The antecedent (‘palace’), though not explicitly preceding , is understood from the context. is nevertheless a substantivized relative clause, occupying the position of the antecedent. is a predicative adjective in the absolute state (of the feminine gender, in agreement with In spite of its predicative status, it is not followed by an enclitic pronominal subject (one would expect 66. is neither a participle nor a participial, so that the absence of the enclitic pronominal subject is not easily accounted for67. A possible explanation for this may perhaps be found in Nöldeke’s statement regarding the pronominal subject which may be omitted ‘in certain cases also with Adjectives… in particular in short accessory clauses’68 (although is not all that short). It seems that what actually happens here is a certain process of crystallization in which an idiomatic expression is created: is grasped as a substantivized adjective (‘a better one’), still inflected for person, and not as a nominal predicate of a relative clause — so that an enclitic pronominal subject is not felt necessary69.

64 P. BEDJAN (ed.), Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum Syriace, III, Hildesheim, 1892, rpt. 1968, p. 20, according to the version mentioned there in footnote no. 3 (= BEDJAN, Acta). 65 BEDJAN, Acta, p. 25, lines 1-2. 66 See G. GOLDENBERG, On Syriac Sentence Structure, in M. SOKOLOFF (ed.), Arameans, Aramaic and the Aramaic Literary Tradition, Ramat-Gan, 1983, p. 98-100 (= GOLDENBERG, Syriac Sentence Structure), for a discussion of the enclitic pronominal subject following the non-verbal predicate. 67 See GOLDENBERG, Syriac Sentence Structure, p. 112-117, for a discussion of the syntax of participles and participials. 68 NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Section 314. 69 See Section 7 below for a treatment of idiomatic expressions with , including the question of the need — and ability — to analyze them syntactically. 274 A. WERTHEIMER

6.1.4. Relative Clauses with Correlatives

Correlative pronouns are demonstrative and interrogative pronouns which often precede the relative particle . Together with they form a unit (such as

relative correlative [= ‘that which’], [= ‘he who’, ‘whoever’]) which is sometimes described as marking the beginning of substantivized relative clauses without an antecedent70. As a matter of fact, though, the correlative fulfills the role of the antecedent itself: Demonstratives and interrogatives, due to their pronominal nature (i.e., their ability to be used as substitutes for nouns), may occupy the position of the nominal antecedent. Muraoka indeed refers to these correlatives as ‘dummy antecedent[s]’ in ’antecedentless relative clauses’71. Relative clauses with such ‘dummy’ antecedents, i.e., correlatives, are very frequent in Syriac — more frequent than substantivized relative clauses (Section 6.1.3 above). The correlative is sometimes preceded by (‘every’, ‘all’), forming units such as (‘whoever’, literally ‘every who that’) etc. Another such ‘dummy antecedent’ is ‘something’72, which is originally a substantive. The unit (correlative + relative) means ‘that which’. The translation which takes place in these constructions is I>>A, with as the translatif and with the correlative serving as the antecedent — and not I>>A>O (Section 6.1.3), since the relative clause is not substantivized.

The following few examples should be sufficient for demonstrating this pattern: – 73 ‘He started encouraging and strengthening all those who were kept in the prison’ (literally: ‘all-of-them which [pl.] that were kept’).

70 NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Section 236A. 71 MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. 87, Section 111. 72 NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Section 219, 236C; MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. 87, Sec- tion 111. 73 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 55*, lines 4-6. THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SYRIAC PARTICLE d- 275

– 74 ‘And they were not afraid of persecution, because those who were persecuted were more numerous than those who were persecuting.’ – 75 ‘They saw whatever he was doing’ (literally: ‘every something which he was doing’).

6.2. More Subordinate Clauses Apart from introducing relative clauses, also serves as a translatif introducing other subordinate clauses (subject clauses, object clauses, adverbial clauses), where the translation is basically I>>O. Such subordinate clauses, being introduced by the same particle which serves as a relative particle, are, indeed, not all that different in nature from genuine relative clauses. Both types are the products of nominalizations marked by the translatif Sometimes, especially in idiomatic expressions (Sec- tions 6.3.2, 7), it is not very easy to tell which type of clause is involved: relative or non-relative76. The following sections enumerate the non-relative subordinate clauses and discuss the kind of translation involved in them. These non-relative subordinate clauses are enumerated according to the syntactic role which they play in the complex sentences (subject clauses, object clauses, etc.). Yet one should note that, according to Tesnière’s view, what really counts here is not the syntactic role (subject, object etc.), but the part of speech which may fulfill such a role (Section 3 above): this is what his translations are all about.

6.2.1. with the Prefix Conjugation Before turning to the different non-relative subordinate clauses, one should consider the pattern

74 CURETON, Ancient Syriac Documents, p. , lines 10-12. 75 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 57*, line 14. 76 NÖLDEKE, Grammar, p. 290ff. refers to these non-relative subordinate clauses as ‘conjunctional relative clauses’ (as opposed to ‘attributive relative clauses’ [NÖLDEKE, Grammar, p. 278ff.] — which are the relative clauses discussed in Section 6.1 above), indicating that ‘between this conjunctional use and the attributive use the contrast is by no means very strongly marked’ (NÖLDEKE, Grammar, p. 290). Cfr also GOLDENBERG, Infini- tive, p. 50, and H.J. POLOTSKY, Syntaxe amharique et syntaxe turque, in Collected Papers, Jerusalem, 1971, p. 5-6, for additional terminology: ‘concrete relative’ = ‘attributive relative’, and ‘abstract relative’ = ‘conjunctional relative’. 276 A. WERTHEIMER

+ Prefix Conjugation which occurs in many of them. The prefix conjugation preceded by is a frequent Syriac substitute for the infinitive77. To illustrate: – 78 ‘and you will be delivered from the torture which I am about to inflict upon you’ (literally: ’which I am about that I will inflict…’)79. – 80 ‘And this, too, I have heard: that the Jews are whispering against you and persecuting you, and they even want to crucify you’ (literally: ‘and even that they will crucify you they want’). – 81 ‘Because of this I could not avenge this matter’ (literally: ‘I could not that I would avenge…’). – ∞82 ‘And she answered and said to him: It is appropriate for you to look at the soil, because you are [taken] from it. And it is appropriate for me to look at you, because it is from you [that] I am taken’ (literally: ‘Yours is it that you will look at the soil… mine [is] it that I will look…’). As seen in the above sentences, the pattern + Prefix conjugation frequently forms part of a non-relative subordinate clause (such as subject or object clause) within a complex sentence. The different subordinate clauses are further treated in what follows.

6.2.2. Subordinate Subject Clauses Subordinate subject clauses fulfill the role of the subject in complex sentences. They are products of the translation I>>O (as the subject po-

77 See also NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Section 286. 78 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 54*, line 7. 79 But cfr the use of + infinitive for the same purpose: (UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 54*, lines 11-12): ‘Every torture and pressure which you are able to inflict upon me — inflict them.’ See also NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Section 286. 80 BROCKELMANN, Grammatik, p. 14*, lines 17-18. 81 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 57*, lines 4-5. 82 BROCKELMANN, Grammatik, p. 35*, lines 8-10 = BEDJAN, Acta, p. 633, lines 2-4. THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SYRIAC PARTICLE d- 277 sition is ordinarily held by a substantive), marked by the translatif To illustrate: – 83 ‘Therefore your majesty should know what is right that you should order concerning the Jews, who have done these (things)’. etc. is the subordinate subject clause. Its pattern is + Prefix Conjugation (Cfr Section 6.2.1 above). is the predicate. – 84 ‘Why is it possible for a man to buy a servant girl and to sleep with her and to do whatever he wishes, and it is not possible for a woman to do any of these openly?’ (literally: ‘that he will buy’, ‘that he will do’, etc.). The pattern of the subject clause is here, too, + Prefix Conjugation85.

As opposed to the above, the non-relative subject clause (glose) of cleft sentences (cfr Section 6.1.3 above for the relative glose) is unmarked by the translatif , in spite of its nominal nature. To illustrate: – 86 ‘It is in them, in the six days, [that] it was created.’ is the subject clause (glose), and it is a non-relative content clause. The translation is I>>O, unmarked by any translatif. What proves that this position is nominal, is the precursor of the cleft sentence — in which the glose is not a clause: ‘It is in them [that] the creation [is].’87

6.2.3. Subordinate Object Clauses Subordinate object clauses occupy the object position in complex sentences. They are produced by the translation I>>O (as the object role in

83 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 56*, lines 13-15. 84 MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. 55*, lines 20-23. 85 For additional examples of subordinate subject clauses see the first two examples in Section 6.1.3 above — but those are substantivized relative clauses (translation I>>A>O). 86 TONNEAU, Sancti Ephraem Commentarii, p. 10, lines 10-12. 87 Cfr WERTHEIMER, Special Types, Section 2.2. See also above, Section 3, for a discussion of the complex sentence as the elaboration and complication of a simple sentence. 278 A. WERTHEIMER a simple sentence is ordinarily fulfilled by a substantive). These clauses are typical content clauses — acting as complements of verbs like ‘say’, ‘think’, ‘know’, ‘want’, ‘be able to’, etc., and providing the content of those ‘speeches’, ‘thoughts’, ‘wishes’ etc88. To illustrate: – 89 ‘As I know that nothing is overlooked by your majesty’. – 90 ‘And he decided to work for a salary and [thus] to eat bread’ (literally: ‘decided that he would work… and would eat…’). The pattern here is + Prefix Conjugation (Section 6.2.1). – 91 ‘And Abgar wanted that he himself would pass [through] and go to Pal- estine.’ The pattern + Prefix Conjugation is broken here — as the subject ( of the verbs and occupies the position between and the prefix conjugation. – 92 ‘Because he could not pass among the Romans’ (literally: ‘because he could not that he would pass…’).

6.2.4. Direct and Indirect Speech Clauses of direct and indirect speech are object clauses (translation I>>O) which provide the content for verbs such as ‘say’, ‘tell’, ‘order’ etc. (like object clauses above, Section 6.2.3). They are discussed here in a separate section because in Syriac it is sometimes impossible to tell the difference between direct and indirect speech — due to the fact that frequently precedes direct speech as well93.

In the following sentences clearly precedes direct speech — as becomes obvious from considering the first and second persons of the verbs and pronouns involved:

88 Object clauses which are the complements of verbs like ‘say’, ‘order’ etc. will be treated separately — see Section 6.2.4 below. 89 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 56*, lines 2-3. 90 BROCKELMANN, Grammatik, p. 35*, lines 14-15. 91 BROCKELMANN, Grammatik, p. 13*, lines 22-23. 92 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 55*, lines 17-18. 93 One could argue that introducing direct speech plays the role of the colon — the equivalent of which does not exist among Syriac punctuation marks. This, of course, has nothing to do with Tesnière’s translations. THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SYRIAC PARTICLE d- 279

– 94 ‘…he ordered them (that) Go and teach and baptize all the people in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit’. – 95 ‘And the Saint answered and said to the judge: (that) God forbid that for the sake of short-term honour and office I should renounce the son of God… and deprive myself of eternal life.’ – 96 ‘and she said to that [one] who used to be her husband… (that) Stretch out [your hand, and get] for me the coin which I dropped.’97 – 98 ‘God tested Abraham again and said to him (that) Take your son and go to the land of the Amorites…’. This is Ephraem’s reference to Gen. 22:2: ויאמר קח-נא את-בנך את-יחידך אשר-אהבת את-יצחק ולך-לך אל ארץ ֹהמריה... ‘And he said to him: Take your only son whom you love, Isaac, and go by ארץ ֹהמריה to the land of the Amorites’ (the problematic translation of need not concern us here). Note that in Gen. 22:2 does not introduce the direct speech, as this is not the usual practice in Hebrew, from which language this passage was translated.

The translation in such direct speeches introduced by is I>>O. The following sentences, though, are somewhat irregular in this respect:

94 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 51*, line 20 — p. 52*, line 1. 95 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 54*, lines 8-11. 96 MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. 55*, lines 14-15. 97 The translation partly follows MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. 55*, Note no. 5. 98 MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. 46*, lines 12-13. 280 A. WERTHEIMER

– 99 ‘They were crying out of their own free will (that) We are Christians.’100 There is no verb in the nominal clause — so that the symbol I (= verb) does not seem quite applicable to it. However, since the nominal sentence pattern Predicate + Enclitic Pronominal Subject is, in many ways, the equivalent of a finite verb101, the symbol I>>O marks, for our purposes, a verb, or a sentence (either verbal or nominal), which is made to fulfill the function of a substantive.

Then again, in the following sentence: – 102 ‘As Gabriel’s words to Mary: (that) The Holy Spirit will come, and the power of the Exalted will rest upon you. Because of this, that [one] who will be born from you is holy, and he will be called the son of the Exalted’ the clause etc. is not an object clause — because there is no verb preceding it. It is a content clause (specifying the content of , and it is a direct speech — but syntactically it is an attributive non-relative clause, serving as the attribute of , so that the translation should be I>>A rather than I>>O (unless we prefer to add a verb of saying, for which the content clause will serve as an object, for instance: … ‘As Gabriel’s words who said that the Holy Spirit would come…’).

Sometimes, when the verbs and pronouns of the object clause are in the third person, it is impossible to tell whether the speech is direct or indirect103. To illustrate: – 104 ‘And he said to himself, that if the women of the city are thus clever, all the more so its men and sons.’

99 CURETON, Ancient Syriac Documents, p. , lines 9-10. 100 The translation partly follows CURETON, Ancient Syriac Documents, p. 72. 101 As shown by GOLDENBERG, Syriac Sentence Structure, p. 99. 102 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 53*, lines 4-7. 103 See also NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Section 367. 104 BROCKELMANN, Grammatik, p. 35*, lines 11-13. THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SYRIAC PARTICLE d- 281

But examining the context may often help to determine whether the speech is direct or indirect. For instance, in – 105 ‘and he told her that it [= the coin] was not a zuz, but a dinar’ the past tense of indicates that this is indirect speech, because the speaker refers to a coin which he sees at the moment of speech. The direct speech should have been: ‘(that) It is not a zuz’ — in the present tense.

To round off this discussion, consider the following sentence with the indirect question: – 106 ‘Although it was ordered that everyone should sacrifice, (but) it was not ordered (that) what should become of those who were not sacrificing.’ In languages such as English, even indirect questions do not open with ‘that’ — but in Syriac is very frequent in this position (and also before direct questions), because it is a translatif marking the translation I>>O (since is a passive form, is a subject — not object — clause). Such clauses may exist without this at all, in which case we may say that the translation is unmarked107.

6.3. Adverbial Clauses Adverbial clauses play the role of adverbs within complex sentences. They, too, are subordinate clauses — such as the ones described in Sec- tions 6.1, 6.2 above. But due to certain special issues involved in them, they merit a separate discussion. Adverbial clauses are the products of the double translation I>>O>E, and perhaps sometimes I>>A>E (E = adverb). The first translation (I>>O, sometimes I>>A) is marked by the translatif . The second translation (O>E, or A>E) sometimes remains unmarked (hence: ‘Un- marked Adverbial Clauses’, Section 6.3.1), and is sometimes marked by a preposition (‘Marked Adverbial Clauses’, Section 6.3.2 below). The different types of adverbial clauses — denoting time, reason, purpose, manner etc. — are irrelevant to the present syntactic discussion:

105 MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. 55*, lines 16-17. 106 CURETON, Ancient Syriac Documents, p. , lines 6-8. 107 See also NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Section 372. 282 A. WERTHEIMER they have to do with semantics, not with syntax. For this reason they will not be dwelled upon in the discussion which follows.

6.3.1. Unmarked Adverbial Clauses Unmarked adverbial clauses are subordinate clauses (usually denoting reason or purpose), the products of the double translation I>>O>E, where the first translation (I>>O) is marked by , and the second translation (O>E) is unmarked. These unmarked adverbial clauses begin with the particle , and are thus structurally not different from object clauses (Sections 6.2.3, 6.2.4). Moreover, the differences between purpose and reason are not structurally marked in them. Only the context can determine the meaning of in such clauses.

To illustrate: – 108 ‘and he lusted after her and he sent [someone] to her [in order] that he should take her.’109 is a subordinate clause denoting purpose. The first translation (I>>O) nominalizes the verb (= sentence) . The product of this first translation, (marked by the translatif , could occupy any nominal position in the sentence: that of the subject: ‘It is appropriate that he should take her’; of the object: ‘He wants to take her’; and also that of the attribute (I>>A): ‘The man who would take her came.’ In the sentence under consideration, occupies adverbial position, i.e., it undergoes a second translation O>E, which is left unmarked by a translatif. – 110 ‘Let us get up and pray and ask Christ to send us a good wind [so] that we will go on our way in peace and happiness.’

108 MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. 55*, lines 10-11. 109 Cfr Section 6.2.1 for the pattern + Prefix Conjugation. 110 WRIGHT, Apocryphal Acts, p. , lines 5-7. THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SYRIAC PARTICLE d- 283

etc. is an adverbial clause of purpose, but since it is not marked as such (being marked only by , it does not differ structurally from etc. there, which is an object clause (‘let us ask that he should send…’). – 111 ‘And he told the old women to look for a wife for him [so] that he would marry [her].’ Note that could be either an adverbial clause denoting purpose, or a relative clause describing (‘a woman whom he would marry’). – 112 ‘You did well to write to me thus’ (literally: ‘[because? when?] that you wrote to me…’). etc. is possibly an adverbial clause denoting time or reason. – 113 ‘And at this time of distress for the Hebrews Moses was born. And [because (or: when)] (that) his mother saw that he was good looking, she hid him until she could no longer hide him.’ here either denotes reason or time. Syntactically this makes no difference114.

6.3.2. Marked Adverbial Clauses Marked adverbial clauses are the products of the double translation I>>O>E where both stages are marked by a translatif 115 — the first stage (I>>O) marked by , the second stage (O>E) marked by a preposition. Unlike the case of unmarked adverbial clauses (Section 6.3.1), the preposition makes the type of adverbial clause involved (reason, time etc.) quite clear.

111 MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. 56*, lines 13-14. 112 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 57*, lines 16-17. 113 TONNEAU, Sancti Ephraem Commentarii, p. 125, lines 21-23. 114 For further examples of adverbial clauses denoting reason, cfr the last two examples in Section 2 above. See also NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Section 366A, B. Cfr below, Sec- tion 6.3.2, for clauses denoting reason with prepositions. 115 See the treatment of this kind of translation in French and German in TESNIÈRE, Éléments, Chapter 269, Sections 16-18 (p. 622). 284 A. WERTHEIMER

To illustrate: – 116 ‘And they were not afraid of the persecution, because (that) those who were persecuted were more numerous than those who were persecuting.’

In the first stage of the translation (I>>O), marks as nominalized (substantivized). Then in the second stage (O>E), marks as adverbial.

The preposition (‘because of’), which may mark the translation O>E in the simple sentence, becomes, when followed by , a subordinate conjunction (‘because’), marking the beginning of a clause in a complex sentence. Thus, for instance, in ‘because of the king's words’, is a preposition, whereas in ‘because the king spoke’, is a conjunction117.

– 118 ‘King Abgar, since [literally: ‘because that’] he could not pass among the Romans and go to Palestine and kill the Jews for having persecuted [literally: ‘on that they persecuted’] Christ, he wrote a letter and sent [it] to Tiberius Caesar.’

and above thus mark the beginnings of adverbial clauses denoting reason. The adverbial clauses in the following sentences denote time: – 119 ‘And when the governor heard these [things], he was filled with rage against Habib.’120

116 CURETON, Ancient Syriac Documents, p. , lines 10-12. 117 See also MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. 64, Section 78, and NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Section 155C (p. 101), and Section 360A. 118 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 55*, line 17 — p. 56*, line 1. 119 CURETON, Ancient Syriac Documents, p. , lines 2-3. 120 The translation partly follows CURETON, Ancient Syriac Documents, p. 73. THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SYRIAC PARTICLE d- 285

marks the first stage of the translation; marks the second. alone does not exist in Syriac. Together with it forms a separate word ( = ‘when’), so that is no longer conceived of as opening a clause. – 121 ‘And she said that she was not going to consent to the king unless after (that) he ordered that she should sit in a carriage, and that former husband of hers should lead it’.

Now consider the following adverbial clause denoting purpose: – 122 ‘And that poor man went and emptied the wool [from the pillow] so that he would wash the pillow.’ is made up from and 123 — so that the first translation (I>>O, or perhaps I>>A?) is marked by , to which the correlative is added (Section 6.1.4). Then (= - marks the second translation (O>E, or A>E). Since there is an idiomatic process involved here, one should perhaps not attempt to describe these different stages in such detail (see below, Section 7).

The same idiomatic element exists in the following sentence, where the adverbial clause beginning with denotes time (or, perhaps, manner, quantity, etc.): – 124 ‘And they beat him until (what) (that) his ribs were showing’. The preposition is made up of and . could be considered as a correlative, so that the first stage of the translation is marked by , the second by .

The pattern of these marked adverbial clauses is Preposition (+ / ) + + Subordinate Clause. The fact that a correlative may be used here might signify that the clause is originally a relative clause, though it is no longer felt as such. This relative clause is dependent on a preposition (which is a noun in the con-

121 MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. 55*, lines 11-12. 122 MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. 56*, lines 10-11. 123 J. PAYNE SMITH, A Compendious Syriac Dictionary: Founded upon the Thesaurus Syriacus of R. Payne Smith, Oxford, 1903, p. 16. 124 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 54*, lines 16-17. 286 A. WERTHEIMER struct state used adverbially)125, and the pattern as a whole may be viewed as a kind of periphrastic genitive construction126 with the governing noun in the construct state. There is a strong element of idiomatic expression here127.

7. Idiomatic Expressions To round off the discussion of as a translatif, one may consider sev- eral Syriac idiomatic expressions with , such as (= ‘without’), which could be related to this issue (See also end of Section 6.3.2 above). As is often the case with idiomatic expressions, which are the products of a process of crystallization, it is hard to determine how far this process is gone in these Syriac idiomatic expressions. It is not always possible (and perhaps not even necessary) to find out what their origins were and to provide them with a syntactic analysis. If, in spite of the above mentioned difficulties, one wants to analyze such expressions syntactically, their possible affinity to elliptical relative clauses (Section 6.1.2), to other subordinate clauses and to genitive constructions may serve as a reasonable starting point. Consider, for instance, the idiomatic expression , which means: ‘such’, ‘such as’ ( alone is a preposition meaning ‘as’, ‘like’): Nöldeke refers to this expression within his discussion of relative clauses which precede their antecedents128. Among other examples he cites there the following: which he translates ‘“sufferings, which are as these” = “such sufferings”’. In his view, is the antecedent, and is the (elliptical) relative clause preceding it. Thus we may say that = ‘as’, ‘like’ (preposition);

125 NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Section 156. 126 Section 5.1. See also NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Sections 359, 360A. 127 See further discussion of idioms in Section 7 below. In the following adverbial clause denoting manner, or comparison, is altogether missing: (UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 57*, lines 11-12): ‘…as I hear about them’. Here the first stage of the translation (I>>O) is left unmarked. Only the second stage (O>E) is marked by the preposition . One might see here a close genitive construction (not a periphrastic one), where the governed noun is replaced by a sentence (= a verb). 128 NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Section 352B. THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SYRIAC PARTICLE d- 287

= ‘which [is] like’ (elliptical relative clause) = ‘such as’; and is the translatif marking the translation I>>A129. Yet , being idiomatic, is no longer conceived of as the beginning of a relative clause. Whether it should be analyzed as such or, being an idiom, left without analysis, is a question beyond the scope of the present study.

Another idiomatic expression, even more crystallized than the former, is , which means ‘without’, and which may serve as the equivalent of the English suffix -less: – 130 ‘And whatever you need for the expenses of the house I will give you endlessly’ (literally: ‘without reckoning’, and even more literally than that: ‘which not reckoning’). here is used adverbially, possibly thus: ‘I will give you [in] [a manner] which [is] not [one of] reckoning.’ There are quite a few possible stages of translations here, one of them most probably being I>>A, which results in an elliptical relative clause, marked by . This may be further substantivized (deleting the antecedent ‘manner’) and then moved to an adverbial position (unmarked by a preposition such as ‘in’). The stages of such translations, and their order, can only be reached at by conjecture (Perhaps I>>A>O>E?)131. Given the idiomatic nature of such expressions, this way of thinking and guessing seems su- perfluous132.

Another idiomatic expression is , meaning ‘as soon as’: – 133 ‘As soon as I have peace [of mind], I am willing to punish them law- fully’ (literally: ‘what that there was to me peace…’).

129 Cfr in Hebrew: ;(as’, ‘like’ (preposition‘ כמו = כ- . = (which [is] like this’ (elliptical relative clause‘ = שכזה 130 BROCKELMANN, Grammatik, p. 18*, lines 18-19. 131 Cfr TESNIÈRE, Éléments, p. 625. 132 Note, too, that means both ‘endless’ and ‘endlessly’ — that is, it may be used both as an adjective and as an adverb. This requires different stages of translations. The same is true for — ‘endless’, ‘endlessly’. 133 UNGNAD, Grammatik, p. 57*, lines 5-7. 288 A. WERTHEIMER

The adverbial clause here seems to have originated in a relative clause with a correlative134 — though this is no longer felt this way.

More idiomatic expressions with are, for instance: – — ‘again’, literally: ‘from [that (= demonstrative pronoun)] of the head’ = ‘from [that] of the beginning’ (cfr the English ‘from the top’). is probably the substantivized governed noun of a periphrastic genitive construction (Section 5.3: O>A>O).

– — ‘very’ (literally: ‘which is very’, where was an adverb even before having entered an adverbial relative clause. Nöldeke refers to this form as an adverb being attached to an adjective ‘by means of a relative particle… where of course the might be left out’, and provides the example: ‘a very severe blow’135. The translation here is possibly I>>A>E (‘a severe blow which [is] very [severe/much so]’). In the stage I>>A, the sentence: ‘It is very severe’ becomes a relative clause referring to ; in the stage A>E (unmarked by a translatif) it becomes the adverb of . Given the fact that is also an adjective (= ‘good’), one might claim that the translation in is simply A>E (one stage only); but this does not seem an accurate way of accounting for this form.

– — ‘worry about’, as in 136 ‘and they will not worry about tomorrow.’ here possibly opens a substantivized elliptical relative clause: ‘worry [about] [the issues] which [have to do with] tomorrow’137, and the translation is probably I>>A>O>E, with only the first stage marked (by The last stage could have been marked by the Syriac equivalent of ‘about’, but is left unmarked here. Another possibility could be: ‘worry [about] [the issues] of tomorrow’ — with a multiple translation of the first degree: O>A>O>E. All this is no longer felt now: the verb most frequently — idiomatically — appears with , which is simply conceived of as its regular complement. The same is true for:

134 Cfr NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Sections 348, 363. 135 NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Section 355 (‘Short Adverbial Qualifications as Relative Clauses’). He cites the example from Judg. 11:33. 136 TONNEAU, Sancti Ephraem Commentarii, p. 146, line 12. 137 Cfr NÖLDEKE, Grammar, Section 209B. THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SYRIAC PARTICLE d- 289

138 ‘And concerning your family and fellow villagers do not worry at all.’ – — ‘all the more so’139. The translations here, too, possibly involve a relative clause with a correlative pronoun (), without the particle following it — but the process by which this idiom was created is not altogether clear. As explained at the beginning of this section, it is perhaps not really necessary to conjecture and explain this process.

8. Conclusion It becomes clear from the discussion above that, in spite of the large variety of roles played by the Syriac particle , there is a unifying principle governing its occurrences. As both genitive constructions and non- relative subordinate clauses are strongly related to relative clauses, we may say that all of the roles of have to do with relative clauses. But the unifying principle is even stronger than that: Both within simple and complex sentences; in genitive constructions, relative clauses and non- relative clauses alike — serves as a nominalizing particle. It is involved in both types of nominalization: substantivization and adjectivization. It also marks the first stage of translations which end up, after the often unmarked second stage, in adverbial expressions. Thus it has less of a ‘vague nature’140 than what may seem at first glance141.

Tel Aviv University Ada WERTHEIMER Faculty of Humanities Department of Hebrew and Semitic Languages P.O. Box 39040 Ramat Aviv 69978 Tel Aviv Israel [email protected]

138 CURETON, Ancient Syriac Documents, p. , lines 12-13. 139 This expression appears in Section 6.2.4 above — third example before the last. 140 MURAOKA, Classical Syriac, p. 21, and cfr footnote no. 2 above. 141 See R. KUZAR, Nominalization Clauses in Israeli Hebrew, in Hebrew Linguistics, ,ש- p. 87 (in Hebrew), for the conclusions of the treatment of the Hebrew ,(1993) 36 which is also described there as a ‘general nominalizer’. The situation in Hebrew, though, של the particles ,ש- is different from the situation in Syriac: Hebrew possesses, beside כי specifically for relative clauses), and) אשר ,(specifically for genitive constructions) (specifically for content clauses). Thus the situation in Hebrew may seem simpler, or, at least, clearer, than in Syriac, because of the special particles for specific syntactic roles. But given the fact that all these roles are so closely related to one another, perhaps it is the state of affairs in Syriac which is more logical after all!