QUality bucket, you like, you buy

Quality pronoun, you like, you buy!

I have a number of pronouns lying around, so I have decided to sell them to earn some cash for vacation this next summer. Took this picture last summer when we took the pronouns to the beach for exercise. As you can see, they are fine specimens.

All of the pronouns come with a basic morphology: case number and gender. For a little extra, I will throw in a “demonstrative” add-on kit that enables deictic reference to near and far things.

Besides the morph and potential deictics, the use of the pronouns is almost limitless, but you begin with an empty bucket. It has no reference until you assign it to something. My pronouns are suitable for bi-directional usage, either pointing back to an antecedent, or forward to something that you want to highlight and draw attention to.

These are basic pronouns, so do not ask me for emphatic ones. There is no such thing as an emphatic pronoun, emphasis is determined by two things: the referent of the pronoun, and the significance of the information to which the pronoun refers. The pronoun in and of itself is an empty bucket, so don’t come whining back to me after the sale that I sold you an empty bucket. That is what a pronoun IS, after all. It is the CONTEXTUAL USAGE that determines what fills the bucket and what role it plays.

If you want a pronoun that refers to Princess Leia, then it is up to you to place it in a context where it can refer to her, I will not take responsibility for helping you think of an example. Okay, that one was a freebee, but no more.

And if you want to make your pronoun emphatic, you need to use it in a context where it conveys the most important information in the context. It has little to do with location and everything to do with content and context. The problem is, since pronouns are empty until a reference is assigned, and the reference generally needs to be known before you can use a pronoun, there are mighty few contexts where a pronoun can legitimately provide the most important information. In and of themselves, they are empty! Stop asking for something that it was never intended to do.

So is there a context where a subject pronoun can receive emphasis and fill in the blank at the same time, you ask? Yes, as a matter of fact there is such a context where this regularly happens: pendens constructions, a.k.a. left-dislocations. Below is an excerpt from my 2008 SBL paper on this topic, which I will throw in for free with the purchase of any qualifying pronoun:

Matthew 26:23 (Mark 14:20, Luke 22:21)

In the upper room scene just before Jesus is betrayed, the synoptic gospels differ in exactly what information is provided to the disciples about the identify of the betrayer. They also differ in the context in which the betrayer is mentioned. In Matthew’s version, Jesus declares in 26:21 that he will be betrayed by one of those present. The same holds true in Mark’s version, with a statement in 14:18. Luke’s version does not contain such a disclosure.

In Matthew and Mark, the disclosure precipitates questions from the disciples about which of them is the betrayer. Matthew 26:23 provides the answer to this question in the dislocation. Since it fills in the blank of the question, it is the most important part of the proposition, i.e. focal. The answer (“the one who dips his hand with me in the bowl”) is far too complex to be emphasized in position P2. It would likely be mistaken as a topical frame of reference. Use of the dislocation allows the pronominal trace to be placed in position P2 for emphasis’ sake, indicated by bolding.

23 [LD Ὁ ἐμβάψας μετ ̓ ἐμοῦ τὴν χεῖρα ἐν τῷ τρυβλίῳ LD] οὗτός με παραδώσει 23 …He who dipped his hand with Me in the bowl is the one who will betray Me.

The effect of using the left-dislocation is to provide something of a build up. “The one who dips…” is introduced, but it is unclear how this entity relates to the proposition under consideration until it is reiterated in the main clause. The use of emphasis by Matthew says something about the importance he places on this information.

In Luke’s version in 22:21, Jesus does not state that he will be betrayed. There is no question being answered, he simply makes the declaration that the betrayer is present at the table.

21 πλὴν  ἰδοὺ  ἡ χεὶρ τοῦ παραδιδόντος με μετʼ ἐμοῦ ἐπὶ τῆς τραπέζης 21 “But behold, the hand of the one betraying Me is with Me on the table.

A verbless clause is used to state that the betrayer is present, but his identity is not connected to the one the dipping the bread. Verse 23 states that the disciples were discussing who the betrayer might be, but there is no identification of the betrayer until Judas arrives in Gethsemane. The difference in the propositional content accounts for the difference in the syntactic form used in Matthew versus Luke.

The content and structure of Mark’s version in 14:20 has the same kind of context as Matthew’s, where questions have been asked about the identity of the betrayer. Unlike Matthew’s version though, the question is answered using a simple verbless clause. There is no main clause that follows.

20 Εἷς τῶν δώδεκα ὁ ἐμβαπτόμενος μετ ̓ ἐμοῦ εἰς τὸ τρύβλιον 20 And He said to them, “It is one of the twelve, one who dips with Me in the bowl.

So while Matthew and Mark both have the same propositional context of a question being asked, Matthew’s version uses the left dislocation to create a dramatic build-up to the answer, emphasizing it by placing the pronominal trace in a marked position. Mark’s version represents a default or normal reply, to simply answering the question without the rhetorical build up.

So, if you want an emphatic pronoun that will be emphatic everywhere, I got nothing for you, don’t even waste my time with an inquiry. However, if you are interested in taking the basic, semantically empty unit (remember, morph included!) and willing to invest the DIY elbow grease to create an emphatic context, you have the opportunity to see your investment really build some equity. But if you want a little free advice, I would not suggest trying to make something emphatic that isn’t, it will only end in heartbreak. Invest the time and energy to learn about what brings about emphasis, and beware of those trying to sell you something that ain’t real. Emphatic pronouns cannot be bought, they are made using a combination of reference and context.

This a follow-up to an earlier post on emphatic pronouns. I really have nothing to sell.