1 Insubordination and independent (ἵ)να clauses in the history of Greek

One of the more complex linguistic questions which the Modern Greek language poses is how to account for its polyfunctional use of να. As shown in (1), this form can, among other things, introduce subordinate complement clauses, viz. να τον δεις as an object of προσπαθήσεις, as well as independent main clauses, viz. να προσπαθήσεις ‘you should try’.

(1) Αν θα πας στην Ελλάδα να προσπαθήσεις να τον δεις (Spyropoulos et al. 2012: 287)

‘If you go to Greece you should try to see him’

However, most research on Greek has focused only on the former, the use of να in subordinate environments. Many researchers have in particular discussed the syntactic status of να, with competing results: Agouraki (1991) had for example suggested that να is a complementizer, but Philippaki-Warburton (1994) for various reasons had counterargued that it was a “subjunctive mood”¹ marker, whereas Roussou (2000) had suggested that να is actually both. Apart from various theoretical and descriptive differences, these proposals have in common that they are made within a theoretical approach of generative grammar, a linguistic paradigm which has been very influential in Greek linguistics (cf. Alexiadou, Horrocks, and Stavrou 1999 for an overview). Though anyone is of course free to choose their own framework, insights from the generative framework cannot always be ‘translated’ easily to other frameworks, such as the functional-typological (cf. Croft 2022). To illustrate briefly, one potentially problematic example is the postulation of Modern Greek να as being in “C” or hypothesizing a movement of the verb, since these explanations can only be upheld if one shares the theoretical assumptions about clause structure from generative grammar. Also, the semantics and/or pragmatics of να clauses have remained relatively underexplored. Scholars have signalled the importance of features such as control on arguments in subordinate environments (e.g. Joseph 1983; Roussou 2009), proposing a rather general semantics for να (e.g. Delveroudi, Tsamadou, & Vassilaki 1994; Philippaki-Warburton 1994 on the “subjunctive” as indicating the speaker’s attitude to the content of the sentence s/he utters). Similarly with respect to diachrony, most efforts have centered around the complex processes whereby subordinate (ἵ)να² replaced the infinitive in the history of Greek (esp. Joseph 1983; Philippaki-Warburton & Spyropoulos 2004; Joseph 2020); for example, scholars have recently argued that other factors such as morphology, language contact and pragmatic restructuring also played a role in this complex process (see Bentein 2018, 83 for an overview).

I would like to argue here that the use of να in subordinate contexts and independent contexts cannot be explained in a uniform way because they underwent distinct diachronic processes. A common diachronic explanation for the genesis of the two uses illustrated in (1) is that there has been a change from purposive ἵνα to “subjunctive particle” in the history of Greek (viz. in its independent and subordinate clause usage), as the result of a grammaticalization process involving reanalysis (Philippaki-Warburton & Spyropoulos 2004, 800–805). The replacement of the non-finite form of the subordinate infinitive by the finite one of (ἵ)να would actually rather qualify as degrammaticalization, i.e. a weakening of the structural bonds between the verb and the complement (note the increase in finiteness), as suggested by Joseph (2020). In fact, the classification of both usages of να under the heading of the “subjunctive mood” is a highly language-specific ‘solution’ which does not fit well with the cross-linguistic evidence or its descriptive traditions: the subjunctive label is generally used to refer to specific inflectional forms of languages (Mauri & Sansò 2016) and the να to introduce complement clauses in Greek would indeed, as pointed out by Roussou, simply be described as complementizer in other languages (cf. Dixon & Aikhenvald 2006; Noonan 2007). Instead, the independent uses of να can be explained as the result of a process of insubordination, a cross-linguistically common diachronic process by which subordinate markers develop independent, so-called insubordinate, uses. More specifically, the process refers to the diachronic conventionalization of independent main clause uses by formally subordinate clauses (Evans 2007: 367). I have recently suggested (2020: 224; 2021) that the independent uses of ἵνα and να qualify as insubordination, a hypothesis which I test diachronically below. Major motivations to conduct such an investigation are that research on independent uses of να is thin on the ground and has often focused on only one particular independent usage (e.g. Rivero 1994; Rouchota 1994 respectively on the imperative and interrogative usage of να),³ and not paid attention to insubordinate uses in the different stages of the history of Greek, especially with regard to their formal, pragmatic, and diachronic variation.⁴

Therefore, I assess the morphosyntactic, pragmatic, and diachronic variation of these independent uses of (ἵ)να from Classical to Modern Greek. In particular, I demonstrate that the independent uses of (ἵ)να are best classified as insubordinate clause constructions; this classification not only puts the Greek evidence on a comparable footing with typological descriptions (cf. Haspelmath 2010; 2016, who discusses the benefits of using cross-linguistically valid comparative concepts for linguistic analysis), but it also allows us to highlight the value of cross-linguistic parallels for the morphosyntactic evidence from the history of Greek. In fact, I would like to stress that the corpus evidence from the history of Greek can make an important contribution to cross-linguistic research on insubordination, in particular diachronic research. It has been noted by several authors that we still lack diachronic corpus research on insubordination (cf. Cristofaro 2016: 395), since most researchers infer the diachrony of insubordination from synchronic data (e.g. Evans 2007) and only few provide corpus-based diachronic studies (e.g. Narrog 2016 on Japanese; la Roi 2021, forthc. ab; Ruiz Yamuza 2022 on Ancient Greek and la Roi 2022 on Latin). The evidence from the long history of Greek therefore can make a significant contribution to this area.⁵

Before embarking on the analysis, let us further introduce the concept of insubordination and point out some important parallels from other languages with the insubordinate use of να in Modern Greek. True insubordinate usages are not only syntactically independent of a matrix clause, but also discursively independent (Verstraete & D’Hertefelt 2016; D’Hertefelt 2018); these distinctions can be illustrated well with examples of insubordinate clauses from Spanish that use polyfunctional que. In (2), speaker B uses a clause headed by que (in bold) which is syntactically as well as discursively ‘incomplete’: syntactically it functions as an object to the question by speaker A whereas the pragmatic force of Speaker B’s answer is dyadically dependent on speaker A’s question (viz. ‘[I think] that they are darlings’). By contrast, in (3), que is not dependent on a previous element or needs contextually accessible pragmatic information to show its interactional function; cf. the sign of its interactive use by the preceding vocative.⁶ Note also the contrast with the second que in (3) which introduces a subordinate clause that functions as an argument to the imperative ¡Mira! ‘Look!’.

(2) A: ¿Qué opinas tú de los niños?

‘What do you think of children?’

B: Que son unos cielos. Para poco rato, vamos.

‘That they are darlings. For a short while, of course.’ (Sansiñena, De Smet & Cornillie 2015: 8)

(3) Ana, que va a llover. Mira el mal día que hace.

‘Ana, [que] it’s going to rain. Look what an awful day it is.’ (Sansiñena, De Smet & Cornillie 2015: 14)

In fact, the polyfunctionality of Spanish que provides solid cross-linguistic comparability for the functional richness of να in Modern Greek, showing that we need not assume a Greek-specific or theory-specific explanation for these usages. What is more, the different independent usages of να in Modern Greek have further typological parallels in other languages too. To illustrate briefly, I give parallels from modern languages for the wish and directive usage of insubordinate constructions and their parallels in Modern Greek usage.

(4) ¡Que sean felices!

‘May you be happy.’ [literally: ‘That you are happy.’]

Que te calles! (Spanish: Sansiñena, De Smet and Cornillie 2015: 13–14)

‘(I insist that you) shut up!’ (literally: ‘That you shut up!’)

(5) νά’σαι καλά (Mackridge 1987: 284)

‘Bless you!’

(6) να φύγεις αύριο, όχι σήμερα (Mackridge 1987: 283)

‘You should leave tomorrow, not today’

(7)

Da	dojdeš!	(Macedonian: Kramer 1986: 32)
that.mod	come.2sg.prs

‘Come!’

An example such as (7) from Macedonian seems to have been taken as evidence for the independent use of complementizer-headed structures across Balkan languages by Amman & van der Auwera 2004 (cf. the listing of ‘bare subjunctives’ in the reference work by Tomić 2006), who have pointed out that such complementizer-headed structures express directives and wishes in a wide variety of Balkan languages, Southern Italian dialects, and unrelated languages (e.g. Turkish). Yet, Wiemer (2017, 2019) has counterargued that interpreting such structures as insubordination does not work for the Slavic evidence, for example since independent uses of da were already present in Old Church Slavonic and the origins of its use as a complementizer are debated. Suffice it to say, these issues lie beyond the scope of the current study, even though there seem to be some striking parallels with Greek.

This paper is structured as follows: in section 2, I discuss the syntactic status of ἵνα in Classical Greek. Then in section 3, I turn to the evidence for insubordinate usages of ἵνα in Post-Classical Greek, while section 4 contributes further evidence for insubordinate and semi-insubordinate uses of να from Medieval Greek, showing that many uses known to us from Modern Greek had already partially been developed in Medieval Greek. Section 5 provides an overview of the insubordinate and semi-insubordinate uses of να in Modern Greek and section 6 concludes the presentation.

2 Subordinate ἵνα in Classical Greek

In Classical Greek, ἵνα does not seem to have developed insubordinate usages yet, despite claims to the contrary in earlier literature (esp. Kalén 1941: 93; Moorhouse 1982: 289; Labiano Ilundain 2008). Kalén and Labiano Ilundain had for example suggested that an independent usage of ἵνα as directive had already been there in Homeric Greek, but such an interpretation does not seem to fit the actual usage context of the adduced examples, such as (8). Nausicaa wishes Odysseus well, in the original meaning of χαῖρε “fare well”, and attaches the remembrance motif given by hosts (De Jong 2001: 213) in a subordinate purpose clause; in other words, she suggests that only if he fares well will he be able to remember Nausicaa (rather than explicitly formulating a wish as well as a directive).

(8) “χαῖρε, ξεῖν᾿, ἵνα καί ποτ᾿ ἐὼν ἐν πατρίδι γαίῃ

μνήσῃ ἐμεῦ, ὅτι μοι πρώτῃ ζωάγρι᾿ ὀφέλλεις.” (Hom. Od. 8.461–462)

‘May you fare well, stranger, so that even once you are in your own native land you may be remember me, because to me first you owe the price of your life.’⁷

Similarly, Moorhouse argued that the emotional address of Oedipus by the chorus in (10) also presents an insubordinate usage, but the ἵνα clause can be interpreted as an illocutionary usage of the subordinate clause. As noted in la Roi (2021: 27), subordinate ἵνα clauses in Classical Greek are not limited to expressing the future purpose of an earlier event (e.g. Soph. Ant. 1087–1088: ὦ παῖ, σὺ δ᾿ ἡμᾶς ἄπαγε πρὸς δόμους, ἵνα τὸν θυμὸν οὗτος ἐς νεωτέρους ἀφῇ “Boy, lead me home, so that this man may discharge his anger against younger persons”) but also often express the condition for appropriateness or relevance under which the speech act of the matrix clause may be carried out, e.g. Just so you know, there is beer in the fridge. A clear parallel of this usage in Classical Greek is given in (9). The information in the ἵνα clause is semantically irrelevant, but pragmatically relevant as a signal to the chorus why they may appropriately tell this information to the old man.

(9) φροῦδος δ’, ἵν’ εἰδῆις πάντα τἀπ’ ἐμοῦ, γέρον,

παιδὸς προθύσων ξένια καὶ γενέθλια

σκηνὰς ἐς ἱερὰς τῆσδε λαθραίως πόσις,

κοινὴν ξυνάψων δαῖτα παιδὶ τῶι νέωι. (E. Ion 804–807)

‘Just so you know all I know, old man, about this woman’s husband, he has gone off without telling her to the sacred tent to make a sacrifice in honor of their friendship and his birth.’

Such illocutionary usages of subordinate clauses have been studied in-depth for Classical Greek conditionals (Wakker 1994: 236–256). Note also how such illocutionary conditionals may be an alternative formulation of this illocutionary just so you know-clause, e.g. If you’re thirsty/Just so you know, there is beer in the fridge. I would argue that the ἵνα clause in (10), where “//” indicates line breaks, thus serves to express the conditions under which the chorus may appropriately command Oedipus (see the imperatives in the matrix clause), that is, for his own protection (i.e. the negative purpose clause).

(10) ἀλλ’ οὐ μὰν ἔν γ’ ἐμοὶ // προσθήσεις τάσδ’ ἀράς. περᾷς γάρ,

περᾷς· ἀλλ’ ἵνα τῷδ’ ἐν ἀ- // φθέγκτῳ μὴ προπέσῃς νάπει

ποιάεντι, κάθυδρος οὗ. // κρατὴρ μειλιχίων ποτῶν

ῥεύματι συντρέχει,   // τῶν, ξένε πάμμορ’—εὖ φύλαξαι—

μετάσταθ’, ἀπόβαθι. πολ- // λὰ κέλευθος ἐρατύοι· (Soph. OC. 154–164)

‘But you shall not bring down these curses upon me! For you go too far, too far! But so that you do not burst into this grassy glade, where no word must be spoken, where the bowl of water runs together with the stream of liquid honey … from there, hapless stranger—take care!—stand away, depart! Let a great distance separate you!’

Finally, I point out that ἵνα clauses may be dyadically dependent, completing a previous turn by another speaker, as illustrated by (11). This example might be thought to be formally insubordinate, but it syntactically and pragmatically actually depends completely on the previous question (see Sansiñena, De Smet, & Cornillie 2015 for similar examples from Spanish; see la Roi 2022 for similar examples in Latin comedy). In other words, the illocutionary force of the clause with the subordinator is co-constructed with the information in the immediate linguistic common ground (cf. la Roi forthc. a for more extensive discussion of such examples in drama).

(11) Trygaeus τιή;

Slave ἵνα μὴ γένηται Θεογένους ὑηνία. (Ar. Pax 927–928)

Tryageus ‘Why not?’

Slave ‘So we don’t turn piggish like Theogenes!’

To sum up, ἵνα clauses in Classical Greek have not developed insubordinate syntactic status yet, as their use is limited to subordinate clause contexts with different pragmatic functions.

3 Between subordinate and insubordinate ἵνα in Post-Classical Greek

As summarized in la Roi (2021, 27–30), ἵνα develops its insubordinate status in Post-Classical Greek, but, I argue, further clarifications are in order, especially of its insubordinate uses across the different periods of Post-Classical Greek, viz. early (III–I BCE), middle (I–III CE) and late (IV–VI) Post-Classical Greek.⁸ The three main reasons for that are:

1. existing diachronic descriptions focus on independent directive uses of ὅπως instead (e.g. la Roi 2021; forthc. a): Kalén’s discussion of ‘independent’ uses of ἵνα and ὅπως clauses (Kalén 1941: 98–137) is almost completely limited to the latter one;

2. Kalén’s and accounts based on Kalén (e.g. Labiano Ilundain 2008: 56–58) take a rather liberal approach to “independent” use which does not directly correspond to insubordinate clauses, as I illustrate below;

3. The diachronic accounts given differ from insubordination accounts: Kalén for example hypothesizes that independent uses are developed through analogy with imperatives, which is why he mainly collects “independent” directive uses in groups where there is actually still another directive (see Kalén 1941: 107–108 for the grouping and 127 for this imperatival hypothesis).

To improve upon available descriptions, I synthesize the patterns from the papyri with those mentioned for literary texts. To do so, I checked for insubordinate uses of ἵνα in a data search from Trismegistos Words, searching for ἵνα with punctuation immediately preceding. This search yielded 1539 results in total, 461 for Early, 758 for Middle and 277 for Late Post-Classical Greek, with the remaining 42 in the later eras. Unfortunately, a full descriptive analysis of the papyrological data lies beyond the scope of this study, which is why I focused on finding clearly insubordinate usages. Therefore, I chose those instances where the editors also felt confident enough to print a full stop⁹ before the insubordinate clause, as in (12), stressing, however, that there are also examples where the use of ἵνα is insubordinate but this is not fully reflected in the editing, as in (18).

In Early Post-Classical Greek, we find insubordinate usages of ἵνα as directives from the earliest centuries, but notably only in the papyri. Though there are ἵνα occurrences in Menander’s works according to the TLG, none present an insubordinate usage. Mayser had recorded some three uses from the third century BCE which can convincingly be classified as insubordinate, but only made the rather vague observation about this construction that it is rare and colloquial, “immerhin seltene aber unstreitige volkstümliche” (Mayser 1926: 261). I give two of his examples here as (12) and (13). With regard to the former, note that the insubordinate syntactic status is reflected in the fact that the directive main clause has its own final subordinate clause, also expressed by ἵνα. Still, as shown by (13), such a finite subordinate clause need not be there to tell us that we are dealing with an insubordinate usage: the ἵνα μέ(=μή) clause in (13) is not just syntactically but also discursively independent, as it expresses the main speech act without dependence on another form expressing an order.

(12) ὑπόμνημα Ζήνωνι. ἵνα λαλήσηις // Εὐνόμωι μετὰ Ἴστρου, καθάπερ σοι

Κρίτων ἐνετείλατο, περὶ Θή̣ρων̣ος // τοῦ ἐν τῶι Βουσιρίτηι σιτολογοῦντος

τοπαρχίαν Θελβωντίτηι, ἵνα κομί- // σηται τὴν τοπαρχίαν καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν

αὐτῶν ἦι. (PSI 4.412.1–7, mid III BCE, private letter)

‘Note to Zenon. Talk to Eunoos with Istrus, as Kriton commanded you, about Theron, the grain collector in the Bousiritis region for the toparchy in Thelbontis, so that he may get the toparchy and it may be under their control.’

(13) ὑπόμνημα Ζήνωνι // Πέτακος ⟦ς⟧(= Πέτακοσς prev. ed.) ὁ αὐλητής.

πρὸ τοῦ σε ἀποδημῆ- // σαι, ἵνα μέ(=μή)με καταλί-

πης(=καταλί|πη⟨ι⟩ς) ἐν τῶι δεσμω- // τηρίωι· οὐ γὰρ ἔχω

τὰ ἀναγκαῖα· (PSI 4.416.1–7, mid III BCE, private letter)

‘Note to Zenon from Petakos, the flutist. Before you depart, don’t leave me behind in prison. For I do not have the necessary things.’

Moreover, I would like to point out that the insubordinate directive usage can be shown to be conventionalized in other ways too: as shown by (14), it spreads outside directives in the second person to the first person and ἵνα immediately precedes the subjunctive.

(14) Ζήνωνι χαίρειν Πετεερμῶτις γ[ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ π]αρὰ σοῦ ἐκ τοῦ Σαραπιείου. τ[ὸ ἐν-]

τεῦθεν ἐνέτυχόν σοι περὶ τοῦ ἱεροῦ [τοῦ γενη]σ̣ο̣μένου τοῦ Ἀρσινόης ἵνα ὧδε γιν̣[οίμην].

εἰ οὖν σοι δοκεῖ, ἵνα ὑπάρχω καὶ ὧδε πα̣[ρὰ σοί (p.lond.7.2046.1–3, mid III BCE, business letter)

‘Petereum greets Zenon, […] of you at the Sarapieion. Therefore I came to you regarding the temple that is going to be built for Arsinoe, so that it may happen this way. If it seems good to you, I should also be here with you.’

This is not an isolated example; compare P. Lond. 7.2055.3. Moreover, the insubordinate use of ἵνα spreads to the third person as well, already in Early Post-Classical Greek: in (15), Agesilaus signposts the main communicative purpose of his message separately on the verso of the papyrus, viz. requesting Zenon to come visit him with his dog.

(15) -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

v

(ἔτους) λγ, Τῦβι ϛ. Ἀγησίλαος Ζήν[ωνι].

ἵνα παραγένη- // ται. (p.cair.zen.5.59824, 8–10, 252 BCE, private letter)

‘Year 33, Tybi 6. Agesilaos to Zenon. Let him come.’

Other examples with a third person subjunctive include UPZ 2 225, 22, 131 BCE, and with a second person subjunctive P. Wash. Univ. 2 106, 4, 18 BCE.

In Middle Post-Classical Greek, we find several further innovations: (i) a spread from directive to wish usage, (ii) negative directive specialization (μὴ ἵνα) and (iii) surfacing of these constructions in literary texts. As for the first point, I have noted (2021, 28) that we start to find wish uses, as in (16), especially in closing formulae, as wishes are typically found there.

(16) μὴ ἀμελήσῃς τῆς μεταφορᾶς // τοῦ ἀχύρου τῆς Θώλθεως. ἄρτι δὲ

μισθὸν μὴ δίδου κτῆσι χάριν κόπρου // ἄχρι τῆς ἀναβάσεως. ἵνα μὴ μισθὸν

διδῷς. (P.Oxy. XLI 2985 (II–III CE), 9–13)

‘Don’t neglect the transport of Tholthis’ chaff. Don’t pay the wage just now for the sake of manure for the cattle until the ascent [of the river, i.e the inundation]. I wish that you would not pay the wage.’

Note that this usage does not replace the directive uses, for which see for example P. Ryl. Gr. 2 230.9, 40 CE, or P. Merton 1 22.3, 59 CE. In fact, such directive uses are not just found in letters on papyri but also on ostraca, as shown by example 17:

(17) Πίσων Ζήνωνι καὶ Ὡρίωνι τοῖ\ς/ ἀδελ- // φοῖς πολλὰ χαίρειν. προσδέχομαι

ὑμᾶς ἐν ταῖς κα[λ]άνδαις. ἵνα οὖν̣ // πέμψῃ⟨ς⟩ μοι μίκκ̣ον χαρτάριον

καὶ στημόνιν. (O.Claud.2.239. 1–5, middle II CE)

‘Pison sends many greetings to his brothers Zenon and Orion. I welcome you in the Calendae. Send me a bit of paper and an inkpot.’

Second, I have observed (2021: 27–28) that we find a specialization of this directive insubordinate use to negative directives, with the morphosyntactic innovation that the negation, which has scope over the whole directive, precedes the insubordinate marker.

(18) οὐκ οἶδα // τί μ[ε ὁ] πάτρων ποιήσει,

πολλοὺς δανειστὰς ἔχο- // μεν. μὴ ἵνα ἀναστατώ-

σῃς ἡμᾶς, ἐρώτα αὐτὸ\ν/ // καθ’ ἡμέραν· τάχα δύνα-

ταί σε ἐλεῆσαι· (BGU IV 1079 (I CE), ll. 17–23)

‘I don’t know what the patron will do for me; we have many money-lenders. Don’t unsettle us; ask him every day. He may soon pity you.’

Another example of this construction is PSI 14.1404.14, 42 CE, although the construction is not that productive with only some examples being recorded.¹⁰

Third and finally, these insubordinate constructions start surfacing in literary texts, though caution is of course needed not to project usage from the papyri or later stages of Greek onto those texts. A good illustration can be offered by reviewing the evidence for insubordinate usage in the New Testament, evidence which I believe to be much less convincing than has been supposed. The grammars and secondary literature have suggested that we “often” find “imperatival” independent usages of ἵνα in the Greek of the New Testament (Radermacher 1925: 170; Blass & Debrunner 1959: 236; Blass, Debrunner & Rehkopf 1990: 313; Labiano Ilundain 2008: 56–58). Yet, examples which have been mentioned as allegedly independent need not always be interpreted that way.¹¹ In example 19, only the modern punctuation with “·” and an imprecise translation (e.g. how would the subjunctive refer to the factual past as per the NIV translation?) support such an interpretation. Instead, the purpose clause seems to be better interpreted as the narratorial interpretation of the event, i.e. he stayed there so that there would be fulfilled what we expected based on the prophets.

(19) καὶ ἦν ἐκεῖ ἕως τῆς τελευτῆς Ἡρῴδου· ἵνα πληρωθῇ τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ κυρίου διὰ τοῦ προφήτου λέγοντος, Ἐξ Αἰγύπτου ἐκάλεσα τὸν υἱόν μου. (NT Ev. Mat. 2.15)

‘He stayed there until the death of Herod so that what the Lord had said through the prophet would be fulfilled: “Out of Egypt I called my son” ’ (NIV with revisions by author)

‘He stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son” ’ (NIV)

Similarly, we find examples of alleged “independent” ἵνα which are dyadically dependent (cf. Sim 2006: 54–68). As explained above in section 2, these are not insubordinate at all. Compare (20), where Paul answers his own question with a dyadically dependent ἵνα clause.¹²

(20) τίς οὖν μού ἐστιν ὁ μισθός; ἵνα εὐαγγελιζόμενος ἀδάπανον θήσω τὸ εὐαγγέλιον, εἰς τὸ μὴ καταχρήσασθαι τῇ ἐξουσίᾳ μου ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ. (NT 1 Ep.Cor. 9.18)

‘What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights as a preacher of the gospel.’

Only some examples can be interpreted as properly insubordinate. This becomes clearest in (21) where the insubordinate directive in the third person is paratactically connected (with δὲ balancing the different topics) to the preceding third person imperative, demonstrating discursive independence.

(21) τὸ μυστήριον τοῦτο μέγα ἐστίν, ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω εἰς Χριστὸν καὶ εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν. πλὴν καὶ ὑμεῖς οἱ καθ’ ἕνα ἕκαστος τὴν ἑαυτοῦ γυναῖκα οὕτως ἀγαπάτω ὡς ἑαυτόν, ἡ δὲ γυνὴ ἵνα φοβῆται τὸν ἄνδρα. (NT Ep.Eph. 5.32–33)

‘This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.’

Still, insubordinate uses can also be found in contemporary literary texts from the middle Post-Classical Greek period, as illustrated by the following example from Epictetus. Note how the insubordinate usage can now also occur on its own in reported conversational contexts, where the directive interpretation is signposted with imperative particles (see la Roi 2021: 33–34 for parallel instances of insubordinate ὅπως with imperative particles such as ἄγε).

(22) τί οὖν; ἔδει εἰσερχόμενον εἰς τὸ θέατρον τοῦτο εἰπεῖν “ἄγε ἵνα Σώφρων στεφανωθῇ;” ἀλλ᾿ ἐκεῖνο “ἄγε ἵνα τηρήσω τὴν ἐμαυτοῦ προαίρεσιν ἐπὶ ταύτης τῆς ὕλης κατὰ φύσιν ἔχουσαν.” (Epict. 3.4.9)

‘What then? Ought you upon entering the theatre to say, “Come, let’s see that Sophron gets the crown?” and not rather, “Come, let me in this subject-matter maintain my moral purpose in accord with nature”?’

In Late Post-classical Greek, we find the continued use of insubordinate ἵνα for directives and wishes (cf. resp. P. Köln Gr. 5 238.12 and P. Oxy. XLVI.3314.12–17, both from VI AD). Similarly, we find some directive usage in literary texts, as exemplified in (23) and (24).

(23) πέμπετέ μοι αὐτά. Ἵνα δὲ γινώσκῃς, Πάτερ, ὅτι μετὰ δύο ἡμέρας, ἐξέρχομαι ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου. (Mosch. Prat.Spi.42.2896.41–42)

‘Send them to me. You should know, Father, that after two days, I am departing from this world.’

(24) εἰ θέλετέ με βασιλεύειν ὑμῶν, ἵνα πάντες χριστιανοί ἐστε. (Mal. Chron. 13.27.2)

‘If you want me to be your king, you should all be Christians.’

It should be noted that (24) carries a morphosyntactic innovation which partially foreshadows some later uses with the indicative: the use of the present indicative instead of the subjunctive.

Summarizing, Post-Classical Greek is the origin period of the insubordinate usage of ἵνα, as it can be shown to develop different kinds of directive uses (with different persons), to evince wish usages, and to develop morphosyntactically (e.g. changes in person of the subjunctive and variation into the indicative). Next, I turn to the evidence from Medieval Greek, the period in which many of the insubordinate uses of να known to us from Modern Greek are developed.

4 Insubordinate and semi-insubordinate να in Medieval Greek

In Medieval Greek (VII–XV CE), we find ἵνα in its novel, reduced form as να, a reduction which might have happened around the 6th century CE (according to Trypanis 1960). Though I had suggested (2021: 30) that να developed a host of novel insubordinate functions in this period, I show here that matters are even more complex, since we find extensions in illocutionary uses as well as morphosyntactic changes in combinations. Horrocks (2019: 1886–1883) has provided a brief overview of independent uses of Medieval Greek να, which, I argue, qualify as insubordinate usages, because they are syntactically and discursively independent. In what follows, I describe the different uses noted in previously and additionally note several innovations that had not been described yet. For the latter, I incorporated searches for insubordinate usages in the TLG of earlier Medieval Greek works as much as possible (but they were not as frequent as expected), because the Cambridge Grammar relies more on examples from the last centuries of Medieval Greek (XII–XV CE). Before we can turn to these uses of ἵνα and να in Medieval Greek, I note that we also continue to find syntactically independent yet dyadically dependent usage in this period, despite the extensions to other illocutionary uses of this pattern. In (25) below from Early Medieval Greek, ἵνα is used as a direct answer to a wh-question:

(25) στραφεὶς δὲ Μαυΐας λέγει τῷ Ἀνδρέᾳ· “τί ζητεῖς;” ὁ δὲ λέγει· “ἵνα δώσῃς βοήθειαν κατὰ τοῦ ἀντάρτου.” (Theoph. Conf. Chron. 349.10–11)

‘Turning around Mavias says to Andrew: what are you looking for? He answers: to provide help against the rebel.’

Furthermore, as in the Post-Classical Greek period, insubordinate (ἵ)να could be used for directives in all three persons, as shown respectively by (26) in the first person from Early Medieval Greek and (27) in the second person from later Medieval Greek.

(26) καὶ τῷ μὲν βασιλεῖ ὑπέσχετο, τῇ δὲ Πουλχερίᾳ ἔγραψε παρακαλῶν αὐτὴν μὴ δεχθῆναι εἰς πρόσωπον αὐτῆς, “ἵνα μὴ ἀναγκασθῶ,” φησίν, “τῶν λυπούντων σε πρᾶξαί τι.” (Theoph. Conf. Chron. 99.10–12)

‘He promised the king, but wrote to Pulcheria, requesting her not to receive him in her presence, saying, “do not let me be compelled to take action against those who are causing you distress” ’

(27) Μαθὸν μηδ’ ἄρτι βιάζεσαι, ἐλθὲ καὶ νὰ καθίσῃς (Ptoch. 3.242)

‘Learn to also not rush now; come and sit’

Note that in (27) the insubordinate directive is paratactically connected to an imperative, thus offering the speaker a way to express a second directive differently.

There are also extensions in the insubordinate expression of wishes. We for example start to find first person subjunctives, so that speakers can express wishes aimed at themselves, as in (28) below.¹³

(28) νὰ μηδὲ τῆς μητέρας μου εὐχὴν κληρονομήσω (Dig. Akr. E 902)

‘And may I never inherit my mother’s blessing’

Note, however, that there are alternative modal strategies for making very similar speech acts, such as the fossilized ἄς used for third person directives or wishes (cf. Horrocks 2019: 1878 & 1882). There are also innovations with respect to the morphosyntax of ἵνα to express wishes, when compared to the Post-Classical period. A particularly interesting innovation in the marking of the wish from the perspective of insubordination is that ἄμποτε “if only” is combined with insubordinate να; I suggest that the former is also an insubordinate marker (cf. the conditional origins of ἄμ, from the conditional subordinator ἄν), which makes this combination a doubling. Such doubling, or fusion of two insubordinate wish markers has parallels in Post-Classical Greek (cf. la Roi 2021: 22 on ὡς εἴθε), but also internally in Medieval Greek with εἴθε να (e.g. Anon. Belthandrus et Chrysantza 844). Moreover, ἄμποτε can be used by itself as well to mark an insubordinate counterfactual wish, as illustrated by (30) below.

(29) ἄμποτε νὰ παρακληθῇ καὶ νὰ μᾶς ἐπακούση· (Dig. Akr. E 1353)

‘If only that she will be persuaded and listen to us.’

(30) ἄμποτε τὸ μᾶς ἔταξαν νὰ τὸ φυλάξωσι τελείως (Horrocks 2019: 1991, Lambros 1930: 285.20)

‘If only they ordered us to guard it fully.’

Furthermore, insubordinate να starts to express exclamative speech acts, a use that is preserved in Modern Greek, for which see (31) below in the third person (or Horrocks 2019: 1956 for the second person):

(31) νὰ λέουν ὁκάποιος φτωχὸς […] ἐνίκησεν τοῦ βασιλέως τὸν ἀδελφὸν (Chron. Mor. H 5008–9, Horrocks 2019: 1881)

‘To have people say that some pauper defeated the king’s brother!’

Similarly, the insubordinate use of να conventionalizes uses in a variety of assertive speech acts, in combination with a range of novel mood forms. “Assertive” is here taken in the Searlean sense (1979) to refer to acts that commit the speaker to something being the case (e.g. state, conclude, swear). In (32), we can see that the insubordinate use of να with a first person subjunctive now acts as a future expression.¹⁴ The fact that this use developed comparatively late in Medieval Greek likely relates to the major changes to the expression of the future in Medieval Greek, where the insubordinate use of (ἵ)να in future-referring contexts connects with the fact that other periphrastic expressions are taking over from the synthetic future (see Markopoulos 2009: 115–224 for a complete overview of the literature). In other words, because other strategies came to replace the synthetic future in assertive contexts, new assertive uses of να could be developed.

(32) ὑπάγετε, ἀναμείνατε μόνον κἂν τρεῖς ἡμέρας, καὶ τότε δεῦτε πρὸς ἐμὲ καὶ ὀκάτι νὰ σᾶς εἴπω (Spaneas 441–442)

‘Go, wait just three days, and then come to me, and I will tell you something I have to say’

A similar explanation applies to the following innovative uses of να in counterfactual apodoses, as shown in (33) and (34) with the bare indicatives. The progressive loss of the modal particle in counterfactual apodoses in Medieval Greek thus led to a variety of replacements (not just the bare indicative, pace Horrocks 1995; 2010; 2019), such as the insubordinate declarative use of να with a bare past indicative and various epistemic modals.¹⁵

(33) Καταβλαττὰς ἂν ἔμαθον καὶ σηκωτὴς ἂν ἤμουν,

ὡς σηκωτὴς νὰ ἐδούλευα τὴν ἅπασαν ἡμέραν, καὶ τὸ βραδὺ νὰ μὲ ἔδιδον μεγάλην κομματούραν

καὶ τὸ ἄσπρον τὸ ἐμποτόπουλον γεμάτον τὸ κρασίν μου

καὶ μονοκύθρου μερτικὸν ἐκ τὰ λαπαριμαῖα,

καὶ γὰρ ἐπὶ τὸ σχόλασμαν νὰ ἐπίανα τὴν λαπάραν,

καὶ νὰ τὴν ἔκρουα κοπετόν, ὡς καὶ τὸ δίκαιον ἔχει. (Ptoch. 3.181–187)

‘If I had learned weaving, I would have been a porter, to toil all day, and in the evening to be given a large portion and the white loaf soaked in my wine and a small portion of cheese from the wicker basket, for even during leisure to grab the loaf, and to strike it, as is just.’

(34) εἰ τοῦ πατρός μου ἤκουσας καὶ μετ’ ἐμοῦ ἐστράφης,

ἄρτι νὰ εἶχον τὰς βάγιας μου καὶ τὴν ἐξόπλισίν μου,

νὰ ἐγίνωσκε καὶ ὁ σὸς πατὴρ τίνος παιδὶν ἀπῆρες· (Dig. Akr. G. 4.809–811)

‘If you had listened to my father and had gone back with me, I would now have my serving girls and my retinue, so that your father could be aware whose child you have taken.’

Note also in particular how these insubordinate constructions have provided the mood system with an alternative strategy to make assertive speech acts with different kinds of epistemic strength. In (35), the combination of να with a past indicative expresses a hypothetical meaning (viz. not merely future-referring), similar to (ἵ)να with the subjunctive for directives or assertives. In (36), the combination with the double negation, οὐ μὴ, and the 2nd person subjunctive expresses a strong negative assertive.

(35) ἐπεὶ ἔνι γὰρ κι ὁ τόπος σου γυμνὸς ἐκ τὰ φουσσᾶτα,

νὰ τὸν ἐπάρουν εὔκολα καὶ νὰ τὸν ἔχῃς χάσει (Chron. Mor. H 4236–7)

‘Since your land is stripped of its armies, they would take it easily and you would lose it’¹⁶

(36) Μισὶρ Ντζεφρέ, ἀφέντη τῆς Καρυταίνου,

μὴ προῦ σὲ σφάξουν, ἀδελφέ, ’ς ἐμέναν παραδόσου·

ἀπάνω εἰς τὴν ψυχίτσα μου δόλον οὐ μὴ νὰ ἔχῃς (Chron. Mor. H 4063–4065, Horrocks 2019: 1870)

‘Sir Geoffroy, lord of Karytaina, before they kill you, brother, surrender to me; on my dear soul you will find no guile.’

The latter innovation is also revealing in that the use of οὐ μὴ νὰ need not be limited to second person subjunctives and attests to the conventionalized status of να in assertive contexts, since οὐ μὴ νὰ occurs in assertives with 1st person subjunctives (Chron. Mor. H 5519 οὐ μὴ νὰ ἀφήσω καὶ νὰ εἰπῶ κι ἀπόκρισιν νὰ δώσω ‘I will not fail to speak and give answer’) and in counterfactual apodoses with bare indicatives (Chron. Mor. H. 4849 οὐ μὴ νὰ ἐγλύτωσε ἀπ’ ἐκεῖ, ἂν εἴχασιν οἱ Φράγκοι ‘They would have slaughtered [the Roman race] there and then, if the Franks had been able’).¹⁷ Additionally, there are novel occurrences of this pattern in interrogatives with 1st person subjunctives (Chron. Mor. H. 819 διατὶ νὰ ὑπᾶμε εἰς τὴν Συρίαν κι οὐ μὴ νὰ στραφοῦμε ὀπίσω; ‘Why should we go to Syria and shouldn’t we turn around?’). Taken together, these innovations in the form and use of insubordinate (ἵ)να provide suggestive evidence of the integral position that insubordinate speech acts with να have taken in the modal system of Greek, a role which is strengthened even further in Modern Greek, as discussed in section 5 below.

Lastly, there are some novel semi-insubordinate patterns which develop in Medieval Greek. These patterns do not present insubordinate usages of formally subordinate clauses, because they still preserve traces of matrix clause material, though serving evaluative functions (cf. Van linden & Van de Velde 2014 for parallel structures from Flemish Dutch, e.g. Misschien/Goed da Kris komt [‘Maybe/Good that Kris is coming’]). In (37) there occurs a semi-insubordinate pattern with an epistemic adverb to make an assertion, a construction which, as noted by Van linden & van der Velde (2014: 247), has clear parallels in other modern Indo-European languages: Swedish (Kanske att … ‘maybe that’), French (Peut-être que … ‘maybe that’) and Spanish (Tal vez que … ‘maybe that’, Por supuesto que … ‘certainly that’).

(37) ἴσως νὰ ἁπλώσῃ ἐπάνω σου καὶ νὰ σὲ σύρῃ ἐμπρός της (Ptoch. 1.162)

‘Perhaps she will come over you and pull you before your nose’

To conclude, a review of the data from Medieval Greek has demonstrated for (ἵ)να (i) stability in the use for directives and wishes (with the latter extending to first person wishes and counterfactual wishes), (ii) morphosyntactic changes in those domains (e.g. insubordinator doubling in wishes and spread to counterfactual, hypothetical, and double negative contexts), (iii) pragmatic spread of the insubordinate use to other speech acts (e.g. assertive and exclamative speech acts), and (iv) the creation of semi-insubordinate patterns. Thus, these insubordinate strategies have taken up a larger share in the modal system which is used to express speech acts, although in some cases alternative strategies exist for similar speech acts (e.g. fossilized ἄς used for third person directives or wishes).

5 Insubordinate and semi-insubordinate να in Modern Greek

As a final step in the investigation of the impact of insubordinate να on the history of Greek, I now aim to provide an overview of insubordinate usage of να in Modern Greek in two ways: (1) compare and contrast the evidence from several grammars (section 5.1), and (2) supplement uses from searches in the Greek ElTenTen 2019 corpus in Sketch Engine and the Hellenic National Corpus (section 5.2).¹⁸

6 Conclusions

In this article, I have pointed out the significant contribution that the evidence from the history of Greek can make to current areas of interest in typological research such as insubordination, as such areas are in need of diachronic studies.²² By applying the cross-linguistically tested concept of insubordination, I have explained how ἵνα and later να have developed a variety of insubordinate and semi-insubordinate uses in different periods of the history of Greek. The most important insight gained from the diachronic comparison is that insubordinate and semi-insubordinate constructions diachronically show a high degree of pragmatic spread, thereby obtaining a range of novel modal forms and functions over time. In other words, insubordination and semi-insubordination have had a major impact on the modal system in the history of Greek. Table 2 summarizes the evidence for insubordination and table 3 does so for semi-insubordination.

Table 2 documents the pragmatic enrichment of insubordinate να which has gone hand in hand with several morphosyntactic innovations such as (i) spread across persons (e.g. directives in all three persons already in Post-Classical Greek but pervasively in Modern Greek), (ii) changes in the modal forms used with insubordinate να, and (iii) insubordinator doubling (e.g. είθε να wishes).

In table 3, the impact of semi-insubordinate strategies on the modal system in the history of Greek can be traced: in Medieval Greek we find the first instances of this construction with ἴσως νὰ + main verb to express epistemic possibility, but in Modern Greek this semi-insubordinate pattern has spread to other adverbs and adjectives for deontic and epistemic assessment (e.g. καλά, ενδεχομένως, σαφώς + main verb), to counterfactual apodoses and to different types of so-called avertive constructions (la Roi 2024a) that express that a once immιnent action was averted, e.g. with σχεδόν or παρά τρίχα + να + main verb. Finally, by comparing the corpus evidence for Modern Greek in the Hellenic National Corpus and the Sketch Engine corpus, I was able to demonstrate that some insubordinate wish strategies are linked with higher register contexts (such as είθε να) whereas other wish strategies are productive and occur across registers (e.g. μακάρι να). This finding underlines the impact of register on the form and function of insubordinate constructions (cf. on this issue, la Roi forthc. b).