Is punctuation redundant?

[jeidsath]

mwh: Largely thanks to its particles, Greek articulates itself without the need for punctuation. A new thread perhaps: Is punctuation redundant? We’d certainly become better readers if we went without it.

Maybe it does deserve a new thread. I took the Anabasis this morning and eliminated the punctation and spaces, but retained normal capitalization, word-final sigma, and paragraph breaks. It's not too hard to read fast, and it does flow differently. Basically like reading a manuscript, but without the difficulties of paleography.

I notice that I'm often two or three words into a new sentence before I realize that a missed a phrase boundary and go back. I imagine that this will be a great way to learn what the syntax clues are.

ἐντεῦθενἐξελαύνειδιὰτῆςἈραβίαςτὸνΕὐφράτηνποταμὸνἐνδε
ξιᾷἔχωνσταθμοὺςἐρήμουςπέντεπαρασάγγαςτριάκοντακαὶπέν
τεἐντούτῳδὲτῷτόπῳἦνμὲνἡγῆπεδίονἅπανὁμαλὲςὥσπερθάλα
τταἀψινθίουδὲπλῆρεςεἰδέτικαὶἄλλοἐνῆνὕληςἢκαλάμουἅπαντ
αἦσανεὐώδηὥσπερἀρώματα

δένδρονδ’οὐδὲνἐνῆνθηρίαδὲπαντοῖαπλεῖστοιὄνοιἄγριοιπολλ
αὶδὲστρουθοὶαἱμεγάλαιἐνῆσανδὲκαὶὠτίδεςκαὶδορκάδεςταῦτα
δὲτὰθηρίαοἱἱππεῖςἐνίοτεἐδίωκονκαὶοἱμὲνὄνοιἐπείτιςδιώκοιπρ
οδραμόντεςἕστασανπολὺγὰρτῶνἵππωνἔτρεχονθᾶττονκαὶπάλι
νἐπεὶπλησιάζοιενοἱἵπποιταὐτὸνἐποίουνκαὶοὐκἦνλαβεῖνεἰμὴδι
αστάντεςοἱἱππεῖςθηρῷενδιαδεχόμενοιτὰδὲκρέατῶνἁλισκομέν
ωνἦνπαραπλήσιατοῖςἐλαφείοιςἁπαλώτεραδέ

στρουθὸνδὲοὐδεὶςἔλαβενοἱδὲδιώξαντεςτῶνἱππέωνταχὺἐπαύ
οντοπολὺγὰρἀπέσπαφεύγουσατοῖςμὲνποσὶδρόμῳταῖςδὲπτέρυ
ξιναἴρουσαὥσπερἱστίῳχρωμένητὰςδὲὠτίδαςἄντιςταχὺἀνιστῇἔ
στιλαμβάνεινπέτονταιγὰρβραχὺὥσπερπέρδικεςκαὶταχὺἀπαγο
ρεύουσι

τὰδὲκρέααὐτῶνἥδισταἦνπορευόμενοιδὲδιὰταύτηςτῆςχώραςἀ
φικνοῦνταιἐπὶτὸνΜάσκανποταμόντὸεὖροςπλεθριαῖονἐνταῦθα
ἦνπόλιςἐρήμημεγάληὄνομαδ’αὐτῇΚορσωτήπεριερρεῖτοδ’αὕτη
ὑπὸτοῦΜάσκακύκλῳ

[John W.]

Why not go the whole hog by losing the accents and setting it all in upper case? I'm not sure how many readers of these texts - especially those at a relatively early stage of getting to grips with Greek - would thank us for that!

There is sometimes, of course, more than one way of interpreting the structure of a sentence, and punctuation can clarify the editor's thinking on this (whether or not one agrees with it). For me, as a student of Thucydides, the prime example of this is at 1.22.4, where both the OCT and Alberti punctuate as follows:

ὅσοι δὲ βουλήσονται τῶν τε γενομένων τὸ σαφὲς σκοπεῖν καὶ τῶν μελλόντων ποτὲ αὖθις κατὰ τὸ ἀνθρώπινον τοιούτων καὶ παραπλησίων ἔσεσθαι, ὠφέλιμα κρίνειν αὐτὰ ἀρκούντως ἕξει.

However, a strong case can be made for moving the comma forward two words, thus:

ὅσοι δὲ βουλήσονται τῶν τε γενομένων τὸ σαφὲς σκοπεῖν καὶ τῶν μελλόντων ποτὲ αὖθις κατὰ τὸ ἀνθρώπινον τοιούτων καὶ παραπλησίων ἔσεσθαι ὠφέλιμα κρίνειν, αὐτὰ ἀρκούντως ἕξει.

This would yield a very different sense in this highly important passage. Do issues of this kind make a case for punctuating (to show what the editor thinks) or not punctuating (to preserve the ambiguity of the 'raw' text)?

[jeidsath]

Why not go the whole hog by losing the accents and setting it all in upper case?

Yes, I've tried that too. It slows me down perhaps 2-3x more than the above. I find that I start reading with one eye instead of two. Perhaps that's mostly because I'm not completely used to the uppercase typography, but maybe the accents are helping out too.

Still, I'm not very concerned with Editors getting in the way of the reader with misplaced commas. My question was more concerned with the fact that the Greeks had a literary technology -- mostly involving the placement of particles, but perhaps other words as well -- that they used to signal phrase boundaries in prose. No doubt it was somewhat different than the spoken language. If we want to sensitize ourselves to that technology, we probably have to ditch the periods and commas.

Once we do that, we can probably begin to answer the question of "How would one of Thucydides' early readers have parsed this sentence the first time through?" Not quite the same as "What did he mean by it?" But still helpful.

ὅσοιδὲβουλήσονταιτῶντεγενομένωντὸσαφὲςσκοπεῖνκαὶτῶν
μελλόντωνποτὲαὖθιςκατὰτὸἀνθρώπινοντοιούτωνκαὶπαρα
πλησίωνἔσεσθαιὠφέλιμακρίνειναὐτὰἀρκούντωςἕξει

ΟΣΟΙΔΕΒΟΥΛΗΣΟΝΤΑΙΤΩΝΤΕΓΕΝΟΜΕΝΩΝΤΟΣΑΦΕΣΣΚΟΠΕΙΝΚΑΙΤΩΝ
ΜΕΛΛΟΝΤΩΝΠΟΤΕΑΥΘΙΣΚΑΤΑΤΟΑΝΘΡΩΠΙΝΟΝΤΟΙΟΥΤΩΝΚΑΙΠΑΡΑ
ΠΛΗΣΙΩΝΕΣΕΣΘΑΙΩΦΕΛΙΜΑΚΡΙΝΕΙΝΑΥΤΑΑΡΚΟΥΝΤΩΣΕΞΕΙ

I don't know whether there's any useful gain from removing spaces. From short experiments, I think that I can learn something about how words tend to be put together from reading without them, I just don't know if that knowledge is useful or not. It seems to change the reading flow slightly, but I'm not sure if that feeling will remain.

Happily, we live in an age where the technology makes it tremendously easy to switch quickly between all these typographical conventions.

[mwh]

It was more of a linguistic observation really. Seems to me that Greek uniquely(?) signals stops, questions, etc. by textual means alone. Which is interesting, but not too surprising, given that ancient Greek writers didn’t punctuate when they wrote, or rarely. Even performance texts, e.g. Homer or the Athenian dramatists, articulate themselves perfectly well without extraneous assistance. Of course modern readers expect punctuation, and editors oblige, but I just wanted to make the point that there’s actually little or no intrinsic need for it. As it is, the editor instead of the reader gets to decide the placement and relative strength of stops (according to the conventional hierarchy of our bizarre system of signs, the descending scale of . · , nothing, plus ; for interrogative). It’s a rather unscientific and arbitrary business (and a German may punctuate differently from an American), and as John’s Thucydides example shows, editors are not always in agreement—and sometimes they are but wrongly. With an author such as Thucydides it is of course very helpful for readers to have the guidance of an editor well versed in the author to steer them through the more complex sentences, but few if any authors present the problems that Thucydides does, and my general point was that we readers of ancient Greek texts risk becoming so dependent on the editorially supplied punctuation that we may fail to pick up on the cues that are built into the text itself.

Jeidsath erases word divisions too. That goes beyond the point I was making, but that too is good in principle, for “words” vary in their degree of lexical independence, as linguists well know. Is τε a word, for instance, or περ? But again, we are too used to the binary distinction, distortive though it is, to make abandoning it a practical proposition. As jeidsath has discovered, it makes reading a slower and more laborious process if we don’t have our familiar gaps inserted within the continuous text.

Why not lose the accents too, asks John, perhaps a tad sarcastically. I see that as being quite a different matter. Ancient Greeks didn’t need accents to be graphically represented, for as native speakers they automatically actualized its accentual system. For us, unless we already know where each accent falls (and who can claim that?), we need to have them marked. As a window into the language’s otherwise largely invisible prosodical system, they’re invaluable. If I don’t always bother to add them in my posts here, that’s only because I’m too lazy to take the time to do so (plus I don’t want to risk making a mistake!).

[mahasacham]

For a while I studied Sanskrit and Pali. In these languages there is a tendency to make an entire sentence into a single word by using the root forms of the words as compounds.
When I first learned about the accusative infinitive I was reminded of this. Also the ancient greek syntax of putting infinitives and their direct objects into an article complex totally reminds me of this compound way of sentence formation. Obviously Sanskrit takes this to the extreme.