the mind of the poet: cognitive and linguistic perspectives

CHIARA BOZZONE

THE MIND OF THE POET:COGNITIVE AND LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES The Mind of the Poet: Cognitive and Linguistic Perspectives

1. INTRODUCTION: STUDYING THE POET’S MIND

What happens in the mind of a poet when poetry is created? The ques-tion already seems prohibitively difficult when dealing with a living poet,whom we can observe as he exercises his craft and interrogate about it.Even today, the creative process is often regarded as mysterious, and theidea of the Muses (and Platonic enthousiasmós) has proved enduring inthe Western tradition. The poet and Nobel prize winner Czeslaw Milosztouched upon this topic in a 1968 poem titled Ars Poetica?1:

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in usso we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung outand stood in the light, lashing its tail.

In fact, many writers and artists (including Milosz himself2) have de-clared themselves skeptical of, or openly opposed to, the scientific inves-tigation of creativity.

With Homer, this same question proves at the same time both harderand easier: harder, because we still know very little that is certain aboutthe specific conditions under which the poems were created; easier, be-cause we know much about the general conditions under which tradi-tional epic poetry is created in oral traditions (starting from the SouthSlavic epic tradition studied by Parry and Lord). Oral-formulaic theoryhas presented us with a compelling case of how the poet puts together hissongs by relying on a trove of traditional expressions (formulas) and tra-ditional story schemas (themes); thanks to this work, the building blocksof the poetry are now in plain sight. What we still know little about ishow these building blocks are assembled in the poet’s mind as he com-

1 C. Milosz, New and Collected Poems, London 2001, 240-241.2 «I am skeptical as to the investigation of creativity and I do not feel inclined to submitmyself to interviews on that subject» (reported in M. Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flowand the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, New York 1996, 12).

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poses. Advances in the fields of cognitive studies and linguistics can nowhelp us tackle this question. On the cognitive side, we can take advant-age of two growing bodies of knowledge: first, we can avail ourselves ofover a century of research on memory, which lends us a much betterunderstanding of how the process of remembering works and how wemanage our attention while performing complex tasks; second, we canrely on the recently inaugurated field of creativity research, which hasstarted to experimentally examine the neural substrate of creativity. Thereal-world phenomena that have been investigated in this field (e.g., jazzimprovisation) bear some clear similarities to the conditions of oralcomposition in performance in some oral traditions, and constitute agood prima facie comparandum for Homer (I shall qualify this claim insection 2.3 below).

On the linguistic side, we have now the tools to closely track (a) howthe poet employes his formulaic technique, and how parts of this tech-nique evolved through time, and (b) how the poet manages his attentionas he produces his verses. Investigating (a) is possible using methodsdeveloped within usage-based linguistics; investigating (b) is possibleusing concepts developed within the study of discourse and informationstructure.

The aim of this paper is to present a coarse-grained survey of thesetopics, to serve as a general reference point to those interested in cogni-tive approaces to Homeric criticism. Suggestions for further readingscan be found throughout the text. While this area of investigation is stillunder development, I think it has the potential to offer fresh solutions tosome of our very old quaestiones Homericae.

2. COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVES

2.1. How our mind works: long-term memory and working memory

During the past several decades, we have learned much about the wayour mind works, and about the way it approaches complex and chal-lenging tasks. Studies of attention and memory go back over a century: avery influential work in the field of Cognitive Psychology was F.C.Bartlett’s Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology3.

3 F.C. Bartlett Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, Cambridge1932.

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Much subsequent research has been devoted to estimating the size ofshort-term memory (see below), and to studying how we are able tocreate memories and recall them, and how memories change over time4.Some of this work on memory and recall has already been applied tooral traditions in general and to Homer in particular, by scholars such asDavid Rubin, a cognitive psychologist who published an extensive treat-ment of Memory in Oral Traditions in 19955, and Elizabeth Minchin, aclassicist who published a book titled Homer and the Resources of Mem-ory in 20016.

These early cognitive approaches to oral traditions focused on recall,addressing questions such as «how memory assists singers in perform-ance» or «how does a poet remember everything that he needs to remem-ber». The contributions of these studies have been valuable: first, theyhave emphasized that remembering almost never consists in pullingsomething intact from a mental drawer, but that it has an active, creativecomponent. This helps vindicate the creative role of the oral singer evenwhile operating within a highly traditional genre, and even when thesinger presents himself as a simple ‘transmitter’ of songs7. Second, thesestudies have sought to establish what resources can aid a poet in keepinghis songs stable from performance to performance; Rubin has shownthat additional constraints (e.g., metrical constraints) make verbal ma-terial more memorable, and Minchin has detailed how the poet was ableto rely on different ‘kinds’ of memory (auditory, visual, spatial, etc.) tosupport different parts of his performance. Less attention has beendevoted to the processing part of composition in performance, i.e., howthe mind of the poet effectively handles the creation of the verses, and towhat an extent the process is automatic or attended. This direction ofinquiry, which takes us closer to our initial question («what happens inthe poet’s mind when poetry is created?») is what I shall focus on in therest of this essay.

In understanding the workings of the human mind, the scholarlyconsensus today is that we need to posit two different systems: working

4 For an introduction, see A. Baddeley - M.W. Eysenck - M.C. Anderson. Memory, Hove- New York 2009.5 D. Rubin, Memory in Oral Traditions: The Cognitive Psychology of Epic, Ballads, andCounting-out Rhymes, Oxford 19956 E. Minchin, Homer and the Resources of Memory, Oxford 2001.7 Of course, some traditions tend to be more fixed than others, and strongly encourageverbatim transmission over recomposition in performance (see discussion in R. Finne-gan, Oral Poetry, Cambridge 1977, 73-87); it is clear, however, that the Greek epic tra-dition does not seem to be of this latter kind.

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memory, and long-term memory. Very simply put: long-term memory iswhere everything that we know is stored. It is where one’s memoriesabide. It is where we remember our phone number and our address, ourpets’ names and our friends’ birthdays. Working memory is where con-scious thinking takes place. It is the space were we entertain and manip-ulate ideas, and where we experience life in real time. As you are readingon this page, your mind is processing my words inside your workingmemory.

The most influential models of working memory have been devel-oped by Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch at the University of York,from the 1970s onwards. These models detail the different componentsof working memory and how they interact (one can speak of an auditorycomponent, a visuo-spatial component, etc.; see Baddeley et al., Mem-ory, 44-58). The specific components of working memory, however, willnot concern us for now. One feature that will, rather, concern us in thisessay is the fact that working memory is severely limited: not much canfit in it at once. This is easily illustrated: if some of my sentences are toolong and complex, your working memory may have a hard time process-ing them. Aristotle knew this already, and in Rhet. 3.9 1409a35-b1 hedefined a good turn of phrase (períodos) as something that is eusúnoptos– something that can be easily taken in with a glance, and does not ex-ceed the capacity of working memory. Likewise, our working memory canbecome strained when too many competing demands are put upon it: ifwe try to pay attention to several things at once (like reading a bookwhile overhearing a conversation), we may find ourselves struggling toretain information, or not noticing important details (this is one of themany ways in which short term memory can in fact impact long termmemory, and our ability to learn). In other words, we experience thelimits of our working memory every day, in our every task.

Cognitive scientists now agree that the number of discrete items thatour working memory can contain at one time is about four8. These areitems like numbers, names, meaningless syllables, or random words thatsubjects are prompted to hold on to, manipulate, and remember duringexperiments. The number seems almost impossibly small. How can weall do the incredibly complex tasks that we do, with just four slots in ourworking memory? The answer is that we have found ways to not have torely on working memory at all. We do not have to consciously thinkabout everything we do: our mind is in fact very good at compressing

8 N. Cowan, Working Memory Capacity, Hove - New York 2004.

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series of complex behaviors so that they count as just a single largebehavior, which can then be executed automatically. This is what hap-pens when we rely on habits, or on automatic behaviors. Talmy Givóntalks about two alternative modes of processing that we rely on duringour everyday life: automated and attended.

Property Attended Automated

Speed Slow Fast

Error rates Error-prone Error-free

Information Uncertain, rare Certain, repetitive

Context Context-scanning Context-free

Consciousness Conscious Sub-conscious

Structure Non-hierarchic Chunked/hierarchic

1 – Modes of Processing9

The advantages of automated processing are apparent: not only is itfaster, it is also free of errors. The limitations of automated processingare that it can only work in known and repetitive situations: it is of nohelp when dealing with novelty. In our daily lives, for doing tasks thatare familiar to us, we mostly rely on automated processing, and weswitch to the attended mode only when we encounter something unfa-miliar that requires our attention. For instance, we can walk on the side-walk without actively thinking of where we are stepping, until we spotan obstacle, and we start consciously minding where we put our feet.We switch seamlessly from one mode of processing to the other, somuch so that we barely notice the difference between the two (althoughwe are certainly familiar with the experience of executing some routineactivity while ‘our mind is somewhere else’).

In Homer (like in many oral traditions), automatic behaviors are afundamental part of the poet’s technique. Both formulas and themes canbe seen in this light: they are the habits that the poet acquired during histraining and that sustain the composition of his songs. When relying onthese habits, the poet can unburden his working memory from low-levelconcerns, and accomplish what seems like an incredible feat (of bothelaboration and recall) with a sustainable amount of effort.

9 From T. Givón, Context as Other Minds: The Pragmatics of Sociality, Cognition andCommunication, Amsterdam 2005, 49.


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2.2. The path to mastery: building automatic behaviors

How does one acquire and learn to rely on automated behaviors? It isclear that automated processing is not available to us for all activies fromthe start. Automatic behaviors are built through extensive training: theyare in fact sequences of actions that we have performed over and over,until they have become, to our mind, a single indivisible unit (the techni-cal term for this is ‘chunking’, cf. Baddeley et al., Memory, 21). Musi-cians practice the discrete movements required to perform a scale or anexercise until it becomes a single, smooth unit – one that can be calledup whenever it is needed, and that, once initiated, is executed with littleor no effort. Similarly, learning to drive may feel cognitively overwhelm-ing at first, in that there are too many novel things that we need to at-tend to at once. Yet gradually, as we gain more experience, the cognitivestrain recedes. What is happening is that our minds, through repetition,are building automatic behaviors. Turning on the engine, or making aturn, is no more a sequence of distinct actions: it is one smooth oper-ation, to which we hardly give any thought at all. After a while we are ableto drive proficiently just by relying on those behaviors, and our workingmemory is largely free to think of something else entirely. We may nowfind that we have driven along a known route almost without realizing it,or that we have taken the wrong route out of habit, because we were notpaying attention. We were dealing with the driving automatically, andusing our working memory for something else. We are now able to per-form a series of taxing cognitive tasks almost without noticing. It is clearthat something similar must account for how the oral traditional poetmasters his skill.

There is in fact much literature now that connects mastery in all sortsof fields, and even genius, not to elusive and inborn talent, but rather toextensive training, and the building of complex habits (i.e. automaticbehaviors) over long periods of time, through what is called ‘deliberatepractice’10. While these studies focus on skills at which not everyone ex-cels (like becoming a top athlete or a concert pianist), we can think ofanother, extremely complex skill at which nearly everybody excels: lan-guage.

In general, the great majority of our language competence (includingphonological, morphological, and syntactic knowledge) is unconscious.

10 These notions have been popularized particularly by M. Gladwell, Outliers: The Storyof Success, New York 2008, which is also a good resource for finding further references.

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This competence is made up of abstract habits that we form during theprocess of language acquisition, and on which we automatically rely. Butthere is more: scholars have come to recognize that much of our lan-guage performance (e.g., speaking fluently) is based on acquiring veryconcrete habits, in the form of fixed and semi-fixed expressions that wecan string together almost effortlessly when we speak11. If you think aboutyour experience learning a second language, you can probably remem-ber the early days when you had to think about every word you spoke –and how slow and painstaking that was. A fluent speaker, on the otherhand, can effortlessly manipulate longer sequences of words (as if theywere single units), while experiencing much lower cognitive strain12.

While this quality of language performance is not at first obvious,studies of corpora of both written and spoken English have suggestedthat, by and large, we rely to a great extent on prefabricated strings ofwords in our everyday usage of language. A 2000 study by Erman andWarren concluded that over 50% of the texts in their spoken andwritten sample were composed not by creatively assembling new se-quences of words, but by piecing together pre-fabricated expressionswhich were not freely modifiable13.

Within some areas of linguistics (especially usage-based linguistics),the importance of pre-fabricated expressions in language performancehas come recently to the fore.

In this respect, then, formularity (i.e., relying on habits in the form ofpre-fabricated expressions) in Homer does not have to be understood asa radically different phenomenon from formularity in natural languages.It is grounded in the same cognitive need for processing efficiency, andfor relying on automated behaviors when dealing with complex tasks,which in turn result from the limitations of our working memory. It alsofollows that formularity (in the more general sense) does not pertainspecifically to orality, but simply to the mastery of a medium. In the caseof Homer, this is a medium that, unlike other kinds of literature14, doesnot openly discourage or avoid pre-fabricated expressions, but rather

11 For an overview of the literature on the topic, see C. Bozzone, New Perspectives onFormularity, in Proceedings of the 21st Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, edd.S.W. Jamison - H.C. Melchert - B. Vine, Bremen 2010, 27-44.12 See N. Ellis, Constructions, Chunking and Connectionism: The Emergence of SecondLanguage Structure, in The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, edd. C.J. Doughty- M.H. Long, London 2003, 63-103.13 B. Erman - B. Warren, The Idiom Principle and the Open Choice Principle, «Text» 20,1 (2000), 29-62.14 See discussion in Bozzone, New Perspectives, 32-34.


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2 – Prefabricated expressions in Spoken and Written Language(data from Erman and Warren, Idiom Principle)*

* Composition of the corpus: 7 extracts of 600 to 800 words from The London LundCorpus of Spoken English + 10 extracts of 100 to 400 words from the Lancaster-Oslo-Ber-gen Corpus (written English) + 2 400-word extracts from two versions of Goldilocks.

Prefabricatedexpressions

Non-prefabricatedexpressions

Spoken Language

Written Language

Non-prefabricatedexpressions

Prefabricatedexpressions

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employs them as one of its signifiers. This is not to deny the exceptionalqualities of Homeric formularity, which should be studied in their ownright: it is to show that Homeric formularity can and should be studiedas a part of natural language.

We now can call to mind the training of the epic singer as describedby Lord15, and how it consists of gradually building habits (automaticbehaviors) that can sustain the performance – these are both habits ofexpression (formulas), and habits of storytelling (themes). In my pre-vious work (Bozzone, New Perspectives, 34-37), I have shown how thedifferent phases of training of a poet that Lord talks about are closelymirrored by some recent accounts of language acquisition by children16.This confirms the old observation that acquiring the language of oralpoetry (at least the particular kind that the guslar, and probably Homerpracticed) is very similar to acquiring a natural language.

2.3. Expert Performance and Flow

Now that we have talked about the automatic behaviors that sustain apoet’s performance, and how they are built through training, we canstart to tackle what actually happens in a singer’s mind as he tells histale. With this, we are stepping more into the ‘mysterious’ black box ofcreativity, but here too we can enlist the help of some recent research inthe field of cognitive science. Over the past few decades, cognitivepsychologists have observed that, when subjects are fully trained in anactivity, and have accumulated enough automatic behaviors to performit fluently, depending on the activity and some of its features, theymay find themselves experiencing a psychological state characterized bycomplete focus, immersion, and deep enjoyment. This state was labelled‘flow’ by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who first described it in the 1970s,and has since written extensively on the topic17.

The state of flow is often reported by musicians, athletes, or artistswhen they are engaged with their craft: it is the sense of being fullyimmersed, fully engaged, and fully in control of what one is doing, so

15 A.B. Lord, The Singer of Tales, Cambrigde, MA 1960, 13-29.16 See M. Tomasello, Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acqui-sition, Cambridge 2003.17 Notable contributions are: M. Csikszentmihalyi - I.S. Csikszentmihalyi, Optimal Experi-ence: Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness, Cambridge 1988; M. Csikszentmi-halyi, Beyond Boredom and Anxiety: Experiencing Flow in Work and Play, San Francisco1975; M. Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, New York 1990.


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that one’s perception of time is altered, and one’s perception of self isweakened. Athletes refer to it as ‘being in the zone’. Flow is an exhilarat-ing experience, and Csikszentmihalyi has argued that experiencing flowin life is greatly conducive to happiness and well-being. In what follows,I will argue that oral poets likely experienced flow during their perfor-mances, and that this is consistent not only with some known featuresof the poetic practice (in ancient Greece and elsewhere), but also withsome beliefs that the Greeks held about the nature of poetry and anumber of other ‘divinely inspired’ activities.

2.3.1. Flow and oral traditional poetry

When looking comparatively at the performances of oral singers, it isapparent that the poets experience a state of deep focus and absorptionin their task. We can call to mind the Tibetan paper singer, who stares ata piece of white paper as a means to focus his mind on the story18.Singers themselves may further speak of the deep enjoyment that theyobtain from their art. But how can we be sure that flow is involved thepractice of poetry in particular? Csikszentmihalyi lists some features ofan activity that are conducive to flow. They are as follows:

1. The presence of clear, defined goals that structure the activity.2. The availability of continuous feedback to one’s actions.3. The presence of challenges that match (but not overstrain) the skills

of the subject (i.e., something that is hard, but not impossibly hard).

I argue that all of these features are present in the performance and prac-tice of oral narrative poetry. In particular:

1. The poet has the clear goal of telling a given story, in a known se-quence, and a given length.

2. The poet constantly receives feedback from the audience19.3. The poet has spent years developing the right skills through his train-

ing, so that the challenge is a good match for his capacities.

In other words, the activity of oral traditional poetry seems designed sothat the poet may experience flow.

18 J.M. Foley, How to Read an Oral Poem, Urbana - Chicago 2002, 1-3.19 See Foley, Oral Poem, 79-94 for an introduction to performance theory and its con-tributions to the study of oral poetry.

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2.3.2. Flow, the lateral prefrontal regions, and the Muses

The evidence adduced so far is circumstantial in nature. But there ismore. Though we do not have self-reports of flow conditions from oralpoets in archaic Greece, we do have one widespread belief attested: thebelief in Muses (or some other divine agent) as the sources of the poeticmatter. Passages are numerous, from Homer to Hesiod and the traditionof poets after them20; perhaps the most famous formulation is found inHesiod:

ka^ moi sk¿ptron =don d4fnh% >riqhléo% Ózondréyasai, qhhtçn5 >népneusan dé moi a!d\nqéspin, #na kle^oimi t4 t’ >ssçmena prç t’ >çnta,ka^ m’ >kélonq’ [mneIn mak4rwn géno% a+èn >çntwn,sf£% d’ a!tà% prVtçn te kaì Ústaton a+èn je^dein. (Hes. Th. 30-4)

And one may also call to mind Phemius’ proclamation in Od. XXII:

a!tod^dakto% d’ e+m^, qeò% dé moi >n fresìn oßma%panto^a% >néfusen (Od. XXII 347-8)

Accounts of this kind will sound familiar to a cognitive psychologist:people experiencing flow report that they lose their sense of self, somuch that often the music, or their words, or their thoughts, feel asthough they are coming not from themselves, but from an external source.We may entertain some healthy skepticism, and presume that artists arestating this to give importance to their own art. In the Western tradition,artists may be simply embracing the Platonic conception of art as pos-session. But now we can prove that this perception is grounded in actualneural states, which have been studied through neural imaging tech-niques.

We have recent studies of jazz musicians and free-style rappers dur-ing improvisation21. These studies involved taking a jazz musician or afree style rapper and positioning them inside an fMRI (functional Mag-

20 Within medieval Europe, one may call to mind Caedmon’s poetic vocation as relatedin Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, IV 22.21 C.J. Limb - A.R. Braun, Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRIStudy of Jazz Improvisation, «PLoS One» 3.2.e1679 (2008); S. Liu - H.M. Chow - Y. Xu- M.G. Erkkinen - K.E. Swett - M.W. Eagle - D.A. Rizik-Baer - A.R. Braun, Neural Cor-relates of Lyrical Improvisation: An fMRI Study of Freestyle Rap, «Scientific Reports» 2(2012).


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netic Resonance Imaging) scan as they perform. fMRI scans can detectwhere oxygen-rich blood localizes in the brain when performing givenactivities, and blood flow is indicative of which areas of the brain isbeing most active at one time. That is to say: researchers asked musiciansto improvise and then observed which areas of their brain were receiv-ing the most blood.

When subjects were performing activities conducive to flow state(such as jazz or lyric improvisation), researchers observed patterns ofneural activation that are indicative of: (1) decreased control activity inthe lateral prefrontal regions, (2) combined with increased activity in themedial prefrontal regions. These results can be interpreted as follows:

in the absence of processing by lateral prefrontal regions – where a senseof agency could be constructed post-hoc – ongoing actions, moment tomoment decisions and adjustments in performance may be experiencedas having occurred outside of conscious awareness. This is not inconsist-ent with the experience of many artists who describe the creative processas seemingly guided by an outside agency. (Liu et al., Neural Correlates)

I believe that these observations allow us to frame the conception of therole of the Muses in Greek poetry within the developing science ofcreativity.

When the singer is immersed in the challenge of his craft, and he isexperiencing flow, he will feel that his words are not coming from hisconsciousness, but from some higher, all-knowing source. In Greek cul-ture, this source is the Muses. Mind that the experience of flow may nothappen to all singers all the time – but it is enough to give substance tothe idea that there exist Muses, which can sustain your performancesometimes (when they are so inclined). This in turn contributes to thesense that art may be a way of experiencing the divine, and that there issomething supernatural that moves artists – what Plato would label atheía dúnamis.

Interestingly, this pattern of neural activation (de-activation of thelateral prefrontal region) is not unique to poetry: it is similar to what hasbeen observed in altered states of consciousness, such as dreaming orbeing under the effect of drugs.

It has also been suggested that deactivation of the lateral prefrontal re-gions represents the primary physiologic change responsible for alteredstates of consciousness such as hypnosis, meditation or even daydream-ing. This is interesting in that jazz improvisation, as well as many othertypes of creative activity, have been proposed to take place in an analo-

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gously altered state of mind. Moreover, a comparable dissociated patternof activity in prefrontal regions has been reported to occur during REMsleep, a provocative finding when one considers that dreaming is exem-plified by a sense of defocused attention, an abundance of unplanned,irrational associations and apparent loss of volitional control, featuresthat may be associated with creative activity during wakefulness as well.(Limb et al., Neural Substrates)

What is fascinating is that the Greeks associated all of these states(which all appear to share this pattern of deactivation of the lateralprefrontal regions) with situations in which the gods were communicat-ing with mortals – in dreams, prophetic trances (sought through intoxi-cation), or in the arts.

2.3.3. Flow in Ancient Greek culture

Traces of flow experience can be found outside of strictly artistic endea-vors. We do not have to look very far in our texts (and what we knowabout Greek culture) to find possible additional examples, described asepisodes of divine intervention, or as experience of divine grace. We canthink of the sense of god-given invincibility that warriors experienceduring their aristeía. For instance, one can bring to mind the divinegrace experienced by Diomedes in book V of the Iliad, where Athenashines a flame from the top of his helmet, and infuses him with anunstoppable battle fury.

!Enq’ aÜ Tude)d‹ Diom\de2 Pallà% ’Aq\nhdVke méno% kaì q4rso%, #n’ =kdhlo% metà p£sin

’Arge^oisi génoito +dè kléo% >sqlòn 0roito5

daIé o* >k kçruqç% te kaì jsp^do% jk4maton pvrjstér’ /pwrinü >nal^gkion, Ò% te m4listalampròn pamfa^n‹si lelouméno% åkeanoIo5

toIçn o* pvr daIen jpò kratç% te kaì êmwn,wrse dé min katà mésson Òqi pleIstoi klonéonto. (Il. V 1-8)

Harari would call this combat flow22: the sense of extreme focus, controland even elation that soldiers can experience when faced with mortaldanger. It has been argued that soldiers can actually become addicted tocombat flow, and miss it when they return home; this supernatural

22 N.Y. Harari, Combat Flow: Military, Political, and Ethical Dimensions of SubjectiveWell-Being in War, «Review of General Psychology» 12, 3 (2008), 253-264.


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euphoria of battle has been described in memoirs and literature for cen-turies – Harari, Combat Flow, 256 quotes a passage from War and Peace.We can also think of the experience of divine grace that top athletes hadduring a race. This was an important subject of celebration and a recurr-ing theme in epinician poetry. Winners having experienced this state,combined with the triumph of victory, must be reminded of their mor-tality.

I would argue that these were all avenues in which, through the ex-perience of flow, individuals in ancient Greek culture could attain thisheightened state of being, which they felt connected them to the gods.All of these activities meet these three conditions:

1. They were structured in a way that we know is conducive to flow.2. They are analogous to activities in which we know people nowadays

experience flow.3. They were perceived as involving a particularly vivid experience of

the divine in ancient Greece.

2.3.4. Flow and competition

There is more: we know from Csikszentmihalyi’s work that some factorscan enhance our chances to experience flow. A major factor is competi-tion.

Golf great Jack Nicklaus affirmed the importance of challenging ven-tures, «The tougher and closer the competition, the more I enjoy golf.Winning by easy margins may offer other kinds of satisfaction, but it’snot nearly as enjoyable as battling it out shot by shot right down to thewire»23.

Athletes report more flow with competition than without. We know thatthe stress of the performance where much is at stake can indeed bringabout flow experiences that one does not necessarily encounter duringtraining, or in performance situations where less it at stake. This is to saythat while Phemius may not experience flow while leisurely performinga simple song for a banquet, if he had to compete with other bards hemight in fact feel more divinely inspired.

Interestingly, competition seems particularly present in ancient Greekculture, in all sorts of domains, but especially where activities with the

23 S.A. Jackson - M. Csikszentmihalyi, Flow in Sports: The Keys to Optimal Experienceand Performances, Champain, IL 1999, 44.

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potential of eliciting flow are found; these are all activities that require atéchne (which normally entails a long training and the development ofautomatic behaviors): poetry, arts and crafts in general, and sports. Wecan call to mind Hesiod and his appraisal of good strife:

jgaq_ d’ !Eri% ÿde brotoIsin.kaì kerameù% kerameI kotéei kaì téktoni téktwn,kaì ptwcò% ptwcü fqonéei kaì joidò% joidü. (Hes. Op. 23-25)

Summing up, taking flow into account may give us another way of look-ing at the competitive character (das Agonale) of Greek culture, aboutwhich so much has already been written24. The all-encompassing fond-ness for competition may at least in part be helping to structure salientcultural activities so that they are more conductive to flow, and thus tothe experience of the divine.

3. LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES

So far, we have seen in rather abstract terms how concepts from thecognitive sciences can apply to the study of Homer. We have seen howhabits sustain the performance of the poet, and we have tried to recon-struct the state of mind that the poet is likely to experience duringperformance. In the latter part of this essay, I will survey some linguisticinstruments that are now available for studying the phenomena justdiscussed. First, I will introduce some methods for studying andmeasuring the poet’s automatic behaviors; second, I will explore howthe study of discourse can help us track the flow of the poet’s conscious-ness.

3.1. The Poet’s automatic behaviors from a linguistic viewpoint

What is the best way to study the formulas and formulaic expressionsthat the poet relies on for composing in performance? This has been amatter of heated debate up until a few decades ago25. The debate fo-

24 Starting with J. Burckhardt, Der koloniale und agonale Mensch, in Griechische Kul-turgeschichte, vol. III, ed. J. Oeri, München 1898, 84-90; J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens: AStudy of the Play-element in Culture, London 1949; see more recently V. Citti, La matriceclassista della dimensione agonale della cultura greca, «Klio» 63 (1981), 289-303.25 For an overview, see C. Bozzone, Constructions: A New Approach to Formularity, Dis-


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cused both on how to define and measure formularity in Homer, and onhow to interpret the results of such measurements. Many contributionsto this debate were most interested in proving the orality of our textsthrough formular analysis, and as such needed a precisely quantifiablemeasure of what counts as a formula and what does not.

Soon, however, advocates of flexibility started gaining ground26, sug-gesting that we could not really understand how the technique worked ifwe only looked at its most fixed parts, and that the technique as a wholeought to be seen as a continuum spanning from free expression all theway through fixed formulas. Lord himself famously said that it is not theindividual formulas that are important, but their ‘molds’.

The particular formula itself is important to the singer only up to thetime when it has planted in his mind its basic mold. When this point isreached, the singer depends less and less on learning formulas and moreand more on the processs of substituting other words in the formulapatterns. (Lord, Singer of Tales, 22)

So far, however, there has not been one single approach to Homeric for-mularity that managed to cover the span from the extremely rigid partsof the technique to its more flexible, but still regulated parts, or one thattried to look at the technique of Homer as a living linguistic system. Inpart, this was because linguistic theory had not yet developed the righttools.

3.1.1. Constructions

The goal of my dissertation work (Bozzone, Constructions) was to de-velop a framework for studying these phenomena that is informed bycontemporary linguistics, in particular the kinds which have dealt withthe extensive formulaic phenomena present in natural language (theseare chiefly corpus linguistics, language acquisition studies, and usage-based linguistics). In my work, I propose to use the concept of ‘con-struction’, adapted from Construction Grammar27, to describe the ha-bits that the poet relies on for building his lines, spanning from the most

course, and Syntax in Homer, Ph.D. Diss. University of California, Los Angeles 2014,11-21. 26 Most notably, J.B. Hainsworth, The Flexibility of the Homeric Formula, Oxford 1968.27 A.E. Goldberg. Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language,Oxford 2006.

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fixed and concrete ones (like Parrian formulas), to the more general andabstract (like general versification patterns).

A construction is defined as a ‘learned pairing of form and function’.It can be used to capture anything from a fixed phrase or idiom to aflexible grammatical structure. Many usage-based linguists now believethat our linguistic competency is made up of a combination of concreteand abstract constructions, which differ from each other in a matter ofdegree, but not necessarily nature. We rely on abstract constructions(i.e., abstract grammatical rules) for dealing with low-frequency andnovel tasks (e.g., parsing a very dense and complicated sentence in atextbook, or writing highly artificial prose), while we use concrete, ready-made expressions for dealing with high-frequency linguistic tasks (e.g.,greetings, frequent exchanges, and everyday dialogue). Just like we canthink of language as the sum of all the constructions that a personknows, we can think of a poetic technique as the sum of all the construc-tions a poet has acquired in his life.

What do constructions look like, in practice? Constructions are builtby way of generalization over a set of data. A child coming across thetwo sequences: ‘more grapes’,’more juice’, will quickly seize upon theirstructural and functional similarity, and come up with a generalization(i.e., a construction), which we can represent as follows28:

more [grapes, juice]

In notating constructions, we bold the part that is fixed, and we put thevariable part within brackets. In time, the child will figure out that evenmore things can be subsistuted in the variable part, depending on whatdata he encounters, and develop the more abstract construction (heresyntactic labels are added to the variable part; as we shall see below,metrical information can be added too):

more [ ]NP*(uncountable)

3.1.2. A Homeric construction

We can use a similar technique when describing Homer’s technique. Letus now turn to a small sample study. The finite verb e#leto ‘took up’appears in three positions in the line in our poems: initially (1), before

* NP = Noun Phrase.28 Examples after Tomasello, Constructing a Language, 95.


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the bucolic diaeresis (2), and in the fifth foot (3). I give one example foreach:

e#leto d’ [0lkimon =gco%]Obj. [jkacménon /xé2 calkü]Obj.Modifier (Il. X 135, XIV 12, XV 482, Od. I 99, XV 551)+W% 0ra fwn\sa% [kçruq’]Obj. e#leto [fa^dimo% /Ektwr]Subj. (Il. VI 494)qumov deuoménou%5 jpò gàr [méno%]Obj. e#leto [calkç%]Subj. (Il. III 294)

Each of these positions in the line corresponds to a construction type.Let us now look at other instances of construction type 129:

e#leto d’ 0lkimon =gco%, Ò o* pal4mhfin jr\rei (Il. III 38, Od. XVII 4)e#leto d’ 0lkima dovre d§w kekoruqména calkü (Il. XI 43; Od. XXII 125)e#leto dè sk¿ptron patrã2on 0fqiton a+e^ (Il. II 46)e#leto dè $4bdon, tÍ t’ jndrVn Ómmata qélgei (Il. XXIV 343; Od. V 47)e#leto d’ /xùn 0konta, kunVn jlkt¿ra kaì jndrVn. (Od. XIV 531)

By generalizing across these instances, we can write the following con-struction:

e#letov d(è) [(_)àà_(à)]Obj.NP [(à)à_àà_àà_ã]Obj. Modifier

This construction captures all the instances in our corpus, and is able togenerate more instances: it attempts to represent what an apprenticepoet would have learned about the usage of e#leto had he used the Iliadand the Odyssey as his learning data.

Once we have described the form of a construction, we can wonderabout its function. It is immediately clear that this construction is spe-cialized for ‘preparation’ scenes, in which a character prepares for a taskby wearing or taking along the required equipment (this can be a war-rior putting on his suit of arms, or Hermes picking up his rhábdos). Wecan infer that a poet or a member of the audience, hearing a line startingwith e#leto dè, had some strong expectations as to its thematic content.

While this e#leto dè construction is quite flexible, there are other con-structions which are much more fixed. Some of the lines we have seenabove, in turn, could be described as their own fixed constructions (i.e.,Parrian formulas). Here we consider them in their wider context withinthe technique. To showcase the flexibility of constructional notation, the

29 For a fuller treatment of the usages of line-initial e#leto, see Bozzone, Constructions,43-49.

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examples below show how we can capture the same sequence (pçda%åkù% ’Acille§%) with constructions that are increasingly abstract:

[pçda% åkù% ’Acille§%]Subj.NP: a fixed subject noun phrase constructionafter the longum of the fourth foot.[[àà__à]MODIFIER[à__ã]NOUN ]Subj.NP : a more abstract construction fora subject noun phrase in the same position in the line, with the same map-ping of syntax and meter (parallel to <k4ergo% ’Apçllwn etc.).[àà__àà__ã]Subj.NP : an even more abstract construction, which doesnot specify the internal structure of the noun phrase. (Parrian formula-types would be here; other instances of this same type would be: nefelh-geréta Ze§%, xanqò% Menélao% etc.).[[x]MODIFIER[x]NOUN]NP: a yet more general construction for a NP in Greekaltogether (without metrical specification).

All levels of analysis are true at the same time, and they are all a legiti-mate object in the study of Homer’s competence.

3.1.3. The life cycle of a construction

What we gain from this method, apart from the capacity to describe thetechnique in its entirety, is the capacity to view the technique as a livinglinguistic system, and for understanding how constructions change andevolve over time. In my work, I discuss how, diachronically, construc-tions pass through a life cycle, whereby they start out as productive andflexible and end up as fixed and isolated. This is parallel to the way mor-phological and syntactic constructions behave in languages, as investi-gated by grammaticalization studies30. I exemplify the life cycle of a con-struction by contrasting two epithets of Hera, one clearly old, the otherclearly new and gaining ground over the former31.

In 1978, Hainsworth wrote: «I persuade myself that it is also possibleto discern various stages of maturity in the formula-systems»32. Basinghimself on Gray’s findings about the designations for metallic weaponsin the epics33, Hainsworth assumed that «special epithets in due processof time gain ground at the expense of generic ones» (Hainsworth, For-

30 For an introduction to grammaticalization, see J. Bybee, Language, Usage, and Cogni-tion, Cambridge 2010, 105-109.31 An earlier version of this study was presented in Bozzone, New Perspectives, 38-41.32 J.B. Hainsworth, Good and Bad Formulae, in Homer: Tradition and Invention, ed. B.C.Fenik, Leiden 1978, 41-50.33 D.H. Gray, Homeric Epithets for Things, «Classical Quarterly» 61 (1947), 109-121.


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mulae, 45). In this view, if there are two competing epithets for oneitem, a generic epithet and a specific one, the specific epithet should bewinning over the generic, and replace it, in the long run. Problematic forthis view, however, are two equivalent noun-epithet formulas for Hera inthe Iliad that show the opposite behavior:

T_n d’ ›me^bet’ =peita qeà leukãleno% /Hrh5 (Il. XV 92)Tòn d’ ›me^bet’ =peita boVpi% pçtnia /Hrh5 (Il. IV 50)

«qeà leukãleno% /Hrh (19x), despite its indistinct and generic colour, hasgained considerable ground against the dramatic boVpi% pçtnia /Hrh(11x)» (ibidem). Hainsworth thus speaks of ‘fragility’ and ‘disruption’ ofthe formula-system.

If we frame the situation in terms of ‘competing constructions’ interms of grammaticalization, however, it is easy to see what is happeningand why, and there is no need to invoke a disruption of the system. Wejust have to look at the way each construction patterns within the tech-nique: a construction that is fossilized and isolated within the techniqueis likely to be old and on its way to replacement; a construction that isflexible and similar to many other constructions in the technique is like-ly to be young and on its way to becoming more frequent. Old construc-tions continually fall out of usage, and new constructions with similarfunctions take their place: what we are seeing with the epithets of Herais not the disruption of the formulaic system, or the triumph of a ‘bad’formula over a ‘good’ one: it is the normal renewal of the technique.

We can easily see that qeà leukãleno% /Hrh displays all the featuresof a young, flexible construction: In the first place, it is ‘transparent’,i.e., made up by recognizeable pieces. A generic epithet leukãleno%(used 13 times in the poems for other female characters) combines withthe name of the goddess to form the 4a-# construction leukãleno% /Hrh.The further modifier qeà is then added to make this into a 3b-# con-struction. This is the same expansion scheme that we see, for instance, inqeà glaukVpi% ’Aq\nh. In addition, the (unexpanded) sequence leu-kãleno% /Hrh shows some flexibility, in that it inflects:

o!d’ =laq’ ’Agc^sao p42% leukãlenon /Hrhn (Il. XX 112)mhtrì f^l‹ >p^hra férwn leukwlénÃ /Hr‹5 (Il. I 572)

In technical terms, we would say that qeà leukãleno% /Hrh is a con-struction with high type frequency and high token frequency (it occurs19 times in the poems).

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Similarly, we can see that boVpi% pçtnia /Hrh is a low type-frequencyconstruction: it is fixed and isolated within the technique, which in turnpoints to its relative antiquity34. In the first place, boVpi% is a specializedepithet for Hera (it appears only three times in the poems with otherreferents). Furthermore, the sequence does not show signs of flexibility(i.e., it cannot inflect). At the same time, boVpi% pçtnia /Hrh occurs qui-te frequently (14 times): it has high token frequency. This will guaranteethat it will survive for a while, despite its isolation.

This situation predicts, on the one hand, the long-run supremacy ofqeà leukãleno% /Hrh (because of its higher type and token-frequency),and, on the other hand, the survival of boVpi% pçtnia /Hrh (because ofits high token-frequency). In accord with what we know about morpho-logical systems and how they develop over time.

We can predict that in the specialization of competing forms ... theconstruction with highest type-frequency will be the one to specializeover other members of the competing set. Furthermore, we can also pre-dict that high-frequency tokens of the less competing types will be thelast to succumb to the specialization process35.

Figure 3 represents the life cycle of a construction, predicated on itstype and token frequency. Similar dynamics can be seen for speech-in-troduction constructions and all sorts of other expressions (see Bozzone,Constructions, 123-140).

The good thing about this method is that it gives us a way of identify-ing which expressions are new in the technique by looking at how theypattern – not simply on the basis of whether they happen to containsome clearly archaic features or not. In my dissertation, for instance, Ilook at the famous repeated line containing the sequence jndrot¿ta kaìÿbhn (Il. XVI 858, XXII 363) and I conclude that it was created using aproductive, young constructional pattern in the technique (which isresponsible for a number of other perfectly regular lines), and it thusunlikely to preserve a great metrical or phonological archaism, as is

34 A further hint that points to boVpi% pçtnia /Hrh’s antiquity is its apparent violation ofWernicke’s law (see A.C. Cassio, above in this volume): the metrical analysis confirmsthe constructional analysis.35 A.K. Smith, The Role of Frequency in the Specialization of the English Anterior, in Fre-quency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure, edd. J. Bybee - P. Hopper, Amsterdam2001, 361-382: 378.


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often claimed36. Regardless of what one thinks of the antiquity of jn-drot¿ta in itself, the line does not show any signs of being construction-ally old.

Additionally, constructions also offer precise tools for describing thetechnique of a book or group of books, and spotting whether there areareas in our poems that behave in peculiar ways. For instance, there is aspeech-introduction construction using the verb proséeipe in OdysseyXIV-XVII that is unlike constructions for that verb that we find any-where else in the poems; this could reasonably be seen as a local experi-ment of the poet who was responsible for those books37.

3.2. The poet’s flow of consciousness from the linguistic viewpoint: thestudy of Homeric discourse

Finally, I would like to briefly sketch another area of the linguistic studyof Homer that can give us great insight into the mind of the poet: thestudy of discourse. By discourse (in the linguistic sense) we mean units

3 – The life cycle of a construction (after Bozzone, New Perspectives, 40)

PARADIGMATICISOLATIONREPLACEMENT

DECAY

CHUNKING

Medium tokenfrequency

High tokenfrequency

Low tokenfrequency

Low typefrequency

Medium typefrequency

High typefrequency

(1) Compositional sequence

(4) Fossilized formula(close to replacement)

(3) Resistant fossilized formula(opaque)

(2) Young formula(transparent)

36 See discussion in Bozzone, Constructions, 94-105; there, I suggest that the originalreading could have been Jdrçthta kaì ÿbhn, which is more satisfactory from the mor-phological and sematic viewpoint.37 See Bozzone, Constructions, 79-80.

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of language larger than the sentence, and linguistic phenomena that onlybecome conspicuous at this scale38.

Egbert Bakker has done much to show how the study of spoken dis-course (and how it differs formally from written discourse) can aid ourunderstanding of Homer39. One main difference is that spoken dis-course is produced in bits and spurts, which are often smaller thancomplete sentences, and are set apart by pauses and changes in intona-tion. We call these bits and spurts ‘intonation units’. We are used toignoring intonation units in our everyday experience, and perceive lan-guage as an uninterrupted stream of words, but if we start to pay atten-tion to the pauses we will suddenly notice that they are everywhere. Andthat the way we speak is very much unlike the way we write.

As an illustration, I give here the transcript of a short oral narrativethat I elicited in 2013. Each line represents an intonation unit, capital-ized words bear sentential stress, and the numbers in parenthesis at thebeginning of each line are pauses.

a. there was A FARMER,b. (.1) who was pickingc. (.3) PEARS.d. (.3) he put the pears into the basket,e. .. and then he went up into the tree,f. (.6) but then A KID came along,g. (.4) and he took’em.h. (.88) the kid put’em on his BIKEi. which was also probably stolen,j. (.6) and he was RIDING down -k. (.4) a path -l. .. and thenm. (1.17) he went to,n. (.6) past a girlo. (.46) he was checking her out -p. (.1) but WHILE checking her outq. (.69) he HIT a rockr. (.22) ands. (.63) fell over.t. (.72) and then he CRIED.u. (.66) uh no he didn’t really cry.

v. (.39) [laughs] andw. (.6) mmmx. (.57) then then some KIDS came alongy. and helped him back up,z. they picked up his PEARS.aa. (.5) for him(?) the pears had fallen over,bb. (.84) mmcc. (.16) cause he fell overdd. (.45) and then the kids kept walking

along the way,ee. (.13) the kid went off into the DISTANCE.ff. .. and then at the VERY end,gg. (.9) the KIDShh. (1.44) passed by the,ii. (1.38) farmer,jj. (.18) againkk. and the farmer sees them.ll. (.21) with the pears.mm. (1.101) and henn. (.53) and that’s where it ends.

4 – A Pear story40 recorded at UCLA in April 2013

38 For an introduction to discourse and information structure, see N. Erteschik-Shir,Information Structure: The Syntax-Discourse Interface, Oxford 2007.39 E.J. Bakker, Poetry in Speech, Ithaca, NY - London 1997.40 W. Chafe, The Pear Stories: Cognitive, Cultural, and Linguistic Aspects of NarrativeProduction, Norwood, NJ 1980.


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Bakker illustrated the utility of looking at the Homeric text as a sequenceof stylized intonation units, and showed how this perspective can helpus understand what the ever-present particles do in our texts. In Bak-ker’s analysis, particles help us track the movement of the mind of thepoet through the scene. They are instructions to us as listeners as towhat we should do with the information contained in every intonationunit: should we foreground it, background it (mén)? Should we take it asa side-diversion (g4r) from the main narration or as a culmination of anaction (oÜn)? Bakker built upon the work of Wallace Chafe, who has ar-gued that the producion of discourse is one of our best means for study-ing consciousness: this is because spoken discourse closely mirrors thelimitations and workings of our attention41.

There is even further potential in this direction. In recent years, lin-guists have come to realize that many languages that had been previous-ly described as having free word order – namely, languages like Greekand Latin, that do not mark syntactic roles through word order – werenot exactly ‘free’ with respect to how they ordered their words in thesentence. In fact, they were ‘discourse configurational’42. These lan-guages use word order to mark discourse roles instead of syntactic roles.

Perhaps the two most common discourse roles are topic and focus,and they very roughly map onto the notion of old information in dis-course (i.e., information that is already active in working memory) asopposed to new information (i.e., information that is not yet active inworking) respectively. The idea is that, in a discourse-configurationallanguage, a noun phrase conveying old information (topic) would oc-cupy a different position in the clause than a noun phrase conveyingnew, focalized information (focus).

Many modern languages have been described in this way, amongwhich are Hungarian and Modern Greek. Hungarian, for instance,tends to position foci immediately before the verb, while it tends toposition topics sentence-initially43.

Linguists now agree that Ancient Greek too is discourse configura-tional, but the detailed description of how discourse configurationality

41 W.G. Chafe, Discourse, Consciousness and Time: The Flow and Displacement of Con-scious Experience in Speaking and Writing, Chicago 1994. See especially part one (3-70)for a discussion of how speech reflects the deployment of consciousness. 42 The volume K.É. Kiss, Discourse Configurational Languages, Oxford 1995, contains se-veral essays on discourse configurationality in a number of languages, and offers an over-view of the category.43 For a detailed account of discourse configurationality in Hungarian, see now K.É.Kiss, The syntax of Hungarian, Cambridge 2002.

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works in Greek – i.e., how exactly word order encodes discourse func-tions – is still underway44. So far, investigations have largely been limitedto prose and to a few diagnostic features (like the position of particles,which can be used to infer a great deal about the structure of the sen-tence), but I believe that, by using constructions, we can start studyingthese phenomena in Homer too, while also controlling for the effect ofmeter. This means that, in addition to describing Homer’s construc-tions, we can also try to explain why words appear in the order they do.If we take the ever-present example,

Tòn d’ jpameibçmeno% proséfh pçda% åkù% ’Acille§% (Il. I 84, IX 307,IX 606, IX 643, XI 607, XIX 145, XIX 198, XXI 222, XXIII 93)

we can now ask why, for instance, the subject noun phrase ‘swift-footedAchilles’ comes after the verb. This is not the unmarked place for a sub-ject in Ancient Greek, which tends, after all, to be verb-final like manyof its Indo-European siblings and Proto-Indo-European itself 45.

One of my results in this area was proving that noun-epithet formulaswhich are line-final are used for discourse-old information (topics): theydo not introduce a new character, but bring up something that is knownto the audience, and which is either already active in their working mem-ory or easily activated46. Descriptively, we call this construction a right-dislocation of a topic, and we find it in many Indo-European and nonIndo-European languages, with a similar discourse function. We can seea couple of examples from Italian:

Non l’ho visto, il gatto.‘I have not seen him, the cat’.È tornato a casa, il gatto.‘He has come home, the cat’.

Here the noun phrase il gatto does not appear in its neutral positionwithin the sentence (before the verb for a subject, after the verb for an

44 A sophisticated account of syntax in Greek prose is D. Matib, Topic, Focus, and Dis-course Structure: Ancient Greek Word Order, «Studies in Language» 27, 3 (2003), 573-633. The forthcoming monograph by David Goldstein, Classical Greek Syntax: Wacker-nagel’s Law in Herodotus, to be published by Brill, will supersede existing treatments.45 For an introductory discussion of Indo-European syntax, see B.W. Fortson IV, Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction, Malden, MA 20102, 152-168. For ba-sic word order in Proto-Indo-European, see specifically 157.46 See discussion in Bozzone, Constructions, 209-217.


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object), but is ‘dislocated’ to the right. Right-dislocation of this kind isonly allowed when the right-dislocated element is effectively a topic(old information, therefore definite). An example like the one below,with right-dislocation of an indefinite noun phrase (which cannot be atopic) would be ungrammatical:

*Non l’ho visto, un gatto.‘I have not seen him, a cat’.

One even finds parallels in a number of unrelated story-telling traditions,where right-dislocated topics are used to disambiguate who is doingwhat and help the audience keep track of the narration (Bozzone, Con-structions, 211-212).

The clarification of the meaning of word order in Homer is also boundto impact our study of formulaic systems and their economy. In lookingat battle scenes, for instance, Edzard Visser has argued that variousverbs of killing (e.g., {le, kteIne, =pefne, >n\rato, >xen4rize) are puremetrical variants of each other, and that their choice is dependent on themetrical shape of other fixed ‘determinant’ elements within the line(such as the proper names of the victims/attackers)47; a more carefulstudy reveals that Visser overlooks an important point: while some verbsmay be synonymous per se, specific verbs are regularly associated withdifferent word orders, and they occur in different discourse situations.They in fact have different discourse functions. Compare the followingtwo constructions for verbs of killing: the =pefne construction, as seen inthe following lines:

!Axulon d’ 0r’ =pefne bo_n jgaqò% Diom\dh% (Il. VI 12)’Ast§alon d’ 0r’ =pefne meneptçlemo% Polupo^th% (Il. VI 29)[áààá]Obj.NP d’ 0r’ =pefne [àáààáààáã]Subj.NP

And the >n\rato construction, as seen in the following lines:

’Idomeneù% d’ 0ra FaIston >n\rato MÇono% u*òn (Il. V 43)Mhriçnh% dè Féreklon >n\rato, téktono% u*òn (Il. V 59)[áààá]Subj.NP d (àà) [(à)áà]Obj.NP >n\rato [áààáã]Obj.Modifier

47 E. Visser, Homerische Versifikationstechnik: Versuch einer Rekonstruktion, Frankfurt1987; E. Visser, Formulae or Single Words? Towards a New Theory of Oral Verse-Making,«Würzburger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft» 14 (1988), 21-37.

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Though both constructions are normally translated identically as ‘X kil-led Y’, their word orders are different. The =pefne construction featuresa sentence-initial object noun phrase; the >n\rato construction featuresa sentence-initial subject noun phrase (the orders are, respectively, Ob-ject Verb Subject and Subject Object Verb). These two word orders en-code different information structure in the discourse, and occur in dif-ferent kinds of narrative contexts. The =pefne construction (Object VerbSubject) occurs in stretches of narrative organized around the victims.The >n\rato construction (Subject Object Verb) occurs in stretches ofnarrative organized around the attackers: in other words, =pefne is usedwhen the victims are topicalized, while >n\rato is used when the at-tackers are48.

Going forward, refining our understanding of Homeric word order isbound to impact our reading of the poems, and give us a better sense ofhow the poet is handling the narration in his working memory.

4. CONCLUSION

The goal of this essay was to provide an overview of some concepts andtools from linguistics and cognitive studies that can help us understandwhat takes place in the mind of the oral-traditional poet as he performsand composes his tales. My hope is that these methods may provide newand fruitful insights in Homeric criticism going forward.

48 Taking word order in Homer as expressing discourse roles is not to deny that metercan impact word order as well. In Bozzone, Constructions, 198-201 I discuss a few suchcases, and many more await us in the text; but this should not distract from the fact thatHomeric word order is meaningful, and that meter can only influence word order withinthe bounds established by the grammar: metrical necessity cannot persuade a poet toproduce something ungrammatical or incomprehensible.


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the mind of the poet: cognitive and linguistic perspectives

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