ΕΝ ΕΦΕΣΩ

Though both require relative clauses to begin with a relative pronoun, Greek and English are typologically distinct in that one employs the pronoun with the gap strategy (English) and the other only needs the pronoun (Greek): a man who Chris saw [GAP] vs. τὸ ποτήριον ὃ ἐγὼ μέλλω πίνειν (the cup that I am about to drink [no gap]).

The English Gap is implicitly necessary for our processing of the grammatical relation of relative pronouns (in this case the Object relation), whereas in Greek, grammatical relations are marked by morphology* rather than structural relations/word order.

*This is not to say that English doesn’t have some morphological marking occurring on it’s pronouns, but this morphology is not the central marker of grammatical relations. Grammatical relations are centrally marked by structural position within the clause. Hence when English speakers hear relative clauses they consciously notice the Gap position where the Object would typically appear.

There are a variety of reasons why the English Perfect and the Greek Perfect must be distinguished in spite of their shared name and similarities.

Greek students are generally taught to use their intuition in terms of deciding whether to translate a Greek perfect with an English perfect or with an English present. But rarely (ever?) is there any discussion of how these two grammatical forms differ in their usage in a cross-linguistic sense. That is, the English Perfect can be used in the context X where the Greek Perfect would be infelicitous or ungrammatical.

Well today, I’m going to give you at least one way that I found about two weeks ago (I had to search for it to find it again). This assumes that the Greek of Joshua is relatively close enough to natural Greek that this is a valid usage. I haven’t had time to check other texts.

Joshua 13:8: ταῖς δὲ δύο φυλαῖς καὶ τῷ ἡμίσει φυλῆς Μανασση, τῷ Ρουβην καὶ τῷ Γαδ, ἔδωκεν Μωυσῆς ἐν τῷ πέραν τοῦ Ιορδάνου κατ̓ ἀνατολὰς ἡλίου, δέδωκεν αὐτὴν Μωυσῆς ὁ παῖς κυρίου…
But to the two tribes and the half tribe of Manasseh, Reuben and Gad, Moses gave (an inheritance to them) in the land beyond the Jordan eastward. Moses the servant of the Lord gave them …

From there, it goes on to list the lands they received. What’s striking about this. Well for one, we see the Perfect’s move toward the Aorist, but we also see a significant way in which the Greek Perfect is very, very different from the English Perfect.

Moses is dead. Moses was dead when the book was written and Moses was dead when the events described here in chapter 13 transpired (assuming for the sake of argument they did – this is a linguistics blog not a history blog). The English perfect cannot be used with a subject the speaker knows to be deceased. The sentence:

*Moses the Lord’s servant gave them X.

is not felicitous in English.

And that, my friends, is one way in which the Greek and English Perfects are different. This sort of example is relatively easy to recognize intuitively when dong translation, but it is still helpful to recognize and understand the reason why you’ve used the English past perfective verb “gave” instead of the perfect. And that’s what I’m interested in here. The why of things.

UPDATE:

There is a pragmatic felicity condition on the use of the perfect: the subject of a Perfect sentence must be in a position to receive the participant property. Perfect sentences are infelicitous when this is not met. In the following well-known example the person referred to by the subject NP is not alive at the RT [Reference Time]. Consider (20), uttered in 1989.

(20) Einstein has lived in Princeton.

This sentence is grammatical but infelicitous when uttered at a time after the death of Eisten (Jespersen 1931:60), Chomsky (1970:85). We explain this in terms of the participant property. Einstein cannot bear the participant property in 1989, the time of the utterance of (20), and so it is pragmatically impossible to ascribe it to him. this is the force of the example. The felicity requirement, then, is reoughly as in (21):

(21) Felicity condition for the present Perfect
The person to which the subject nounphrase [sic] refers must be pragmatically able to bear the property ascribed to them.

The notion of ‘Current Relevant’ is sometimes invoked to explain the infelicity of sentences like this. (Jesphersen 1931: 47, 57, et seq; McCoard 1978, ch. 2).

Carlota Smith, The Parameter of Aspect (2nd ed.; Studies in Linguistics & Philosphy 43; Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 1997), 108.

Also, I should note that an English Past Perfect, which is traditionally associated with the Greek Pluperfect would also be acceptable here: Moses had given…

Today is a day that I have been waiting for quite some time:

LOGOS 4

Over the past few months, Logos has been kind enough to allow me to participate in the private beta testing of their (formerly) forthcoming version of their library system.

And let me tell you, it has been exciting.

The new version changes just about everything. And it’s for the good.

• The new interface is clean and simple.
• Window management has been completely revolutionized.
• Library management is less time consuming & more feature rich.
• New language tools have been developed & old ones have been redesigned.
• New resources & new library collections have been released with new content — including several resources that make me less interested in investing in another piece of software (e.g. my own collection now has Swete’s The Old Testament in Greek According to the Septuagint including the apparatus).

Interface & Window Management:

The basic interface now consists of three basic icons & three drop down menus in the top left corner:

“Home”, “Library”, & “Search” – all of which are rather self-explanatory. And “File” consists have various syntax searches, notes, visual filters, clippings, etc. that you might create as you go along. Under “Guides” we have the ever reliable passage guide, exegetical guide, & word study guide. All of which have received a nice face lift;

Organizing Windows has improved in some incredible ways. For one, it’s now possible to simple drag windows around and they resize to a highlighted area:

But probably the most exciting thing is the fact that now windows can be separated from the central program window:

Which then results in:

This definitely makes Logos 4 much easier to work with when using multiple programs at the same time compared to Logos 3 – or using multiple monitors (which I would love to have, but don’t).

Finally, had you set up your windows in a certain way a week ago that you want to go back to? Didn’t save it? Can’t remember exactly what it was? Well, Layouts has changed all of that:

There’s a reason though. Anyway, it is now possible go back and pick out a particular layout that you had used a few days before, rename it, and save it as your own. Currently, I have four such layouts. Why two Layouts with virtually the same name? Well, it’s a long story.

The Library

With Version 4, we can now both tag and rate the books in our libraries. Note that haven’t spent too much time ranking books –- Swanson’s dictionary is gets two stars. That’s not because it’s bad, just that it’s not what I would want. It’s a great dictionary for a quick gloss, but I’m very, very rarely interested in a quick gloss. Just want to put a plug in here for the slow, detail reading of lexical entries of full-fledged lexicons like BDAG, LSJ, GELS, & L&N. It gets two stars instead of one because it’s still far superior than Strongs.

Ah, but now we come to the interesting stuff in the library: new resources. Now what follows, as I understand it minimally requires the Original Languages Library, though you will need to go look at Logos’ website to double check on that. And you may have noticed it in a screen shot above:

We finally have something to compete with (and absolutely crush!) Opentext.org’s database. These are the same trees that Andi Wu & Randall Tan discussed at International SBL this past year, as well as at BibleTech:2009 (where there’s also a PDF & mp3 available for download).

It’s doesn’t do everything. But it’s a massive leap in the right direction. For one, unlike Opentext.org, Cascadia actually recognizes that there are more than four types of constituents (Predicate, Subject, Complement, & Adjunct). Unfortunately, the treatment of discontinuous phrases is just about the same and needs work. But Cascadia brings a lot to the table:

• Actual Phrase Structure
• More Clause Types – the inclusion of “Verb Elided Clause” as a clause type is incredibly important – especially for Paul.
• Recognition that, semantically speaking, copulas (e.g. εἰμί) are not predicates.

Here’s what it looks like in action:

Now I’ve only been able to search using this new database for about a month now, but I definitely like what I have seen, generally speaking. More than anything, I’ve appreciated being able to do the same search using both Cascadia and Opentext.org together and compare the search results.

For example, ditransitive clauses have had my curiosity off and on for some time now, so I constructed this search in Cascadia using the new and improved Syntax Search Dialog (It’s similar to the old one, but now you can drag and drop, which makes it easier to use and is so cool):

And essentially the same search in Opentext.org:

The results were rather interesting. Opentext received more hits:

The first two in Matthew aren’t ditransitive in Cascadia because they both use copulas. Thus, it is the initial adjective that receives the Predicate Function rather than the verb. An adjective cannot be an Object if it is the semantic predicate of the clause.

Acts 2:39 is not ditransitive in Cascadia because Opentext.org has incorrectly annotated ἂν as a Complement, which it very much is not. And Acts 25:27 has the rather semantically empty, δοκέω, and thus the semantic predicate of the clause is ἄλογον.

Finally, 2 Corinthians 9:1 is not ditransitive in Cascadia, again, because the verb of the clause is a copula.

So why did I go through all of this?

Well, for one, we finally have a second voice beside Opentext.org that provides an extremely beneficial balance & check for determining what the syntax of the text actually is. Of the five differences in this search, four of the were the result of Opentext.org’s simplicity (which, granted, at times is a good thing). But this search also revealed a tagging mistake in Opentext as well. Doing quality research is always going to be dependent upon the quality of the data we use. And now we have a significantly easier way to confirming what is the accurate syntactic annotation.

There is more to do in Greek syntax, of course, but I’ll leave that for another time. I’m planning on putting in another proposal to BibleTech:2010 on this very topic.

I’ll leave you with this: the preface from the Cascadia graphs, just to give you an idea of where they came from:

The Cascadia Syntax Graphs of the New Testament is derived from a new dynamic treebank project developed by the Asia Bible Society. The Greek Syntactic Treebank Project is built on the basis of a computer-readable Greek grammar, with the syntactic trees (graphs) directly generated by a parser. Manual checking and corrections are stored as data in a knowledge base to guide the parser. The syntax trees (graphs) are dynamically generated from the latest version of the grammar and knowledge base, which enables continual organic improvement and growth as the grammar and knowledge base are maintained and updated.

We humbly present this preliminary version of the syntax graphs to users of Logos version 4 and look forward to improving and expanding it in the future.

Randall Tan
Andi Wu
November, 2009

Andi Wu and Randall K. Tan, Cascadia Syntax Graphs of the New Testament (Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009).

There is much, much more to say, but I hope I’ve at least given you something to whet your appetite for the time being. Logos 4 is good enough that It’ll be replacing Logos 3 for me. Most definitely.

By the way, did I mention that as of version 4, my entire library is now indexed (which times some time, but is definitely worth it) and I can search my 2000 books in mere seconds for anything?

The Mac version of Logos 4 is in Alpha testing as we speak and will be have complete parity with the Windows version. That’s right, Mac users, you haven’t been ignored.

And did I mention at all Logos 4 for iPhone & iPod Touch is part of the deal?

Be sure to head over to LOGOS 4 to get the whole scoop and learn about new notes, clippings, handouts, editable passage, exegetical, & word study guides (or you can now create your own!). There’s so much that I could have shared, but I wanted to focus on the things that matter to me. So go, check it out: LOGOS 4.

Notes:

• All screenshots are illustrative. Resources shown may not be included in Logos 4 base packages – i.e. you need at least the Original Languages Library for either Opentext.org or Cascadia.
• Upgrade discounts are available for existing customers.

Other Reviews thus far:

Ricoblog,

Reuben Gomez

Steve Runge’s got a bit too.

Joe Miller

Thomas Black

Adam Couturier

Robert Pavich

Ken Morris

Chris Roberts

Dan Wallace has posted a very short essay that simply surveys the major interpretive landscape of 1 Timothy 2:12. He doesn’t give much in terms of conclusions about what his view is. In general that’s very helpful considering that most discussions of this verse are so emotionally charged toward one perspective that it can be hard for people to understand exactly how many complex and unsure issues there are.

And by the way, I can think of probably another half dozen that didn’t make his list.

Interpretive Issues in 1 Timothy 2:12

Some have called the claim that Modern Greek has something to add to the study of Hellenistic Greek controversial.

Perhaps.

But I think that depends on what you mean and what context you intend to use Modern Greek. For the first or second year student, I would heartily agree that Modern Greek isn’t going to be terribly helpful.

But when it comes to understanding the Greek text by the more advanced scholar, particularly for being able to teach the beginning student, Modern Greek is much more important.

Let’s look at an example.

According to Artemis Alexiadou, Liliane Haegeman & Melita Stavrou, the two demonstrative positions in Greek have distinctly different meanings (the footnotes are theirs):

Context A: Mary is at the butcher’s pointing to a pork joint that she wants to buy.

a. Mary: Thelo afto to butaki.
want-1SG this the joint
‘I want this pork joint.’

b. Mary: ??Thelo to butaki afto.[48]
want-1SG the joint this

Context B: A paragraph from a guide book about a Greek town.

c. I poli eci pola istorika ktiria pu xronologhunte apo ti vizantini epoci.
the town has many historical buildings that date back to the Byzantine period

d. Ta ktiria afta episceptonte kathe xrono ekatondadhes turistes.
the buildings these vistis-3SG every year hundreds tourists

e. ??? Aftra ta ktiria episcenpttonte kathe rono ekatondadhes turistes.
these the buildings visit-3SG every year hundreds tourists[49]

Manolessou & Panagiotidis (1999), Manolessou (2000), Panagiotidis (2000), and Grohmann & Panagiotidis (2005) observe that in Greek the pre-article position of the demonstrative afto entails greater deictic strength, in contrast with the post-nominal position in which the demonstrative is used as discourse anaphoric, namely to refer back to an entity that has been previously mentioned. Only the pre-article demonstrative can normally be used along with a pointing gesture: based on this observation it is generally agreed that only the pre-article demonstrative is genuinely deictic.[50]

Artemis Alexiadou, Liliane Haegeman & Melita Stavrou, The Noun Phrase in Generative Grammar (Studies in Generative Grammar 71; Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter, 2007), 120-121.

---

[48] For some speakers (b) is acceptable with contrastive intonation on the demonstrative and an accompanying deictic gesture.

[49] Notice that the ‘strategy’ discussed in the preceding note is not available for rescuing (83e) since the buildings in question are not physically present, and so one cannot point to them (unlike the butcher’s customer who actually sees the joint).

[50] Interestingly, a different proposal with respect to the interpretation of post-nominal and pre-article demonstratives is made by Tasmowski De Ryck (1990), who argues that the pre-article demonstrative has a thematic interpretation (i.e. it represents an entity already known/given) while the post-nominal demonstrative has a rhematic (i.e. new) interpretation.

These words, sparked my curiosity as to what we can say about the status of demonstratives in Hellenistic Greek. So I perused the texts for a bit. I didn’t do anything comprehensive, just perusing. But what I saw, in my randomness, fit – if we assume that footnote 48 was generally true for the Hellenistic Period.

Likewise, it *appears* that pre-nominal demonstratives are not allowed in situations like what we see in Context B above. Granted, this was more difficult to test. What I did was search through the non-narrative texts of the New Testament and examined the kinds of contexts and pragmatic situations where the author used pre-nominal vs. post-nominal demonstratives. The different, I though, was quite striking. For example, in Paul, pre-nominal demonstratives are only used in a couple different situations:

1. Pronominal situations: Rom 11:30, νῦν δὲ ἠλεήθητε τῇ τούτων ἀπειθείᾳ, “but now you have received mercy as a result of their disobedience.”
2. Quotes from Direct Speech: 1 Cor 11:25, τοῦτο τὸ ποτήριον ἡ καινὴ διαθήκη ἐστὶν ἐν τῷ ἐμῷ αἵματι, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.”
3. References to previous words written (i.e. the external real life referent is the text itself): 2 Cor 7:1 ταύτας οὖν ἔχοντες τὰς ἐπαγγελίας, “Therefore, since we have these promises…” (Cf. Eph 3:1
4. Abstact Concepts that cannot have an external referent: 2 Cor 11:17, ὃ λαλῶ οὐ κατὰ κύριον λαλῶ ἀλλʼ ὡς ἐν ἀφροσύνῃ ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ ὑποστάσει τῆς καυχήσεως, “ In this self-confident boasting I am not talking as the Lord would, but as a fool.”

If what Alexiadou, Haegeman, & Stavrou say is correct for Hellenistic Greek as well, then it would have been ungrammatical for Paul to have said: ἐν τούτοις τοῖς κλίμασι instead of ἐν τοῖς κλίμασι τούτοις in Romans 15:23.

Now whether I’m right or not, I’m not sure, which is why I used the word “appears” above. I don’t think we can draw definite conclusions on the issue from this very cursory & ad hoc study I did this afternoon.

But if I am correct on this, then there are two important things to remember:

1) Greek word order issues are never discussed in beginning classes in terms of the why?. New students only learn the what?. They need to learn the reasons for different word orders.

2) What I just covered here is something you could very easily teach to your students: “Students, this is why the order of the demonstrative in the NP matters and this is what it means.” See, that was simple, wasn’t it?

Articular Infinitives in the Greek of the New Testament: On the Exegetical Benefit of Grammatical Precision (New Testament Monographs) by Denny Burk

This is a difficult book to review. That might sound strange to some since its not a long book, nor is its thesis particularly controversial. What makes it a difficult book to review is that I found Burk’s thesis to be quite acceptable and well argued. The parts of the book that gave me trouble were the preliminary discussions about case. But because it’s 1) such a complex issue and 2) rather peripheral, I decided that I wouldn’t spend too much time focusing on it.

Burk’s thesis is a good one and it’s well argued: When used with the infinitive, the Greek article is a syntactic marker that does not mark definiteness with the infinitive, but rather tends to clear up grammatical ambiguity in the interpretation of the infinitive. One might say that there isn’t to much revolutionary about it. And yes, that’s true, but even still, it’s a helpful guide where plenty of commentators have given too much emphasis to the appearence of the article with the infinitive (or too little).

Chapter one introduces Burk’s thesis, history of research & methodology. The history of research is a particularly helpful survey of grammatical discussions of the infinitive generally, one that probably wouldn’t be found elsewhere. Burk generally steers a helpful course between placing too much emphasis on the use of the article and two little emphasis.

The methodology section, surprised me a bit. One the one hand, there are some very good things said about how he went about his study, but on the other hand, there are a variety of statements that left me wondering. For example, were Moulton here today and read this section, he would probably respond by saying that his own work on grammar was also scientific (Burke, 17) and descriptive (21). And indeed, I doubt that any of Burk’s own work would be difficult for a grammarian of the previous generation to understand.

My other thought in reading this section was that his methodology appears to have a greater dependence upon scientific method than it does upon modern linguistic theory. And, to be honest, there’s nothing wrong with that. What is clear from the section is that Burk has done him homework in terms of reading secondary literature & his use of linguistic monographs & resources is better than a number of other studies I’ve read – though I was slightly concerned that many of the linguistic proper books were somewhat dated, but this is generally true with most NT studies that dip into linguistics.

Chapter two of the book introduces a helpful discussion of the Greek article more generally. There’s not too much for me to say here. The discussion provides a good summary of the literature and concisely describes how the article is used in the NT.

But it’s chapters 3 & 4 that pull me in two directions. On the one hand, Burk’s discussions of the article and the infinitive in these chapters are great. I really, really enjoyed them. On the other hand, I consider Burk’s discussions of the Greek cases to be both frustrating and disappointing. This, I think, has more to do with Burk’s following of Stanley Porter’s discussion of case more than it does Burk. But that doesn’t let him off the hook. There is a significant bibliographic gap with reference to the cases as used both with and without cases: Silvia Luraghi’s On the Meaning of Prepositions and Cases: The Expression of Semantic Roles in Ancient Greek (Studies in Language Companion Series). This book was published three years before Burk’s was in 2006. Now, I’m not sure whether he completed his dissertation before 2003 or not, so I don’t want to push this one too hard and if this is the case, it would have requires a massive rewrite to deal with the claims & data from Luraghi. I think it the end that would have been worth it, but at the same time, I can understand how unappealing that would be to someone who has already spent years working on the original thesis.  Anyway, I’ve blogged about this book before HERE. It’s cognitive, rigorous, and written by a highly qualified Indo-European/Greek scholar who definitely knows her stuff. It’s also expensive. But if you’re going to write a dissertation on a subject closely connected to cases & prepositions in Greek, you cannot avoid it. There’s more I could say specifically, but this review would grow way too long (& it already has once).

The last two chapters provide some extra evidence from the LXX (chapter 5) for Burk’s claims and draw some conclusions with exegetical comments (chapter 6). Both these chapters were quite enjoyable.

All in all the book is a nice discussion of the infinitive and it would be a beneficial read for Greek students.

I’ve finished two books that I plan on writing reviews for:

Grammatical and Exegetical Study of New Testament Verbs of Transference: A Case Frame Guide to Interpretation and Translation (Library of New Testament Studies) by Paul Danove

Articular Infinitives in the Greek of the New Testament: On the Exegetical Benefit of Grammatical Precision (New Testament Monographs) by Denny Burk

But I cannot decide which I should review first. The two books are very different animals in terms of method & focus – much of which can be recognized from the titles. But there is a significant relationship between them in that Burk makes some incredibly critical comments about Case Grammar, the linguistic framework that eventually morphed into Construction Grammar which Danove uses in this most recent book.

So what do you think:

I don’t know if I’ve ever done one of these posts, but I’ve just received a couple books that I’ll be reviewing:

Grammatical and Exegetical Study of New Testament Verbs of Transference: A Case Frame Guide to Interpretation and Translation (Library of New Testament Studies) by Paul Danove.

Articular Infinitives in the Greek of the New Testament: On the Exegetical Benefit of Grammatical Precision (New Testament Monographs,) by Denny Burk

The former book, I’ve received with many, many thanks to the kind people at T & T Clark & Continuum for their willingness to provide this review copy. especially Abigail Cox. I look forward to digging into Danove’s analysis and his use of Construction Grammar for studying the New Testament text.

The latter I’ve been interested in reading for some time and decided to buy it. Sheffield Phoenix Press provides a reduced price of their hardback books for scholars, which lowered the price of Burk’s book into a rather reasonable range (HERE) when you order it directly from them. Now if only Burk would start blogging about Greek on occasion – or perhaps start another blog that focuses on Greek since his blog on culture is already rather popular.

I’m totally ripping this off directly from the B-Greek list, but its definitely worth it if I can get a few more people to see this little discussion.

Several days ago, Elizabeth Kline wrote this:

In James 3:3 we see an example of a preposed genitive noun TWN hIPPWN.
One way to read it, TWN hIPPWN modifies TA STOMATA (J.Huther) which is
within a prepositional phrase EIS TA STOMATA. Another reading, TWN
hIPPWN modifies TOUS CALINOUS. J.B. Mayor suggests TWN hIPPWN modifies
both TOUS CALINOUS and TA STOMATA. Alford suggests that TWN hIPPWN
might mean something like “in the case of horses” thus linking ideas
CALINAGWGHSAI … SWMA from the immediately preceding context.
Alford’s suggestion is interesting in light of proposals in recent
text-linguistics about fronted constituents. S.Levinsohn talks about
TWN hIPPWN in Js. 3:3 (Discourse Features SIL, 2000, p63). Levinsohn
suggests that TWN hIPPWN is preposed to indicate a shift from talking
about people to talking about horses. What I find interesting here, is
that Alford in the second half of the nineteenth century had a very
similar reading without the trappings of text-linguistics. The
terminology is quite different and Levinsohn certainly frames the
question differently, nevertheless … draw your on conclusions about
this.

(My Emphasis)

To which Steve Runge replied,

You seem surprised about the agreement you find in their analysis. IMO, it is foolish to begin anywhere else than with what the “Dead Grammarians” have said. I include Carl and Wallace here out of respect. Most had internalized the language more than I could ever hope. The main problem I have with them is the fuzziness of explanations at times, ones that are dependent on English or Latin. I mean to say that they had a poor medium to communicate their thoughts, not that their thoughts were poorly formed. If you look at the commentaries and grammarians that Levinsohn cites for support, most of them are the same vintage as Alford.

Another related issue with the dead grammarians is their ability to explain WHY they claim what they do. They know a duck when they see one, but at times fail to provide the meaningful characteristics that make a duck a duck and not a seagull or goose. This is the area that I think text-linguistics has the most to offer. This kind of description should, if done properly, allow those following behind to understand the thought process step by step, compared to choosing from a long list of potential syntactic forces. This is particularly the case where there are several complicating factors at work in a single context, as in James 1:22-23. Text-linguistics can help one understand the role played by each component that makes up the whole. Does Alford offer any basis for his conclusion for you to weigh it against the competing alternatives that you cite? You called it interesting, making me think it was the outlier compared to other more modern explanations. Levinsohn reaches the same conclusion, but leaves a trail of bread crumbs.

Simply having an answer leaves the exegete in a poor position to evaluate the alternatives. Too often, statistical factors are called into play, even in traditional grammar. “The vast majority of the time X functions as Y, therefore in this context the evidence leans toward reading it as Y.” The exegesis of hOUTWS in John 3:16 is a good example of such argumentation.

If someone claims a brand new reading that has hitherto been overlooked by scholarship, watch out. Unfortunately, linguistics is being used by some as a hip new way of tickling the ears, being little more than smoke and mirrors with nice poly-syllabic words. Linguistics, if it is used properly, should help you understand what is going on under the hood; it does/should not change the car. In my experience, I have found that any claim I might make on the basis of discourse grammar and linguistics can be supported by the previous claim of a dead grammarian. They knew their stuff, knew whom they were stuffing, and stuffed them with eloquence. It behooves us to linger over this same stuff, as you so often demonstrate in your research. Thanks for passing it along on the list.

And finally, Elizabeth Kline again replied,

Actually the surprise is more rhetorical than real. I have been reading “Dead Grammarians” (sans Wallace who is a special case) along with linguists for 25 years. Just reminding some of the “young turks” that the old NT scholars are not to be despised, the linguistic framework you (not Steve R.) are all excited about now will be dead and gone and people will continue to read the old NT scholars.

…

One significant difference between Alford and Levinsohn, Alford doesn’t attempt to draw any broad generalizations about fronted constituents and fit them into some sort of large theoretical framework, Levinsohn does. Alford is commenting on the text and not writing a grammar of discourse. That is one justification for reading linguistics.

Levinsohn (DFNTG 2000 p63) marks TWN hIPPWN TOUS CALINOUS as a “point of departure” and states that TWN hIPPWN is fronted with the “point of departure” and marks a “switch of attention” from humans to horses.
Alford tells us in language almost anyone can understand that TWN hIPPWN is new information whereas we already know about CALINOUS and STOMATA since they are mentioned in the preceding context. Alford claims that the position of TWN hIPPWN is emphatic and is connected with the (head) noun STOMATA not CALINOUS. J.Huther agrees with him on both points. The notion that fronted constituents are emphatic is a commonplace generalization in the older exegetical works. However, this observation isn’t set into a large theoretical framework like functional grammar (S.Dik, T.Givon). Perhaps this is one reason we still read Alford and Meyer, we aren’t required to demystify the dynamics of a very complex hybrid (eclectic) theoretical framework to read Alford.

The notion of “points of departure” in Levinsohn isn’t present in Alford (stating the obvious) but Alford’s treatment does have implications for discourse cohesion and thematic development. The difference is that Levinsohn pulls out, highlights and labels aspects of the surface structure that contribute to discourse cohesion, thematic development and so forth. This is a useful project, not to be despised by advocates of the traditional grammar.

So.

Read dead grammarians.

Read linguists.

It’s not an either or. It’s both and.

This is a continuation of my series examining Devine and Stephen’s book Discontinuous Syntax: Hyperbaton in Greek. Today’s post consists of much rewriting of about 15 pages I lost back in February when my hard drive died.

See also:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Weak Focus Y₂ Hyperbaton[1]

Most commonly, Y₂ Hyperbaton will denote weak focus on the initial head noun with the following adjective marking an additional restriction on the head noun. This additional restriction also tends to be weak focus. The first three instances of Y_­2 Hyperbaton in the New Testament provide an excellent example of this combination of syntactic structure and pragmatic meaning seen below.[2]

(1) τὸ γὰρ ἐν αὐτῇ γεννηθὲν ἐκ πνεύματός ἐστιν ἁγίου
For what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. Matt 1:20.

(2) ὁ λαὸς ὁ καθήμενος ἐν σκότει φῶς εἶδεν μέγα
The people who live in darkness have seen a great light. Matt 4:16

(3) καὶ ἰδοὺ ἄνθρωπος χεῖρα ἔχων ξηράν.
And behold, a man who had a withered hand. Matt 12:10

In these three examples, the author/speaker provides brand new information to the reader/listener. Example (50) is from the monologue of the angel to Joseph regarding the source of Mary’s pregnancy. The clause consists of the known information shared by both the Angel and Joseph: Mary is pregnant. There is a child conceived (τὸ γὰρ ἐν αὐτῇ γεννηθὲν). The predicate of this clause is the completely new, non-contrastive information: the child is from the Holy Spirit (ἐκ πνεύματός ἐστιν ἁγίου).

Example (51) is found within a quotation of Isaiah 9:1-2 in the Gospel of Matthew.[3] The discontinuous phrase appears late enough in the quotation from Isaiah to provide a large enough context for understanding the phrase’s information structure without recourse to the text of Isaiah.[4] The phrase appears following a description of the land of Israel, “Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, / the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan, / Galilee of the Gentiles— / the people living in darkness have seen a great light / on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned” (TNIV). In the greater context of the Gospel, the writer has just described Jesus as traveling through these regions, fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy. Verse 15 is entirely accessible, known information; as does the Subject of the clause in question here (the people). The brand new, prominent information is “light” –a great one.

In the last of these examples (52), Matthew introduces a new scene within the periscope that describes Jesus’ relationship to the Sabbath. With the new scene, come new participants. Since the clause itself introduces brand new information, there is little doubt about the information status of the constituents: καὶ ἰδοὺ (and behold) marks the shift to a new Topic, ἄνθρωπος (a man), which also is the Subject of the clause. The rest of the clause is a participial clause (χεῖρα ἔχων ξηράν, “having a withered hand”) in the predicate position with ἄνθρωπος (a man).

In light of DS’s claims about the discourse function of Y_2­ ­Hyperbaton, these first three examples are rather striking because of them, only the last one even partially parallels their predicted discourse context which Y₂ Hyperbaton should occur. They write, “Two generalizations suggest themselves: first, the verbs are all intransitive, and second … they are all simple verbs of occurrence or existence.”[5] In our examples above, only example (50) is an existential verb and none of the three examples are intransitive. [6]_­

How do we deal with this? On the one hand, it is possible that DS limits their generalizations only to Weak Focus ­Y₂­ Hyperbaton examples where the discontinuous phrase bears the grammatical relation of Subject. This is not explicit in their discussion, but could easily be inferred from the text itself. Earlier they write, “In the simplest type of Y_{­2­ ­}Hyperbaton, [Y₁X] is an ordinary weak focus and the Y₂ Adjective specifies an additional restriction on the noun, and so represents a second weak focus. Some of the clearest instances involve split subject phrases.”[7]

1 Intransitive, Existential, or Occurrence Verbs

If we accept this perspective on the intention of DS, as well as assume that their two generalizations function as separate possibilities rather than two requirements, a clearer picture emerges. Of those instances of Subject ­Y₂ Hyperbaton, all of them fit their generalizations and many of the cases can be paraphrased in English with either, “an expletive there or an extraposed relative clause.”[8] Consider examples (53-55) with an existential verb from the New Testament and Josephus.

(4) καὶ ἐγένοντο ἀστραπαὶ καὶ φωναὶ καὶ βρονταὶ καὶ σεισμὸς ἐγένετο μέγας
And there was lightning and sounds and thunder and there was a great earthquake. Rev 16:18

(5) λίθος δὲ ἦν μέγας ἐπὶ τῷ στόματι τοῦ φρέατος
But there was a large stone on the mouth of the well. Gen 29:2

(6) κατὰ νυκτὸς ἐνάτην ὥραν τοσοῦτο φῶς περιέλαμψε τὸν βωμὸν καὶ τὸν ναόν, ὡς δοκεῖν ἡμέραν εἶναι λαμπράν
By the ninth hour of the night, such a light shone around the altar and the Temple, as to appear that it appeared to be bright day time. Josephus, Wars 6.290

In all three of these examples, the author is not seeking to contrast two items or events (i.e. Strong Focus), rather he is merely reporting that X exists or happened.[9]

There are also Hellenistic examples of Y₂ Hyperbaton with intransitive verbs shown in the following examples.

(7) θύρα γάρ μοι ἀνέῳγεν μεγάλη καὶ ἐνεργής
For a door has opened up to me, a wide and effective one. 1 Cor 16:7

(8) πηγαὶ συνεσχέθησαν αἰώνιοι ἐξ ἀβύσσων ἀπὸ ὀρέων ὑψηλῶν, ὅτι οὐκ ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς ποιῶν δικαιοσύνην καὶ κρίμα.
Eternal Springs were shut up from the depths from the high mountains, because there was no one among them performing righteous and justice. Psalms of Solomon 17:19

(9) Εἰπὸν αὐτῷ ἐπὶ τῷ ἐμῷ ὀνόματι Κρύψον σεαυτόν, καὶ δήλωσον αὐτῷ τέλος ἐπερχόμενον, ὅτι ἡ γῆ ἀπόλλυται πᾶσα, καὶ κατακλυσμὸς μέλλει γίνεσθαι πάσης τῆς γῆς καὶ ἀπολέσει πάντα ὅσα ἔστʼ ἐν αὐτῇ.
Say to him [Noah] in my name, “Hide yourself!” And show him that the coming end: that the entire earth will be destroyed and a severe flood is about to come upon all the earth and will destroy everything on it. Book of Enoch 10.2

Of these three examples, (56) could easily be paraphrased as, “There is a door that has opened to me, wide and effective.” Also, example (58) is particularly striking because it states explicitly the reportive nature of the construction with the angel Uriel commanding the son of Lamech to bring this new information to Noah.

Finally, there is one clear example of Y_{2 ­}Hyperbaton with an occurrence verb in Josephus.[10]

(10) ἀσπασάμενος δὲ τὴν φωνὴν ὁ τοῦ Σαούλου παῖς ὡς νίκην αὐτῷ σημαίνουσαν παραυτίκα μὲν ἀνεχώρησαν ἐξ οὗπερ ὤφθησαν τόπου τοῖς πολεμίοις, παραμειψάμενοι δὲ τοῦτον, ἐπὶ τὴν πέτραν ἧκον ἔρημον οὖσαν τῶν φυλαττόντων διὰ τὴν ὀχυρότητα.
So Saul’s son accepted the voice, as it indicated to him victory. So he immediately came out of the place where they had been seen by their enemies; so he changed his place, and came upon a deserted rock guarded by its own strength. Josephus, Antiquities 6.112

The discontinuous phrase is “ἐπὶ τὴν πέτραν ἧκον ἔρημον” (he came upon a deserted rock). And once again, it is clear that Josephus is merely reporting what he views as the necessary new information in preparation for the more salient events which follow where Jonathan and his armor bearer route the Philistine army.

2 Challenges for DS’ Generalizations?

Now that we have covered the examples which can easily be explained by the generalizations of DS, what shall be done with the rest? Indeed, the majority of instances of Weak Focus Y­₂ Hyperbaton do not , at face value, align themselves to their description. These must be discussed and explained below, either by showing how they fit within the already stated generalization or by adapting and expanding the generalization so that all the data can be explained. This will be the focus of Part VI, which will appear in much better time than Part V did.

[2] There is one construction that could technically appear here, but will be discussed elsewhere, the construction: ἐγὼ χρείαν ἔχω X (cf. Matt 3:14). This structure is technically a Y_2­­ Hyperbaton, but the modifier constituent is so varied it cannot be discussed consistently in this section with its focus specifically on Adjectives. Secondly, the nature of the construction as a stereotyped phrase deserves it own independent discussion later on.

[3] The quotation and its word order differ from both the LXX (Rahlfs) and the Masoretic Text. The LXX reads πορευόμενος instead of καθήμενος and neither the LXX nor the MT has the discontinuous phrase we find in Matt 4:16. For this reason, I do not view this instance of Hyperbaton influenced by its Hebrew source text.

[4] This assumes, of course, that Matthew did not adapt the text himself, but drew from an Isaiah manuscript that included the discontinuous phrase.

[5] DS, 92; they provide no definition for “verbs of occurrence.” But according to Angela Downing and Philip Locke (English Grammar: A University Course [London: Taylor & Francis, 2006], 85), verbs of occurrence are those such as, “appear, disappear, go, come, arrive, depart, vanish, fade, happen…”

[6] Though according to our reading of (52), the discontinuous phrase, with its participle, functions as the semantic predicate of a nominal clause and, by definition, nominal clauses are existential.

[7] DS, 91.

[8] Ibid, 93.

[9] Of note in the Josephus example is that the existential infinitive within the discontinuous phrase is governed by an occurrence verb: to appear.

[10] Since this is the only clear example, the context is quoted more fully.