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Discontinuous Syntax: article

Posted: January 4th, 2014, 12:55 pm
by Stirling Bartholomew
Was talking on another forum with a classics scholar yesterday. He affirmed that the following is impossible greek:

The article separated from it's participle by a finite verb where the articular participle is the subject of that finite verb. I am always wondering about statements made in the NT commentaries and grammars about "impossible" greek syntax. Is this a case of impossible syntax?


It's been a while since I looked at
Discontinuous Syntax: Hyperbaton in Greek
Andrew M. Devine, Laurence D. Stephens

I didn't see anything promising in the table of contents.

Re: Discontinuous Syntax: article

Posted: January 4th, 2014, 1:11 pm
by MAubrey
Stirling Bartholomew wrote:Was talking on another forum with a classics scholar yesterday. He affirmed that the following is impossible greek:

The article separated from it's participle by a finite verb where the articular participle is the subject of that finite verb. I am always wondering about statements made in the NT commentaries and grammars about "impossible" greek syntax. Is this a case of impossible syntax?
Impossible...maybe. If only the article is moved forward, then, yes, it is impossible. If, however, the article and something else internal to the participle's phrase is also moved forward, then in theory, that might be possible. I'm not sure that I've ever seen it with participles, but it certainly happens with other types of arguments.
Stirling Bartholomew wrote:It's been a while since I looked at
Discontinuous Syntax: Hyperbaton in Greek
Andrew M. Devine, Laurence D. Stephens

I didn't see anything promising in the table of contents.
The book has its problems theoretically, but the data they collect and their observations about that data is incredibly useful. Phrase discontinuity cannot be explained by phrase structure alone. It exists at the interface of syntax, information structure, and prosodic phonology.

Re: Discontinuous Syntax: article

Posted: January 4th, 2014, 2:16 pm
by Stirling Bartholomew
MAubrey wrote:
Stirling Bartholomew wrote:Was talking on another forum with a classics scholar yesterday. He affirmed that the following is impossible greek:

The article separated from it's participle by a finite verb where the articular participle is the subject of that finite verb. I am always wondering about statements made in the NT commentaries and grammars about "impossible" greek syntax. Is this a case of impossible syntax?
Impossible...maybe. If only the article is moved forward, then, yes, it is impossible. If, however, the article and something else internal to the participle's phrase is also moved forward, then in theory, that might be possible. I'm not sure that I've ever seen it with participles, but it certainly happens with other types of arguments.
What if we make the question more general. Is it possible for a noun phrase to interrupted by the finite verb, where the noun phrase is an argument for that verb? In other words, the noun phrase is either a subject or object of the finite verb and the constituents that make up the noun phrase are located both before and after the finite verb.

Re: Discontinuous Syntax: article

Posted: January 4th, 2014, 4:00 pm
by cwconrad
Stirling Bartholomew wrote:
MAubrey wrote:
Stirling Bartholomew wrote:Was talking on another forum with a classics scholar yesterday. He affirmed that the following is impossible greek:

The article separated from it's participle by a finite verb where the articular participle is the subject of that finite verb. I am always wondering about statements made in the NT commentaries and grammars about "impossible" greek syntax. Is this a case of impossible syntax?
Impossible...maybe. If only the article is moved forward, then, yes, it is impossible. If, however, the article and something else internal to the participle's phrase is also moved forward, then in theory, that might be possible. I'm not sure that I've ever seen it with participles, but it certainly happens with other types of arguments.
What if we make the question more general. Is it possible for a noun phrase to interrupted by the finite verb, where the noun phrase is an argument for that verb? In other words, the noun phrase is either a subject or object of the finite verb and the constituents that make up the noun phrase are located both before and after the finite verb.
How about Iliad 1.5 Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή, 1.10 νοῦσον ἀνὰ στρατὸν ὄρσε κακήν, 1.20 παῖδα δ’ ἐμοὶ λύσαιτε φίλην ... But perhaps that's not what you had in mind.

Re: Discontinuous Syntax: article

Posted: January 4th, 2014, 4:35 pm
by MAubrey
Stirling Bartholomew wrote:
MAubrey wrote:
Stirling Bartholomew wrote:Was talking on another forum with a classics scholar yesterday. He affirmed that the following is impossible greek:

The article separated from it's participle by a finite verb where the articular participle is the subject of that finite verb. I am always wondering about statements made in the NT commentaries and grammars about "impossible" greek syntax. Is this a case of impossible syntax?
Impossible...maybe. If only the article is moved forward, then, yes, it is impossible. If, however, the article and something else internal to the participle's phrase is also moved forward, then in theory, that might be possible. I'm not sure that I've ever seen it with participles, but it certainly happens with other types of arguments.
What if we make the question more general. Is it possible for a noun phrase to interrupted by the finite verb, where the noun phrase is an argument for that verb? In other words, the noun phrase is either a subject or object of the finite verb and the constituents that make up the noun phrase are located both before and after the finite verb.
Absolutely. You can interrupt an NP by even more than just the finite verb, even.

There's lots of data here that I collected while working through Devine & Stephens: http://evepheso.wordpress.com/studies-i ... n-phrases/

Re: Discontinuous Syntax: article

Posted: January 4th, 2014, 6:24 pm
by Stephen Carlson
Stirling Bartholomew wrote:What if we make the question more general. Is it possible for a noun phrase to interrupted by the finite verb, where the noun phrase is an argument for that verb? In other words, the noun phrase is either a subject or object of the finite verb and the constituents that make up the noun phrase are located both before and after the finite verb.
You might then find this article relevant: Brian Agbayani and Chris Golston, Phonological movement in Classical Greek, Language 86 (2010): 133-167. The article argues that much of the movement in Greek obeys prosodic constraints rather than syntax.

Re: Discontinuous Syntax: article

Posted: January 4th, 2014, 11:05 pm
by MAubrey
Stephen Carlson wrote:
Stirling Bartholomew wrote:What if we make the question more general. Is it possible for a noun phrase to interrupted by the finite verb, where the noun phrase is an argument for that verb? In other words, the noun phrase is either a subject or object of the finite verb and the constituents that make up the noun phrase are located both before and after the finite verb.
You might then find this article relevant: Brian Agbayani and Chris Golston, Phonological movement in Classical Greek, Language 86 (2010): 133-167. The article argues that much of the movement in Greek obeys prosodic constraints rather than syntax.
Well, the article is much bigger than that. They're arguing for a complete reorganization of Chomsky's Minimalist Program. But yes, it's language specific statements are a good critique of Devine and Stephens, too: discontinuous syntax very much involves the "movement" (for later of a better term; uh, placement?) of "non-constituents," and for that reason a syntax oriented explanation does not work. With that said, their proposal is actually rather terrible--they butcher Greek clitics, in particular.

I presented a paper comparing Devine and Stephens and Agbayani and Golston in my Survey of Linguistic Theories class in 2011.

Re: Discontinuous Syntax: article

Posted: January 5th, 2014, 6:09 am
by Stephen Carlson
MAubrey wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:You might then find this article relevant: Brian Agbayani and Chris Golston, Phonological movement in Classical Greek, Language 86 (2010): 133-167. The article argues that much of the movement in Greek obeys prosodic constraints rather than syntax.
Well, the article is much bigger than that. They're arguing for a complete reorganization of Chomsky's Minimalist Program. But yes, it's language specific statements are a good critique of Devine and Stephens, too: discontinuous syntax very much involves the "movement" (for later of a better term; uh, placement?) of "non-constituents," and for that reason a syntax oriented explanation does not work. With that said, their proposal is actually rather terrible--they butcher Greek clitics, in particular.
I like the article for its good set of data that needs to be accounted for by any theory. I feel the specific proposals are at best incomplete; for example, not all of their constraints are ranked and there's not enough of them. Also, I still don't know what to make of OT ("Optimality Theory")..

As for their view on clitics, yeah, I think their work is still inadequate. The problems are even more manifest in their article, Second-position is first-position: Wackernagel's Law and the role of clausal conjunction, Indogermanische Forschungen 115 (2010), 1-21. For example, their proposals cannot explain any of the examples I've been recently posting here.
MAubrey wrote:I presented a paper comparing Devine and Stephens and Agbayani and Golston in my Survey of Linguistic Theories class in 2011.
If you don't mind sharing, I'd love to read it.

Re: Discontinuous Syntax: article

Posted: January 5th, 2014, 10:37 am
by MAubrey
Stephen Carlson wrote:I like the article for its good set of data that needs to be accounted for by any theory. I feel the specific proposals are at best incomplete; for example, not all of their constraints are ranked and there's not enough of them. Also, I still don't know what to make of OT ("Optimality Theory").
OT is an odd animal for syntax. But it's the standard theoretical model for virtually all phonological analysis these days. It isn't without its problems, but most phonologists use it because no better alternative has been put forward.
Stephen Carlson wrote:As for their view on clitics, yeah, I think their work is still inadequate. The problems are even more manifest in their article, Second-position is first-position: Wackernagel's Law and the role of clausal conjunction, Indogermanische Forschungen 115 (2010), 1-21. For example, their proposals cannot explain any of the examples I've been recently posting here.
MAubrey wrote:I presented a paper comparing Devine and Stephens and Agbayani and Golston in my Survey of Linguistic Theories class in 2011.
If you don't mind sharing, I'd love to read it.
Well, technically you already have back in 2011. But I can send it again, if you'd like.

Re: Discontinuous Syntax: article

Posted: January 5th, 2014, 11:17 am
by Stephen Hughes
Stirling Bartholomew wrote:Was talking on another forum with a classics scholar yesterday. He affirmed that the following is impossible greek:

The article separated from it's participle by a finite verb where the articular participle is the subject of that finite verb. I am always wondering about statements made in the NT commentaries and grammars about "impossible" greek syntax. Is this a case of impossible syntax?
I find this hard to follow. Should there be some Greek text in here that you are discussing?