Colonization

Jonathan Robie
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Colonization

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Carlson wrote:All one period without a finite verb in sight!

For a close reading, I would suggest that the first step is to break the period down into its colons (κῶλα) or intonation / information units, each can be phrased in a single breath and basically corresponding to one idea (referent, state, or event). I would suggest the following breakdown (it is possible that some of these colons can be merged together, perhaps 1c-d, 1e-f, and 4b-c):

1a Παῦλος
1b ἀπόστολος,
1c οὐκ ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων
1d οὐδὲ δι’ ἀνθρώπου
1e ἀλλὰ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ θεοῦ πατρὸς
1f τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν,
2a καὶ οἱ σὺν ἐμοὶ πάντες ἀδελφοί,
2b ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις τῆς Γαλατίας·
3a χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς καὶ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ,
4a τοῦ δόντος ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν
4b ὅπως ἐξέληται ἡμᾶς ἐκ τοῦ αἰῶνος τοῦ ἐνεστῶτος πονηροῦ
4c κατὰ τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ πατρὸς ἡμῶν,
5a ᾧ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων·
5b ἀμήν.

As you can see, the modern punctuation does not finely segment the text.
I am comparing this to the syntax tree here:

http://biblicalhumanities.org/sandbox/g ... tians.html

I don't know how you are breaking this down, what rules do you use? Some of these, like 3a, are much more complex than others, and could be broken down further. How do you decide?
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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Stephen Carlson
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Re: Colonization

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Jonathan Robie wrote:I don't know how you are breaking this down, what rules do you use? Some of these, like 3a, are much more complex than others, and could be broken down further. How do you decide?
It's a combination of syntactic and pragmatic criteria, and based on the research revolving around Wackernagel's Law. The hardest for me is deciding whether post-verbal adjuncts (usually prepositional phrases) go into their own colon. Perhaps it depends on the rate of speaking?

At any rate, I tend to err on the side of over-segmenting post verbal adjuncts on the "one idea per unit" notion, but in speech they may be merged. None of the interesting stuff with colons turns on this, however.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
cwconrad
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Re: Colonization

Post by cwconrad »

I'm going to offer an inappropriate comment here, but it can be expunged if anyone takes offense at it. The word "colonization" appears to have taken on a new meaning; it has been uprooted from the process of migration and community-forming and transplanted into the realm of linguistics, where it is likely to increase and multiply into a thriving new generation of jargon. I wish that we could, as a former Secretary of State once expresssed it, "caveat that." Would an existing word such as "segmentation" suffice? Or might we simply speak of "breaking the text iinto natural units"?
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Colonization

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I would prefer "segmentation." I understand Jonathan to be somewhat playful in titling this thread.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Jonathan Robie
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Re: Colonization

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Carlson wrote:I would prefer "segmentation." I understand Jonathan to be somewhat playful in titling this thread.
Sorry, I saw the term 'colons' and created a verb without thinking. I also prefer 'segmentation'.

Stephen: from your description, I don't know if this is highly subjective and largely according to feel, or a methodology that produces essentially the same results when two different people do it. I like segmenting texts, and do it intuitively, but you seem to imply a method here.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Colonization

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Aside from Wackernagel and Fränkel, there hasn't been much scholarship on it until fairly recently, and it desperately needs to be connected with modern linguistic theory. Frank Scheppers has written a book, The Colon Hypothesis, that proposes some rules (looking for "introductives," "post-positives" like δέ, etc.), but largely only in engagement with the older scholarship.

There is a recent master's thesis under Mark Janse of U. Ghent by a certain Samuel Zakowski that lays out some of the concepts: http://lib.ugent.be/fulltxt/RUG01/001/8 ... 001_AC.pdf
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Jonathan Robie
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Re: Colonization

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen - why did you segment these phrases like this:

ἀλλὰ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ θεοῦ πατρὸς
τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν,

and not like this?

ἀλλὰ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ
καὶ θεοῦ πατρὸς τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν,

or like this?

ἀλλὰ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ
καὶ θεοῦ πατρὸς
τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν,
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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Stephen Carlson
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Segmentation

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Good questions.

There are three factors that indicate to me that τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν should get its own segment (colon):
  1. Appositional participial clauses tend to get their own colon.
  2. Weak pronoun αὐτόν tends to go into second position of a colon.
  3. Thematic additions tend to get their own colon.
As for διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ θεοῦ πατρός, I keep them together as a coordinated object of a single preposition. I should note that R. Longenecker has a chiastic analysis relating διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ to οὐδὲ δι’ ἀνθρώπου and διὰ ... θεοῦ πατρὸς to οὐκ ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων, which would suggest segmenting 1e further, but I don't quite buy the analysis.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Colonization

Post by Jonathan Robie »

I still haven't quite grasped what you are calling an information unit, and what function it performs.

I would have thought καὶ θεοῦ πατρὸς was a separate information unit because it is the antecedent of τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν.

So what is an information unit, and what is an information unit for?
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Colonization

Post by Stephen Carlson »

OK, I see that the proposed synonym of "information unit" is confusing. Focus on "intonation unit" then; it is tied what can reasonably be phrased in a single breath while still containing basically a single idea. So it fits somewhere between a phrase and a clause. You also read the thesis I linked to for a fuller discussion.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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