Matt. 12:32
Edgar Foster
questioning1 at yahoo.com
Thu Jul 23 16:13:38 EDT 1998
--Jim West wrote:
> Please, pardon the question, but what exactly is "deep structure"?
Is this some new literary methodology? If so, what is the
source? I have not heard of it (though I do my best to keep up with
developments in Biblical Studies).<
> What is the purpose of such a reading? What are the procedures used
to employ the method?<
Dear Jim,
According to psychologists, sentences have both a surface and deep
structure. Surface structure has reference to the words
and phrases that make up a sentence. Deep structure is the underlying
meaning of the words and phrases in a sentence. Deep
structure per se isn't "new", but the application of deep structure to
Biblical studies is a fairly "new" development.
> What are the goals of this method? What can it show? What does it
fail to show?<
Linguist Norm Chomsky (1957) discovered that grammar allows the
speaker to move from surface struture to deep structure
via the components of semantics and syntax. These movements are called
transformations. Thus, the goal of deep structure is
to ascertain the essential or underlying meaning behind the morphemes,
and lexemes in a sentence. One way this can be done,
and the model I'm working with is to classify words semantically (over
against classifying them grammatically).
Let us use as an example, John 1:1c.
KAI is grammatically a copulative. Semantically, however, it is a
relational term. QEOS is grammatically a substantive.
Semantically, it is an object. Both HN and hO are also relational
words. Finally, LOGOS is an object. Thus the semantic
classification of 1:1c would be as follows:
KAI (R) + QEOS (O) + HN (R) + hO (R) + LOGOS (O)
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