Word Order Signifigance: Mark 3.1

Moon-Ryul Jung moon at saint.soongsil.ac.kr
Sun May 16 13:06:53 EDT 1999


On 05/16/99, ""George Blaisdell" <maqhth at hotmail.com>" wrote:
> HN EKEI ANQRWPOS EXHRAMMENHN ECWN THN CEIRA. [Mark 3:1]
> 
> A fun thing about a literal rending of this sentence is that it sounds like the beginning of a limmerick:
> 
> Was existing in that place a man
> Being withered is having the hand
> 
> Any takers???  :-)
> 

George, I have read Jeffrey's post and basically would like to
agree with him. But I also think that the mental pictures of
different authors about the same situation could be different,
and the difference can be reflected by the word order and 
other things. The transposed elements from their normal places
carry some emphasis. In the case of
HN EKEI ANQRWPOS EXHRAMMENHN ECWN THN CEIRA,
the "normal" order would be
HN EKEI ANQRWPOS ECWN THN CEIRA EXHRAMMENHN. [ 

Then the only element that is considered "transposed" is 
EXHRAMMENHN. Then EXHRAMMENHN is at the "beginning" of a phrase, and
its position at the "center" of the sentence can be considered 
accidental. Being transposed to the beginning of a phrase, EXHRAMMENHN
receives some emphasis. But it seems that that's all there is. 

Cheers!

Moon-Ryul Jung
Assistant Professor
Dept of Computer Science
Soongsil University
Seoul, Korea
 



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