Cindy Westfall
Mark Beatty
marksresearch at hawaii.rr.com
Fri Jun 22 02:19:36 EDT 2001
Dear Cindy,
Thank you for your comments. I hope the following addresses your concerns.
First, my comments on word order in my post attempted to be in non technical
language. My terms, however, come out of a very theoretical background.
"Uneconomic" means something like, "violating immediate feature checking by
forcing formation of chains rather then base generating the word or phrase
in an environment allowing immediate feature checking." I believe this is in
line with the main stream syntax theories of linguistics from people like
Noam Chomsky. As I mentioned in my last contribution, we can be confident
that such a definition of "uneconomic" is correct if it actually does work
in all the 6,808 living languages--as well as many dead ones.
In light of this, my theory, if correct, should work not only in all
languages in the world but in all forms of Greek, Classical, Biblical,
Modern, and all the dialects of them. As I understand Greek, this aspect of
syntax has not changed in the last 2,500 or so years. That five of the
occurrences are quotes from the LXX is not relevant to the mechanics of
syntax. If the word order has been changed AND there was some clear
discourse purpose then that could support my theories indirrectly. The
reason for any change might simply be because the LXX translation was not
that good, or the point the author of Hebrews was making is different than
the point the author of the particular LXX book was making. If it was the
same, then perhaps both had some reason for using an uneconomic word order.
I have not looked up the OT reference for theoretical reasons. The reason I
have not examined it is that my theory states that the reason behind
uneconomic word order is semantic (which I take to subsume discourse). To
answer why the LXX writers used a certain uneconomic form would involve
analyzing in depth a large portion of scripture. To merely identify it as
uneconomic is according to mechanical rules of syntax and, according to my
theoretical package, a simple task.
As the the four occurrences of QEOS in the S ... V pattern, I include the
following footnotes in my dissertation:
FOOTNOTE: This list was found using Gramcord. The context was set to 5, and
thus any nominative nouns more than four words away from the verb would not
have come up on this search. Some occurrences were possibly missed because
of this. This was considered acceptable for this study, because if the
subject is too far from the verb then other variables are at play. These
variables could hinder comparing verb-subject and subject-verb patterns. In
addition, questions were not considered.
FOOTNOTE: When searching Gramcord certain verbs can be omitted. In this
search eimi and ginomai were excluded.
For me Hebrews 1:1 counts as a verb more than 5 words away from the noun. O
QEOS is next to a participle which is not relevant to my claims. The
relevant verb is the indicative ELALHSEN in 1:2.
In my dissertation I consider other examples that give empirical support to
my theories. I hope the answers provided here adequately address the
concerns expressed. When I presented my dissertation to my committee they
used words like "shocked" and "impressed" by this finding. The reason I
consider the list of examples as significant is that this observation is a
result of my theoretical lens. My theoretical perspective that is wholly
independent from even Biblical Greek resulted in finding this pattern in the
book of Hebrews. I found a similar pattern with the word KURIOS. Below are
several relevant paragraphs discussing these findings.
In Hebrews there are 43[1] occurrences of the verb-subject pattern relevant
to this study. The 12 copulative verbs[2] were not considered here because
both arguments of such verbs have the same case. Infinitives and participles
were also not considered here because they do not assign nominative case to
their external arguments (that is their subjects). These 43 occurrences are
listed in (260).
Of the 43 uneconomic subject structures, 10 have qeov" God as the subject,
9 have kuvrio" Lord, 3 have iJerei'" priest, and 2 have AbraaVm
Abraham. The other 13 subjects, occurring only once are (in order from
above): angels, the Spirit, our fathers, the word of the message, a Sabbath
rest, Jesus, Melchizedek, the law, high priest, Moses, one (covenant),
Christ, his enemies, sacrifice, soul, ancestors, descendants, Isaac, and
women. Six of these occurrences follow the verb levgw to speak.
There are 31 occurrences of subject-verb patterns. As above, copulative
verbs, questions, infinitives and participles were omitted. These
subject-verb patterns are listed in (261).
Of these 31, none have qeov" God as the subject, none have kuvrio" Lord,
1 has iJerei'" priest, and 2 have AbraaVm Abraham. The only multiple
occurrence subject is Mwu>sh'" Moses that occurs 4 times. The other 24
subjects in the economic word order, in the verse order as in (261), are:
your years, every violation and disobedience, the children, every house,
dead bodies, Joshua, Christ, mortal men, Levi, the people, the law, the day,
a tent, gifts and sacrifices, the high priest, every priest, Abel, the
Egyptians, the walls of Jericho, Rahab, an animal, his voice, mutual love,
the bodies.
Given the reasonable limits I put on my data, I think I covered all relevant
passages of this particular syntactic structure in the Book of Hebrews. In
my dissertation I did support my theories with a variety of other syntactic
structures. Further support for my theories was also mentioned in my last
post to include the variable positions of prepositions and echo questions in
both English and Greek. My present research is applying my theoretical
package to Vietnamese. I am also preparing a paper for ETS in November,
applying these theories to Hebrews 4:12-13. My theories, however, are an
integrated package. Seeming holes in one component (such as syntax for
example) are addressed in the other component (semantics for example).
Again thank you for your interest and response. When my dissertation comes
out I hope you might carefully and critically consider it. I make very
far-reaching but specific claims that are falsifiable if wrong. I look
forward to feedback from research whether it supports or damages my
theoretical package. That is the process of advancing a theory.
Sincerely,
Mark Beatty
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