Constituents in the "wrong places"?

Iver Larsen iver_larsen at sil.org
Wed Mar 13 04:20:09 EST 2002


>
> Mark 4.30b reads:
>
> EN TINI AUTHN PARABOLHi QWMEN;
>
> AUTHN, the object of the verb, is placed within
> the noun phrase TINI PARABOLHi. So, AUTHN which is
> not part of the noun phrase is placed within it.
>
> I can understand free word order, but this example
> seems to be more than free word order. Can you explain
> what is going on here?

Yes, it is a fairly extreme case of free word order that noun phrases are
cut into pieces by other phrases or parts of phrases. But it happens quite
often in Greek. I am not aware of other languages that do this kind of
thing, so for a linguist, it is an unusual phenomenon to see.

Iver Larsen




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