[B-Greek] Prepositional Phrase [How Did Greeks Think?]

Doug Hoxworth dhoxworth at charter.net
Tue Oct 7 10:29:59 EDT 2003


><Iver>
>I admit that judging emphasis or prominence is rather subjective, but the problem I have with BOTH preposing and postposing for emphasis in a language with such a free word order as Greek has, is that both the writer and the reader would be constantly confused as to what might be the more prominent.

<doug>
but this brings up another question that i've been 
wondering for some time and even more now that i'm trying 
to learn to actually "read" Greek rather than merely 
analyze it. i understand that the word order is relatively 
free but my additional question is how did they actually 
think or put the thought together as they read. having 
english as my native tongue when i try and read Greek it 
seems rather disjointed in thought as if the writer just 
keeps adding thoughts. i mean since they read from left to 
right then the sentence has to make sense as one reads it 
now just as we analyze it, parse it, diagram it, translate 
it, etc.

perhaps this is just my complete ignorance as to foreign 
language but i'm trying to get my arms around this idea of 
how they put ideas and thoughts together. i really don't 
know exactly what i'm asking...it really seems rather 
amorphous. but in Rev 13:8 in particular, how would the 
reader know when coming to the final prepositional phrase 
that it was supposed to modify the verb which came way 
before it (i.e., it is quite distant from it)?



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