[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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