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

Bart Torbert Bart.Torbert at ihsenergy.com
Tue Oct 7 11:13:33 EDT 2003


I am with Doug on this one.   Didn't there have  to be some sort of 
standard conventions that allowed the meaning of the sentence to be 
understood?

This may seem like a strange question, but did the Greeks actually talk 
this way (i.e. use the same sort of word ordering non-rules, etc as we see 
in written literture)?  Was the freeform word order better for spoken 
language where the speaker could use inflection, tone, gestures, etc to 
put emphasis where it is was required and to give hints what pieces of the 
sentence went with each other?

We today almost worship the ancient Greek texts.   But what was their 
level of importance to the Greeks?  Did they concentrate more on spoken 
conversations, so they really did no care so much if the manner of writing 
was a bit clunky and hard to understand?


Bart
bart.torbert at ihsenergy.com





"Doug Hoxworth" <dhoxworth at charter.net> 
Sent by: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
10/07/2003 08:29 AM

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






><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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