[B-Greek] Fronting for Emphasis in 1 John
Martin Culy
MCuly at briercrest.ca
Fri Nov 5 15:38:04 EST 2004
Mitch Larramore wrote:
Dr. Culy in 1 John notes quite a few fronting constructions, each denoting
emphasis. I'm wondering how a letter the size of 1 John (very short) can
have so much emphases based on fronting. With so much fronting (I'm not even
through with the 2nd chapter), doesn't that tend to negate "emphasis?"
___________________
First, let me commend Mitch for his insightful question. I agree that if
fronting always emphasizes the constituent in question, the sheer number of
emphatic elements would cancel each other out. In very few cases throughout
the handbook, though, do I actually associate the phenomenon of fronting
with "emphasis." I typically use the term "prominence" when referring to
fronting. Basing my analysis on what is thought by many to be the unmarked
word order for Koine Greek (verb-subject-object), I suggest that "Anything
that precedes the verb is 'fronted,' in order to highlight the information
in some way" (p. 13). Not everyone would agree with such a claim. (I
believe Carl Conrad, for example, has serious reservations about such an
analysis.)
While "prominence" and "emphasis" are sometimes used synonymously (as in one
author I quote in the handbook), others distinguish the two terms. My
intention was to view fronting primarily as a prominence marker that
indicates rhetorical underlining. This does not mean that every fronted
element is emphasized, per se; it simply provides the reader with some
linguistic clues concerning which information is more important throughout
the text. It thus serves a similar function to intonation in spoken English
by drawing greater attention to certain parts of a discourse without
necessarily emphasizing them. In my view, we should expect such markers of
prominence to appear in significant numbers in hortatory texts like 1 John.
Some linguists distinguish this type of prominence from emphasis using the
label "focus." Where emphasis "highlights an item of information which will
be surprising to the hearer" (and we thus don't expect it to occur very
often in a text), focus draws the reader's attention to information that is
"of particular interest or significance" (and is thus fairly common in a
hortatory discourse). Perhaps this distinction should have been clarified
in the handbook.
Martin Culy
Associate Professor of New Testament and Greek
Briercrest College and Seminary
510 College Drive
Caronport, SK S0H 0S0
Phone: (306) 756-3207
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