[B-Greek] word order in Aesop
Elizabeth Kline
kline-dekoning at earthlink.net
Wed Jun 22 11:36:45 EDT 2005
On 6/22/05 1:22 AM, "R Yochanan Bitan Buth" <ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il> wrote:
> A dying farmer gives sly advice to his sons:
>
>
>
> TEKNIA, EN MIA MOU TWN AMPELWN QHSAUROS APOKEITAI
>
>
> CHILDREN, IN ONE OF MY VINES A TREASURE LIES
>
>
>
> The sentence is pretty much all ‘new’ information, since it begins the
> farmer’s discourse. Of course, the sons know that their father is a farmer
> with a vineyard and they might have hoped for an inheritance. In that sense
> there may be more than one possible way to read the line.
This observation illustrates that there are two kinds of old information.
There is old information which is found within the text itself and
information which was inferable within the situation of original speaker and
auditors. This sentence is "is pretty much all ‘new’ information" within
the text. But only QHSAUROS is new information within the situation. The
rest is inferable from the shared knowledge in the situation of the of
original speaker and auditors.
Elizabeth Kline
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