[B-Greek] word order in Aesop

R Yochanan Bitan Buth ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Sun Jun 26 18:40:37 EDT 2005


Shalom Iver, Thank you for your response. 
I will intersperse with **comments**

EGRAYEN Buth:

> A dying farmer gives sly advice to his sons:
> TEKNIA, EN MIA MOU TWN AMPELWN QHSAUROS APOKEITAI
> Τεκνία, ἐν µιᾷ µου τῶν ἀµπέλων θησαυρὸς ἀπόκειται. 
> CHILREN, IN ONE OF MY VINES A TREASURE LIES

Or in a freer rendering with a different word order:  Children, there is a treasure in one of my vines

** good English, this is exactly how I read the pragmatics, introducing 'treasure' as the salient point using an existential structure.**

The word "one" is inherently emphatic. Merely by mentioning "one", a contrast to the others has been set up. That is why a fronted position for "one" is pragmatically unmarked (it is expected to be in that position).

**Sorry, can't see 'one' as inherently emphatic. 'one', not 'two'? Yet to claim that it is 'emphatic', 'fronted', and 'pragmatically unmarked' seems to scramble definitions.**
 
> 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. 

If that is so, the pertinent question is how to get the inheritance, and that is probably why "one of my vines" is fronted.

** Except that you have us jump from an assumable 'inheritance' to an [unknown] 'treasure'. (If they knew the nature of this treasure they may not have done the work!)**
 
> However, a couple of items stand out:
> 
> 1. the subject QHSAUROS may be considered the most salient part 
> of the sentence. It is the lust for treasure and wealth that will 
> drive the sons to plow the whole vineyard and thus learn the art 
> of farming. The QHSAUROS must be considered new or surprising for 
> the sons or else they would not have been tricked into digging up 
> the field.

I am afraid I cannot follow the reasoning for assuming the treasure itself to be surprising rather than its identification and placement. 

** Because the treasure is both 'unknown' and turns out to be contrary to their expectations. Ergo, there was no previously assumed treasure as a starting point. If there had been a known treasure, then they got cheated, because it still wasn't found.**

...

> 2. If point number one is true, then the fronting of ‘one of my 
> vines’ is not Focus or the ‘most emphatic’ part of the sentence. 
> It would serve as a marked Contextualization (a ‘Topic’ in common 
> linguistic terms though not the topic/subject of the sentence).

The "Topic" and "Comment" theory of linguistics is popular in many circles, although fairly new (Halliday and others). 

**You are mixing topic/comment (=~functional sentence perspective) terminology with pragmatic movement/placement rules. The analysis in the first email was arguing against a topic-comment FSP continuum, it assumed that pragmatic placement rules may operate during clause generation.**

I have personally never felt that it is a satisfactory or realistic description of language use. In my opinion, it is too simple by assuming a dichotomistic view of communication, i.e. dividing a clause into only two parts: topic and comment. But it is also too complicated, because the theorists build a complex system of rules on top of the basic dichotomy.

**Agreed. As stated, the analysis of a fronted contextualization and a fronted Focus followed by the remaining default is not Topic/Comment theory.** 

ERRWSO
Randall Buth 






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