[B-Greek] Predicate as topic, word order Jc 5:17
Mike Sangrey
MSangrey at BlueFeltHat.org
Tue Jun 28 18:13:35 EDT 2005
If I may point out something which may be insultingly obvious to those
involved in this discussion (or maybe wrong):
It appears to this novice that the "thing" (if you will) that determines
(and I choose that word on purpose) whether something is prominent in a
sentence has to do with pragmatics (I'm defining 'pragmatics' here as
how the words interact with the context. And 'context' is defined as
not only the text around the text, but also the entire amount of
relevant information which can reasonably be expected to be known by the
audience). I actually suspected this as you all were going into this
discussion and it is rather interesting to me that the evidence being
brought forth for each side appears to turn on this very thing--
pragmatics.
Might I suggest that this is why it is so very hard to nail down. You
can't define it in terms of syntax. Syntax is relevant, but it isn't
the determining factor. The relative saliency of a piece of information
must be defined in terms of the pragmatic function (which we don't
understand very well at this point in the development of the art of
linguistics). Once we understand the pragmatic function, then we'll be
able to determine how the syntax is used to bring about the saliency.
What I think we'll see is that certain pragmatic functions will utilize
one form of syntax while another pragmatic function will utilize a
different syntax to achieve the same result.
One can't argue from syntax to saliency directly. It's pragmatics to
saliency with syntactic support.
Well, like I said...a novice. My apologies if you all are working on
something much deeper and I just don't understand.
--
Mike Sangrey
msangrey AT BlueFeltHat.org
Landisburg, Pa.
"The first one last wins."
"A net of highly cohesive details reveals the truth."
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