[B-Greek] Rom 9:16 information structure
Elizabeth Kline
kline-dekoning at earthlink.net
Wed Jun 29 14:25:28 EDT 2005
Rom. 9:16 ARA OUN OU TOU QELONTOS OUDE TOU TRECONTOS ALLA TOU ELEWNTOS QEOU.
This text was thrown out as a foil. It presents some difficulties.
The first question to address is information status. It looks like all the
nominal elements TOU QELONTOS ... TOU TRECONTOS ... QEOU are old
information. These elements have either been specifically mentioned or are
inferable from the preceding context.
This is a compound contrastive construction. The first contrast is OU TOU
QELONTOS OUDE TOU TRECONTOS. The first contrast can be profitably viewed as
a single element (constituent) in the second contrast with ALLA TOU ELEWNTOS
QEOU. Using Helma Dik's approach I am not sure if we would call the second
contrast a contrast of Focus or a contrast of Topic. Both elements in the
second contrast provided topical linkage to the previous discourse. The
local focus element appears to be ELEWNTOS QEOU. I am tempted to say the
whole verse is focal in relation to the preceding discourse ARA OUN ...
with a contrastive focus internal structure OU ... OUDE ... ALLA ...
For contrastive focus see Helma Dik chapter 2.
I am not going to argue vehemently to defend this analysis.
Romans would be the last place I would go to illustrate information
structure analysis. I would use narrative.
Elizabeth Kline
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