[B-Greek] Re: 1 Cor. 14:8 - word order, BDF & Turner

Iver Larsen iver at larsen.dk
Tue May 31 09:14:31 EDT 2005


> Shalom Chet,
> You, too, cover so much interesting ground that it is difficult to
> write a single response. I will put comments below with [**]
>
> > So, Randall, I think there is ample justification for you to have
> written that three elements were fronted if by that you meant fronted
> from a hypothetical neutral verb-subject-object order, >
>
> ** Thank you. For me, the neutral order comes from de-pramaticizing a
> 'deep structure', not from a statistical count. I cited Dik because
> she worked on Herodotus, an ancient author that Rife might have called
> "Subject-Object-Verb" yet she analyzed as "Verb-Subject-Object". It
> all boils down to identifying the pragmatic movements being
> involved.**

When two scholars reach opposite conclusions about word order based on the
same data, I am inclined to think that none of them got it quite right. My
feeling is that if we ask "Is Greek a verb-initial or verb-final language?"
the answer will be "neither", because the question is wrong. Is there a
neutral order? I doubt it, but it is hard to prove.

For a language like Greek, I believe that it is important to look at the
semantic content of a verb, rather than just whether it is a verb or not.
For instance, I expect verbs that carry a heavy semantic weight in the
sentence to come first in the clause unless another item is relatively more
important. On the other hand a verb with little semantic content like "to
be" will very rarely be placed first in the clause, simply because other
elements are relatively more prominent in order to convey the essential
meaning. If the verb "to be" is used to indicate existence, it is more
likely to be placed towards the left than if it is used as a copula. in
fact, when used as a copula, it is often moved so much down the prominence
slope that it disappears altogether.

Iver Larsen




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