[B-Greek] Left order prominence? Or Contextual and Focal differences? Some examples from John 1.
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Sun Dec 24 16:39:50 EST 2006
XAIREIN
In another thread there was an interesting quote on 'left-order'
prominence. It was helpful to see where Iver Larsen traced such an
idea.
>
>The principle of "left order prominence" was apparenlty first explained by
> Joseph Rotherham in his "The New Testament Critically Emphasized"
> from 1878. It amazes me to this day that some Greek scholars do not
> recognize or use this basic and general principle. The principle says
> "The more to the left an item occurs, the more prominent it is."
> You could also explain it in terms of markedness theory.
Of course, the reason that some Greek scholars do not use this 'basic'
principle is that they think it is wrong. Iver and I have at least
partially disagreed on this on the list before. (Two 'theory'
paragraphs follow below, then concrete examples. "Prominence" would
need some very nuanced definitions in order to handle the
bi-functionality discussed below.)
It is true that 'left-positioning' is treated within many general
linguistics perspectives as a universal marking system. (left
positioning is a metaphor, folks, and is auto-switched when speaking
about languages in a right to left orthography). But it is not true
that it is viewed as marking a single scalar feature. Ever since the
Prague school's 'theme' and 'rheme' linguists have noted the
difference between items that are marked for 'topicality' from items
that are marked for 'focus/emphasis'. These two functions for
presenting special information in a sentence/communication need to be
distinguished in any sensitive reading of a text in any language. In
many languages they can both receive 'left-positioning' as part of
their marking.
I am uncomfortable with Rotherham's "Emphasizing" rule above and think
that it mis-communicates by not distinguishing topical information
from focal information. This is of practical interest to me because of
recording a lot of material for next summer's intensive Greek scholé.
(NAI!) When recording a text a reader must decide where the 'juiciest'
parts of a sentence are and must read specially marked pieces
accordingly. (Ambiguity or multiple possible choices can occur.) Of
course, "a" reading is not necessarily "the" only unique reading, but
it must be judiciously based. And speakers 'tag' their communications
unconsciously when using a language.
Consider John 1:14 KAI O LOGOS SARKS EGENETO
'and the word flesh became'
In its context O LOGOS has already received considerable discussion in
verses 1:1-13. Linguists viewing a distinction between Topic (i.e.
Contextualiztion) and Focus (marked 'salient' [='juiciest']
information) can fairly easily distinguish these in this sentence.
O LOGOS is a CONTEXTUALIZATION, it is setting up what we are going to
talk about. It is repeated, 'old' information in this context and is
NOT the emphatic point that is being made in this sentence.
SARKS happens to be 'new' information, but more importantly, it is a
live candidate to be read as the most salient item of this sentence.
Both LOGOS and SARKS are left-positioned relative to the verb. LOGOS
is most left. But SARKS is most salient. At least so I read.
The question that this sentence answers is not "who/what became
flesh?" but "what did the word become?" The answer, of course, is
SARKS. In terms of FOCAL information, SARKS is more FOCAL, more
emphasized, and more 'surprising' than LOGOS.
Putting John 1:14 into such linguistic terms one may call LOGOS a
Topic and SARKS a Focus.
Both are left-positioned relative to the verb.
How would I read the sentence? I would go so far as to use a high tone
on SARKS. [Note well, high-tone does NOT mark a Focal item, per se.
There will be many high tones in a sentence of significant length in
Greek and both 'unmarked' and 'Topical' items may naturally have a
high tone.] Now while standard prosody requires that syllable-final
high tones on words are marked as "low/grave" when with following
context [i.e. +/- high, which becomes high before a pause], I expect
that a marked Focal item would retain its natural high tone.
(Alternatively, one may read with a louder, paused, low-tone to mark
Focus. Indecision is not allowed, once a Focus interpretion is read,
but one might improbably argue there was no marking of Focus in the
ancient language beyond what was written. [As if languages ever
recorded complete info in the writing system! Questions were read like
statements?!])
These same functions and dynamics can be seen in 1:4 (in this
interpretation of clause breaks)
O GEGONEN EN AUTW ZWH HN
what came into being (Topic) LIFE (Focus) was.
The Topic had already been introduced and was used as a contextual
reference point for the 'marked salient' item LIFE. Go ahead and read
it with it's natural high tone, says me.
Ditto for 1:49
SU BASILEUS EI TOU ISRAEL
The SU 'you' repeats the subject from the previous clause and is not
the Focal, Salient information but the necessary point of discussion
and relation to the context. BASILEUS 'king' is the salient piece of
information and the 'juicy' part. It is also marked by being placed
immediately before the verb EI 'you are'. This marking (left
positioning) is meaningfully significant and not 'mandated by
grammar', as is seen by its optional separation from the rest of its
noun phrase 'king of Israel'. So again, I would recommend that the
word BASILEUS be read with a special intonation.
The above readings are in general syntactic agreement with the study
by Helma Dik on Word Order (1995?). A sentence may have many
contextualizations and there a quite a few different kinds of uses for
Contextualizations and Foci in a sentence. Which is why humans have so
much fun communicating and layering and inverting the shared
parameters. But sometimes it is simple and clear. Like the above?
ERRWSQE
Randall Buth
--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη πληθυνθείη
שלום לכם וברכות
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
randallbuth at gmail.com
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list