[B-Greek] partial fronting for marking items, mostly focus
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Mon May 29 09:21:56 EDT 2006
I am glad to see that the discussion on Mt 1:20 PNEUMATOS ESTIN AGIOU
correctly recognized that PNEUMATOS AGIOU go together as two
genitives. AGIOU is certainly not apredicate nominative. However, a more
important issue is at work and was not discussed.
Mt 1:20: PNEUMATOS (ESTIN) is marked and fronted. Thus, the phrase PNEUMATOS
AGIOU is only partially marked with special pragmatics. "that which is born"
functions as topic/contexualization and "spirit" is the marked, most salient
piece of the sentence. In other words, PNEUMATOS is Focus, or what is
traditionally called emphasis. This is actually quite common in Greek.
I would read Carl's example similarly
Lk 2:25 ... KAI PNEUMA HN hAGION EP' AUTON.
"Spirit" has been fronted and is marking something that was distinguishing
Symeon from the general class of "pious".
Consider Acts 16:23
POLLAS EPIQENTES AUTOIS PLHGAS
many hitting/putting on them blows
EBALON EIS FULAKON
they threw [them] into jail
POLLAS PLHGAS is one object phrase but POLLAS is marked by fronting and is
also Focus here.
Close examples may be provided in Acts 17:16 and 18:
16 QEWROUNTOS KATEIDOLON OUSAN THN POLIN
while noticing full-of-idols being the city
The predicate has been fronted before the participle. I would read it as the
most salient detail and marked by fronting within its unit.
18 XENWN DAIMONIWN DOKEI KATAGGELEUS EINAI
of foreign spirits he seems a preacher to be
The phrase "preacher of foreign spirits has been broken up and partially
fronted and the XENWN DAIMONIWN is the most salient, thus Focus.
topical, non-focal, split frontings are possible, too.
Haven't looked for these but a complex one comes to mind:
Aesop fable "man with wooden god":
two actions are compared and produce two different results:
TIMWNTA SE GAR OUDEN WFELHSAS ME
while honoring you, for, nothing you profited me
the participle 'honoring' is accusative to match ME 'me', and fronted to
provide a contextualizing point of comparison. The SE is simply dragged
along to the front by the participle and the post-posed GAR shows that the
whole phrase was rhetorically one unit.
The salient point is that the god did n o t h i n g.
The man kept getting poorer while he was praying to the idol.
I read NOTHING as Focus (pragmatically marked most salient item) according
to the author. (Iver or others may disagree, but that is how I read this
Greek.)
TUPTHSANTA DE POLLOIS KALOIS HMEIPSW
having-smacked [you], but, many good things you recompensed
the smashing (of the idol's head against the wall) is the compared
situation, a contexualization within my schema, and the most salient point
is the "many good things" that the man received (in the story a treasure of
gold flowed out of the head).
This may not be the clearest example of a split-fronting for
contextualization since 3 of the four items are unpredicatible/unexpected
(doing NOTHING, hitting the god, getting a treasure). But at least it is an
enjoyable example.
The point of all the above is that Mt 1:20 shows interesting pragmatics,
which is why people want to read Greek, right?
ERRWSQE
Randall Buth
--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
randallbuth at gmail.com
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list