[B-Greek] partial fronting for marking items, mostly focus

Awohili at aol.com Awohili at aol.com
Mon May 29 13:26:29 EDT 2006


 
Dear Randall,
 
Thanks for making the subject of Matthew 1:20 much more interesting and  
enlightening.  
 
My original query began as a friend's question.  Thanks to the  replies, I 
now have several insights to share with him.  And I have been  instructed as 
well.
 
Kind regards,
 
Solomon Landers
 
In a message dated 05/29/2006 6:22:13 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
randallbuth at gmail.com writes:

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.







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