[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.
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list