[B-Greek] left marking, right salience in general linguistics

Randall Buth randallbuth at gmail.com
Mon Jan 1 07:20:07 EST 2007


> Just a brief note to give a broader linguistic perspective to these wordorder discussions.
> Within general linguistics it is considered a language universal thatsalience, the important meaning-bearing part of a communication, naturallyoccurs to the right.It is also considered a language universal that special marking occurs tothe left.
>

HH: It is hard to see how there can be a universal along these lines
when some languages (e.g., Hebrew) move from right to left, and others
(e.g., Greek) move from left to right. Were you perhaps  thinking in
terms of Greek? Would the general rule be that salience naturally occurs
at the end of a sentence and special marking at the beginning?

a person should always interpret a message within its context. Yes,
obviously 'left to right' is a directional metaphor that is being used
in a left-to-right orthographic context. That is the practice and
idiom within general linguistics and linguists are very much aware
that many right-to-left orthographies exist, as well as top-down. (I
do not know of any down-up orthographies.)

However, when languages are being compared and transcribed by
linguists, they are usually transcribed in a modified IPA, which is
left-to-right, even for Hebrew.

PS: please note that the original note does not ANSWER the discussions
on this list. It is simply a reminder that they take place within what
is known about languages in general. The word 'prominence' and
'emphasis' are quite easy to misconstrue or misapply, which is why I
wrote the note. Also, the existence of 'left-marking' among languages
does not mean that there cannot be 'right-marked' structures in a
langauge. It is just that left-marking appears to be a language
universal.

On the other hand, the functions and frequency of left-marking are
widely divergent among languages and this is where the discussion
needs to be with Greek. There is also a question about what
constitutes 'left-marking' in a flexible word order systems like Greek
and the Slavic languages.

Randall Buth
-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
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randallbuth at gmail.com


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