[B-Greek] technical vocabulary (was Re: Luke 4:7)

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Fri Jun 15 13:41:59 EDT 2007




On Jun 15, 2007, at 9:57 AM, James Ernest wrote:

> Stepping back from the details of this thread: I'm interested both by
> the evidently useful technical vocabulary (focus, emphasis, fronting,
> marking, etc.) that several of you seem to share--vocabulary that I
> did not learn studying classical and biblical languages in in college,
> seminary and graduate school. From various asides, I gather that (1)
> this is the lingo of discourse analysis,

Yes and no. It is the lingo of latter day Prague School linguistics,  
functional grammar, cognitive linguistics.

> and (2) there is such a
> multiplicity of different theories in the arena that you find it
> difficult to understand each other even when using the shared
> technical vocabulary.

For those who find the Topic - Comment, Topic - Focus framework  
somewhat useful, the terminology isn't an insurmountable problem. The  
reason we aren't getting anywhere fast in this discussion of Luke 4:7  
is that some of us accept the Topic - Focus framework as describe in  
Levinsohn, H.Dik, K.Lambrecht and others simply reject the framework  
and use the terms differtently, play the game by a different set of  
rules.

> Which makes me think there's probably no one
> manageable book that I could read to get a handle on the vocabulary.
> I'd have to read an assortment of dissertations and books on general
> linguistic theory and try to get my bearings on my own.
>
> Right?
>
> James Ernest

I think that SIL-UND is still available somewhere on the WEB.  
Levinsohn's Discourse Features of NTG (2nd ed.) includes a glossary  
of sorts, but his book is not an introduction. Helma Dik's book is  
more accesable than Levinshon, Helma Dik  Word Order in Ancient  
Greek: A Pragmatic Account of Word Order Variation in Herodotus.  
Amsterdam:  J. C. Gieben, 1995. Helma Dik departs in significant ways  
from Simon Dik. Another  title worth reading is: Lambrecht, Knud:  
1994, Information structure and sentence form. Topic, focus, and the  
mental representation of discourse referents., Cambridge, Cambridge  
University Press.




Elizabeth Kline







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