[B-Greek] Word order in 2 Cor 5:19

Kimmo Huovila kimmo.huovila at helsinki.fi
Wed May 23 14:21:13 EDT 2007


The text again:

2COR. 5:18 TA DE PANTA EK TOU QEOU TOU KATALLAXANTOS hHMAS hEAUTWi  
DIA CRISTOU KAI DONTOS hHMIN THN DIAKONIAN THS KATALLAGHS,  19 hWS  
hOTI QEOS HN EN CRISTWi KOSMON KATALLASSWN hEAUTWi, MH LOGIZOMENOS  
AUTOIS TA PARAPTWMATA AUTWN KAI QEMENOS EN hHMIN TON LOGON THS  
KATALLAGHS.

Thanks for all who supplied me on-list or off-list with lists of passages with 
EIMI and a participle with intervening constituents. A few further thoughts.

I think I used the word topicalized in a somewhat confusing way. I did not so 
much think of a topic-comment framework, but a particular slot of word order.

In the lists I received, there are many examples with the intervening elements 
going together with EIMI, not the participle (thus not examples of a 
periphrastic construction). Also it was frequent to have either the subject 
or the focus between EIMI and the participle. Mark 13:25 did not seem to 
follow this pattern (KAI hOI ASTERES ESONTAI EK TOU OURANOU PIPTONTES). 
Perhaps there PIPTONTES is put last to mark it as new information. There were 
also some existential clauses or clauses with presentational articulation 
(Levinsohn 2000:7).

I did not find any examples (unless 2 Core 5:19 is construed as such) of a 
pre-participial focus followed by another pre-participial constituent. I 
suspect that the slot immediately preceding can be used to mark the focus, 
but not the slot before that.

My working hypothesis is that EN CRISTWi cannot be the focus, but rather 
KOSMON is marked as the focus, regardless of whether the passage is 
periphrastic or not. If the passage is not periphrastic, EN CRISTWi is in an 
unmarked position, but if it is periphrastic, it is marked.

I know that my reasoning is subject to at least the following criticisms:
1) I did not analyze the corpus carefully enough. I just read it through once 
categorizing the examples while reading.
2) The corpus was too small, and perhaps not representative.
3) I have not related this hypothesis to any whole theory of Greek word order.
Nevertheless, I think that the hypothesis is at least worth testing.

Any thoughts?

Kimmo Huovila

=================
Levinsohn, Stephen 2000: Discourse Features of New Testament Greek



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