Re: Peculiar Word Order

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sat Apr 24 1999 - 09:38:46 EDT


At 5:52 AM -0500 4/24/99, Moon-Ryul Jung wrote:
>Dear B-Greekers,
>
>Recently I encountered two sentences whose word order I could not
>understand. Lk 7:40: ECW SOI TI EIPEIN ( I have something to tell you]
>Heb 2:8b: NUN DE OUPW ORAMEN AUTWi TA PANTA hUPOTETAGMENA
>(We are not yet seeing everything having been subjected to him]
>
>Logically speaking, I thought the object of ECW is TI and the object of
>ORAMEN is TA PANTA. But the verbs and the objects are separated by
>datives SOI and AUTWi, respectively. I wondered why they did not
>write as ECW TI EIPEIN SOI. Similarly why not
> NUN DE OUPW ORAMEN TA PANTA hUPOTETAGMENA AUTWi?
>
>Does ECW SOI TI EIPEIN intend to convey a similar thing as
> "I have something to tell YOU", where YOU is stressed?
>When the sentence in question is SOI TI EIPEIN, I can understand it.
>But when it is embedded as an object of a verb, I do not understand
>what is going on in ECW SOI TI EIPEIN.
>
>I guess I am missing something about Greek word order.

No, in fact you're seeing it properly, I believe; on the street, the word
order of Lk 7:40 means: "I've got for you something to tell." SOI is quite
emphatic here; we might get the force of it in English by putting SOI in an
emphatic final position: "I've got something to say to YOU in particular."
To the extent that morphology and syntax make the fundamental meaning of a
sentence clear, the word-order is free and essentially a matter of
rhetorical emphasis, with more important words moving to the front or,
occasionally, postponed to a dramatic final position.

So in Heb 2:8b AUTWi is indeed emphatic also, but you ought also to note
something that has been remarked fairly frequently recently in list
discussion: the chiastic ordering of elements of the phrasing: the line
from Psalm 8 is cited in 2:8a as PANTA hUPETAXAS hUPOKATW TWN PODWN AUTOU,
where he is clearly understanding hUPOKATW TWN PODWN AUTOU as = AUTWi. Now,
in 8b he writes EN TWi GAR hUPOTAXAI AUTWi TA PANTA OUDEN AFHKEN AUTWi
ANUPOTAKTON. It might be interesting to get into the text-critical problem
of the editors' bracketing of the first AUTWi in 8b and the question of how
rhetorical word-order bears upon the text-critical problem, but note the
chiasmus with the AUTWi left intact: A hUPOTAXAI B AUTWi C TA PANTA | C'
OUDEN B' AUTWi A' ANUPOTAKTON.

Note furthermore that, if I am right in equating hUPOKATW TWN PODWN AUTOU
with AUTWi, then we have in 8a A PANTA hUPETAXAS B {AUTWi} and then in 8b
(8c?) after NUN DE OUPW hORWMEN we have B' AUTWi A' PANTA hUPOTETAGMENA.
Perhaps the chiasmus doesn't go so far as to reverse the order of all three
elements in the sequence, but it DOES emphatically position AUTWi at the
beginning of the key phrase AUTWi TA PANTA hUPOTETAGMENA as it had been
positioned emphatically at the end of the LXX Ps 8, where I suggested that
hUPOKATW TWN PODWN AUTOU must be understood as equivalent to AUTWi. Clearly
the pronoun AUTWi is the underscored element: HE is the KEYSTONE upholding
the entire arch structure (in case you're wondering, I am indeed thinking
of Saarinnen's great steel parabola that stands on the riverfront in
downtown St. Louis, and I'm remembering well the warm and sunny day in the
later 60's when the keystone was lowered into place and riveted in to the
rest of the great arch); so the Greek is saying, "and yet we don't see that
to HIM everything stands in subordination." Even if all this stuff about
the chiasmus is wrong, the important point remains that AUTWi has emphatic
position in the whole indirect statement following upon hORWMEN.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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