[b-greek] Re: the notion of sentence, parataxis

From: Chet Creider (creider@csd.uwo.ca)
Date: Fri Jul 27 2001 - 20:24:00 EDT


> At 03:01 PM 7/27/2001 -0400, Chet Creider wrote:
> >Consider the following two interpretations:
> >
> >(1) I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart / I can be forever happy
> >(2) I have no feelings whatsoever / when we're apart I can be forever happy
> >
> >Calling the larger unit which contains the two smaller units a clause
> >rather than a sentence is fine if you allow clauses to be self-embedding.
> >If not (my unspoken assumption -- I should have mentioned this), then
> >another unit is needed.
>
> I think we agree, then.
>
> > I don't think many linguists would object to
> >the former analysis (I don't myself), but the traditional analysis,
> >considering clause as a minimal unit is also acceptable, I think, for
> >English, and for that subset of NT Greek which is like English (i.e.
> >participial phrases, relative clauses, INA complements, etc.).
>
> Again, I think we agree. For me, no model is the One True Account, so it
> doesn't bother me that there are models that don't think in terms of sentences.
 
Wonderful that we agree. Let me add for you as a programmer that recursivity
is theoretically elegant but practically often best replaced by iterativity
as I'm sure you know, and for other readers that it important to note that
while for natural languages using the concept of recursion gives considerable
elegance, there are some very fine theories that get along quite well without
it (e.g. Halliday's Scale and Category Theory with its notion of rank-shifting).

> >But the more paratactic connections are the ones I'm unsure about.
>
> Main Entry: para.tax.is
> Pronunciation: "par-&-'tak-s&s
> Function: noun
> Etymology: New Latin, from Greek, act of placing side by side, from
> paratassein to place side by side, from para- + tassein to arrange
> Date: circa 1842
> : the placing of clauses or phrases one after another without coordinating
> or subordinating connectives
>
> So do you mean the relationship between adjacent clauses with no
> coordinating or subordinating connective?
>
> Jonathan Robie

Sometimes dictionaries aren't the best place to look for definitions.
Linguists use the term as a near-synonym for co-ordination (I say near-
because it is not always clear that two constructions connected para-
tactically are the same unit as the components) including asyndeton
(the placing of clauses one after another without coordinating connectives).

According to Smyth (Greek Grammar, 1956: 485), "In Greek, PARATAXIS
means simply coordination in general, as hUPOTAXIS means subordination."

This is also the way we (linguists) use these terms. However, classicists
seem to have a different usage. Here is Smyth again (same page): "The
term parataxis, as here employed, is restricted to the arrangement of two
independent sentences side by side, though one is _in thought_ subordinate
to the other." I don't recommend this usage, although the phenomenon
is interesting and I would like to know about its occurrence in the NT
(Smyth gives a number of examples, but none short enough to type out,
illustrating KAI, TE...KAI, EUTHUS...KAI (often meaning "when" and DE
meaning "for")). There is some discussion in Blass, Debrunner and Funk,
para. 442 and they cite Mk 15:25 as example with KAI of the "when" type.
They also mention as "due primarily to Hebrew, although it appears as
early as Homer..." the "use of KAI to introduce an apodosis (the "then"
or result clause of a conditional sentence). Their discussion is rich
and I'm grateful to you for having led me to look up what they have
to say.

Chet Creider

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