[B-Greek] Position of Prepositional Phrases in Paul

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Mon May 17 16:38:24 EDT 2010


On May 16, 2010, at 10:17 PM, Kristan Slack wrote:

>  I'm at student at Moore College in Sydney and have been doing a little research on whether Paul has his own idiolectic placement of prepositional phrases. In particular I've been trying to isolate prepositional phrases which sit between a noun and come before the verb to which the noun is related (that is, NOUN + PREP + VERB) - such that the preposition is sandwiched between the two items).
> 
> An example is found in Romans 5:8
> 
> CRISTOS hUPER hHMWN APEQANEN
> 
> 
> 
> I've tried (to no avail) to find information about the placement of prepositional phrases (both in general and of this particular kind), both in searching the b-greek archives but also in grammars.
> 
> I was just wondering if the list had wisdom about this kind of usage?
> 
> (I've noticed a few things myself: it occurs with EIMI verbs, especially in John; 1/3 of the ones I found across the NT are with passives or middle forms).
> 
> My more general question is, has anything been written regarding the positioning of prepositional phrases, or of idiolect and prepositional phrases?


First of all, prepositional phrases are mobile constituents. They can be clause initial, clause final and almost anywhere in between.  In traditional grammars, word order, if it is discussed at all, tends to be focused on the order of subject, verb and object as these are defined within the traditional framework. So your example in Rom 5:8 would addressed by asking why is APEQANEN final and CRISTOS initial. Actually CRISTOS is preceded by an adverbial clause.

 ὅτι ἔτι ἁμαρτωλῶν ὄντων ἡμῶν Χριστὸς ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἀπέθανεν.
hOTI ETI hAMARTWLWN ONTWN hHMWN CRISTOS hUPER hHMWN APEQANEN.

In textlinguistics, the treatment of word order is dependent on the framework. Most of the discussion is focused on the position of the main verb in relation to other constituents. A lot of attention is given to the preverbal slot. Clause final position is addressed but somewhat less important. The difference between traditional grammar and textlinguistics on this subject is monumental. One needs to comprehend the grounding principles that drive the linguistic framework before one can understand the details. 

Prepositional phrases come up for discussion under discontinuous constituents. When part of a prepositional phrase is preverbal (before the main verb) and another part after the verb, this attracts attention. The discussion will generally focus on the preverbal portion of the prepositional phrase. An example:

Rom. 11:24 εἰ γὰρ σὺ ἐκ τῆς κατὰ φύσιν ἐξεκόπης ἀγριελαίου καὶ παρὰ φύσιν ἐνεκεντρίσθης εἰς καλλιέλαιον, πόσῳ μᾶλλον οὗτοι οἱ κατὰ φύσιν ἐγκεντρισθήσονται τῇ ἰδίᾳ ἐλαίᾳ. 

Rom. 11:24 EI GAR SU EK THS KATA FUSIN EXEKOPHS AGRIELAIOU KAI PARA FUSIN ENEKENTRISQHS EIS KALLIELAION, POSWi MALLON hOUTOI hOI KATA FUSIN EGKENTRISQHSONTAI THi IDIAi ELAIAi. 

Here EXEKOPHS  breaks the prepositional phrase EK THS KATA FUSIN ... AGRIELAIOU. Some analysits would explain this as lending KATA FUSIN a higher level of salience than EK ... AGRIELAIOU. Note that PARA FUSIN and hOI KATA FUSIN are also preverbal. The argument appears to revolve around KATA FUSIN and PARA FUSIN. 

In Homer and Attic tragedy we see a different pattern where the substantive phrase governed by the preposition is split, part before and part after the preposition. The position of the verb isn't an issue here which is probably why I haven't seen any discussion of this in the literature on textlinguistics. Helma Dik only mentions it in passing while expounding on word order within the noun phrase. This is a more detailed level of analysis, focusing on the order within the noun phrase where the Rom. 11:24 example focuses on the constituent order within the clause. 



Elizabeth Kline
 






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