linguistic absolutes

From: clayton stirling bartholomew (c.s.bartholomew@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Sun Apr 09 2000 - 13:52:49 EDT


Why all the fuss about pre-positive constituents and point of departure?
Levinsohn* seems to be establishing something very close to a linguistic
absolute in his treatment of this subject. There is an issue at stake here
which is somewhat broader than the question about the clause position of a
point of departure.

Lets say that language is chess board and that we have two grand masters
sitting down for a match and as they make their first few moves the Russian
player discovers that the bishop on his right has been glued to the board.
This changes the whole nature of the game. The bishop does not move. The
Russian player begins to suspect that their are other pieces which are glued
down and it makes his strategy fall to pieces.

If we think of language as a chess board, and the meaning of each piece is
defined by the state of the board at any given time in the history of the
language, then the discovery that certain pieces are glued to the board is
going to completely change our understanding of language. We are going to
end up wondering like the Russian grand master what other pieces are glued
to the board and our strategy may fall to pieces.

>From my limited perspective, stating that any constituent that functions as
a point of departure MUST be prepositive is gluing a piece to the board.

Furthermore, I can think of analogies at higher narrative discourse levels
where the point of departure function is postponed. Take for example the
narrative device called "flash back". This device serves some of the same
functions as point of departure but it in terms of high level narrative
structure it is postpostive. It is introduced after the main storyline is
already under way. I have a sneaking suspicion that there is something like
"flash back" at the clause level in NT Greek narrative. I will keep my eyes
pealed for examples.

Clay

--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062

*Stephen Levinsohn, Discourse Features of New Testament Greek, SIL 1992 222
pp. (paper).

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