[b-greek] Deep Structure Eph 3:7

From: c stirling bartholomew (cc.constantine@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Fri Sep 21 2001 - 17:44:14 EDT


I have taking a quick trip through Ephesians. Today when I encountered yet
another relative pronoun at the beginning of Eph. 3:7 (hOU) I stopped to
ponder the question: Why so many levels of subordination?

What does all this Deep Structure*, i.e. multiple levels of hypotaxis,
accomplish?

Does it really make sense to understand the discourse structure of Ephisians
as a cascading series of subordinate relationships? I am beginning to have
doubts about this. I am beginning think that presenting this sort of
discourse structure as a diagram showing each relative clause hanging under
it's antecedent is perhaps a misrepresentation of what is really going on
here.

A rather vague idea is now forming in my thinking about this. The idea that
hypotaxis in this epistle is functionally more or less equal to parataxis.
In other words, the relative pronouns are being used as simple links between
two clauses and the overall structure of subordination across multiple
lawyers is not really significant in terms of understanding the discourse.

Another way of saying this: The apparent deep structure isn't really deep.
The actual structure is more or less flat as if it were linked together with
conjunctive particles.

I am just musing about this publicly. Might change my thinking on this ten
minutes from now.


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

*This use of Deep Structure has nothing whatsoever to do with the way that
term was used in Generative Linguistics in the '60's.


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