
Mario Nunez
Is someone suggesting that the group headings are the points of emphases? By that I mean it is being argued that each of the categories is the emphasis, and not the contents and their main predicate? I can't find that credible. Is this what I am being asked to respond to? I really am not sure I would even know how to address that.αι γυναικες… οι ανδρες… τα τεκνα… οι πατερες… οι δουλοι… και οι κυριοι
I subscribe to the daily digest through google mail. This was done for me, so I'm not sure how to go about it, but Jonathan would probably be able to subscribe you if you wish. This has been very helpful when I've been very busy, as I have been for the last month or so with the beginning of a new school year. Otherwise, check in once a day or so to see if anyone loves you enough to write back...Alan Patterson wrote:I gave the rationale in summary in my first post. Here are the groups being addressed:
Is someone suggesting that the group headings are the points of emphases? By that I mean it is being argued that each of the categories is the emphasis, and not the contents and their main predicate? I can't find that credible. Is this what I am being asked to respond to? I really am not sure I would even know how to address that.αι γυναικες… οι ανδρες… τα τεκνα… οι πατερες… οι δουλοι… και οι κυριοι
By the way, I just happened upon this post that has requested my reply. How do I know, in the future, if someone is seeking a reply from me?
I agree with Stephen. Informally "emphasis" often means that something "jumps up" from the text, as if it was highlighted with a color pen. There's much more to word order than that. "Topic" and "focus" are related to the flow of thought, so that text feels natural and easy to follow. I now try to explain with my own words: "emphasis" proper happens when the most natural, neutral flow of cognitive chain of ideas (and also words) is broken. What actually is the neutral flow of words depends on the context – there's no one normative neutral word order for all situations. In this case the most natural explanation is contrastive topic, as Stephen says, and because moving from one topic to another by putting the topic first in the sentence is natural and normal, it doesn't get any special "emphasis".Stephen Carlson wrote: In a pragmatic / discourse / information structure analysis, it is best to avoid the term "emphasis," altogether in favor of more precise terms such as "topic," "focus," etc. In this case, I would say that Eph 5:25 οἱ ἄνδρες, ἀγαπᾶτε τὰς γυναῖκας (as punctuated by NA27) exhibits a contrastive topic (οἱ ἄνδρες) followed by a broad focus (ἀγαπᾶτε τὰς γυναῖκας).
... And the rest is focus. It's after the topic, as is completely normal, so there's no "emphasis" either. Internally it has Verb-Object which is also neutral in such a context.Eeli Kaikkonen wrote: In this case the most natural explanation is contrastive topic, as Stephen says, and because moving from one topic to another by putting the topic first in the sentence is natural and normal, it doesn't get any special "emphasis".