You Wrote:
> My initial statistics were very close to his: SV order far more common
than VS.
snip
> However, when, based on these statistics, I postulated SV as the
> unmarked (i.e., "normal") order and sought reasons for marking in the
> VS instances, I came up empty. This was grievous to me, because I was
> sure that SV was the normal order. The obvious next step was to
> postulate VS as the normal order and seek reasons for SV as marked.
snip
> But to my surprise, I
> found that a large proportion of the SV instances were easy to
> explain on bases such as the fact that a relative pronoun functioning
> as subject is naturally going to appear before the verb.
You have raised an interesting issue, that the order is NOT what one would
ordinarily expect. Does anyone know of an "official" ancient source that
deals with anything like word order? I know some of the ancients deal with
word definitions
Two things come to mind, one raised by you. It would be interesting to see
if what you have discovered holds out across the board for a cross-section
of NT authors, and I wonder how this pans out for non-biblical lit. of the
Koine type.
It seems that we are left with the impression that grammatically VS is more
"correct," and SV more or less emphatic. Did I read this correctly?! What
sorts of things did you look for and what conclusions did you typically
draw from the SV construction. I guess I am asking for a couple of
examples to show you methodology. If it is too much hassle please don't
feel obliged.
Paul F. Evans
Pastor
Thunder Swamp Pentecostal Holiness Church
MT. Olive
E-mail: evans@esn.net
Web-page: http://ww2.esn.net/~evans