>First, certain parts of speech used as subject (Ward has mentioned
>pronouns in a recent post) tend to precede the verb. Relatives and
>interrogatives stand out in this regard, since these kinds of words
>practically always stand at the beginning of their clause, regardless
>of grammatical function within the clause.
>
>Second, whether the kind of modifier(s) a subject has seems to make a
>difference. This one gets too complex for the purposes of this post.
>
>Third, identifying the topic of a sentence (the entity in view) and
>the comment (the new information conveyed about the topic) yields the
>general pattern that the topic precedes the comment. This accounts
>for many instances of SV order, since the topic often coincides with
>the grammatical subject. This is especially so in independent
>clauses.
This seems similar to Charles Fillmore's 'deep case' in "A Case for Case." The role of an object or concept has more to do with the encoding process of language than we give conscious thought. While this seems obvious, examine the time and energy we (myself included) spend analyzing the surface grammar compared to the time we spend considering the underlying relationships.
>Fourth is emphasis. I suggested three categories of rhetorical
>emphasis: 1) stressing parallelism (comparison or contrast), 2)
>stressing degree, and 3) stressing logical progression. To try to
>keep my preconceptions about Greek word order from influencing what
>words I identified as emphatic, I carefully marked Hebrews for these
>kinds of emphasis (as well as topic-comment relations) using a very
>literal English translation, then came back to the Greek text to see
>to what extent the words I marked as emphatic occurred in "unusual"
>order.
Did you use Young's Literal Translation or another? I know we don't want to discuss translations on conference, but I am interested in learning what kind of tools others find useful.
>I'll give a couple of examples of emphasis, where SV order
>corresponds with emphasis on the subject. Practically the only kind
>of emphasis I found on subjects was that stressing parallelism. 5:5
>says hOUTWS KAI hO CRISTOS OUC hEAUTON EDOXASEN GENHQHNAI ARCIEREA,
>where Christ is paralleled with Aaron. The OV order also seems to
>indicate a related emphasis on the object, by the way. A contrasting
>emphasis appears in 11:35, where after a long list of victories won
>by heroes of the faith, we read ALLOI DE ETUMPANISQHSAN. The "OTHERS"
>marks the contrast unmistakeably.
Would you say that there are few instances of an emphasis marked by word order that aren't more readily discernable from the context?
Thank You,
Chris Babcock
chrisbabcock@erols.com
4333 Harford Rd
Baltimore, MD 21214
P.S. I be would interested in the 8-page appendix on how you compiled your data base. I'm afraid that I am an incurable info-hound. :-)