From: David Moore (dvdmoore@dcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us)
Date: Thu Feb 15 1996 - 22:30:22 EST
On Thu, 15 Feb 1996, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
> What I really ought to have said is that the initial position
> in the sentence tends to be the position of greatest (rhetorical) emphasis
> and that the predicate word does tend to be the more emphatic element in
> this sort of sentence. Now, I'm not sure that I can prove this to be true
> for classical Attic, although I could readily enough take a large enough
> sampling of prose authors and do a count. I haven't counted, of course; I
> can only say it's my observation that this is a tendence: one finds
> AGAQOS ESTIN hO ANQRWPOS far more frequently than one finds hO ANQRWPOS
> ESTIN AGAQOS.
That sounds correct., But the example is not completely parallel
to the sentence with nominative arthrous nouns joined by a verb of "to
be" in third person. Let's say that what we wanted to say was, "That man
is the good one." The word order would more probably be hO ANQRWPOS
ESTIN hO AGAQOS rather than hO AGAQWS ESTIN hO ANQRWPOS. The latter, at
least IMO, would usually mean something like, "The good one is that man."
The first would tend to be found in a context in which there had been
discussion of the man; the second, in a context that had been discussing
what is good.
The construction anarthrous nominative - linking verb - arthrous
nominative does call for the major emphasis on the second nominative
noun, normally making it the subject, _a la_ Jn. 1:1.
David L. Moore Southeastern Spanish District
Miami, Florida of the Assemblies of God
dvdmoore@dcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us Department of Education
http://members.aol.com/dvdmoore
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