From: Ronald Ross (rross@cariari.ucr.ac.cr)
Date: Wed Mar 25 1998 - 20:33:06 EST
justin wrote:
> In verse 6:16 HMEIS GAR NAOS QEOU ESMEV ZWNTOS, KAQWS EIPEN hO QEOS hOTI
>
> How is ESMEN functioning in this verse? It really seems out of place in the
> sentence construction. I have looked at several grammars and had no luck
> finding a solution. Does ESMEN function as a pointer to the OT prophecy in
> the latter part of verse 16?
>
> Thanks,
> Justin
> Johnson
As for ESMEN being out of place, I'll just say that in languages like English,
which have very little morphology, the order of the words is crucial to
indicating what words constitute phrases. In languages like Greek, that have a
very rich morphology (things agree in gender, number, case, etc.), the
morphology plays a major role in indicating what words belong to the same
phrase. Here, for instance, QEOU and ZWNTOS agree in gender, number and case,
a sign they belong to a phrase. This allows for a much freer word order than
is the case in English. So it's normal that this looks strange to an English
speaker. I'm sure it didn't look strange to Greek speakers.
Ron Ross
Linguistics Department
University of Costa Rica
UBS Translations Consultant
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:39:16 EDT