From: clayton stirling bartholomew (c.s.bartholomew@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Thu Apr 20 2000 - 16:16:47 EDT
on 04/18/00 10:21 PM, yochanan bitan wrote:
> First of all, KAI + finite verb is normally a mark of CONTINUATION
> with a main-line event in a story, often with the same participant or
> perspective as the preceding event. That is the main reason for KAI
> beginning a sentence and especially when beginning a new paragraph unit.
> However, in some Jewish Greek, this structure multiplied itself
> against-the-grain of Greek sensitivities. Mark has far too many
> sentence-initial KAI's for any semblance of Greek sensitivities, his style
> has a distinctly 'foreign' sound.
Randall,
Yes, yes, now I see what you are getting at.
Levinsohn** (chapter 13) makes the point that discourse boundaries are
semantic boundaries and are not determined by "formal" language features.
Levinsohn repeats this over and over restating it in several different ways
for the purpose of stressing the point. He states that formal features such
as conjunctions and fronted constituents are only supporting evidence for a
semantic* boundary. The semantic boundary must be determined on the basis of
a change in "theme." The formal features that happen to fall on these
boundaries have other purposes at the level of syntax. Their primary purpose
is not to mark a boundary in the semantic structure.
Another point that Levinsohn makes is that the mapping of formal features
to discourse boundaries changes significantly from author to author. This is
further evidence that the formal features themselves are not really
discourse markers. For example, the use of KAI is not the same in Mark as it
is in Luke, Acts, or the epistles. The use of KAI in the Apocalypse is
different yet. It isn't too difficult to find an occasion in Mark where KAI
falls on a semantic boundary, but this does not give us the right to
conclude that KAI marks a semantic boundary which it does not.
Even if you limit the scope of your analysis to one author or one book you
will find that formal features are not reliable indicators of boundaries in
the semantic structure. For example, in the Apocalypse META TAUTA is used to
divide semantic blocks but there are also occasions when META TAUTA does not
fall on a semantic division. Therefore, within the Apocalypse META TAUTA can
only be used as supporting evidence for a break in the semantic structure.
This is a point that should be closely pondered by those who are trying to
do exegesis from the bottom up. The coupling between the syntax layer and
the semantic layer of a NT Greek text is very subtle. It would be very
difficult to define a set of formal rules which would allow one to "move"
from the syntactic structure to the semantic structure of a NT Greek text.
This does not mean that we should ignore formal features of the text while
doing discourse analysis. It does mean that discourse analysis is going to
involve top down analysis which will look foreign and perhaps suspect to
those schooled in traditional approaches to NT Greek grammar.
Clay
--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062
* For those who have problems with the term semantic boundary or semantic
division, just think of a paragraph boundary which isn't exactly the same
thing but close enough for following the argument.
**Levinsohn, Stephen Discourse Features of New Testament Greek,
SIL 1992 222 pp. (paper)
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