From: Eric S. Weiss (eweiss@gte.net)
Date: Tue Jun 20 2000 - 16:37:11 EDT
On 06/20/00, "clayton stirling bartholomew
<c.s.bartholomew@worldnet.att.net>" wrote:
> on 06/20/00 6:03 AM, Mike Sangrey wrote:
> > Take a 20 word Greek sentence with the verb at
> > the end. IMCO (In My Current Opinion), it is the START of a mistake to
> > take that whole sentence, put it on the dining room table and construct
> > the relations from the whole. The mistake is made then when one builds
> > the meaning of the sentence from the diagram working from the verb out.
> > The author did not do it that way; the reader shouldn't either.
> Mike,
> Yes, I see what you are driving at. I have been reading another book by
> Simon Dik* and it has been making me think long and hard about how analysis
> should be performed on TEXTS.
> Simon Dik suggests that we should shun transformations. This statement has a
> number of implications. I will only explore one of them.
> We should not think of a predication found in a TEXT (or utterance) as a
> realization of some underlying proposition in Subject-> Verb-> Object form.
> The so called "surface structure" of a predication is in fact the object of
> our analysis and should remain the object of our analysis. The word order of
> a predication has a lot to do with pragmatic functions and if we mess with
> the word order to reduce a predication to a proposition in SVO form then we
> have lost this pragmatic information.
> This observation has implications for syntax diagramming and sentence flow
> analysis as taught in standard text books on NT Greek exegesis like Gordon
> Fee's. I will not explore the implications any further at this time since I
> am still mulling it over.
So ... does this mean that we shouldn't be quick to disparage standard
diagramming? My Greek teacher was big on linguistics and transformational
tagmemics or whatever he called it (he never really taught us these things,
just mentioned them repeatedly and referred us to THE SEMANTIC STRUCTURE OF
WRITTEN COMMUNICATION by Beekman and Callow - to this day, I can't
comprehend it! :-). Anyway, he (and others) bemoaned the fact that Greek NT
Commentaries were still written with little application of linguistics,
something he felt could really solve/open up the text for us in new ways.
Are you (and Dik) saying that we shouldn't be so quick to abandon the
surface structure to dive into the deep structure/kernel clauses? That we
should continue to pay attention to surface structure relationships to
examine meaning, maybe moreso than perhaps some "deep structuralists"
suggest? Because it is "standard diagramming" I have steered clear of
buying Fee's book, thinking I am better off learning more from a
linguistics perspective instead. So, should I buy and read Fee?
> To see how all of this applies to the analysis of biblical Greek one need
> only get a copy of: Stephen Levinsohn's Discourse Features of New Testament
> Greek, 2nd Ed. SIL 2000. Levinshon explores this subject in some detail.
> Everyone who is doing intermediate or advanced study of NT Greek needs to
> have a copy of this book. No exceptions.
I think I will order a copy. Thanks for the recommendation!
> Thanks,
> Clay
>
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