Life is complex and busy, right? Who needs more distractions? Who wants to read stuff that is unimportant, that doesn’t tell me anything new? If I already know something, why should I tolerate a writer who has the gall and disrespectful arrogance to make me read something that is redundant? Are you tracking with me here, can you feel the rage?????
I read a note in the NET version yesterday in Deut 9:25. Here is what it said:
The Hebrew text includes “when I prostrated myself.” Since this is redundant, it has been left untranslated.1
I love these guys and the valuable notes that they provide. However, it begs the question of whether redundant information is of any value. The answer can be somewhat complex, so I will attempt to simplify it for you. If the redundant information is coming from a middle schooler that is not your offspring, it’s okay to tune it out. If it is from document that is held up in a number of faith-communities as sacred, then I would give it a little attention.
Here’s the deal. Rarely will languages have one special device that only ever accomplishes one single task. Languages tend to be very efficient, doubling (or more) up on what something accomplishes in order to help you. Really, it is a help. The main problem is that we are typically only looking for one thing to be accomplished–semantic clarity. Our expectation first and foremost is that someone is telling me something because they didn’t think that I knew it. This is all well and good. This also explains the boredom or indignation that we sometimes feel when we hear or read something “old” that is not, well, new. This is especially the case if you are under30, my dear children. You ain’t got no time to slow down and enjoy the ride!
What about all of this “redundant” information, especially what we find in the Hebrew Bible. I will focus on one example for today. Class, today’s focus will be on relative clauses that modify the word “land” in Deuteronomy. Hang with me here, this is some cool stuff to impress your friends with!
Once some entity is introduced, in our case the “promised land” of Canaan that the Israelites are about to acquire, there is no further semantic need to refer to it using some extended expression like “the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess” (Deut 25:19). So why do it? Does Moses, the writer, the incompetent Deuteronomistic editor (who was too stupid or afraid to delete redundancies) think that we are so dull that we can’t remember which “land” he is referring to? Does he think we are dolts? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
This is where our “principle-o-the-day” comes in: If something is not needed for semantic reasons, then it must be doing something else. It’s like “if God closes a door, look for a window” only different. Personally, if God closes a door, I think it is better to wait than to break out, but I digress.
In the case of these 53 relative clauses modifying “land”, most of them are not semantically required. Curious what they might be doing? A couple observations are in order.
- They are rarely repeated with the exact wording in successive order, they get changed up
- The relative clauses are not restrictive (i.e. narrowing down which “land”), but add thematic information to the context
- The redundant information relates to the broader theme under discussion in the context
So while some might attribute the changes in wording to “stylistic variation” or redaction, it seems pretty significant that the wording correlates to the local theme. It’s almost like the writer/editor wasn’t stupid after all, like he meant to do it. Weird, huh. You might even say it was inspired, even profitable for teaching and stuff like that.
I did a quick syntax search using Logos 4 and was quite easily able to find some nice examples of what I am talking about. Read through the PDF and take a look at the changes. If you have the time, read the broader context and look for correlations between the “extra, ought-to-be-deleted, I-already-knew-that” information and the local theme. You just might find some evidence of intentionality, maybe even a new thing to look for when you are reading.
Being a doctor (the kind who doesn’t really help people, like with medicine and stuff), I have heard it is important to theorize new things. That, and come up with new terminology to frustrate emeritus faculty members, but we won’t go there. I have done just such theorizing, trying to describe the process we go through as we process redundant information. There is essentially a fork in the road when one moves beyond the semantic function. If the info is not needed for semantic reasons, then it will either accomplish thematic functions like that discussed above, or it will accomplish one of several forward-pointing or “cataphoric” functions.
If you want to learn more about this, again to impress your friends with cool language factoids, here is some suggested reading.
For thematic highlighting functions, see my JNSL article.
For the forward-pointing functions, I have two offerings. One paper was presented to the Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics section of SBL this year. It has a few things to say about whether Greek actually grammaticalizes tense in the indicative or not.
The other paper was presented in the Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew section at SBL. This is the first time I have made it available. All of the Hebrew cited comes with a translation highlighting the intended thing, so don’t be afraid to try reading it.
Happy New Year. I enjoyed my rest and am ready to get back to blogging again.
Ain’t grammar wonderful?
- Biblical Studies Press, The NET Bible First Edition (Biblical Studies Press, 2006). [↩]
I have heard this idea pitched before, I even lectured on it in introductory Greek in 2001 when the idea first arose. It seems to have found new life though. Word has it that a new conjunction has been found that may impact the reading of Matt 2:11. The word is σαντα, and is understood to function as a subordinating conjunction not unlike οτι. The problem is that it is virtually unattested in the ancient Greek corpus, and is more likely borrowed from Latin, at least based on the evidence from several 11th century manuscripts particularly 474.
I did some checking at SBL and it sounds as though Winged Bull Press may have a forthcoming volume that treats the issue, due in early April. Based on the evidence I have seen so far, the case is not very compelling. For those of you who really want to dig into this, I would suggest contacting CSNTM about the matter, they are in a better position than I am to comment.
So as you make your way through the Christmas festivities, keep in mind what it is all about: the sending of a Savior. And no matter what they say, do not believe in the σαντα clause. It’s a myth.
If you have any other information about this issue, please post a comment.
I have often heard the accusation that evangelical Christians lack what it takes to compete in the real world. Sadly, I have seen this in business and academics, where cheesy work is passed off as professional. I found some more such evidence over on Scotteriology today. It sounds like karaoke at the Clinton’s house, with the former president up to bat. Hope it shines a little brightness on your day. Light is important, because a day without light is like… night. Think about that one.
P.S. I have found that those working with SIL are the consistent exception to this idea, doing more fieldwork and quality publication than most other linguists. They have set the bar very high for the rest of us!
I first began writing this post in the early Fall, but set it aside due to time constraints and extreme frustration. I wanted some time for better perspective on the issues. SBL has come and gone, I have had some great opportunity to interact with some practitioners. In rereading the post and cleaning up a few things, I think it is finally time to post this. Be aware that my comments are primarily focused on this applying Systemic Functional Linguistics within biblical studies, and primarily to those applying it to syntax. I would appreciate hearing comments from those of you with an opinion.
Original post:
This is a follow up to a previous post on the need for reading the sources of those whom you are reading. In other words, instead of citing X on Y, read Y. There comes a practical limit in research to which this can be done. But folks, there is nothing more critical to successful and useful research than a sound and robust theoretical framework. I cannot emphasize this enough. This is also a follow-up to a series of posts culminating here on why I am not a systemic functional linguist. In the name of practicing what I preach, and in prep for a paper on the verbal aspect of the historical present at SBL this year, I hit the library.
To date, most of what I know about Systemic Functional Linguistics has come from those that are applying it to biblical languages, especially Greek. I have spent the last few days reading full-fledged linguists who are plying their trade with SFL. It has been interesting to say the least.
I am coming to the conclusion that those applying the Hallidayan model in NT studies may not be true Hallidayans, but more like an offshoot. I read an interview with Halliday here and found it quite helpful in understanding what he is after. He is very theoretically driven to solve some problems that will probably not help me much in my exegesis, but they are legitimate questions. What’s more, I have yet to find an SFLer outside of biblical studies using a symmetrical approach to markedness. It would seem that Halliday would use a symmetrical cline to represent some of his probabilistic data mentioned in the interview, but in skimming through his Introduction to Functional Grammar (2004) they are not to be found. Within NT studies, markedness clines form the foundation of most work, be it word-order, aspect, morphology, you name it. Outside, they are proving difficult to find.
For those of you interested in applying linguistics and discourse analysis to biblical studies, I would offer two pieces of advice.
- Read the original sources that are cited by those applying them to NT studies. It is relatively easy to misunderstand someone when you start out, and such mistakes can compound if not corrected. Go read Halliday on Halliday to form an opinion, read folks that have made linguistics their primary profession. I encourage you to do the same with my material. If I cite Lambrect on information structure or mental representations, then by all means read Lambrect. It will definitely be worth your time.
- Read competing theories or approaches that offer alternative explanations to the problem you are trying to solve. In my case of information structure, Lambrecht was my chosen model. However, Functional Grammar, Relevance Theory, Role and Reference Grammar, and SFL all offer competing explanations. In doing my reading, I found that I could reconcile the basic frameworks into a unified account, with the exception of Halliday (see chapter 9 of Discourse Grammar of the GNT).
One thing that I did find that was consistent with Hallidayans both within and without biblical studies: the propensity to resignify common terminology to serve their purposes. For instance, Halliday begins with the Prague School concepts of Theme and Rheme. The theme is ‘what the sentence is about’, and rheme, is ‘what is said about it’. Simple enough, right? This is fundamentally what the approaches above use as their core concept, though cognitive and other constraints have been brought to bear to add precision. The core idea remains unchanged, though. Not so with Halliday.
Halliday (2004:64) defines theme as “the element which serves as the point of departure of the message; it is that with which the clause is concerned.” He then goes on to associate Theme with initial position in English. This causes a problem, in that there are constructions that allow one to place Rheme into the initial position in a clause. One reason for making this change is to make the info stand out, to “emphasize” it. The most common construction for this is the it-cleft, e.g. “It is by grace that you have been saved” as in Eph 2:8. The translators (virtually all) use an it-cleft to reflect the marked word order in Greek, which emphasizes the word grace. However, Halliday’s system classifies this position as Thematic, even though it contradicts the Prague School notions of Theme and Rheme. So what is the solution to this problem? How is it resolved? There seem to be two preferred solutions to such dilemmas in SFL:
- Add another layer of analysis, in this case the “Information unit.” This allows you to maintain your original model without having to change anything. Don’t change, just add. Halliday makes it work for him.
- If you must change, then change the meaning of the original concept that caused the dilemma, not your own notion. In this case, Theme is changed from what the Slavic “Founding Fathers” intended to what Halliday needed to make the SFL model work. “Just play through,” I always say.
I wish I was making this stuff up, I really do, but there are just too many such examples in SFL. Other methods might do this as well, but not with the consistency or pervasiveness I have seen in SFL.
So why are many of the SFL applications to Koine Greek so complex? Part of the reason in my opinion is Solution 1 above. They have added completely unnecessary complexity to already complicated issues, all in the name of preserving the original model. Language is complex enough as it is. Solution 2 adds another unnecessary complexity to the process, since it is much harder to reconcile what is being claimed by Kwong’s use of SFL with Lambrecht, Dik, Van Valin or some other competing theory.
One final observation. SFLers seem bent on perpetuating the model against all competitors, yet there is little to no interaction with the competitors. In reading Halliday on information structure, there is no engagement of competing theories, no effort to plot his proposal in the larger constellation of the theoretical universe. In contrast, the first third of Lambrecht is devoted to interaction with the field. Hallidayans are intent on using a purely SFL framework, which seemingly results in reading primarily Halliday or his followers. I have seen the same tendency in Relevance Theory by relying upon Sperber and Wilson, but there is still a fair degree of interaction with competing theories.
If you want to invest the time, money and effort to learn Halliday, if you think that his concepts hold the answers to the complexities of language and are chuck full of useful nuggets that will help with exegesis, then go for it. I think there are much simpler and more productive ways of accomplishing most of these tasks. SFL provides a productive framework for preliminary sketches in new areas of study, but areas like information structure in Koine and Classical Greek are well beyond this point. Studies like Nick Bailey’s really drive that point home.
I actually did a fair amount of reading this week, most into new areas. It all began with seeing Michael Bird’s reference to a new issue of Trinity Journal. I downloaded one of the featured articles by E. Randolph Richards on honor/shame values applied to John’s temple-cleansing accounts. It was a helpful read, but I was surprised at how uncritically he applied the framework, as though shame/honor was the overriding value in every context. Things were probably not quite that tidy, based on the other influences of the day. The article did pique my interest, so I started looking into his cited works. One of the sources I found at Amazon had a review by Markus Bockmuehl1 This is what cracked my up, take a look at some of the excerpts:
For its new third edition, this celebrated twenty-year-old textbook classic has been spruced up with a new preface and cover, two new chapters, updated bibliographies and 20 pages of study questions at the end, perforated so as to be easily detachable. (For some reason the index pages, which follow the questions, received the same efficient treatment and thus began to take leave of their binding before I finished reading.)
I take it he was not very pleased by the efficiency of the publisher. But wait, there’s more…
Two new chapters explore the extent to which status maintenance is constantly under threat from envy and the evil eye, and the evolution of Jesus groups under the somewhat cringe-making typology of ‘forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning’. A brief ‘theological conclusion’ asserts that to reject such socio-cultural study is to deny the Incarnation.
Here are the happy comments. They should have begun with “while” or “notwithstanding”.
Over the years Malina has done a very great deal to awaken and stimulate student interest in the ‘New Testament world’, as a place that is not just historically and perhaps linguistically distant from us, but whose people inhabited a social and cultural fabric of assumptions that would strike the average English-speaking eighteen-year-old as alarmingly alien. At a time when the hard work of such historical engagement of the ‘other’ has been under threat from all manner of purely reader-generated interpretations, it is hard to overestimate the benefit of Malina’s contribution.
Then the other shoe drops:
Typos old and new continue; so does a prose style that borders at times on the trite and repetitive — even when allowing for undergraduate attention spans.
As a result, astounding generalizations proliferate, seemingly unsupported by evidence and reminiscent of grand anthropological theories of a bygone day, when Polynesian cargo cults could be thought to shed the same inexhaustible light on the social realities of Steeple Bumpstead as of ancient Xanadu. We hear about what is characteristically, and it appears timelessly, ‘Mediterranean’ behaviour. But for every valid or at least plausible insight one stumbles over others burdened with rather too many unmentioned exceptions, be they ancient or modern or both. All the while, the cultural stereotypes merrily accumulate to an extent that would be unthinkable if the object were contemporary ‘African’ or ‘native American’ people groups.
Now he gets on a roll with some helpful word-pictures:
Malina refers to ancient Jews and their literature in curiously arm-waving and unspecific terms (‘Semites’, ‘Semitic subculture’, ‘Ben Zakaiists’, ‘late Israelites’), citing the Mishnah only twice and the Dead Sea Scrolls not at all, and virtually ignoring the first-century role of the Pharisees, who (rather than the priests) were in Josephus’s view the real ‘bearers of the Great Tradition’.
Then there is the final assessment, including an “in no way” statement that seems a bit infelicitous:
But this cannot be the place for a full-scale interaction with Malina’s approach. My insistence on a more culture-specific application of cultural anthropology is in no way meant to detract from his achievement in securing for this field of study a valid place at the table of New Testament scholarship, or indeed from this book’s years of service among undergraduates in North America and beyond. Future scholarship in the cultural anthropology of early Christianity will inevitably benefit from the initiative represented by works like this.
A colleague of mine is fond of saying that if your only tool is a hammer, all the world looks like a nail. My sense from Robertson’s article, and from Bockmuehl’s review, it that it would be good to have more than one tool. In then end, I ordered several books on the matter, but not this one.
- M. Bockmuehl, Review of Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (Third Edition, Revised and Expanded). Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001. Pp. xv + 256. ISBN 0-664-22295-1. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2002.04.19. [↩]
Quality pronoun, you like, you buy!
I have a number of pronouns lying around, so I have decided to sell them to earn some cash for vacation this next summer. Took this picture last summer when we took the pronouns to the beach for exercise. As you can see, they are fine specimens.
All of the pronouns come with a basic morphology: case number and gender. For a little extra, I will throw in a “demonstrative” add-on kit that enables deictic reference to near and far things.
Besides the morph and potential deictics, the use of the pronouns is almost limitless, but you begin with an empty bucket. It has no reference until you assign it to something. My pronouns are suitable for bi-directional usage, either pointing back to an antecedent, or forward to something that you want to highlight and draw attention to.
These are basic pronouns, so do not ask me for emphatic ones. There is no such thing as an emphatic pronoun, emphasis is determined by two things: the referent of the pronoun, and the significance of the information to which the pronoun refers. The pronoun in and of itself is an empty bucket, so don’t come whining back to me after the sale that I sold you an empty bucket. That is what a pronoun IS, after all. It is the CONTEXTUAL USAGE that determines what fills the bucket and what role it plays.
If you want a pronoun that refers to Princess Leia, then it is up to you to place it in a context where it can refer to her, I will not take responsibility for helping you think of an example. Okay, that one was a freebee, but no more.
And if you want to make your pronoun emphatic, you need to use it in a context where it conveys the most important information in the context. It has little to do with location and everything to do with content and context. The problem is, since pronouns are empty until a reference is assigned, and the reference generally needs to be known before you can use a pronoun, there are mighty few contexts where a pronoun can legitimately provide the most important information. In and of themselves, they are empty! Stop asking for something that it was never intended to do.
So is there a context where a subject pronoun can receive emphasis and fill in the blank at the same time, you ask? Yes, as a matter of fact there is such a context where this regularly happens: pendens constructions, a.k.a. left-dislocations. Below is an excerpt from my 2008 SBL paper on this topic, which I will throw in for free with the purchase of any qualifying pronoun:
Matthew 26:23 (Mark 14:20, Luke 22:21)
In the upper room scene just before Jesus is betrayed, the synoptic gospels differ in exactly what information is provided to the disciples about the identify of the betrayer. They also differ in the context in which the betrayer is mentioned. In Matthew’s version, Jesus declares in 26:21 that he will be betrayed by one of those present. The same holds true in Mark’s version, with a statement in 14:18. Luke’s version does not contain such a disclosure.
In Matthew and Mark, the disclosure precipitates questions from the disciples about which of them is the betrayer. Matthew 26:23 provides the answer to this question in the dislocation. Since it fills in the blank of the question, it is the most important part of the proposition, i.e. focal. The answer (“the one who dips his hand with me in the bowl”) is far too complex to be emphasized in position P2. It would likely be mistaken as a topical frame of reference. Use of the dislocation allows the pronominal trace to be placed in position P2 for emphasis’ sake, indicated by bolding.
23 [LD Ὁ ἐμβάψας μετ ̓ ἐμοῦ τὴν χεῖρα ἐν τῷ τρυβλίῳ LD] οὗτός με παραδώσει 23 …He who dipped his hand with Me in the bowl is the one who will betray Me. The effect of using the left-dislocation is to provide something of a build up. “The one who dips…” is introduced, but it is unclear how this entity relates to the proposition under consideration until it is reiterated in the main clause. The use of emphasis by Matthew says something about the importance he places on this information.
In Luke’s version in 22:21, Jesus does not state that he will be betrayed. There is no question being answered, he simply makes the declaration that the betrayer is present at the table.
21 πλὴν ἰδοὺ ἡ χεὶρ τοῦ παραδιδόντος με μετʼ ἐμοῦ ἐπὶ τῆς τραπέζης 21 “But behold, the hand of the one betraying Me is with Me on the table. A verbless clause is used to state that the betrayer is present, but his identity is not connected to the one the dipping the bread. Verse 23 states that the disciples were discussing who the betrayer might be, but there is no identification of the betrayer until Judas arrives in Gethsemane. The difference in the propositional content accounts for the difference in the syntactic form used in Matthew versus Luke.
The content and structure of Mark’s version in 14:20 has the same kind of context as Matthew’s, where questions have been asked about the identity of the betrayer. Unlike Matthew’s version though, the question is answered using a simple verbless clause. There is no main clause that follows.
20 Εἷς τῶν δώδεκα ὁ ἐμβαπτόμενος μετ ̓ ἐμοῦ εἰς τὸ τρύβλιον 20 And He said to them, “It is one of the twelve, one who dips with Me in the bowl. So while Matthew and Mark both have the same propositional context of a question being asked, Matthew’s version uses the left dislocation to create a dramatic build-up to the answer, emphasizing it by placing the pronominal trace in a marked position. Mark’s version represents a default or normal reply, to simply answering the question without the rhetorical build up.
So, if you want an emphatic pronoun that will be emphatic everywhere, I got nothing for you, don’t even waste my time with an inquiry. However, if you are interested in taking the basic, semantically empty unit (remember, morph included!) and willing to invest the DIY elbow grease to create an emphatic context, you have the opportunity to see your investment really build some equity. But if you want a little free advice, I would not suggest trying to make something emphatic that isn’t, it will only end in heartbreak. Invest the time and energy to learn about what brings about emphasis, and beware of those trying to sell you something that ain’t real. Emphatic pronouns cannot be bought, they are made using a combination of reference and context.
This a follow-up to an earlier post on emphatic pronouns. I really have nothing to sell.
I just received a note this morning from Stephen Levinsohn regarding the posting of his resources on the web. Some of you may be familiar with his self-taught discourse materials. What may be new are his extensive exegetical notes on various books of the Bible. Some of it may well be over your head, but they are definitely worth taking a look at if you are doing a close study of the book. Conceptually speaking, the framework I am using is intended to serve as an introduction to his approach. If you can track what I am doing here, you should do fine. Here is his description:
The website includes not only the self-instruction courses, but also my files of discourse observations on 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 1 Corinthians 1-4 and parts of Luke – materials produced in past ‘Discourse for Translation’ workshops. It also has a link to three files in Spanish. As I am often asked for these files, I was wondering whether there is some means of publicising the existence of this site.
One note of caution. Stephen is a very precise scholar. Generally speaking, if he cannot account for 95-100% of the data of a given feature, then he does not feel that he has properly described it. I am aiming for the 80-90% range, since there seems to be a fairly high fatality rate in covering the last 10%. In other words, it becomes so technical in the final leg that many give up the ghost rather than pushing ahead. It’s not really a death march, it just feels like it. My introductions are intended to acclimatize folks before they move off to attempt the summit. When I was doing my doctoral studies there was no concise introduction to the field, most works assumed a horrific amount of background. Hopefully I am bridging that gap.
I commend Levinsohn’s work to you, particularly the self-teaching materials. By all means read and see how languages tend to operate, what principles they follow. It will greatly enhance your ability to think productively about English, Greek, or most any other thing.
It was with some measure of shock and even a little horror that I read Mounce’s Koinonia blog post this morning on emphatic pronouns. After a little checking to see whether anyone had yet addressed the issue, I decided to tackle it myself. B-Greek has received postings about Greek “urban legends” of late, and we should add this as another entry. Unbelievable. He seems to realize that this post will evoke some ire stating, “Talk of this kind is often met with angry blog comments, but the fact of the matter is that this is what the Greek text says.” My beef has nothing to do with his theology whatsoever, nor will I even engage any theological aspect of the claims to help make that point. My point of contention is the eisegesis of the urban legend into “this emphatic pronoun, and this one alone.” So, here we go.
If you have read this blog for any time at all, you have probably seen me make the (hugely significant, prime-directive-ish kind of) distinction between the semantic meaning of something and the pragmatic effect of its usage. A pronoun is nothing more that an abbreviated placeholder to refer to some concept in the discourse. Since Greek finite verbs encode person and number, in most cases subject pronouns are not semantically required. This is the case of the pronouns in Matt 5 that Mounce references, hence his inclination to see them as doing something more than a mere semantic function of disambiguating the subject. He is dead on. The million dollar question is which function? Here is the salient excerpt from the post, but please be sure to read the whole thing:
But one of the most theological powerful and provocative uses of the emphatic third person pronoun is in the beatitudes. All have the same construction. “Blessed are the … for they (αυτοι) will ….” The nuance of αυτος is that they they alone will receive the blessing.
- Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
- Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
- Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus is not saying that the poor in spirit, among others, are blessed. He is saying that they and they alone will inherit the kingdom. The merciful, and they alone, will receive mercy. Only those who are persecuted with inherit the kingdom. The meaning of the αυτος is nuanced, but it is there, and its force is devastating to much of modern theology and its easy believism. (Italics are Mounce)
This claim left me without words for a while. I was surprised that a scholar of his caliber would still hold to such a view in light of the work by Levinsohn and others in the area of information structure. Nick Bailey’s dissertation is a huge contribution, but it is certainly not the first to provide a coherent, linguistically-viable description of Koine information structure. There are two basic functions of pronouns in the information structure system of Koine when they are not semantically required. Viewing them as “placeholders” is a key to moving forward (see the series of posts here, or my article here).
There are two pragmatically marked slots in a given clause, theoretically speaking. The first slot is for what has traditionally been called “contrastive subjects/pronouns”, what I refer to as “frames of reference.” Frames of reference relate the clause that follows to what precedes in a very specific way. In my view, what Mounce is describing are topical frames of reference. Such usage is often called “contrastive” since they are typically used to make a marked switch from one topic to another. This slot is the initial position in the clause, and requires some kind of marker to be present to make this function explicit. Since the verb can encode the subject information, the pronoun serves as a placeholder to mark that a pragmatic function is intended. Mounce provides a nice example that I will quote:
That point is most often seen in contrasts. John the Baptist says, “I (εγω) baptize you with water… He (αυτος) will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (Matt 3:11).
The instances in Matt 5:3 ff do not involve a switch, but is instead a reaffirmation of the preceding subject. A second pragmatic function of pronouns, and I think the one from which the claim of “emphatic” probably stems, is what is traditionally called “emphasis.” The pragmatic slot immediately after the frame of reference may or may not be filled by an element in marked focus. This element is the most important bit of information in the clause, hence the decision to “emphasize” it in the marked focus position. If you read Simon Dik, he refers to the first position as P1, the second as P2. This is the same framework employed by Levinsohn and Randall Buth, though horribly simplified for present purposes. Below is an example of the P2 function of a pronoun for emphasis sake from Matt 4:10. It is exactly the thing that Mounce is claiming in regard to Matt 5, but is a legitimate example.
Matt 4:10 τότε λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· ὕπαγε, σατανᾶ· γέγραπται γάρ· κύριον τὸν θεόν σου προσκυνήσεις καὶ αὐτῷ μόνῳ λατρεύσεις.
In Jesus’ final response to Satan’s temptations, he is rejecting the call to abandon the worship of YHWH. The information structure in Deut 6:13 is the same as that of Matt 4:10 because the determinative factor is the difference between what is established or presupposed in the context and what is newly asserted. The newly asserted information, by definition, will be the most salient, the “focus” of the utterance. If you REALLY want to make it stand out, you can place the focal information in a marked position (i.e. marked focus), which has the effect of “emphasizing” what was already the most important information in the clause.
Returning to the example in 4:10, Jesus states that YHWH is to be the object of worship, as opposed to some other alternative, in this case Satan. Here we find there is no contrastive change in topic, but instead an emphatic reaffirmation. The emphasis does NOT come from the placement of the pronoun alone, but from the information context, the difference between what is presupposed and what is asserted. It is presupposed that SOMEONE is to be worshiped, and Satan wants it to be him. This is rejected implicitly through the statement that YHWH is to be worshiped, and stated more emphatically through the reaffirmation in terms of whom we are to serve. Pronouns can be indeed be used for emphasis, but it is the information context that is determinative, not just the presence or location of the pronoun.
There is one other common use of pronouns in information structure. This is to use them as a frame of reference in non-contrastive contexts. I believe this is the case in Matt 5:3. Levinsohn refers to this as “renewal,” whereby a topic that has already been introduced is reaffirmed for the purpose of thematic highlighting. It is NOT the most important information in the clause, what is said about it is most important. It simply reaffirms it to draw the reader’s attention to what otherwise might have been missed.
In the context of the Beatitudes, there is a whole series of topic switches from one complex entity to the next (e.g. the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness). This renewal of the topic using a frame of reference buys the reader some processing time to slow down and properly track the discourse, to reorient on the new topic. The same technique is used by Luke in the scene where Jesus is dedicated at the temple. In quick succession we are introduced to Simeon and Anna. In each case, Luke follows up the initial introduction by a topical frame of reference for renewal using a thematically-marked demonstrative pronoun, underlined below.
Luke 2:25 Καὶ ἰδοὺ ἄνθρωπος ἦν ἐν Ἰερουσαλὴμ ᾧ ὄνομα Συμεὼν καὶ ὁ ἄνθρωπος οὗτος δίκαιος καὶ εὐλαβὴς προσδεχόμενος παράκλησιν τοῦ Ἰσραήλ, καὶ πνεῦμα ἦν ἅγιον ἐπʼ αὐτόν·
Luke 2:36 Καὶ ἦν Ἅννα προφῆτις, θυγάτηρ Φανουήλ, ἐκ φυλῆς Ἀσήρ· αὕτη προβεβηκυῖα ἐν ἡμέραις πολλαῖς, ζήσασα μετὰ ἀνδρὸς ἔτη ἑπτὰ ἀπὸ τῆς παρθενίας αὐτῆς
Neither of these participants require an explicit reference in the underlined context since they are the only ones active in the preceding clause. The renewal of them using a frame of reference slows the pace a bit and lets the reader know to pay attention to these two. They are what Levinsohn calls “local VIPs”. They play a salient role, but it is only a cameo appearance. The most important information in the clause is not their identity, but their character and activity, respectively.
Returning to Mounce’s exegesis of the Beatitudes, the pronouns are not there to emphasize that they and they alone are entitled to something, but it is simply to renew them to make sure that the reader tracks all of the changes Jesus makes. Where a writer wants to make the point about “THEY and THEY ALONE,” it would be expected in a context that has some kind of expected alternative, as in Matt 4:10. Furthermore, the writer could include some restrictive element like μονος. Mounce seems to be arguing that this is the case in Matt 5, but it is an argument from silence. I find nothing in the context on which to claim the kind of exclusivity he advocates. He dramatically overstates his case in claiming that “the fact of the matter is that this is what the Greek text says.”**
If the exclusivity is actually a property of the emphatic usage, as he appears to claim, the how does he explain the renewal in Luke 2:36, and the somewhat similar one in 2:25. Is this intended to claim that Anna ALONE was advanced in years, no one else? Such a claim would be ludicrous, nor do I think he would make it.
My point here is to highlight the important distinction to be made between semantic meaning and pragmatic effect. Pragmatic effects are derived from the constraints and information status of the context, not just the form alone. The same form can be used in what may appear at first blush to be the same context, but with different effects. Pronouns can be used to emphasize things, but make sure you have delimited the factors that bring about the effects. If your are interested in reading more about these kinds of issues and how they interact, I would encourage you to take a look at my forthcoming Discourse Grammar. There is an excerpt available for download on my publications page. Hopefully this urban legend will die soon, but I am not holding my breath.
**For his claim to be plausible, it would require each of the things asserted about the “poor in X” to be presupposed as was shown to be the case in Matt 4:10. It is presupposed/established that Jesus is going to worship SOMEONE, it is just a matter of who. The “blessed are…” assertions function to introduce a new group of people about which a comment will be made. In the following clause, the quality or comment that is made about each group is what is asserted and hence most important. None of them are presupposed or inferable from the context.
Update: I have created a follow-up post on the function of pronouns to clarify some of the presuppositions here.
JJ Miller is one of many that have noted the recent release of a doctoral dissertation from the Free University in Amsterdam, home Simon Dik and one of my external examiners. There is also a post by Mike Aubrey on the topic.
Bailey has published several articles on aspects of word order in the Hebrew Bible, but was quite pleased to see this dissertation. It seems that he relies heavily upon the work of Knud Lambrecht, particularly the work subsequent to his 1994 volume. I devote a section of a chapter of the Discourse Grammar to various approaches to analyzing the pragmatics governing the ordering of clause elements. I note that most everyone but Halliday rely on Lambrecht. He has made a significant contribution to describing the cognitive processes which affect the pragmatics, an element that is missing from older applications of Dik’s Functional Grammar.
Most significant is Bailey’s discussion of words like ιδου that are often considered interjections and translated woodenly. He argues that one of their functions is indicating sentence focus, introducing a brand new entity. I had been puzzling over this very same issue in my Hebrew analysis and had wanted some more info on the issue. Well, here it is.
While I highly recommend his work, Bailey’s work also reconfirms the fact that describing the pragmatic principles at work is a complex thing, not for the faint of heart. However, principle-driven approaches will fare far better despite their difficulty than oversimplifications using rule-based models derived from statistics. These may be simpler, but with good reason–they miss much of what is driven by the human processing of the text, the difference between what is presupposed and asserted in each clause. Since this changes with each clause as one reads the discourse, the mind is constantly updating the parameters used for making judgments. If it sounds too simple to be true, then be skeptical.
So if you are looking at a nice introduction to constituent order devoted to Greek, you will not find anything finer out there than Bailey’s work. The outline I provide is simply meant for an introduction, not to train you to do the analysis yourself. And for what it is worth, Lambrecht’s book was (and still is) the most difficult book that I have yet read.
Here is one other excerpt from JJ from Rich Rhodes of UC Berkley who served as external examiner on the committee:
We all recognized that Nick’s work has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of information flow in the NT. I’m pushing him to work on pulling the generalizations out of the welter of minor constructions he has cataloged, since it is expected that he will formally publish his findings.
We spent the afternoon after the defense talking about the family of constructions involving ίδου/ἴδε. We’ve heard these translated as behold for so long, that we have no clue that that’s not how most of them function in Koine at all. Read his Chapter 6 to see the breakdown.
Be sure to read the rest of the post about the ceremony of the event. Being there would have been a blast.
I finally feel like I am getting settled back into life after leaving for an extended trip Nov. 15. The first leg was spent at Calvin Seminary in Grand Rapids for a consultation considering how best to incorporate Bible software into the teaching of biblical languages. There has been an elephant in the room for some time at many seminaries: the waning ability to justify the usefulness of traditional Greek and Hebrew study in preparation for pastoral ministry. This issue has been around since my days in seminary in the early ‘90s, yet has only really gained traction in recent days with schools needing to trim budgets. As pastors are required to have more and more training in more diverse areas than ever before, something has to give. Adding another year to the program is not an option, so most schools are cutting out what deans consider to be fluff.
In my own experience, I do not think my profs were in a very good position to make a compelling case for the traditional approach of memorization and parsing. I saw folks around me that memorized it all, did well in the class, but did not really understand the language. Then there were the rabid psycho people like me that got up early to study and read for fun, but I still did not have the foundation I needed for moving from decoding Greek to understanding it. When a prof was asked “Why take Greek?” the general answer was to be able to access information about the text that could not be conveyed in English. This could be anything from a text-critical matter to a translational or exegetical matter. I learned at Calvin that one of the benchmarks for Reformed pastors is the ability to work in original languages for resolution of doctrinal disputes.
The problem with this justification is that what used to be inaccessible is now quite so, thanks to databases, a variety of English translations, textual notes like those in the NET. The information-access justification even then was pretty lame. Knowledge of the languages does indeed help in such matters, but for the number of times that a pastor might address such an issue in any given week, does it justify the years of study? Some would say “no.”
Another justification was that knowledge of the languages would help you to preach a better sermon. Again, it is generally informationally-driven, the idea being that if you know that this was a genitive of source instead of means, then one could provide a better exegesis. I am not sure if this lead to or coincided with the move toward a 1-2 verse per week pace of preaching, but what I saw was people atomizing the text into such small bits that the pieces no longer looked like the who. It would be like dissecting a chicken down to its component parts, and then trying to put it back together. One might recognize it as a fowl, but certainly without its original glory. Unfortunately many have associated the atomization of the text with language study, and thus eschewed it as unproductive. Many language teacher have only confirmed such a view with their methodology.
My goal in preparation for preaching is to crawl into the text, so to speak. One of my profs talked of living in the text, of preparing to preach by immersing oneself in the larger corpus for weeks in preparation and then in the given pericope the week of the sermon. Doing so would allow you to meet with God, to allow Him to impact your life with His word in preparation for leading the congregation into the same experience. I loved the idea, but there was little in the way of methodology, and I had been taught to atomize. Putting the chicken back together was still a challenge. I had to figure out a different approach where the chicken was still alive on Sunday morning, so to speak. I think my metaphor may be breaking down, but hopefully you get my drift.
In all of this discussion about languages, little of it focused on intended outcome. Yes, there was the general goal of reading a clean text, knowing all words occurring more than X number of times, and being able to parse or recognizes morphological forms, but this had more to do with dividing the chicken into its component parts than the ability to distinguish a chicken from a duck. What has been missing is an intelligent discussion about what does it practically mean to understand a text. Does it mean the ability to translate it? If so, formal or dynamic? Does it mean an understanding of the grammatical parts, the vocab, morph, and syntax? What is it about these elements that contribute to understanding? Surely not just assigning a label.
The consultation at Calvin was a first step down the road of better understanding our intended objective in language study. We heard from folks in the trenches preaching, both a new grad and an older one. This reality check about life in actual ministry must inform any discussion. If we place an unworkable load of what good exegesis looks like that cannot reasonably be achieved on a regular basis, then we are no better that the Pharisees who did the same with their tradition. The solution must be workable in real life.
The harder question is what is “it”? What is it about the language that positively contributes to preaching and teaching? The pat answer is “Understanding the text!” Right, what does that practically mean, practically look like? Back in the day, seminarians arrived with at least one modern language under their belt, as well as at least one classical language like Latin or Greek. The seminary then merely needed to reformulate what the student already knew about language and apply it to Koine or BH. This was not necessarily easy, but it was attainable due to the student’s background. Not so today.
Most of us have heard the complaint that students today do not even really know English let alone any other language. Instead of building on an existing foundation in the introductory year, profs are needing to lay the foundation before any progress can be made. When I used to build, we poured the whole foundation before doing any building on it, allowing us to make sure it was square with the world and of the proper dimensions. Metaphorically speaking, some teaching language today are pouring the foundation as they build, without a very clear blueprint of what the structure is supposed to look like. An architect’s rendering of the finished product is pretty, but it is the engineered-version of the blueprint that contains the details needed to make that pretty picture a reality. Each phase of the project has its own detailed page: foundation, framing/rough plumbing, electrical, exterior elevations, landscaping, etc. We should not be surprised if we get a Rube Goldberg house at the end of the day.
It was encouraging to hear what some practitioners are doing to address these issues. I listened and took notes, walking away with a renewed calling to dream up things that could help turn the tide against the degradation of biblical language study. I know the impact that the languages have had on my life and ministry, but many chickens died along the way. A key revelation for me came from reconciling orthodoxy with orthopraxy. I said and affirmed that I believed Scripture is living and active, the living word of God that is able to touch hearts and change lives by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is an important part of my orthodoxy. In terms of orthopraxy, I tended to atomize what had always been living in order to demonstrate it was living, and then tried to put it back together again. I ended up closing the sermon/teaching with a dead chicken taped back together. If Scripture really is living and active, then all that needs to happen is clearing the way for people to see that. I shifted from atomizing to something more like a guided tour, striving to stay out of people’s view so they could see what was really important. I stopped including things that were not necessary to accomplish this, and surprisingly nobody seemed to miss these things I had been taught were near non-negotiables.
If God’s word really is living and active, really is His means of speaking into our lives, then how does this affect our preaching, our preparation? What is the relation of the language study to the delivery, what exactly is it that I am deriving from my study that prepares me to teach? I am beginning to formulate some ideas here, and my research focus this coming year will be to practically tackle some of these issues, especially the lack of language foundation in today’s language students. What is it about the study of the language that practically translates into helping a congregation or class meet with God in the text?
