Robert Crowe wrote: ↑April 8th, 2017, 7:03 pm
Stirling Bartholomew wrote: ↑April 8th, 2017, 1:49 pm
Text Linguistics isn’t just about word order; Textuality, Cohesion, Foreground, Background, Anaphora, Participant Reference ... someone else can complete the list.
Surely it is possible to recognise these features apart from Text Linguistics. This being the case much of its jargon amounts to mere clutter.
To me, one of the basic questions is this: at what point do we leave the world of syntax-wrote-large - including syntax of colons or passages or whatever - and enter the wild and wooly world of interpreting passages based on themes and setting and character and all that, and how much of this can linguistics help us with? I really don't have a good answer, just a question. To use an analogy from painting, color and perspective are important tools for a painter, but interpreting a painting is not as cut and dried as these things, and is done in a different domain. On the other hand, a solid grasp of technique will help you interpret a painting.
I do think that some of the discourse features that Levinsohn and Runge identify are helpful for noticing some ways that context and focus are established, and I suspect we have a lot to learn from them. At this point, I suspect it might be useful to look at John 2:1-11 in a separate thread, look at what Levinsohn has said about it in his discourse features, and think about what it teaches us. I'll start that soonish.
Robert Crowe wrote: ↑April 8th, 2017, 7:03 pmI find some of the basic principals grandiose. Levinsohn,'Discourse Features of the New Testament Greek, p.viii' states 'One basic principal is that
choice [of phrase order]
implies meaning.' This he claims is always an informational nuance. I don't accept this; but, if it is true, a serious analysis should then include degrees of nuance. It might be important or less so.
Less so would still mean that it implies meaning, but not much meaning. I'm not sure if every choice implies meaning, I suspect that native speaker might sometimes notice very little or no difference between alternate formulations. On the other hand, some choices usually imply a significant amount of meaning.
For an English speaker, there is very little difference between these sentences:
- I went to the store today.
- Today, I went to the store.
But I do think there is arguably a difference in focus. The second one puts the focus on "today".
Robert Crowe wrote: ↑April 8th, 2017, 7:03 pmI can accept this kind of study as a working hypothesis, whereby theories are made in conclusion by way of yes
accidental benefits, and not claimed preposterously beforehand.
I think we've seen discourse oversold sometimes. And perhaps more so in its early days than today. I don't think we can scientifically derive the correct interpretation by the mathematical calculation from discourse features, and I don't think discourse grammar is the same thing as discourse analysis.
But maybe we should take a look at some passages in detail and see what it buys us?
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/