1 Corinthians 12:4-5 δὲ vs καὶ

[PhillipLebsack]

Better to focus on learning to read greek.

The better one learns to understand Greek, the better one understands what Steven and others are doing in DA.

I agree... I feel like this is essential to learning to read Greek...

I can't say that i'm an authority on this, but my philosophy is that no translation can ever do full justice to a text, because interpretation is involved and there will subsequently always be some meaning lost... From studying Mr. Runge's "introduction" to DA so far, I feel bad I didn't pick up earlier. It really does make sense of a lot of things, and it makes reasonable sense in general. Some of the concepts, like 'forward-pointing' devices I already innately knew were there. I knew that there were more to the 'connectives' because why would there be two words that mean exactly the same thing? The concept of semantic constraints, though I understand is theory, I feel is good linguistics and is really enlightening.

I'll keep an open mind. But, at the very least, I feel that it is something that should be studied and kept in perspective.

[RandallButh]

In principle when reading any language when running across two potential structures for a particular situation, always ask what "A" would mean and what "B" would mean, assuming both are referring to the same general situation.
Learn to read within the framework of the language system itself.
In other words, meaning and emphasis and packaging are part of the original language system and are not determined by translation into another language. καί and δέ do not "mean, emphasize, or package" the same thing even if English translators choose the same English words for their translations.

Practically, that means that students can learn a lot by asking questions like, "what would this mean if the aorist infinitive were replaced by a continuative infinitive, or vice versa?" Practicing to read "A" by comparing with "B" will eventually bring a big payoff in sensitive reading skills. That is what people are doing who write about "discourse analysis".

PS: Unfortunately, some people have cluttered the literature with unteneable and misleading theories (at a time when the field was too weak to call them out).
That clutter is what some of the 'aspect-only' people did with discourse analysis in the 90's. I feel sorry for Stirling:

I invested untold hours trying to figure out what S.E. Porter and J. Reed were up to in the 1990s. Wasn't an investment with much yield.

Stirling is correct and students, expecially beginning students, should be steered away from aspect-only "discourse" studies. For example, the Greek perfect was a semantic signal (somewhat complex because of having features that overlap with aorists, statives, and imperfectives), it was not a pragmatic discourse signal of heightened proximity/foreground or any other weakly defined subjectivity. Suggesting the perfect as heightened gobblygook, as the aspect-only people did, mispredicted the reading of texts and simply left students and the practioners themselves in a cloud of confusion.

So yes, read, read, read, Greek, communicate in Greek to become sensitive to the choices being made, and yes, read Steve Runge's book--it is a responsible synthesis of features and signals in the Greek language.

PPS:
Steve, I don't know if you will see this note, but I saw a copy of your book yesterday in the Bible Society shop across from the NW corner of the Old City, Jerusalem. κῦδος !

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

... but if we keep reading, the very next δὲ introduces text which is analyzed by the editor[1] as parenthetical which means δὲ introduces subordination. On the other hand the next καὶ introduces text that moves the story forward but it doesn't introduce a new scene.

Real text is often more complex than the rules of any framework can handle.

If your last sentence means that the text you analyze doesn't "obey the rules", I remind that according your analysis it fits within the framework about which Steve told Levinsohn nowadays holds. But your purpose is a bit unclear to me.

The problem in understanding discourse, at least for those who are accustomed by rule-based old-fashioned grammar and who wait for the "this is what the original text really says" experience is that there are no "rules", as was already said, like there are in grammar - like "this always means that" or "this is always inflected like this" or "this word is never in this position with that kinds of words" or something like that. There are only tendencies and vague explanations. But this doesn't mean that explanations are wrong or not worth understanding.

[Stirling Bartholomew]

If your last sentence means that the text you analyze doesn't "obey the rules", I remind that according your analysis it fits within the framework about which Steve told Levinsohn nowadays holds. But your purpose is a bit unclear to me.

Eeli,

Yes I agree, it wasn't well worded. I didn't put in the (substantial) effort required to figure out what Runge's post was saying. Levinsohn's ( Discourse Features 2000) treatment καὶ δὲ covers a lot of territory. The Thucydides sample introduces some contrast which demonstrates a need to approach this topic with care. I say this because students who arrive here after several years in the grammar translation courses often have absorbed a mindset that doesn't work in textlinguistics, which is not just an advanced course in greek grammar.

I have experience this sort of disconnect before on b-greek. I remember talking about transformation grammar and Chomsky with Micheal Palmer in the late 90s. I was working with transformation grammar that was actually pre-Chomsky and adopted by some major players in mid 20th century bible translation. Palmer was working with a different framework. This is the feeling I get from reading other people talking about Levinsohn. We are not on the same wavelength.

[Barry Hofstetter]

I agree... I feel like this is essential to learning to read Greek...

I can't say that i'm an authority on this, but my philosophy is that no translation can ever do full justice to a text, because interpretation is involved and there will subsequently always be some meaning lost... From studying Mr. Runge's "introduction" to DA so far, I feel bad I didn't pick up earlier. It really does make sense of a lot of things, and it makes reasonable sense in general. Some of the concepts, like 'forward-pointing' devices I already innately knew were there. I knew that there were more to the 'connectives' because why would there be two words that mean exactly the same thing? The concept of semantic constraints, though I understand is theory, I feel is good linguistics and is really enlightening.

I'll keep an open mind. But, at the very least, I feel that it is something that should be studied and kept in perspective.

People have been learning and understanding Greek for quite a few centuries prior to the invention of Discourse Analysis, so no, it's not essential. My experience has been that the model is helpful in making explicit certain syntactical arrangements and constructions which are simply felt on a practically subliminal level by fluent users of the language. More than once while reading Runge I remember thinking to myself, "I never quite thought of it that way, but yeah..." Studies about the langauge, using whatever model or approach, are always best understood on the foundation of knowledge of the language.

[Jonathan Robie]

I'm reading these chapters again now, thanks to this thread. It's worth re-reading as your language skills improve.

[paorear]

My take, which follows nicely with Steve Runge's report on Levinsohn now preferring the term "point" is that current software applications help us to understand this. Think of PowerPoint slides:

• και is used sort of like two slides, one is with "Some Title" and the other is "Some Title (cont.)" - e.g. primarily *coordinating*

• δε is more like the bullet points on a given slide, where the bullet points can elaborate on the topic of the slide, whether that be coordinating, contrasting or subordinating.