Subject and Predicate in 1 Cor 11:3 παντὸς ἀνδρὸς ἡ κεφαλὴ [ὁ] Χριστός ἐστιν

[Stephen Carlson]

I have both Levinsohn's Discourse Analysis, which identifies left-dislocation, and a set of syntax trees. I need to do a little monkeying to make their reference systems compatible, but I can probably get to that in the next week and give this a shot.

There's some danger that this is specific enough that there won't be a whole lot of instances in the Greek New Testament. And I don't know where to get annotations that identify left-dislocation in the classical corpus. But it's worth a try, and there will be clear benefits to bringing Levinsohn and syntax trees together into one query system.

Sure, are you familiar with his BART displays? https://scholars.sil.org/stephen_h_levinsohn/bart

[Jonathan Robie]

I have both Levinsohn's Discourse Analysis, which identifies left-dislocation, and a set of syntax trees. I need to do a little monkeying to make their reference systems compatible, but I can probably get to that in the next week and give this a shot.

There's some danger that this is specific enough that there won't be a whole lot of instances in the Greek New Testament. And I don't know where to get annotations that identify left-dislocation in the classical corpus. But it's worth a try, and there will be clear benefits to bringing Levinsohn and syntax trees together into one query system.

Sure, are you familiar with his BART displays? https://scholars.sil.org/stephen_h_levinsohn/bart

Yes. In fact, this is the data I have in my database. I have it in BART, I also have it as XML here:

https://github.com/biblicalhumanities/levinsohn

It lists 403 instances of left-dislocation in the Greek New Testament, at least in this release, which is behind what BART has.

[Jonathan Robie]

The average NT student with seminary level Greek will not get it. Can you translate? What difference does this make in our understanding of the text, our exegesis of the text, and how we might explain it to a congregation or or Bible study?

I'm not sure, but let me try.

This thread seems to be discussing two main things. Left-dislocation is a focusing device. It tells us something about the overall organization of this passage. In subject/predicate constructions, the sequence of subjects tells us what this is about, the predicates tell us what is said about the subjects.

In an inductive Bible Study, some people might use colored pencils to distinguish subject from predicate. In a sermon, it would be mostly a matter of emphasis in what is said. Like much of what we learn by reading the original instead of a translation, it's too geeky and hard to explain and it's not the main point of the sermon. But even in English, there's a difference in the flow and emphasis in these two sentences:

• The head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
• Christ is the head of every man and the man is the head of the woman and God is the head of Christ.

[MAubrey]

Let me lay out a number of premises to this approach (as I understand them, can't speak for Mike):

I wholeheartedly endorse this.