Syntax in Josephus Antiquities

Other Greek writings of the New Testament era, including papyri and inscriptions
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Stephen Carlson
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Re: Syntax in Josephus Antiquities

Post by Stephen Carlson »

RandallButh wrote: April 9th, 2019, 4:58 am The so-called "sentence accent" can also be for a Topicalization, Contextualization and thus non-Focal. So I find "sentence accent" unhelpful by itself. (See my comments immediately above.)
Mike will have to define "sentence accent" but I've been gravitating to a position like that (it basically sits on the focal element). I'm not sure your understanding of it is the same as his.
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Matthew Longhorn
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Re: Syntax in Josephus Antiquities

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

It's actually an indirect question. Believe it or not, the main verb in the indirect question is κατέστησαν
Crikey! I wouldn’t have spotted that if I had spent the next month glowering at it! Thanks Barry, very helpful and also good to know it isn’t Greek 101.
MAubrey
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Re: Syntax in Josephus Antiquities

Post by MAubrey »

RandallButh wrote: April 9th, 2019, 4:58 amThe so-called "sentence accent" can also be for a Topicalization, Contextualization and thus non-Focal. So I find "sentence accent" unhelpful by itself. (See my comments immediately above.)
Clitics are phonological and prosodic phenomenon, if you're going to account for them without talking about prosody then you've already done it wrong. So simply saying that "sentence accent" is "unhelpful" is itself unhelpful.
RandallButh wrote: April 9th, 2019, 4:37 am In this example {οὗτοι υἱοί εἰσιν θεοῦ} οὗτοι is non-Focal, it is a Contextualization (AKA Topic) and would relate to some group that the context was making clear. The sentence would then be communicating a characterization of the "these" by adding the salient information, and in this example would be doing so in a marked/special way. In other words, "As for these, they are verily SONS of God." This would have been used in a context where the author wanted to say what kind of people "these" were. Were they good, bad, slaves, rich, poor, common, patrician, literate, illiterate, strong, weak, etc? They were SONS of God. "Of God," then, gets dragged along with the Focal partial constituent so that it attains to a kind of unmarked Focus as well. A second way to say this was the last example {οὗτοι υἱοὶ θεοῦ εἰσίν}, where again the marked Focus ends up on "sons of God."
Yes, I agree that's solid way to take it, but it assume interpretations of the prosody that we do not have access to: treating οὗτοι as you do says not merely that it is topical, but that it is left dislocated with a pause between it and υἱοὶ. It's certainly a legitimate reading. But if οὗτοι υἱοὶ is taken as cohesive NP without the break, then the interpretation changes.

Or are you asserting that the ordering οὗτοι υἱοί εἰσιν θεοῦ would only happen if οὗτοι was a left dislocation?
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Re: Syntax in Josephus Antiquities

Post by MAubrey »

Barry Hofstetter wrote: April 8th, 2019, 11:19 pm Here is an example where the verb is fronted in it's clause:

εἰσὶν δὲ ἐξειλεγμένοι Περσῶν οἱ ἄριστοι δόξαντες ἐν ἡλικίᾳ τέτταρες...
This is close to what we're looking for, but I'm not sure how the δὲ and participle would affect things.
Barry Hofstetter wrote: April 8th, 2019, 11:19 pm Here's an example using the demonstrative:

ἔπειτά εἰσιν οὗτοι οἱ κατήγοροι πολλοὶ καὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἤδη κατηγορηκότες...
This example involves εἰσιν as an enclitic attaching to ἔπειτά, what we want is an orthotonic εἴσιν at the front. That's the bit that makes its weird.
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Matthew Longhorn
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Re: Syntax in Josephus Antiquities

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

Orthotonic?
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Re: Syntax in Josephus Antiquities

Post by RandallButh »

Or are you asserting that the ordering οὗτοι υἱοί εἰσιν θεοῦ would only happen if οὗτοι was a left dislocation?
Yes.
Here it is Subject-CC(Topic) Complement-Focus (partial) Verb Complement (partial)


PS: No problem with prosodies, but those are subservient to, and part of, the word order choices. E.g., you accept εἰσιν above in more than one position. That is pragmatics, not prosody, doing the dictating.
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