Word Order in Greek: Prominence
Here is a great document on the importance of word order in Greek. I think that this article may help to clear up many of the questions that you all may have on this matter. Your confusion is not unsual. I have copied this document to this blog. I hope that it is useful to the novice (newbies like me) student of Greek.
I would have paraphrase this wonderful text, but I do not believe that I could explain this nuance so eloquently or concise.
Word Order and Relative Prominence in New Testament Greek
Earlier version published in Notes on Translation Vol. 5 No. 1 (1991): 29-34 (© SIL Int.)
This version is revised by the author in February 2001
Iver Larsen, iver_larsen@sil.org
“Sometimes the very point which an author [of a book of the Bible] wishes to make may be missed if the emphasis which he makes in Greek is neglected in the translation,” warns Harold Greenlee (quoted by Smith 1985:17).
Word order is the most common means of showing emphasis in Greek and of distinguishing the themes in focus from background themes. Since the word order in New Testament Greek is very free, while word order in English is not, the emphasis, which is shown by the Greek word order, cannot be directly transferred to English, nor can it be directly transferred to any other language. All languages have ways of showing emphasis and ways of distinguishing the more pertinent information from the peripheral, but these ways can be very different. A literal translation will quite often miss the point the biblical author is making or at least skew it, exactly because different languages use different ways to show emphasis. Therefore, it is of utmost importance for a translator to study how both the source language and target language mark emphasis.
Many people have written about this topic. Some articles appeared in the now defunct Selected Technical Articles Related to Translation (referenced below). While there is some difference of opinion about the details of the analysis, there is general agreement on the basic principle, which can be simply stated and which, in spite of its simplicity, can give considerable new insight even to those who know little Greek. By following an interlinear Greek-English version, one can notice the Greek word order and draw out significant information from that alone.
The basic principle about how NT Greek uses word order to show emphasis is not a new discovery. Joseph Rotherham expounded it in 1878 in his book The New Testament Critically Emphasized. But the principle has only recently been widely recognized. I shall restate the principle as follows:
The more to the left an item occurs, the more prominent it is.
In this article I shall try to illustrate this basic principle without going into a discussion of theoretical details. I shall first look at word order within the phrase, then within the clause, and finally within the sentence. (Of the articles in the References I especially recommend Smith 1985, Callow 1983a and Levinsohn 2000.)
1 Word order within the phrase
A noun phrase consists of a head noun and one or more modifiers. These modifiers can be a word, a phrase, a rankshifted relative clause or a participial phrase/clause. The qualifying words may be one or more of the following: article, negative particle, adjective, numeral, demonstrative, quantifier (strong – “all” or weak – “some”), or a genitive noun/pronoun. The phrase may be a genitive NP or a prepositional NP. Most of these constructions will be treated in the following sections, but some of them I shall mention here in passing. In Greek almost any type of NP can function without a head. Even the article can function without its head. In such cases the head is either implied form the previous context or a very general concept like “person” or “thing”.
If an NP has the definite article, the article always occurs in first position within the phrase. The presence or absence of the article does not seem to have any direct relationship to prominence.
When an phrase is negated, the negative particle comes first. It may be a noun phrase, prepositional phrase or verb phrase and some of these may function within another phrase. This placement agrees with the general statement, because if something is negated it is a prominent fact that it is negated. In English, the word “not” is normally stressed for the same reason.
1.1 Noun plus adjective
The basic word order for an NP with a definite article and an NP without the article is different, so we shall look at these separately. First the unarthrous NP.
The unmarked, basic order for the unarthrous NP is that the adjective follows the noun. Therefore, when the adjective precedes the noun, which it often does, this order signifies that the adjective is more prominent or emphatic than the noun. In the majority of cases the emphasis has to do with a contrast or something unexpected. A restatement of the basic principle would be: The more unpredictable the information is, the more to the left it is put. In the following examples italics in the English glosses are used to show the emphasis:
Matt 7.18 οὐ δύναται δένδρον ἀγαθὸν καρποὺς πονηροὺς ἐνεγκεῖν, οὐδὲ δένδρον σαπρὸν καρποὺς καλοὺς ἐνεγκεῖν.
not can a-tree good fruits bad produce
a good tree cannot produce bad fruits
(general knowledge, nothing unexpected or emphasized)
Matt 13:45 Πάλιν ὁμοία ἐστὶν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν ἀνθρώπῳ ἐμπόρῳ ζητοῦντι καλοὺς μαργαρίτας
to-a-merchant seeking good pearls
(not just any pearls, but good ones)
Luke 19:17, 22 και ειπεν αυτω ευγε αγαθε δουλε οτι εν ελαχιστω πιστος εγενου ισθι εξουσιαν εχων επανω δεκα πολεων and λεγει αυτω εκ του στοματος σου κρινω σε πονηρε δουλε ηδεις οτι εγω ανθρωπος αυστηρος ειμι αιρων ο ουκ εθηκα και θεριζων ο ουκ εσπειρα
Well done, good slave – evil slave
(This first slave was good in contrast to the third slave)
a new creation (the newness is in focus)
1 John 2.7 αγαπητοι ουκ εντολην καινην γραφω υμιν αλλ εντολην παλαιαν ην ειχετε απ αρχης η εντολη η παλαια εστιν ο λογος ον ηκουσατε
not command new I-write to-you
(the emphasis is more on command than new)
For the arthrous NP there is a significant difference between the NT writers.
Matthew almost always places the adjective before the noun and after the article. This is then the basic order in Matthew. We cannot draw any conclusion about emphasis from this pattern in Matthew. However, if the noun precedes the adjective in Matthew, we can expect the noun to be relatively more prominent than the adjective.
Mark is the opposite. His basic pattern is that the adjective follows the noun. (The article is then repeated before the adjective.) We cannot draw any conclusion from this pattern. But when Mark moves the adjective in front of the noun, we can expect an emphasis on the adjective.
The other NT authors use both patterns much more equally. Luke has a tendency to prefer the adjective before the noun. (This applies to Acts as well.) The same applies to Paul. John, on the other hand, prefers the adjective after the noun, and this applies to Revelation as well. In Revelation the tendency is stronger than in the Gospel.
We can illustrate these differences between the authors by comparing parallel passages:
Mark 4:20 και εκεινοι εισιν οι επι την γην την καλην σπαρεντες οιτινες ακουουσιν τον λογον και παραδεχονται και καρποφορουσιν εν τριακοντα και [εν] εξηκοντα και [εν] εκατον ”
Those in the good soil”
Matt 13:23 ο δε επι την καλην γην σπαρεις ουτος εστιν ο τον λογον ακουων και συνιεις ος δη καρποφορει και ποιει ο μεν εκατον ο δε εξηκοντα ο δε τριακοντα
”That in the good soil”
Luk 8:15 το δε εν τη καλη γη ουτοι εισιν οιτινες εν καρδια καλη και αγαθη ακουσαντες τον λογον κατεχουσιν και καρποφορουσιν εν υπομονη
”That in the good soil”
For Matthew and Luke we cannot conclude anything from the word order, since this is their preferred, unmarked order. Mark also uses his unmarked order. If Mark had had the same order as Luke and Matthew this would indicate that Mark wanted to emphasise the “goodness” of the soil. But he doesn’t. The mere fact that the soil is described as ”the good soil” gives some prominence to the idea of ”goodness”, but Mark does not emphasize this. Since the adjective in the arthrous NP in most of the books of the NT normally occurs before the noun, there are less possibilities of exploting word order for emphasis in an arthrous NP compared to an unarthrous NP.
Adjectives may function substantively, that is, the head noun is implied from context or a general word like “thing” or “person” needs to be supplied. Some adjectives function adverbially. In this case, the adjective is often in the neuter form.
