Originally Posted by LegionOnomaMoi

That's the little problem for you, isn't it? Markedness is central to your ENTIRE approach, yet the only reference you have to support your use of it is a dissertation on biblical hebrew. But where, in that (or any other reference) does the analyst define marked/unmarked structures and then use their classification schema(ta) to claim that because s/he has no explanation for the purpose behind the use of a particular structure that this says anything at all about the text?

We can turn, for example, to an actual expert in Greek and text analysis who uses markedness as the basis of his monograph: Andreas Willi and his The Languages of Aristophanes. In section 5.8 of his monograph, Willi argues that the use of the verbal adjective in Aristophanes is "marked", based primarily on his analysis of Clouds 727-9. However, he admits at the beginnning and end of his analysis that Aristophanes' "use of verbal adjectives is not conspicuous in other parts of Clouds (or any other comedy)" and thus if not for his analysis of the lines given above, his analysis would have little weight.

Willi bases his entire work (just as in your reference to that dissertaion) on functional markedness, and uses it according to the fundamental principles of the theory: "marked" forms, if properly identified, can be said to convey particular semantic content (i.e., the use of the "marked" element is a conscious or unconscious indicator of some particular notion, concept, meaning, intention, implication, etc., the author/speaker makes through its use).

I have asked, repeatedly, for you to give some basis for your perversion of this theory, in which you use it to identify what you consider to be a problem in the text.

You continue to refuse to do so, although the entirety of your argument rests on your use of this theory.

Why is it that when it comes to such a fundamental component of your argument (the use of functional markedness/stylistic markedness as a method for determing that AJ 20.200 has been altered), you can do nothing but dodge requests for some references demonstrating you are not simply using this theory to do something it was not only never intended to do, but in fact cannot do?


She is, actually, and even in this article. First, the context you give is misleading. Yes, she is talking about IE word order, but that's irrelevant. The point is that structural markedness can be used to demonstrate preferred structures, but cannot be used to explain them. The problem of preferred IE word order goes back centuries, because older IE languages like Greek are are so flexible. Viti begins by discussing that markedness as a tool for description does not suffice to explain word order variation specifically because simply identifying preferred structures tells one nothing about why they are preferred, or what variant word orders might tell us.

In particular, that long list of "preposed genitives" you quoted earlier belong to a structure she relegates to a footnote (p. 209): kinship using two proper names, such as kroisos ho Aluatteo where both the head+kinship term along with the governed genitive involve proper names "of the structure "X the one of Y". Apart from that footnote, her discussion of kinship gentives doesn't involve the structure you referred to, but it does demonstrate the considerable variability in kinship word order, as well as the qualitatively different structure of the type you referred to and that we see in AJ 20.200, where a kin term governs a genitive phrase.


Her analysis is limited to the genitive word order, however, and only with respect to its position relative to the governing noun, so as useful as it is, Bakker's monograph on the noun phrase is much more so. In particular, his chapter "Word order in multiple modifier NPs".

Bakker states quite explicitly that, "the semantics of the modifiers is not the factor that is decisive for the order of the constituents in the noun phrase in Greek" or, put differently, that one cannot simply look at the lexemes and word order (as you do) and determine anything meaninful. Bakker gives several examples of "the 'improper' position" of various modifiers, even those which "cannot be explained by a special pragmatic marking". (p. 106).

Instead, despite your protests against my bracketing, rather than chopping up the NPs in the way that you do, according to Bakker, the whole of the NP(s) can be used to explain the order of its constituents: "the postion of a constituent in a multiple-modifier NP depends on its saliency: the more salient the information, the further to the left it has to be expressed." (p. 106). In Josephus, almost inevitably whenever he discusses some character he cares little about, everything about that character is preposed, and we get the name last, exactly as in AJ 20.200. As Bakker notes, the fact that (for example) we have "brother" first in AJ 20.200 whereas in other uses of "brother" the kin term is typically postposed is irrelevant, because the semantic content of the words do not matter, but in all cases ("NPs with multiple prenominal or postnominal modifiers and NPs with both pre- and postnominal modifieres") it is saliency which determines word order.





I have quoted innumerable specific examples, including those given in the references I referred to.

Let's break this down: you've made a claim that certain exceptions to word order, presumably word order in which the genitive comes before the name or is otherwise similar to AJ 20.200, can be accounted for because Josephus is naming "famous" people or people "previously mentioned". Except:

1) Despite your best attempts to first claim Cohen did recognize marked syntax, and when that didn't work to claim it is all a "red herring", both he and the article I referred to specifically state that Josephus is particularly irregular in that he seems to do the opposite of what we would expect, and "introduce" people after he's mentioned them, or to re-introduce them.

2) You have never done anything to demonstrate that the examples of "inverted" word order you gave were inverted for the reasons you stated. You simply claimed this was the reason.

3) Even better, the literature on Greek syntax doesn't seem to match your little personal theory. ln "Rheme before Theme in the Noun Phrase" (Studies in Language 32(4); 2008), Viti states quite explicitly:While the functions of new information and discontinuous information prefer prenominal genitives the function of old information seemingly has the same probability to be encoded either by a prenominal or by a postnominal genitive." And if we examine Josephus, we do not find any reason to support your claim that the exceptions have to do with fame or previous mention, because there is no correlation between alterations in kinship or other identification and either fame or previous mention.


You simply created an ad hoc explanation which contradicts both studies of greek syntax and Josephus.

"fame" and "previous mention" have no impact. You simply chose to explain exceptions with this, but failed to demonstrate any evidence for your claim. As I noted above, if we look at Greek in general, the opposite holds true. And if we look at Josephus in particular, he simply doesn't follow any pattern which demonstrates he is taking into account fame or previous mention. You have just used these as ad hoc explanations for exceptions which you want to explain.



I gave examples before, which you claimed were not valid because they were people with famous relatives or previously mentioned relatives. What you did not do is present any evidence that this was the reason behind the word order in the structures I identified. On the other hand, I not only cited sources demonstrating that Josephus does basically the opposite of what you claim, but also (see above) that you're order when it comes to new vs. old information is contradicted by studies of Greek syntax.


The issue is that it is such suggestions which are at the heart of your argument: markedness. If you can't come up with a suggestion, what part of the theory suggests that this is a reason to question the texts?



Let's look at some actual examples of "bracketing" by real linguists, shall we?


That's taken from a Studies in Language paper by Matic "Topic, focus, and discourse structure: Ancient Greek word order" (27(3); 2003).

This kind of bracketing of entire clauses, phrases, etc., is continued throughout the paper. Why? Because the interest is in pragmatics and function, not formalist/generative analysis, and thus we find functional bracketing such as (emphasis in original):

i. Topic- Narrow Focus-Verb-Presupposed material
ii. Topic - [Verb-Focal Material], {[Verb + FocalMaterial] = Broad Focus}


Yet you seem to have little idea at all at how these are "bracketed" by actual functional linguists:


Now, compare this to a constituent and formal analysis using markedness within Optimality theory (a generative, chomsky-type model):


The sentence in question in the latter is "what did mary say". Notice in the latter every word and its position counts. We can find much the same kind of generative formalism with Greek:



What, I wonder, is the theory you are using to "bracket" as you do?

Functional "bracketing" is based on the analysts determination of functional structures, not your naive transformationalist crap. With Greek in particular, even "broad" bracketing, such as that in "Topic, focus, and discourse structure: Ancient Greek word order," only holds true in general. Ancient Greek word order "cannot be described in terms of rules, but at best as tendencies", yet Matic isn't even dealing with strict word order per se, but with the position of, for example, an entire prepositional phrase. The "tendencies" referred to concern "brackets" of material (actually called things like "Focal Material"), whether a single verb or a prepositional phrase.

I'm not the one with the brush. This markedness thing is your claim, and you simply have failed to support it. It's unfortunate that so many lack the access to the materials as well as the background to realize how ad hoc and baseless your analyses are. However, for any who are interested in seeing how modern linguistic theory may be applied and what it consists of, there is a freely accessible analysis of "thetic" syntactic structures in Koine Greek ("thetic" refers to propositions, sentences, or similar units which introduce people, entities, states of affairs, etc., which includes the introduction of characters in, for example, Josephus):

Thetic Constructions in Koine Greek

Originally Posted by spin

The default word order features the name first. I call this default order "unmarked".

<snip>

Originally Posted by maryhelena

The Josephan quote:

"...the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, .."

If this is back to front and not the default word order for a phrase such as this - then perhaps there is more here than meets the eye. No - not interpolation.....

What reason could the Josephan writer have for writing this phrase back to front? I would suggest that perhaps it was written this way to indicate that the content of the phrase does not relate, does not refer, to historical figures.

If the phrase was written the default way:

"...James, the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ.." then it would be a straightforward historical reference.

However, the back to front phrasing is indicating that something else is being conveyed here; something that is not related to historical figures but to pseudo-historical figures.

Interpolation is not the only way to attempt to get out of the Josephan quagmire.........

Originally Posted by aa5874

How many times will the same worthless linguistic analysis be argued??? It is clear that Josephus may or may not have written Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1 if ONLY, I repeat ONLY, linguistic analysis is used.

<snip>

Originally Posted by maryhelena

Interpolation is not the only way to attempt to get out of the Josephan quagmire.

Originally Posted by spin

Your use of Viti is a joke. Did you even bother looking at the example? Κροισος ο Αλυαττεω. This is like most of the patronyms in Josephus: the word παις is understood at the end (if you'd read all the footnote).

Originally Posted by LegionOnomaMoi

In particular, that long list of "preposed genitives" you quoted earlier belong to a structure she relegates to a footnote (p. 209)

Originally Posted by spin

The Greek is like most of the fratronyms I supplied earlier, except that "son" is not needed.

Originally Posted by Viti

Kroîsos ên Ludòs mèn génos, paîs dè Alyátteō,
Croesus was Lydian PTC by.birth son.M-NOM.SG PTC Alyattes-G

túrannos dè ethnéōn tôn entòs Hályos potamoû
ruler PTC people.M-G.PL. ART-G.M.PL. inside Halys river
"Croesus was Lydian by birth, son of Alyattes, ruler of the people who live west of the river of Halys.' (6.1.1)

Originally Posted by maryhelena

Quote:
Originally Posted by EarlDoherty View Post
As far as word order goes, Legion claims there is nothing particularly un-Josephan about the phrase in Antiquities 20. OK, I'll acknowledge that.

Once the possibility is admitted that Josephus could have written "called christ" - then one has to face any implications, however unwelcome, that possibility will present.

Attempting to claim that the gospel JC story was written after the death of Josephus is a very long shot in the dark. And all for what - so one can deny the possibility, a possibility that you, yourself, have admitted, that Josephus could have written "called christ"...

Originally Posted by spin

Word order in ancient Greek is quite flexible, though there are "default" word orders.

Originally Posted by tanya

I have the impression that LegionOnomaMoi considers this text within the range of possibilities, for someone like Josephus.