Greek Word Order and Clause Structure: A Comparative Study of Some New Testament Corpora

Abstract

This chapter analyses the Greek word order and Greek clause structure across the New Testament under a single united methodological framework and plots some implications of the results for Greek grammar and syntax, discourse analysis and the exegesis of individual passages. It begins by examining the question of word order in relation to the theory of markedness and thematization, perhaps the most pervasive motivation for studying word order in the past. The chapter then delineates various degrees of codification, followed by a systemic functional analysis of rank scale (the structure of language) and clause types. It offers a few reasons for organizing the New Testament books into the corpora. Word order simply functions at a different linguistic level for non-configurational languages. The chapter analyzes meaningful syntactic patterns at the rank at which the Greek word order and clause structure occur. Keywords:Greek clause structure; Greek grammar; Greek word order; language; linguistics; markedness; New Testament; syntax; thematization