63 Colloquial and Li.. - Ganino.com

164 j. g. f. powell
Scholars in the field of modern linguistics recognise the phenomenon of
hyperbaton, terming it ‘discontinuity’, but there have been few attempts
either among traditional philologists or among linguists to explore the
matter either systematically or comprehensively in relation to Latin. 3 The
fullest recent study of Latin hyperbaton is Devine and Stephens 2006:
524–610, part of a large-scale theoretical treatment of Latin word order
which cannot be discussed here: it will be apparent that my approach is
very different from theirs. I do not address here (interesting though it is)
their principal question, which is how to account for the phenomena of
Latin word order in terms of generative theory. I have a more modest
purpose: to try to determine as clearly as possible what the phenomena
actually are (initially keeping an open mind as to what kind of theory
might best describe them). 4 Certain linguistic concepts are indispensable
for any satisfactory description: in particular, the terms ‘topic(alisation)’
and ‘focus’, which derive from functional linguistics, will recur, though to
many classicists they may not even now be very familiar. Topicalisation is
what happens when a word or phrase is placed first in a sentence so as to
indicate what the sentence is about: in ‘Talent Mr Micawber has; capital
Mr Micawber has not’ the words talent and capital are topicalised. What
is said about the topic is the ‘logical predicate’. A word has ‘focus’ if, from
a semantic or logical point of view, it is more important or prominent
than other words in the surrounding context: focus may be conveyed by
word position, by the addition of words e.g. particles, or by stress or
intonation in speaking. Roughly it is equivalent to what is traditionally
called ‘emphasis’, though it is a more precise term, since ‘emphasis’ could
also refer to a manner of pronunciation or delivery applied to a whole
utterance (‘speaking with emphasis’). The usage of these terms among
linguists varies to some extent; I differ from some others in making a
distinction between, on the one hand, the logical categories ‘topic’ and
‘predicate’ which refer to (usually well-defined) divisions of a sentence,
and on the other, the pragmatic category ‘focus’, which is a matter of
3 See e.g. Madvig 1856: 418–19 (brief and clear summary); Ahlberg 1911 (useful study of earlier Latin
prose usage); Marouzeau 1922: 215–19, 1938: 96–102, 1949: 150–62; K–Sii.618–20; Foucault1964:
66–7 (brief discussion of Latin); H–S 689–94 (with further bibliography at 693–4); Skard 1970;
Lundström 1982: 31–8 (a study of hyperbaton involving possessive pronouns, directed towards
solving one particular textual problem in Cicero); Bolkestein 2001; Pinkster2005b.
4 This chapter is a provisional preview of an on-going project, on which I embarked in 2003–4 with
the aid of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, and to which I am now returning after an intervening
period of heavy administrative commitments. Much detailed work on the texts remains to be done,
and at this stage I unavoidably concentrate on general principles and provisional hypotheses yet to
be fully tested; but from the reader’s point of view this may not be a disadvantage.