Mike wrote: The hypothesis I’m toying with suggests that the location of the verb would partially depend on the author’s intention to demarcate propositional content.

I would say the hypothesis seems reasonable.

Mike wrote: ”The only reason I bring it up here is to underscore the fact that the meaning of the punctuation marks (the forms) pretty much needs to be there in the original.“

Mike wrote: “The semantic chunking mechanism is part of the cognitive processing of the text and is universal. We English (as well as all modern languages I’m remotely familiar with) assume punctuation marks are required in order to signal the places to chunk. I don’t think that is true. There are other indicators.“

While we assume that for English, do we assume that for other languages? I’m not sure we do.

I don’t know, 35 years ago the Marine DI seemed to think his cadence was part of communicating with us. And it didn’t take a genius to figure what his meaning was! LOL Left-right, 3-4, left-right, 7-8…

Rich

The meaning of the punctuation was there in the original. Those people simply did it differently. An example of this would be paragraph breaks. One way they did it was through chiasm. English uses whitespace.

I have a theory (hypothesis, actually) that the location of the verb was frequently used to mark sentence beginning and end. In other words, the location of the verb performed what we would call a punctuation function. That’s why scholars keep arguing over the unmarked word order of the Greek sentence. I think it was Porter that showed the placement of the verb was reasonably close to 50% beginning and 50% at the end of a sentence (it might have been something like 60-40). The hypothesis I’m toying with suggests that the location of the verb would partially depend on the author’s intention to demarcate propositional content.

I’ve had no time to explore this hypothesis.

The only reason I bring it up here is to underscore the fact that the meaning of the punctuation marks (the forms) pretty much needs to be there in the original. The semantic chunking mechanism is part of the cognitive processing of the text and is universal. We English (as well as all modern languages I’m remotely familiar with) assume punctuation marks are required in order to signal the places to chunk. I don’t think that is true. There are other indicators.

In short, punctuation is translation, too. So is the white space.

So are verse numbers. O!…now wait a minute….

One. Verse numbers don’t exist in EITHER language. Two. At least not naturally. Three. Unless you talk really funny. Four.

Ariane, you should be reading old posts at the new site. They have all been copied across, complete with comments. Let us know if you have any technical difficulties with this.

I recently found this blog and am really enjoying it ….but I am having a technical problem reading older posts at the old site — it keeps automatically switching over to the main page of the new domain. Even if I hit Cancel immediately, it still goes ahead and switches, so to read through a post requires putting up with multiple interruptions. Not impossible but pretty annoying. Is there any way this can be fixed not to automatically redirect? I have Windows XP & have been using IE7.

Of course, we know that the oldest manuscripts didn’t have punctuation or spaces (in Greek). They were later additions, as were chapter and verse, serving as tools to aid in reading/studying, etc. of the text. Which ones are necessary? So, it all seems relative as to what is the extraneous “form” to carry into the translation. Based on some of us old codgers, punctuation is necessary, but based on texting practices, punctuation and even spelling might be negotiable. LOL

Rich

Not really.

Two inter-related thoughts in response:

One. Get the Books of the Bible and read it. I suspect you’ll benefit from it in ways you don’t expect.

Two. Consider that the difference in form between a comma and a period in everyday text is barely noticeable. And yet, semantically, and cognitively, it makes significant difference (or we would confuse them much like some other forms of punctuation which are less different). So, are the forms we call verse numbers and chapter numbers more or less salient than the difference between a comma and a period? Well then, do you think that specific saliency affects the semantic and cognitive processing of the text?

This is probably ironic to some who think they know where I stand on translation method, but, I’m really arguing for formal equivalence (FE) here. That is, there’s no form in the original that justifies the cognitive processing engendered by the verse and chapter numbers. So, why add them to the text?

To further clarify, the reason I make the association with FE is because an underlying assumption of FE is the matching of forms assures semantic equivalency–form in source text needs to match up (in some way) to the form in the destination text. I’m not saying FE translations are the only ones to do verse numbers. I’m saying the underlying assumptions of FE should have prevented their use. Or, at least, moved them into the margins as in many other texts meant for serious detailed study.

Howdy, Mike. Do you mean that each verse is a separate paragraph in formal equivalent translations? I’m not sure that is a requirement for formal equivalent translations, but more for reference purposes and ease of seeing each separate verse. Perhaps I am wrong. I have a 2002 RCC revision of RSV that is in paragraph format, not individual verses separated as individual paragraphs. So also, HCSB (if you consider it formal equivalent). Thus, I would say that such a process is more for study purposes than a translation issue.

Rich