I’ve covered almost half of Dickey, and have begun doing Sidgwick, but am still getting my word order wrong (or, at any rate, unnaturally–assuming that a/the natural order is the one given in the keys). I am wondering whether there is a text-book teaching this skill specifically. Here is a sample of my recent (bad) composition (it is #2 in Sidgwick; so I stuck to the vocabulary given there):
ἐν ἐκείνῳ τῷ πλοίῷ ἐισὶ τρεῖς ναῦται. τὰ ἱμάτια τούτοις τοῖς ναύταις ἐρυθρά ἐστιν. ἐπὶ τῷ ὦμῳ ὁ νέος ναύτης ἱστίον ἔχει. ἄλλος αὐτῶν καθεύδει, ὁ δὲ τρίτος παρὰ τῷ πηδαλίῳ ἐστίν. οὗτος τὸν δεινὸν κίνδυνον οὐχ ὁρᾷ, ἐν γὰρ τῇ λίμνῃ πέτρα ἐστίν. καὶ αὕτη ἡ πἐτρα στερρά ἐστιν, καὶ πολλοῖς τοῦ θάνατου αἰτία ἔσται. ἐγγὺς νῦν εἰσὶ τοῦ τόπου, καὶ ὠχρός εἰμι ὑπὸ φόβου. ἀποτρέπω οὖν τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς. ἰδού, ἔξω τοῦ κινδίνου εἰσί, καὶ δάκρυα ὑπὸ χαρᾶς ἐν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς μού ἐστι.
Helma Dik has two monographs on the subject, one focusing on Herodotus and prose the other on tragic dialogue. These are not textbooks and they are expensive. Unless you’re willing to get embroiled in functional linguistics[1] you might want to look elsewhere. Donald Mastronarde addresses the topic here:
http://atticgreek.org/downloads/WordOrder.pdf
[1] functional linguistics
Word Order Change and Stability in Ancient Greek
Dag Haug, University of Oslo August, 10 2009
Word Order in Ancient Greek: A Pragmatic Account of Word Order Variation in Herodotus
Helma Dik
http://www.brill.com/word-order-ancient-greek
Word Order in Greek Tragic Dialogue Helma Dik
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/word-order-in-greek-tragic-dialogue-9780199279296?cc=us&lang=en&
That’s awesome! Thanks a lot.
Can you see how much more smoothly Sidgwick’s sentences flow? To mention just one thing, notice the first words of the first few sentences: τούτοις τοῖς ναύταις, ὁ νέος ναύτης, ἕτερός τις, ὁ δὲ τρίτος, οὖτος. The topic is the sailors, and they get fronted in each sentence.
However, I think that were you taking a composition course from Sidgwick, he would be mostly looking at accidence and syntax in these exercises. Word order begins to become more of a concern in his Introduction to Greek Prose Composition and his Essays on Greek Prose Composition. My guess though, is that it is not something that you can learn well without copious reading.
The whole notion of “topic” (let alone, the idea that it should be “fronted” in a sentence) is quite new to me; am gung ho about mastering it. Then, hopefully, I will be able to “see.”
Dear Tugodum,
My first piece of advice would be, while prose composition is a valuable undertaking, don’t struggle! Word order in Greek is not something that’s right or wrong, but something you can arguably develop a feel for with, as jeidsath says, copious reading (more so than with copious composition, I suspect).
The great English scholar Kenneth J. Dover wrote a pamphlet “Greek Word Order,” still available:
https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Word-Order-Advanced-Language/dp/1853996041/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1506693863&sr=8-2&keywords=Greek+word+order. He begins with these two examples:
- An Attic boundary stone proclaims itself: ὁδοῦ ὅρος. Another, of the same date, back-to-back in the Inscriptiones Graecae: ὅρος ὁδοῦ.
The beginning of chapter 8 of the De carne in the Hippocratic corpus: τὸ δὲ ἧπαρ ὧδε ξυνέστη. The beginning of the next chapter: ὁ δὲ σπλὴν ξυνέστη ὧδε.
He proceeds to look at apparent lexical & semantic, syntactical, and logical determinants of word order and concludes with some interesting thoughts about the choice of word order as an element of the author’s style, and the drift over time, from classical literature to New Testament, to more syntactically determined patterns of order. A very informative and suggestive study, but nothing to make you confident that there are certain “rules” you can confidently apply to your prose composition.
Thank you, dear RandyGibbons, for your soothing comment! The sobering fact, though, is that right there Dover says that “The purpose of this book is to discover the nature of the principles which would justify us in calling πάντ’ ἂν ἔγραψεν [not ἔγραψεν ἂν πάντα] ‘normal’ or ‘right’ in order”; and I have to admit that, as of now, I am totally ignorant of those principles.
I would argue that English word order is also rather free, but we have to modify the voice. All of these sentences say the same thing, but would be used in different contexts, depending what the topic is:
The boy gave the ball to the girl
The girl was given the ball by the boy
The ball was given to the girl by the boy
- The ball to the girl by the boy was given
- Given was the ball to the girl by the boy
X The boy the ball gave to the girl
O The ball by the boy was given to the girl
These two marked * are too awkward to be correct English, and could only be used in very stylized contexts. X is impossible. O means something different from the other sentences.
There is no set of rules to tell you which to use in context, but native speakers will be able to spot it whenever you don’t use the most natural expression.
Good point. It is relatively easy to learn which kinds of word order are _in_admissible. But literacy implies, on top of that, knowing (at least, intuitively) which of the admissible variants expresses what.
An example from Dickey: “The doctor inquired about these things from the children we sent.” (p.93)
My translation: ὁ ἰατρὸς ἐπύθετο ταῦτα ὧν ἐπέμψαμεν παίδων.
Her translation: ταῦτα ἐπύθετο ὁ ἰατρὸς ὧν ἐπέμψαμεν παίδων.
Any clues about the rationale behind her word order?
Another one from Dickey: “The jurors will condemn whoever you abandon.” (p. 94)
My translation: οἱ δικασταί καταγνώσονται ὧν ἂν καταλίπητε.
Her translation: καταγνώσονται οἱ δικασταί ὧν ἂν καταλίπητε.
I’ve just started reading Helma Dik; she suggests the order: TOPIC-FOCUS-VERB. Of course, the verb itself can be TOPIC (let alone, FOCUS), and apparently this, in Dickey’s mind, is the case here; but I fail to understand why.
There’s nothing wrong with your word order in these isolated sentences. In the first one ταυτα is likely to come first since it picks up something preceding. In the second the difference is slight, but your order could carry more of a suggestion that non-dicasts might not, while in Dickey’s it’s the condemnation that’s at issue.
The Mastronarde link in Stirling’s post is much the best thing for you to read.
http://atticgreek.org/downloads/WordOrder.pdf
But I wouldn’t get too hung up on topic and focus.
OIC. Of course this is a stand-alone sentence, but it did not occur to me that ταῦτα as such implies referring back. Thanks!