I’ve been doing some reading on Latin word-order lately, and most of it seems to begin from, in modern terms, a “topic-comment”/”topic-focus”/”theme/rheme” approach (three different ways of saying the same thing–that word-order is generally determined by the move from old to new information, with the “theme” or “topic” [what is being talked about, presumably already familiar to the addressee] coming near the beginning of the sentence, and the “focus” or “rheme” [new information about the theme that moves the discourse forward] coming toward the end).
I was interested to see in a BMCR review from a couple of years ago that, despite all of the newer jargon and approaches informed by modern linguistics in addition to traditional grammars, this actually can be related to discussions all the way back to antiquity. From the penultimate paragraph of Daniel Koelligan’s review of The Language of Literature. Linguistic Approaches to Classical Texts:
Casper C. de Jonge “From Demetrius to Dik. Ancient and modern views on Greek and Latin word order” (pp. 211-232) discusses the approaches of Demetrius and Quintilian to ancient Greek and Latin worder order, interpreting both as talking about pragmatic rather than syntactic categories. He points out similarities between Demetrius’ treatment of Greek word order that claims that the περὶ οὗ, what the λόγος is about, should come first in a sentence, and Dik’s definition of the topic and its usual assigment to sentence-intitial position in Greek, and finds similar distinctions in Quintilian’s Inst. Orat. which talks about de quo loquimur and quod loquimur which look much like topic and comment in modern terms, and about materia as the topic and the uis sermonis which according to Quintilian is frequently found in the verb in sentence-final position. de Jonge interprets this as meaning that this position in Latin is the focus position, and since the verb is frequently focussed it is frequently in that position.
Hmm … this sounds suspiciously like SUBJECT (What are you talking about?) and PREDICATE (What do you say about it?).
That’s what my students are thinking about right now.
Of course, that’s often the case, though traditional grammars too recognize that the grammatical subject is sometimes not the “topic” or “theme”–cf. Gildersleeve & Lodge, when discussing the reflexive pronoun and possessive (309.1-2): it is used 1. regularly when reference is made to the grammatical subject of the sentence and 2. frequently when reference is made to the actual subject (521, R. 2) (emphasis in original).
Allen & Greenough have something similar in their note at 300 (on the reflexive): “Sometimes the person or thing to which the reflexive refers is not the grammatical subject of the main clause, though it is in effect the subject of the discourse: Thus, –cum ipsi deo nihil minus gratum futurum sit quam non omnibus patere ad se placandum viam (Legg. ii. 25), since to God himself nothing will be less pleasing than that the way to appease him should not be open to all men.”
It would seem, though, that the vast majority of the time, grammatical subject and “theme” will be the same.
No doubt, but I think the analogy is one that works and can serve as an avenue to the kind of analysis you’re talking about. Whether we’re talking about strict grammatical categories or the themes of discourse, the basic principal is that you tend to indicate what you’re talking about before you say what you’re going to say about it.
I think I’d like to spend some more time thinking about this with an eye toward how best to present the concept of word order in Latin to students.
I just had a look at the thoughts of one of my favorite old scholars, E.G. Sturtevant, in his article ‘Two Factors in Latin Word-Order’ (CW 3.4, 1909, pp. 25-28).
He actually appeals to Herbert Spencer’s The Philosophy of Style and cites the ‘economy of the listener’s attention’ as a fundamental principle of composition, against competing theories of emphasis placed either at the beginning or the end of the sentence in Latin.
How does that strike you?
I think the article makes for interesting reading, and he cites examples of Latin that show a ‘frequent clashing of psychological and grammatical subject.’ He also has thoughts on what he calls ’emotional inversion’, explaining the placement of imperatives and interrogatives.
Again, I think it’s well worth a read.
I definitely agree that for beginning language instruction subject-predicate is the only way to go (I did this just a couple of weeks ago) as an introduction. I’ve been thinking about word order more because I’m teaching prose composition for the first time this semester, and it suddenly has become much important to me to know how one ought to order the elements of the sentence, to give students some idea not only of grammatical correctness, but “pragmatic” correctness. In prose, I should think that rhythm must have something to do with it as well (I believe Devine and Stephens treat word-order partially in terms of prosody, as well).
The Sturtevant is interesting and parallels what I’ve seen in more recent scholarship, more or less. I’ve seen an appeal to Spencer elsewhere, too, though I can’t remember where. In fact, what Sturtevant calls “emotional inversion” is paralleled exactly in, e.g., Panhuis, who states that, with imperatives, for emotional force (I believe; don’t have it in front of me), the normal “theme-rheme” order is reversed to “rheme-theme.” I’ll have to read the article–thanks for pointing it out.