Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| How Pronunciation Serves to Remove Ambiguity. Different Kinds of Interrogation.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter 3.—How Pronunciation
Serves to Remove Ambiguity. Different Kinds of
Interrogation.
6. And all the directions that I
have given about ambiguous punctuations are to be observed likewise
in the case of doubtful pronunciations. For these too, unless the
fault lies in the carelessness of the reader, are corrected either
by the rule of faith, or by a reference to the preceding or
succeeding context; or if neither of these methods is applied with
success, they will remain doubtful, but so that the reader will not
be in fault in whatever way he may pronounce them. For example,
if our faith that God will not bring any charges against His elect,
and that Christ will not condemn His elect, did not stand in the
way, this passage, “Who shall lay anything to the charge
of
God’s elect?” might be pronounced in such a way as to make what
follows an answer to this question, “God who justifieth,” and
to make a second question, “Who is he that condemneth?” with
the answer, “Christ Jesus who died.”1843
But as it would be the height of
madness to believe this, the passage will be pronounced in such a
way as to make the first part a question of inquiry,1844
and the
second a rhetorical interrogative.1845
Now the ancients said that the
difference between an inquiry and an interrogative was this, that
an inquiry admits of many answers, but to an interrogative the
answer must be either “No” or “Yes.”1846
| 1846 The English language has no two
words expressing the shades of meaning assigned by Augustin to
percontatio and interrogatio respectively. | The passage will be pronounced,
then, in such a way that after the inquiry, “Who shall lay
anything to the charge of God’s elect?” what follows will be
put as an interrogative: “Shall God who justifieth?”—the
answer “No” being understood. And in the same way we shall
have the inquiry, “Who is he that condemneth?” and the answer
here again in the form of an interrogative, “Is it Christ who
died? yea, rather, who is risen again? who is even at the right
hand of God? who also maketh intercession for us?”—the answer
“No” being understood to every one of these questions. On the
other hand, in that passage where the apostle says, “What shall
we say then? That the Gentiles which followed not after
righteousness have attained to righteousness;”1847
unless after the inquiry, “What
shall we say then?” what follows were given as the answer to this
question: “That the Gentiles, which followed not after
righteousness, have attained to righteousness;” it would not be
in harmony with the succeeding context. But with whatever tone of
voice one may choose to pronounce that saying of Nathanael’s,
“Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”1848
—whether with that of a man who
gives an affirmative answer, so that “out of Nazareth” is the
only part that belongs to the interrogation, or with that of a man
who asks the whole question with doubt and hesitation,—I do not
see how a difference can be made. But neither sense is opposed to
faith.
7. There is, again, an ambiguity
arising out of the doubtful sound of syllables; and this of course
has relation to pronunciation. For example, in the passage, “My
bone [os meum] was not hid from Thee, which Thou didst make
in secret,”1849
it is not
clear to the reader whether he should take the word os as
short or long. If he make it short, it is the singular of
ossa [bones]; if he make it long, it is the singular of
ora [mouths]. Now difficulties such as this are cleared up by
looking into the original tongue, for in the Greek we find
not στόμα [mouth], but ὁστέον [bone].
And for this reason the vulgar idiom is frequently more useful in
conveying the sense than the pure speech of the educated. For I
would rather have the barbarism, non est absconditum a te ossum
meum,1850
| 1850 My bone was not hid from
Thee. | than have
the passage in better Latin, but the sense less clear. But
sometimes when the sound of a syllable is doubtful, it is decided
by a word near it belonging to the same sentence. As, for
example, that saying of the apostle, “Of the which I tell you
before [prædico], as I have also told you in time past
[prœdixi], that they which do such things shall not inherit
the kingdom of God.”1851
Now if he had only said, “Of
the which I tell you before [quæ prædico vobis],” and
had not added, “as I have also told you in time past [sicut
prœdixi],” we could not know without going back to the
original whether in the word prædico the middle syllable
should be pronounced long or short. But as it is, it is clear
that it should be pronounced long; for he does not say, sicut
prœdicavi, but sicut prædixi.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
