Hyperbaton , in its original meaning, is a
figure of speech
A figure of speech or rhetorical figure is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from ordinary language use in order to produce a rhetorical effect. Figures of speech are traditionally classified into '' schemes,'' which vary the ordinary ...
in which a phrase is made discontinuous by the insertion of other words.
[Andrew M. Devine, Laurence D. Stephens, ''Latin Word Order: Structured Meaning and Information'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 524.] In modern usage, the term is also used more generally for figures of speech that transpose sentences' natural
word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
, and it is also called an anastrophe.
Etymology
The word is borrowed from the Greek ''hyperbaton'' (), meaning "stepping over", which is derived from ''hyper'' ("over") and ''bainein'' ("to step"), with the ''-tos'' verbal adjective suffix. The idea is that to understand the phrase, the reader has to "step over" the words inserted in between.
Classical usage
The separation of connected words for emphasis or effect is possible to a much greater degree in highly-
inflected
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defini ...
languages, whose sentence meaning does not depend closely on word order. In
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
and
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
, the effect of hyperbaton is often to emphasize the first word. It has been called "perhaps the most distinctively alien feature of Latin word order."
Donatus, in his work ''On
tropes'', includes under hyperbaton five varieties:
hysterologia,
anastrophe
Anastrophe (from the el, ἀναστροφή, ''anastrophē'', "a turning back or about") is a figure of speech in which the normal word order of the subject, the verb, and the object is changed.
For example, subject–verb–object ("I like po ...
(for which the term hyperbaton is sometimes used loosely as a synonym),
parenthesis
A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...
,
tmesis
In its strictest sense, tmesis (; plural tmeses ; Ancient Greek: ''tmēsis'' "a cutting" < ''temnō'', "I cut") is a word compound that ...
, and
synchysis.
Ancient Greek
* () (
Demosthenes
Demosthenes (; el, Δημοσθένης, translit=Dēmosthénēs; ; 384 – 12 October 322 BC) was a Greek statesman and orator in ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prow ...
18.158)
:"Greece has suffered such things at the hands of
only one person"
In the above example, the word "(only) one", ''henos'', occurs in its normal place after the preposition "at the hands of" (''hupo''), but "person" (''anthrōpou'') is unnaturally delayed, giving emphasis to "only one."
* () (occurs several times in
Euripides
Euripides (; grc, Εὐριπίδης, Eurīpídēs, ; ) was a tragedian
Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful e ...
)
:"
entreatyou
by your knees"
Here the word "you" (''se'') divides the preposition "by" from its object "knees."
* () (
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
, ''Republic'' 358b)
:"
What power does it have?"
New Testament Greek
Hyperbaton is also common in New Testament Greek, for example:
In all these examples and others in the New Testament, the first word of the hyperbaton is an adjective or adverb which is emphasised by being separated from the following noun. The separating word can be a verb, noun, or pronoun.
Latin
Prose
In Latin hyperbaton is frequently found in both prose and verse. The following examples come from prose writers. Often, there is an implied contrast between the first word of the hyperbaton and its opposite:
*''
meo tu epistulam dedisti
servo?'' (
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus (; c. 254 – 184 BC), commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the gen ...
, ''Pseudolus'' 1203)
:"You gave the letter to
''my'' slave (i.e. not your own)?"
*''
duas a te accepi
epistulas heri'' (
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...
, ''Att.'', 14.2.1)
:"I received
''two'' letters (''duas epistulas'') from you yesterday" (not just one).
*''
hae permanserunt
aquae dies complures.'' (
Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman people, Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in Caes ...
, ''B.C.'' 1.50.1):
:"
This time the flood (''hae aquae'') lasted (''permanserunt'') several days" (unlike the earlier one).
*''
ille sic
dies'' (Cicero, ''Att.'' 5.1.3)
:"So (passed)
''that'' day (''ille dies'')" (as opposed to the following one).
Sometimes the hyperbaton merely emphasises the adjective:
*''pro
ingenti itaque
victoria id fuit plebi.'' (Livy 4.54.6)
:"The people saw this, therefore, as an
enormous victory."
*''
magnam enim secum
pecuniam portabat'' (
Nepos, ''Hannibal'', 9.2)
:"for (''enim'') he was carrying
a large sum of money (''magnam pecuniam'') with him (''secum'')".
*''
magno cum
fremitu et clamore'' (Cicero, ''to Atticus'', 2.19.2)
:"with (''cum'') a great deal of roaring and shouting"
The first word of the hyperbaton can also be an adverb, as in the following example:
*''
aeque vita
iucunda'' (Cicero, ''de Finibus'' 4.30)
:"a life (''vita'')
equally pleasant (''aeque iucunda'').
In all the above examples, the first word of the hyperbaton can be said to be emphasised. The following is different, since there is no emphasis on ''sum'' "I am". Instead, the effect of emphasis is achieved by reversing the expected order ''ipse sum mensus'' to ''sum ipse mensus'':
*''
sum enim ipse
mensus'' (Cicero, ''ad Quintum fratrem'', 3.1.4)
:"for
I measured (''sum mensus'') it myself"
It is also possible for the noun to come first ("postmodifier hyperbaton"), as in the following:
*''
dies appetebat
septimus'' (Caesar, ''B.G.'' 6.35.1)
:"The seventh day was approaching"
*''Antonius
legiones eduxit
duas.'' (Cicero, ''ad Fam.'' 10.30.1)
:"Antonius led out
two legions."
The following even have a double hyperbaton:
*''cum ipse
litteram Socrates
nullam reliquisset.'' (Cicero, ''de Orat.'' 3.60)
:"When
Socrates himself didn't leave
a single line of writing."
*''
praeda potitus
ingenti est'' (Livy 40.49.1)
:"he took possession of
an enormous amount of booty".
A hyperbaton can also be used to demonstrate a kind of picture shown in the text:
*
Hac in utramque partem
disputatione habita" (Caesar, Bello Gallico 5.30)
"With the dispute being held unto either side" (showing an elegance to the dispute being on either side of the accusative prepositional phrase)
Another kind of hyperbaton is "genitive hyperbaton" in which one of the words is in the
genitive case
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
:
*''
contionem advocat
militum'' (Caesar, ''Bellum Civile'' 2.32)
:"He called
a meeting of the soldiers."
In the following, a genitive hyperbaton and an adjectival hyperbaton are interleaved:
*''
magnus omnium incessit
timor animis'' (Caesar ''Bellum Civile'' 2.29)
:"Great fear (''magnus timor'') overcame the minds of all of them (''omnium animis'')."
Another kind of hyperbaton (called "conjunct hyperbaton" by Devine and Stephens) is found when a phrase consisting of two words joined by ''et'' ("and") is separated by another word:
*''Aspendus,
vetus oppidum
et nobile'' (Cicero, ''Verr.'' 2.1.53)
:"Aspendus, an
old town,
and a noble one".
*''
Faesulas inter
Arretiumque'' (Livy, 22.3.3)
:"Between
Faesulae and Arretium".
Poetry
In poetry, especially poetry from the 1st century BC onwards, hyperbaton is very common; some 40% of
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...
's adjectives are separated from their nouns.
Frequently two hyperbata are used in the same sentence, as in the following example:
*''
quam Catullus
unam/ plus quam se atque suos amavit omnes'' (Catullus 58a)
:"
whom alone (''quam unam'') Catullus loved (''amavit'') more than himself and
all his own (''suos omnes'')."
Often two noun phrases are interleaved in a double hyperbaton:
*''
saevae memorem
Iunonis ob iram'' (
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...
, ''Aeneid'', 1.5)
:"on account of the
mindful anger (''memorem iram'') of
cruel Juno
Juno commonly refers to:
*Juno (mythology), the Roman goddess of marriage and queen of the gods
*Juno (film), ''Juno'' (film), 2007
Juno may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Fictional characters
*Juno, in the film ''Jenny, Juno''
*Ju ...
(''saevae Iunonis'')".
*''
lurida terribiles miscent
aconita novercae'' (
Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
, ''Metamorphoses'', 1.147)
:"
Fearsome stepmothers (''terribiles novercae'') mix
lurid aconites (''lurida aconita'')."
The above type, where two adjectives are followed by a verb and then two nouns in the same order as the adjectives, is often referred to as a "
golden line
The golden line is a type of Latin dactylic hexameter frequently mentioned in Latin classrooms and in contemporary scholarship about Latin poetry, but which apparently began as a verse-composition exercise in schools in early modern Britain.
Defin ...
".
In the following line, a conjunct hyperbaton is interleaved with another noun phrase:
:''
venator cursu
canis et latratibus instat''.
:"the
hunting dog (''venator canis'') threatens him
with running and barking (''cursu et latratibus'')."
In other cases one hyperbaton is inserted inside another:
*''in
nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas /
corpora'' (Ovid, ''Metamorphoses'' 1.1)
:"My spirit leads me to tell of
forms transformed (''mutatas formas'') into
new bodies (''nova corpora'')."
*''ab
Hyrcanis Indoque a litore
silvis'' (
Lucan
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (3 November 39 AD – 30 April 65 AD), better known in English as Lucan (), was a Roman poet, born in Corduba (modern-day Córdoba), in Hispania Baetica. He is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of the Imperial ...
8.343)
:"from the
Hyrcanian
Hyrcania () ( el, ''Hyrkania'', Old Persian: 𐎺𐎼𐎣𐎠𐎴 ''Varkâna'',Lendering (1996) Middle Persian: 𐭢𐭥𐭫𐭢𐭠𐭭 ''Gurgān'', Akkadian: ''Urqananu'') is a historical region composed of the land south-east of the Caspian ...
forests (''Hyrcanis silvis'') and from the
Indian shore (''Indo litore'')."
In such cases, the placing of two adjectives together may highlight a contrast between them, for example, in the following sentence from
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...
, where the fragility of the boat is contrasted with the roughness of the sea:
*''qui
fragilem truci commisit pelago
ratem'' (Horace, ''Odes'', 1.3.10f)
:"who committed a
fragile boat (''fragilem ratem'') to the
rough sea (''truci pelago'')"
Similarly in the example from Ovid below "transparent" is contrasted with "dense":
*''et
liquidum spisso secrevit ab aere
caelum'' (Ovid, ''Metamorphoses'' 1.23)
:"and He separated the
transparent heaven (''liquidum caelum'') from the
dense atmosphere (''spisso aere'')."
Usually the adjective in a discontinuous noun phrase comes first, as in the above examples, but the opposite is also possible:
*''
cristāque tegit galea aurea
rubrā'' (Virgil, ''Aeneid'' 9.50)
:"And a golden helmet
with a red crest (''crista rubra'') covers him."
*''
silva lupus in
Sabina'' (Horace, ''Odes'', 1.22)
:"a wolf (''lupus'') (lurking) in the
Sabine
The Sabines (; lat, Sabini; it, Sabini, all exonyms) were an Italic people who lived in the central Apennine Mountains of the ancient Italian Peninsula, also inhabiting Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome.
The Sabines divide ...
forest (''silva Sabina'')."
The above example illustrates another occasional feature of hyperbaton, since the word "wolf" (''lupus'') is actually inside the phrase "Sabine forest" (''silva Sabina''). This kind of word-play is found elsewhere in Horace also, e.g. ''
grato, Pyrrha, sub
antro'' "Pyrrha, beneath a
pleasant grotto", where Pyrrha is indeed in a grotto; and in the quotation from Horace ''Odes'' 1.5 below, the girl is surrounded by the graceful boy, who in turn is surrounded by a profusion of roses:
*''
quis multa
gracilis te
puer in rosa'' (Horace, ''Odes'', 1.5)
:"what
graceful boy (''gracilis puer'') (is embracing) you (''te'') amidst
many a rose (''multa rosa'')?"
Other languages
The classical type of hyperbaton is also found in Slavic languages like Polish:
[Spevak (2010), p. 23, citing Siewierska, A. (1984).]
Certain conditions are necessary for hyperbaton to be possible in Polish: discontinuous noun phrases typically contain just one modifier, and the noun and modifier must be separated by a verb (and not, for example, by the indirect object ''Markowi'' alone).
Similar constructions are found in other languages, such as Russian, Latvian, and Modern Greek from which the following example comes:
Ntelitheos (2004) points out that one condition enabling such constructions is that the adjective is in contrastive focus ("the red dress, not the blue one").
English usage
In English studies, the term "hyperbaton" is defined differently, as "a figure of speech in which the normal order of words is reversed, as in ''cheese I love''" (Collins English Dictionary) or "a transposition or inversion of idiomatic word order (as ''echoed the hills'' for ''the hills echoed'')" (Merriam-Webster online dictionary).
[Merriam-Webster online dictionar]
"hyperbaton"
Some examples are given below:
* "Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end" —
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
in ''
Richard III
Richard III (2 October 145222 August 1485) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat and death at the Battl ...
'', 4.4, 198.
* "Object there was none. Passion there was none." —
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wide ...
, ''
The Tell-Tale Heart
"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843. It is related by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of the narrator's sanity while simultaneously describing a murder the n ...
''.
* "The helmsman steered, the ship moved on; / Yet never a breeze up blew" —
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poe ...
, ''
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' (originally ''The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere'') is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–1798 and published in 1798 in the first edition of ''Lyrical Ballad ...
''
* "For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, / Seem here no painful inch to gain" —
Arthur Hugh Clough
Arthur Hugh Clough ( ; 1 January 181913 November 1861) was an English poet, an educationalist, and the devoted assistant to Florence Nightingale. He was the brother of suffragist Anne Clough and father of Blanche Athena Clough who both became p ...
, ''Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth''.
* "Arms and the man I sing" — Opening words of
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...
's ''Aeneid'', translated by E. F. Taylor (1907).
* "Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind." —
Wolcott Gibbs
Wolcott Gibbs (March 15, 1902 – August 16, 1958) was an American editor, humorist, theatre critic, playwright and writer of short stories, who worked for ''The New Yorker'' magazine from 1927 until his death. He is notable for his 1936 parody o ...
's 1936 parody of ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine.
See also
*
Anastrophe
Anastrophe (from the el, ἀναστροφή, ''anastrophē'', "a turning back or about") is a figure of speech in which the normal word order of the subject, the verb, and the object is changed.
For example, subject–verb–object ("I like po ...
*
Apposition
Apposition is a grammatical construction in which two elements, normally noun phrases, are placed side by side so one element identifies the other in a different way. The two elements are said to be ''in apposition'', and one of the elements is c ...
*
Figure of speech
A figure of speech or rhetorical figure is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from ordinary language use in order to produce a rhetorical effect. Figures of speech are traditionally classified into '' schemes,'' which vary the ordinary ...
*
Golden line
The golden line is a type of Latin dactylic hexameter frequently mentioned in Latin classrooms and in contemporary scholarship about Latin poetry, but which apparently began as a verse-composition exercise in schools in early modern Britain.
Defin ...
*
Parenthesis
A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...
*
Split infinitive
A split infinitive is a grammatical construction in which an adverb or adverbial phrase separates the "to" and "infinitive" constituents of what was traditionally called the full infinitive, but is more commonly known in modern linguistics as the ...
Bibliography
*Aubrey, Mike
''Discontinuous Syntax in the New Testament'' part 3.*Devine, Andrew M. & Laurence D. Stephens (1999)
''Discontinuous Syntax: Hyperbaton in Greek'' Oxford University Press
Review by M.C. Beckwith
*Devine, Andrew M. & Laurence D. Stephens (2006), ''Latin Word Order. Structured Meaning and Information''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. xii, 639. : Ch. 7 "Hyperbaton", pp. 524–610.
*Nisbet, R. G. M. (1999)
"The Word-Order of Horace's ''Odes''" ''Proceedings of the British Academy, 93, 135-154.
*Ntelitheos, Dimitrios (2004)
''Syntax of Elliptical and Discontinuous Nominals'' University of California, Los Angeles, M.A. thesis.
*Powell, J. G. (2010) "Hyperbaton and register in Cicero", in E. Dickey and A. Chahoud (eds.), ''Colloquial and Literary Latin'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 163–185.
*Siewierska, A. (1984). "Phrasal Discontinuity in Polish", ''Australian Journal of Linguistics'' 4, 57–71.
*Spevak, Olga (2010). ''Constituent Order in Classical Latin Prose''. Studies in Language Companion Series (SLCS) 117. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2010. Pp. xv, 318. {{ISBN, 9789027205841: pp. 23–26.
References
External links
Rhetorical techniques
Word order
Obfuscation
Latin-language literature
New Testament
Greek literature (post-classical)