Hyperbaton
The term hyperbaton ( Greek : ὑπερβατός act .: exceeding ; pass .: adjusted ; German designation: blocking ) is used inconsistently in the specialist literature to denote different rhetorical figures .
Hyperbaton in the strict sense
In a narrower sense, hyperbaton refers to a sentence remodeling in which two syntactically related words are artificially separated by an insertion. The insertion takes place either by adding superfluous words (often in pleonastic formulations) or by simply rearranging the sentence. The hyperbaton draws attention primarily to the first of the two separate terms.
Examples:
- "With you, Lords, one can usually read the essence from the name"
- (Goethe, Faust I ) - supplement
- "Gentle in the moonlight and sweet the calm."
- (Matthias Claudius, "A Lullaby") - Changeover
- "The words have changed enough."
- (Goethe, Faust I ) - conversion
Closely related to this form of hyperbaton is the tmesis , in which the insertion is made by breaking up a compound (“And whether I already wandered in the dark valley” instead of “And although I wandered in the dark valley” - Psalm 23.4, according to the translation by Martin Luther ).
Hyperbaton in the broader sense
In a broader sense, however, hyperbaton refers to various forms of sentence restructuring in which the normal syntax is deviated from by rearrangement or insertion for poetic or emphatic reasons. In this sense, hyperbaton is also used as an umbrella term for rhetorical figures such as anastrophe , parenthesis , hysteron-proteron , inversion or anacoluth .
Example with both forms of hyperbaton
A classic example of the use of the hyperbaton is the opening sentence of Caesar's De Bello Gallico : "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres." (Translation: "Gaul is divided into three parts.") This sentence contains two hyperbata: one im narrower (insertion of the logically superfluous “omnis”) and one in the broader sense (change from “tres partes” to “partes tres”).
literature
- Hadumod Bußmann (ed.): Lexicon of Linguistics. 3rd edition Kröner, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-520-45203-0 , p. 285.
- Wilhelm Gemoll : Greek-German school and manual dictionary . 9th edition. G. Freytag Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1965, ISBN 3-486-13401-9 .
- Heinrich Lausberg : Elements of literary rhetoric. 6th edition. Max Hueber, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-19-006508-X , p. 108 f.
