Talk:Parataxis

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 January 2019 and 15 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Skalaola. Peer reviewers: Cleo120.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 06:07, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Grammatical use

what about the grammatical use of the word parataxis???

In grammar the contrast is usually made between hypotaxis (subordination) and parataxis, the former in need of conjuctions to make it work. My understanding of parataxis is that utterances that could be joined up (hypotactically) are in fact simply juxtaposed, so that the connection between the utterances is not made explicit and is left to the hearer/reader to work out. The example from Caesar is probably best understood as three separate sentences, because they were never meant to be joined up, the entire effect consisting in the cumulation of the individual sentences. The examples from Dickens and Beckett seem to consist mostly (in the case of Beckett, entirely) of non-sequiturs. In the case of Dickens this has humorous value. In the case of Beckett it is probably intended to reflect the disjointedness of the world in general, the sense of "Entfremdung" that was undoubtedly the constant companion of Beckett. Pamour (talk) 23:35, 24 December 2008 (UTC))

Parataxis also has meaning in psychology. I don't know what this meaning is, but I'd like to know it, so I'd love to see it added to this article. DivineAna 21:49, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Two pages

Is there a good reason to keep Parataxis (grammar) as a separate page? SlimVirgin 16:30, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I've merged the contents of the other page into this one. SlimVirgin 19:58, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

The Bible

Parataxis is the composition method of much oral literature most notably the Bible and as such has a long and honorable history that ought to be mentioned here. It became popularly identified in the 18th century (Blair's rhetoric) with sublime effects and use reached height among 19th romantics poets and orators striving for a "natural" or "primitive" sublime and universally comprehensible style. (I think it was also called the Attic style, not too sure about this, however).Mballen (talk) 19:36, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Part of it's power seems to come from concept repetition, even if they are actually opposites. Like this, I wonder?
Death has lost it's victory 1 Corinthians 15:42-57

42 It is the same way with the resurrection of the dead.
Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die,
but they will be raised to live forever.
43 Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory.
They are buried in weakness, but they will be raised in strength.
44 They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies.
For just as there are natural bodies, there are also spiritual bodies.

and 1 Corinthians 15: 36-44, 47-56

36 Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.
37 And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.
38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.
39 Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish.
40 There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another.
41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; indeed star differs from star in glory.
42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.
43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.
44 It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.
47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.

--68.127.91.226 (talk) 22:33, 18 August 2011 (UTC)Doug Bashford

psychology

Paratactic thinking is sometimes used to describe thinking that falsely ascribes a cause/effect relationship to unrelated things. Viz.

ANTHROPOLIGIST: Why do you dance and chant every morning before dawn?

SHAMAN: To make the sun come up.

ANTHROPOLOGIST: What makes you think the sun would not rise without your dancing?

SHAMAN: Have I ever failed?

When I tried to pursue this, I ran into "prototaxic" and other thickets that I have no expertise to penetrate. Can anyone elucidate? Jim Stinson (talk) 20:55, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

"falsely ascribes a cause/effect relationship to unrelated things" is almost word-for-word one of the formal logical fallacies, particularly common in argument and rhetoric as well as untrained (or wishful or otherwise sloppy) thinking. There are a whole series of "False Cause fallacies." Your example is Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, "when something is assumed to be the cause of an event merely because it happened before the event."
--68.127.91.226 (talk) 23:21, 18 August 2011 (UTC)Doug Bashford

Too much Jargon in lede section

The lede section in particular should be understandable by everybody and must also be self-contained, (which also means using hypertext only when forced).

The first paragraph is laced with jargon and lazy hypertexting, only: "favors short, simple sentences," makes sense:

"... to arrange; contrasted to syntaxis) is a literary technique, in writing or speaking, that favors short, simple sentences, with the use of coordinating rather than subordinating conjunctions.[1] It can be contrasted with hypotaxis.[2]"

"Lazy hyperlinking is when hyperlinking is used as a poor, or awkward replacement for actual, thoughtful in-context English prose. ..typically reads as painfully distracting or pedantic." See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lead section):

"In general, specialized terminology and symbols should be avoided in an introduction. ...Where uncommon terms are essential to describing the subject, they should be placed in context, briefly defined, and linked."
--68.127.91.226 (talk) 22:56, 18 August 2011 (UTC)Doug Bashford

asyndeton

Shouldn't asyndeton be mentioned too? --Backinstadiums (talk) 18:00, 26 February 2021 (UTC)