Riparian Grammar School: Parataxis and Why It's The Most Important Grammatical Idea You've Never Heard Of
Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 7:46AM | by Otter Two things probably leaped out at you immediately.
One is that it’s a little difficult to organize the information. We depend on paragraphs, line-breaks, punctuation (including quotation marks) to tell us what the relationships are between elements in the language. That is, we think syntactically, not paratactically like Mark does. That makes parataxis a little difficult to read at first. But it’s like wearing glasses: after a little while your brain adjusts to it and you see things a little differently.
Second, the text organizes itself in surprising ways. I’ll bet you noticed relationships between images that hadn’t occurred to you before.
That is, you’ve begun to think a little more like the biblical writers. And whether you’re a believer or not, it’s just kind of nice to feel you understand them a little better.
