Contrast and clausal order: On beyond Behaghel

Abstract

Abstract:Since Aristotle first set out rules of natural priority, rhetoricians and linguists have sought to establish the ‘natural order’ of words, phrases, and clauses. Accounts of constituent order by classical rhetoricians and philologists and by modern linguists and psychologists have addressed word order within phrases and phrasal order within clauses. However, they have not tended to investigate clausal order within sentences, with the important but limited exception of narration sequences (They had a baby and they got married), which—as recognized from Dionysius (‘What is prior in time should also be prior in word order’) to Grice (‘Be orderly’)—exhibit a robust but defeasible iconic link between order of events and order of mention. For clauses exhibiting the rhetorical relation of contrast rather than narration, the literature is less perspicuous. It is on such cases that I focus here, inspired by behaghel’s second law (1932:4): ‘That which is less important (or already known to the listener) is placed before that which is more important (or unknown) … Old concepts are placed before new’.