Hyperbaton
See, also http://rhetoric.byu.edu/figures/H/hyberbaton.htm
Hyperbaton is derived from the Greek hyper, "over" and bainein, "to step" . For Latin orators it was called transgression, for the French trespasser. In English, transposition.
Why use it?
Well, why be a slave to normal word order? Juggling around you can hit on ways to emphasise verbs, nouns or even prepositions which would otherwise slide along. It can sound forced and over poetic, but it can also add melody and swing.
There are two kinds:
• An inversion of normal word order, where it is sometimes synonymous with anastrophe. ( disarrangement of syntax by a single word)
This can be for comic effect: the Yiddish “Troubles, everybody's got.”
(Normally: Everybody's got troubles). “Cheese, I love!”
Or to add emphasis: Adriana asks regarding men in Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors: Why should their liberty than ours be more?
To join ideas in unexpected ways: TS Eliot: “time present and time past…”
And, particularly, to emphasise emotion: “Great was our sorrow, great our loss.”
• Adding a word or thought to a sentence that is already semantically complete, thus drawing emphasis to the addition.
This can also be for comic effect "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put." – Attributed to Winston Churchill skewering the rule of not ending a sentence with a preposition.
But mostly, it adds emotion like a kick: “It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done…”
Blast from the past: Quintilian then tells a story about the first four words of Plato's greatest dialogue, the Republic. As they come down to us, they are "kateben chthes eis Peiraia," translated as "Yesterday he went down to the Piraeus..." Quintilian comments that after Plato's death these four words were found written on his tablets in many different orders: "he wanted to try out which order would make each word most effective (8.6.64)."
http://www.drbilllong.com/EvenMoreWords/Hyperbaton.html
Connects to: hypallage, hysteron proton
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