Talk:Hyperbaton

Yoda's quote

In the English examples question, there was the following quote by Yoda:

"Size matters not! Judge me by my size, do you?" - Yoda in "The Empire Strikes Back"

I removed it because I don't think it was an example of hyperbaton—the word order is not changed by the speaker for emphasis or effect, but rather that's how Yoda speaks all the time. (It could be argued that George Lucas used hyperbaton, but for the entire character, not for this sentence. I still wouldn't agree, because the emphasis is towards the speaker, not towards the words.)

Since Yoda quotes have now been added & removed two or three times, wouldn't it make more sense to mention him in the article & explain why this use of reverted sentence construction doesn't qualify as Hyperbaton? Weasel Fetlocks (talk) 10:53, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me irrelevant that Yoda always speaks in hyperbata. If someone speaks in a high-pitched voice we can still say it is high-pitched, even if it is their normal speaking voice. What matters is that it is high-pitched compared with the way other people usually speak. The example therefore seems to me a valid one, since it conforms to the definition of the dictionaries. Kanjuzi (talk) 04:48, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Don't confuse the character with the scriptwriter. The author who wrote Yoda's lines was not employing hyperbaton, but trying to make him sound like an alien. This article does not need misleading examples. Please do not restore it again. Acasson (talk) 21:24, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

English examples

Indeed none of the English examples given can be called hyperbaton. (If they are, the writer should add a reference.) Reversing the order of two elements in a sentence (e.g. saying "the leaves dead" instead of "the dead leaves") is not hyperbaton, and saying "bloody thou art" instead of "thou art bloody" is not hyperbaton either. Hyperbaton is when a phrase is split up by putting another word in between. For that reason I have deleted all the examples. (A better example might be "a small lady's handbag" (where "small" goes with "handbag" not "lady") or "I only go there on Tuesdays" where "only" goes with "on Tuesdays". However, I will not add these for want of a reference.) Kanjuzi (talk) 04:42, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

It seems I acted too soon! In English studies the word seems to have a different meaning from its original one. I have therefore reverted the edit. However, the Greek word doesn't mean "transposition", as some writers say. I think we should make a distinction between the original and the modern usage. Kanjuzi (talk) 04:59, 19 January 2018 (UTC)