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Hyperbaton /haɪˈpɜːrbətɒn/, in its original meaning, is a figure of speech in which a phrase is made discontinuous by the insertion of other words. In modern usage, the term is also used more generally for figures of speech that transpose sentences' natural word order, which is also called anastrophe. Anastrophe is a hyponym of the antimetabole, where anastrophe only transposes one word in a sentence.
The word is borrowed from the Greek hyperbaton (ὑπέρβατον), meaning "stepping over", which is derived from hyper ("over") and bainein ("to step"), with the -tos verbal adjective suffix. The idea is that to understand the phrase, the reader has to "step over" the words inserted in between.
Anastrophe is from the Greek: ἀναστροφή, anastrophē, "a turning back or about".
The separation of connected words for emphasis or effect is possible to a much greater degree in highly inflected languages, whose sentence meaning does not depend closely on word order, unlike languages like English with highly-strict word order. In Latin and Ancient Greek, the effect of hyperbaton is often to emphasize the first word. It has been called "perhaps the most distinctively alien feature of Latin word order." Donatus, in his work On tropes, includes under hyperbaton five varieties: hysterologia, anastrophe (for which the term hyperbaton is sometimes used loosely as a synonym), parenthesis, tmesis, and synchysis.
In the above example, the word "(only) one", henos, occurs in its normal place after the preposition "at the hands of" (hupo), but "person" (anthrōpou) is unnaturally delayed, giving emphasis to "only one."
Here the word "you" (se) divides the preposition "by" from its object "knees".
Hyperbaton is also common in New Testament Greek, for example:
οὗτος
hoûtos
ὁ
ho
ἄνθρωπος
ánthrōpos
πολλὰ
pollà
ποιεῖ
poieî
σημεῖα
sēmeîa
(John 11:47)
"This man is performing many signs" (not merely a few)
διὰ
dià
τὸ
tò
ἐγγὺς
engùs
εἶναι
eînai
Ἰερουσαλὴμ
Ierousalḕm
αὐτόν
autón
(Luke 19:11)
"because of him being near Jerusalem" (not far)
ἴδετε
ídete
πηλίκοις
pēlíkois
ὑμῖν
humîn
γράμμασιν
grámmasin
ἔγραψα
égrapsa
τῇ
têi
ἐμῇ
emêi
χειρί
kheirí
(Paul, Galatians 6:11)
"See, I have written to you with big letters in my own hand" (not small ones)
ταλαίπωρος
talaípōros
ἐγὼ
egṑ
ἄνθρωπος
ánthrōpos
(Paul, Romans 7:24)
"I (am) a wretched man" (not a fortunate one)
In all these examples and others in the New Testament, the first word of the hyperbaton is an adjective or adverb which is emphasised by being separated from the following noun. The separating word can be a verb, noun, or pronoun.
In Latin hyperbaton is frequently found in both prose and verse. The following examples come from prose writers. Often, there is an implied contrast between the first word of the hyperbaton and its opposite:
In all the above examples, the first word of the hyperbaton can be said to be emphasised. The following is different, since the emphasis seems to be on the word in the middle:
In the following an adjective of size is brought to the front, emphasising the whole phrase:
The first word of the hyperbaton can also be an adverb, as in the following example:
It is also possible for the noun to come first ("postmodifier hyperbaton"), as in the following:
A hyperbaton can also be used to demonstrate a kind of picture shown in the text:
Another kind of hyperbaton is "genitive hyperbaton" in which one of the words is in the genitive case:
The following even have a double hyperbaton:
In the following, a genitive hyperbaton and an adjectival hyperbaton are interleaved:
Another kind of hyperbaton (called "conjunct hyperbaton" by Devine and Stephens) is found when a phrase consisting of two words joined by et ("and") is separated by another word:
In poetry, especially poetry from the 1st century BC onwards, hyperbaton is very common; some 40% of Horace's adjectives are separated from their nouns.
Frequently two hyperbata are used in the same sentence, as in the following example:
Often two noun phrases are interleaved in a double hyperbaton:
The type in the examples below, where two adjectives are followed by a verb and then two nouns in the same order as the adjectives, is often referred to as a "golden line":
Occasionally (but rarely) three separate noun phrases can be interleaved, for example:
In the following line, a conjunct hyperbaton is interleaved with another noun phrase:
In other cases one hyperbaton is inserted inside another:
The following example is from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Here the clause quae duri colerent iuvenci "which patient bullocks might cultivate", which already contains a hyperbaton of the phrase duri iuvenci "patient bullocks", is in turn is split up by the words pater arva:
In some cases, the placing of two adjectives together may highlight a contrast between them, for example, in the following sentence from Horace, where the fragility of the boat is contrasted with the roughness of the sea:
Similarly in the example from Ovid below "transparent" is contrasted with "dense":
Sometimes pretty effects are obtained by apparently switching the order of the adjectives:
Usually the adjective in a discontinuous noun phrase comes first, as in the above examples, but the opposite is also possible:
The above example illustrates another occasional feature of hyperbaton, since the word "wolf" (lupus) is actually inside the phrase "Sabine forest" (silva Sabina). This kind of word-play is found elsewhere in Horace also, e.g. grato, Pyrrha, sub antro "Pyrrha, beneath a pleasant grotto", where Pyrrha is indeed in a grotto; and in the quotation from Horace Odes 1.5 below, the girl is surrounded by the graceful boy, who in turn is surrounded by a profusion of roses:
In Ovid, hyperbaton or dislocated word order is particularly common in his elegiac poetry. Kenney quotes the following. Here the words timebam ne caperer "I was afraid lest I might be captured", which are already dislocated into caperer ne timebam, are interleaved with the phrase si progressa forem nocte "if I had gone out in the night":
Housman comments: "the dislocation of nocte together with its juxtaposition with timebam lends emphasis to [Briseis's] fears of getting lost in the dark."
Anastrophe is common in Latin poetry, such as in the first line of the Aeneid:
In the example, the genitive case noun Troiæ ("of Troy") has been separated from the noun that it governs (oris, "shores") in a way that would be rather unusual in Latin prose. In fact, the liberty of Latin word order allows "of Troy" to be taken to modify "arms" or "the man" but is not customarily interpreted so.
The classical type of hyperbaton is also found in Slavic languages like Polish:
Piękny
beautiful
Markowi
for Mark
kupili
they bought
obraz
painting
"They bought a beautiful painting for Mark."
Certain conditions are necessary for hyperbaton to be possible in Polish: discontinuous noun phrases typically contain just one modifier, and the noun and modifier must be separated by a verb (and not, for example, by the indirect object Markowi alone).
Similar constructions are found in other languages, such as Russian, Latvian, and Modern Greek from which the following example comes:
Το
To
κόκκινο
kókkino
είδα
eída
το
to
φόρεμα.
phórema.
"It is the red dress (το κόκκινο φόρεμα) that I saw."
Ntelitheos (2004) points out that one condition enabling such constructions is that the adjective is in contrastive focus ("the red dress, not the blue one").
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While less common in English, hyperbata are still used and are defined as a purposeful inversion or transposition of dogmatic word order.: 45 Hyperbata are often closely associated with or considered a type of or synonymous with inversions: the metathesis of two elements switch their placements.
A common types of hyperbaton include placing the adjective after the noun it modifies: for example, "the forest burned with a fire unquenchable;" or delay the verb to the end of the sentence: thus Milton's phrase "who disobeys him, disobeys me" becomes "him who disobeys, me disobeys.": 49
Hyperbaton is often used for the purpose of emphasis. The effectiveness of hyperbaton— though he defines hyperbaton as involving appending information to an already-complete sentence, such as in W. H. Auden's opening to "Musée des Beaux Arts:" "About suffering they were never wrong, / The Old masters—" derives from the spontaneity of adding truth to an already closed statement. Additionally, the relocation of phrases to the beginning or end of a sentence increases their importance as those positions in a sentence draw greater emphasis.: 431
Occasionally, devices such as parenthesis (the insertion of a phrase that interrupts the sentence's normal syntax) and apposition (placing an explanative or modifying element directly after another element; such as in Luke 3:2: "John, son of Zechariah") are considered as hyponyms of hyperbata.: 431–432
The following are examples of hyperbaton in which the author intentionally edited word order (opposed to the grammar becoming archaic):
Subject–verb–object ("I like potatoes") might be changed to object–subject–verb ("potatoes I like").
Because English has a settled natural word order, anastrophe emphasizes the displaced word or phrase. For example, the name of the City Beautiful urbanist movement emphasises "beautiful". Similarly, in "This is the forest primeval", from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline, the emphasis is on "primeval".
If the emphasis that comes from anastrophe is not an issue, the synonym inversion is perfectly suitable.
Anastrophe also occurs in English poetry, as in the third verse of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:
The word order of "his hand dropt he" is not the customary word order in English, even in the archaic English that Coleridge seeks to imitate. Also, excessive use of the device if the emphasis is unnecessary or even unintended, especially for the sake of rhyme or metre, is usually[citation needed] considered a flaw, such as the clumsy versification of Sternhold and Hopkins's metrical psalter:
However, some poets have a style that depends on heavy use of anastrophe. Gerard Manley Hopkins is particularly identified with the device, which renders his poetry susceptible to parody:
When anastrophe draws an adverb to the head of a thought, such as for emphasis, the verb is drawn along. That causes a verb-subject inversion:
In Robert Frost's "Mending Wall," the poem's opening clause begins with an object noun, and yet this inversion does not occur, effectively creating a tension that is worked against through the rest of the poem:
A popular cultural example of anastrophe would be Yoda from the Star Wars series. “Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you.”
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