Is employing hyperbaton correct in English?

Question

I've often seen the sentence structure "____ does not a ____ make" which I've now discovered is called hyperbaton.

the use, especially for emphasis, of a word order other than the expected or usual one
— from Dictionary.com

I'm wondering though if it would be considered correct use of English?

Good question, which shows how inadequate - how unrealistically categorical - the word "correct" is. — Colin Fine, May 16 '11 at 13:07
HOWEVER, unless you are fluent at speaking English, do not attempt hyperbation in your everyday speech. — GEdgar, Nov 06 '12 at 01:39
Read up everything on Hyperbaton here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbaton Note the remark, 'figures of disorder (deliberate and dramatic departures from standard word order') there. And here: http://www.truthortradition.com/modules.php?file=article&name=News&sid=927 — Kris, Nov 06 '12 at 11:23

score 33 · Accepted Answer · answered May 16 '11 at 02:57

33

Hyperbaton correct is indeed—from the Germanic side of the ancestry of English, a holdover must I'd wager it be—though usually archaic it is considered, and thus poetically and dialectically it is used. To see it with objects quite unusual it is, as in:

One swallow does not a summer make.

Rather more common it becomes when prepositions more involved do themselves become.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.

—Escalus in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Act II, Scene 1

And poetry let us not forget:

I will arise and go now,
And go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there,
Of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there,
A hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade

—W. B. Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Inversion of noun and adjective is a form of hyperbaton most common: it describes with force a thirst unquenchable, a hunger insatiable, a passion so wild it moans “word order be damned!”; to bolder wax (and more archaic seem), consider the object to move afore the verb, and thy speech merrily to lilt and gaily prance allow.

answered May 16 '11 at 02:57

Jon Purdy

32,386

Before I saw your name, I thought maybe Yoda had written this answer. ;) – Josh Leitzel May 16 '11 at 08:37
I think "hyperbaton" is actually the name of Yoda's dialect. – Kit Z. Fox May 16 '11 at 12:31
1

+1: great answer to a great question! Learning about things like hyperbaton must be what the Internet is meant to be used for... – AAT May 16 '11 at 16:19
1

@AAT: Amen! And it's lucky for me I've been into Yeats recently: he was tremendously fond of hyperbaton. – Jon Purdy May 16 '11 at 19:03
+10... damn, can't. But it's such a great... nay, the words do fail me here, my vocab being suddenly inadequate. lost for words, aka, speechless – Jürgen A. Erhard Jun 02 '11 at 19:03

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered May 16 '11 at 02:53

This is a gross oversimplification.

Subject-object-verb word order is an archaic feature of Old English (before 1100 AD). AFAIK, It was used mainly in subordinating clauses and perfect tenses.

It can still be seen in religious liturgies and poetry in Modern English:

"With this ring, I thee wed." "What light through yonder window breaks"

I was struck by how much Old English grammar and syntax resembles Modern High German.

score 3 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 25 '12 at 15:35

3

Grammatically I see

Noun / linking verb / article, direct object / verb.

This could be read as blank does not make a blank which would be more of a standard/simple structure but I believe this to be correct as is.

Unless I'm mistaken this is a form of "subordinating conjunction".

edited Jan 25 '12 at 15:35

answered May 16 '11 at 01:02

Imagen

131

score 3 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 06 '12 at 10:59

3

There are several examples in Wikipedia:

"Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end" — William Shakespeare in Richard III, 4.4, 198.

"Object there was none. Passion there was none." — Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart.

"The helmsman steered, the ship moved on; / Yet never a breeze up blew" — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

edited Nov 06 '12 at 10:59

RegDwigнt

97,231

answered May 16 '11 at 03:20

Paul Amerigo Pajo

6,557

The quotation is apocryphal - could have been Churchill, could have been some other official, could have been made up by someone else entirely - but as I learned it, Churchill was responding to a suggested correction in one of his speeches, and said "This is the sort of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put." – MT_Head May 16 '11 at 03:36
@MT_Head you have a citation for that? :) – Paul Amerigo Pajo May 16 '11 at 07:08
2

The Churchill tag - whether or not really Churchill - is not an inversion, and is completely correct according to the traditional rules of prescriptive grammar, as opposed to the everyday version it rejects: "which I will not put up with". – Colin Fine May 16 '11 at 13:05

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered May 16 '11 at 01:36

0

Standard word order in English is SVO (subject, verb, object). The given sentence (with a bit of complexity due to the helper verb) is more SOV.

In one sense it is totally incorrect grammar. In another, if you went around talking in SOV order like the above, you'd have the tendency to sound like a crazy poet. That is, correct but strange.

answered May 16 '11 at 01:36

Mitch

71,423

5

It is not in any sense “totally incorrect grammar”. This answer explains why. – tchrist Aug 17 '12 at 03:17

Is employing hyperbaton correct in English?

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