Formulas 2

Formulas are just everywhere. Today, someone started an utterance to me with the word "Well." I knew what was coming next because "well" only has 4 functions–all of them adeverse to the listener. At best, the speaker is trying to sort for common ground. At worst, the speaker is outright disagreeing with me. So I knew that what would follow would be negative.

In the New Testament, some translators render the word "but" for the little Greek word "de." Really it is a formula word and not translatable most of the time. Occasionally, the word does mean "but." But, nearly always it is a signal that what follows is not contrastive. It is simply more information, an extension of the original thought. Sometimes in English it should be represented by a period or semicolon, sometimes by the word "and," and sometimes by the word "but."

Formulas are the glue in language we depend on. It gives our brains a split second to relax because the formulaic word used has no meaning. It is a 0 placeholder if a math analogy is needed. Sometimes, this information is helpful to know, especially if a person is thinking that the word in thier version rendered "but" doesn't really fit the context or the contrastive idea destroys the sense of the sentence.