Second Amendment wording. [View all]

[Decoy of Fenris]

Last edited Sun Oct 21, 2012, 06:54 AM - Edit history (1)

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

In my off time, I passably study diachronic linguistics. When read in established context of contemporary writings in English America, the tonal inference of the Second Amendment reads to the modern era:

"Establishing that a militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

Contrary to some opinions, the primary word in this amendment seems to be "Being" as opposed to Militia. In colonial America, the use of the word "Being" most commonly established a secondary but often intertwined meaning between two thought processes, similar to how English uses the semicolon to divide yet follow related lines of thought. Likewise, the grammar associated with the contemporary use of the word "Being" tends to follow archaic grammar similar to an ungendered line of Spanish or to a lesser extent any Germanic language. The grammar structure of the colonial American "Being" applies across the entire sentence structure, not just to the lines of thought being conveyed. In the instance of the Second Amendment, the structural breakdown would be as follows:

"The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed, (because) the security of a free State necessitates a well-regulated Militia."


Now, before anyone jumps the gun (hehe...) on the use of the word Militia, might I offer up the linguistic evolution of the word? In the modern world, the notion of a Militia is an organized civilian group devoted to certain goals of a nation under either true or false pretense (see the border patrol militias as an example.) The issue with "Militia" is that, with all words in one way or another, it is a true polyseme, having morphed enough through history as to render a non-contemporary analysis moot, only allowing for a contemporary examination of historical predicate transfer morphology and to a lesser extent subjecting the word to lexical implication rules.



Any input on this preliminary case offering would be more than welcome, as I'm looking to do further independent research of the subject matter, but only if there is appropriate interest.


(Second edit to add parenthesis instead of brackets around word "because", fifth semipara, word fifteen. Coding is not my strong suit, and the word "because" was deleted due to bracketing. Third edit to correct improper linguistic analysis; altered preceding analysis for true diagnostic.)