means “Shut the windows!”) In the New Testament, rhetorical questions are often equivalent to statements. For example, “What shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” (Matt. 16:26) conveys an emphatic negative declaration, “It will surely not be of any lasting benefit if a person gains the whole world and loses his soul.” Surface Structure and Deep Structure One way of analyzing the skewing in language is to posit a deep structure that corresponds to the intended
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