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?
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.
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.
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".
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
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.
