[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

RE: What is a Greek Sentence?

I (Micheal Palmer) Wrote:
>
>>>>>>>>>>
>Part One: A hellenistic Greek sentence is a set of interrelated clauses.
>This >set may have only one member, or many. One or more of the member
>clauses may be >eliptical if the discourse context provides the necessary
>constituents to >complete them. A sentence which contains only one clause
>may also be eliptical >if the same condition is met.
>
>Part Two: "Interrelated" in Part One must be understood in a tightly
>>constrained way. The clauses must be interconnected either 1) by the use
>of >complementizers (such as OTI) or conjunctions (such as KAI, DE, and
>hINA), or >2) by some of the member clauses taking a non-finite form
>(infinitives or >participles) as modifiers of, or constituents of another
>clause. Of course, >both of these strategies may be used in the same
>sentence. (Given the regular >use of asyndeton in the NT, you might also
>want to allow for a null >conjunction, allowing adjoining clauses with
>strong thematic overlap to >constitute a single sentence even if no
>complementizer, conjunction, or >non-finite verb form is present. This
>position is somewhat debateable, though. >Why not just call these 'closely
>related sentences' rather than trying to make >them asyndetic clauses of
>the same sentence?)
>>>>>>>>>>
>
And at 8:39 AM +0000 6/4/97, Clayton Bartholomew responded:

>I am not sure what *elliptical* means here? Is it the same as thing as
>being >self referencing or recursive? I don't think this is what it means.

'Elliptical' is a grammatical term used to designate a sentence which is
'missing' some major part, like the subject, direct object, verb, etc. This
is permissible in Greek (as in most languages) as long as the missing part
can be easily reconstructed from the available context. Any adequate
definition of the Greek sentence must take this into account.

Consider the following English example:

Speaker 1:	Where are you going this afternoon?
Speaker 2:	To the movies.

Is Speaker 2's statement a sentence? It is if you take elipsis into account
and realize that it is an eliptical version of "*I'm going* to the movies."
The subject and verb can clearly be inferred from Speaker 1's question.

>Your strong definition of the term *interrelated* looks at first glance
>like >sentences might be definable strictly in terms of Greek syntax, that
>is without >reference to semantic information. Is this truly the case? Can
>we build a set >of syntax rules (e.g., PROLOG predicates) for a Greek
>sentence which could find >sentences in a text without reference to
>meaning?

Certain elements of what you are calling 'semantics' would undoubtedly fall
under the umbrella of 'syntax' in the framework of linguistics I am most
familiar with. Clearly, a definition of the Greek sentence cannot be given
strictly in terms of explicit formal elements like morphology, but a
definition in terms of interrelated clauses (recognizing that certain
elements of 'meaning' are necessary for recognizing that interrelatedness)
can cover *most* sentences in the Greek New Testament.

As to whether a set of syntax rules like PROLOG could do the job, I
seriously doubt it. Artificial intelligence is proceding at a rapid pace,
and natural language processing has made great strides in the last few
years, so it may one day be possible for a machine to recognize and process
the sentences in the Greek text, but much 'semantic' information would have
to be a part of that process.

>My personal hunch before asking this question was that the concept
>*sentence* >is not strictly a category of syntax in NT Greek. That to look
>for a *sentence* >in terms of Greek syntax alone is going to be difficult.
>My hunch was that a >Greek clause may be definable in terms of syntax
>alone but identifying a Greek >sentence requires semantic information as
>well as syntactical information. Or >perhaps this saying too much for even
>for clauses? Perhaps a clause cannot be >defined strictly in terms of
>syntax.

Yes, and much of this 'semantic' information is now included within the
arena of syntax in a number of the most widely used approaches to
linguistics.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Micheal W. Palmer				   mwpalmer@earthlink.net
Religion & Philosophy
Meredith College

Visit the Greek Language and Linguistics Gateway at
http://home.earthlink.net/~mwpalmer/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
References: