Re: Anarthrous Subject with Articular Predicate

Jonathan Robie (jwrobie@mindspring.com)
Fri, 05 Sep 1997 02:26:45 -0400

At 09:25 PM 9/4/97 -0700, Micheal Palmer wrote:
>At 3:21 PM -0400 9/3/97, Jonathan Robie wrote regarding Phil. 2:13:
>
>>So what exactly do we mean by "the subject"?

Your whole response is really very useful for me, and it was hard to trim it
down. Thanks for this really clear, helpful explanation!

>Personally, I think the whole matter of which noun is the grammatical
>subject is of little relevance to the translation issue. What is much more
>important is that the the article seems to show which noun should NOT be
>taken as the logical predicate.

Phrasing the rule this way means that Carl's example MEGA BIBLION MEGA KAKON
is not a counterexample.

>This approach is consistent with the view that the ABSENCE of the article
>is often a marker of salience--a discourse issue rather than a strictly
>syntactic one.

Does this view say that dropping the article is a way of emphasizing the
substantive? Sure sounds simpler than Colwell's rule ;->

Jonathan

***************************************************************************
Jonathan Robie jwrobie@mindspring.com http://www.mindspring.com/~jwrobie
POET Software, 3207 Gibson Road, Durham, N.C., 27703 http://www.poet.com
***************************************************************************