From: Paul S. Dixon (dixonps@juno.com)
Date: Mon Jan 05 1998 - 19:47:19 EST
On Fri, 02 Jan 1998 14:11:59 -0500 Jonathan Robie <jonathan@texcel.no>
writes:
>At 01:48 PM 1/2/98 EST, Paul S. Dixon wrote:
>
>>Jonathan asked if there were any rules for determining definiteness.
>>This might be one, at least as it pertains to the predicate nominative.
>>Let me try to state the rule (call it Dixon's rule, if you like and for
>>simplicity): a predicate nominative will be definite if and only if it
>>can be interchanged with the subject without losing any meaning. Boy,
>>am I going out on a limb on this one, or what? Saw away.
>
>I'm not ready to saw yet, since the burden of proof rests on the
>affirmative. Give me some proof, then we'll start sawing ;->
Well, there are plenty of examples affirming it. I could go through the
Gospel of John and demonstrate it, I believe. Take 1:1c and 1:14 for
starters. Or, take one of the examples given by the Gramcord Institute
I challenged, Heb 1:10, ERGA TWN CEIRWN SOU EISIN hOI OURANOI.
The Institute notes argue for definiteness. If we turn it around, does
it
work? "The works of your hands are the heavens"? I don't think so, not
unless we want to conclude that the heavens are the complete works of
God's hands. What about the earth? It seems to be the anarthrous
construction is important here and that it probably indicates
qualitativeness,
even though we might still translate it with a "the."
>I've been thinking about this for the last few days. I think that this
test
>still involves a *subjective* judgement in the mind of the interpreter,
and
>I'm not sure that two different interpreters will always agree whether
two
>substantives are interchangeable. And the criteria for
interchangeability
>can not be determined from actual language usage, but only from the
logical
>world view of the interpreter (I make the assumption that formal logic
does
>not determine the structure of languages). That's why I would prefer
tests
>that make predictions about what constructions in a given language will
be
>(un)grammatical based on a set of proposed semantics - it is easier to
>falsify, and validation can be done using predictions that can be tested
>with a text corpus.
I think the test is more objective than you recognize. As pointed out in
the
Heb 1:10 passage, if the anarthrous predicate nominative is definite,
then
by definition the definite predicate nominative equals the definite
subject. By
interchanging the two, the equation should not change. If it does, then
the
the only viable explanation is the predicate nominative cannot be
definite.
Paul Dixon
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