From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sat Jan 17 1998 - 18:48:49 EST
At 11:09 AM -0600 1/17/98, Paul S. Dixon wrote:
>
>Ok, you have argued that a participle having an adverbial form can occur
>in the first or second attributive position. Is it not rather the
>attributive position of the participle that indicates it should be taken
>attributively rather than adverbially?
I don't believe that I have argued any such thing. Perhaps you're
misunderstanding what I wrote:
>On Sat, 17 Jan 1998 09:07:26 -0600 "Carl W. Conrad"
><cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu> writes:
>>If by functions, you mean something as simple as that a circumstantial
>>participle may function as an adjective insofar as it must agree with
>>an implicit or explicit pronoun or substantive even while at the same
>>time it may function like an adverbial clause in indicating time,
>clause,
>>purpose, etc. thus:
>
>> APO PETRAS BLHQEIS APOQANEITAI hO KLEPTHS
>>
>> "The robber, since/because/when/although hurled from the rock,
>>will die"
>>
>>(a) Although to be fully attributive, the participle ought to have an
>>article:
>>
>> hO APO PETRAS BLHQEIS KLEPTHS or hO KLEPTHS hO APO >PETRAS
>BLHQEIS
>
>>so that it could be authentically translated as "the robber who gets
>>hurled from the rock"--i.e. as a substantival participle or the
>equivalent of
>>a relative clause, nevertheless it would not be illegitimate to
>>translate it the first formulation as: "The robber will die, hurled from
>>the rock."
>>Now, you tell me in that instance whether "hurled" is adjectival or
>>adverbial or both?
I'm saying that although the participle BLHQEIS is predicative in the sentence
APO PETRAS BLHQEIS APOQANEITAI hO KLEPTHS
it could legitimately be translated into English as "Hurled from the rock,
the robber will die." In this version, "hurled" is adjectival because it
agrees with "robber," but it is adverbial in that it implies a causal,
temporal, or conditional relationship to the verb "will die." There's
nothing complicated or exceptional about this: English is just less precise
than Greek in spelling out whether the participle is attributive or
predicative. For instance, I think we'd probably say that in
"A rolling stone gathers no moss"
"rolling" is attributive and clearly adjectival, but in
"A stone rolling gathers no moss"
"rolling" is much more ambiguous--we'd probably best understand it as
functioning adverbially, but would we deny that it "functions" like an
adjective?
>How about a participle having an attributive form, but occurring
>adverbially, like (surprise) APEIQHSASIN in 1 Pet 3:20? At one point,
>did you argue that it should be taken attributively because it agreed
>with PNEUMASIN in person, number and gender?
I don't think I ever argued that it was attributive
>Or, were you just saying it
>agrees with the substantive? If so, so what? Does that mean it should
>be taken attributively, as most translations reflect? We agree, I
>believe, that it should be taken adverbially. The question, as I
>understand Clay, is: are you saying it can or should be taken both ways?
I started out by saying I wasn't sure what Clay was asking, but I thought
it was possible he might be referring to this "double syntactic belonging"
of the participle: its MORPHOLOGY is governed by its relationship to a
pronoun or substantive, while its SYNTAX as a form of the verb may be
either adjectival or adverbial depending on whether it has attributive or
predicative force. English is far less precise than Greek.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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