From: Iver Larsen (alice-iver_larsen@wycliffe.org)
Date: Thu Jan 18 2001 - 04:34:55 EST
> Carlton L. Winbery wrote:
> The "predicative position" for an adjective simply means that the adjective
> is outside the nominal structure, i.e., not between the article and head
> noun or following the article. It can be in the predicative position and
> follow the whole structure. The attributive position for an adjective would
> be following the article either preceding the noun or following the noun.
> PAS never occurs in the attributive position with the article. There are
> places where no article is used. Some of these could be attributive such as
> Matt. 18:16 hINA EPI STOMATOS DUO MARTURWN H TRIWN STAQHN PAN hRHMA: What I
> would say is that wherever the noun modified by PAS has the article, PAS
> stands in the predicative position.I think this is what Carl said also.
Carl wrote:
> The distinction normally made in teaching of Greek in the U.S. is between
> an ATTRIBUTIVE position of an adjective WITHIN an article directly
> referring to a noun and a PREDICATE or PREDICATIVE position of an adjective
> OUTSIDE an article directly referring to a noun. So, yes: PANTES hOI
> ANQRWPOI is predicative, and so is hOI ANQRWPOI PANTES; what we DON'T see
> with forms of PAS is hOI PANTES ANQRWPOI (unless we wanted to say something
> like "whole men"!).
Thanks to both of you for enlightening me about the terms used in Greek
classrooms in the US. It is a long time since I sat in such a classroom, and
never in an English speaking country.
The key to the predicative/attributive distinction is apparently the article,
when it occurs. If there is no article, the definition apparently changes to be
relative to the noun.
My vantage point is general linguistics. From that background I do not see that
this kind of distinction is particularly useful in describing how the Greek
language functions nor does it give much help to the student in understanding
the structure or meaning of Greek nominal phrases. In linguistic terms, it does
not seem to have much explanatory power and it raises some questions. The
definition also appears to be ill-defined if it presumes the occurrence of the
article, but is still used when there is no article. (I had to read the
definition several times to try to understand what is meant by a "position of an
adjective within an article.")
How would you explain Acts 27:37: HMEQA DE hAI PASAI YUCAI EN TWi PLOIWi 276?
An ALWAYS rule has no exceptions.
Furthermore, a nominal structure in general linguistics consists of the head
noun plus all its modifiers. I find it strange, then, to hear that an adjective
that modifies a head noun is outside the nominal structure. It is often helpful
to distinguish different types of modifiers, e.g. proper adjectives (good, bad,
whole etc), determiners (the article, demonstratives), possessives, strong
quantifiers (all), weak quantifiers and numerals (few, many, ten). These
different types often have different constraints as to the order in which they
occur within the whole nominal phrase. The exact classification depends on the
language, and the key is whether these different modifiers can co-occur and if
so, in what order.
In English, you can say "the good men", "the ten good men", "all the good men"
and "all (the) ten good men", but you cannot say "the all good men" or "the all
souls". You can say "the whole group of souls". I am not sure if English allows
"these my good men". If not, the possessives should be included in the
determiners. So for English, we could posit an order like
S-QUANT+DET(+POSS?)+W-QUANT+ADJ+NOUN.
Anyway, what is more interesting to me than shooting down an ALWAYS rule is the
relative position of the head noun and the various modifiers in Greek.
Greek is different from English and most other languages in that Greek has a
fairly free word order, and to try to pin down the significance of these
variations in word order is a very enlightening exercise. My point is that these
variations are significant in terms of relative prominence and some of them can
only be adequately explained by reference to the larger discourse.
Thanks again,
Iver Larsen
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