From: Iver Larsen (alice-iver_larsen@wycliffe.org)
Date: Sat Jan 20 2001 - 10:29:45 EST
Dear Carl, Moon and others,
Let us see if we can together benefit from joining insights from general
linguistics and traditional Greek grammar.
I would like to follow up on Carl's statement earlier - repeated here for
convenience:
"I certainly DO think that there's much in traditional Greek grammatical
pedagogy that is questionable or could stand great improvement."
As Moon and I have pointed out there are some serious problems with the
so-called predicative and attributive position of adjectives. The problem seems
to stem from a confusion between function and structural position. I don't think
the origin of the problem is in US schools, but it goes way back in the history
of Greek grammar descriptions and is also present in a standard German grammar
like Bl-D. (BAG has a rather confused section under hOUTOS 2c because of this
traditionally unhelpful analysis. What he considers a very difficult
construction - Acts 24:21 -has no difficulty in my proposed revision.)
The first task is to try to identify the problem we have. I would value input
from others, if I have not defined the problem correctly. I'll use examples to
define the problem, but let me start with some general remarks to set the scene.
First, a noun phrase (NP) consists of a Noun (N) plus a number of modifiers,
e.g. the article/determiner, adjectives, demonstratives, numerals, participles
(relative clauses in English). Greek is different from English in that the N
very often is implicit (rare in English - the good, the bad and the ugly). If it
is implicit it is either inferred from the context or it is a very general
concept like "thing" or "person".
Secondly, there are rules about the relative position of the N and its modifiers
for any language, but the order of modifiers as well as word order in general is
far less restricted in Greek than in English. A NP can even be split apart by
other elements not part of the NP in Greek.
Thirdly, in order to describe the relative position of the modifiers within a
NP, it is helpful to classify them, but the details of this classification is
unique to the language. It is more helpful to describe Greek from an analysis of
Greek structure rather than an analysis of Latin, German or English structure. I
haven't done a detailed study of the Greek NP from the viewpoint of modern
descriptive linguistics. Maybe someone else has. But we need to put ordinary
descriptive adjectives like "good, bad, etc" in a different class from a few
restrictive modifiers like "all" and the demonstratives. The article needs its
own class, but numerals and ordinals may be in the same class as the descriptive
modifiers (adjectives proper). The relative position of these modifiers needs to
be described in terms of their membership in such classes.
Some examples:
KALON TO hALAS (Mk 9:50) KALOS hO NOMOS (1 Tim 1:8)
Salt (is) (a) good (thing). Law (is) (a) good (thing).
Here we have a NP KALON/KALOS consisting of an adjective and an implied N (a
good thing). This NP functions as a predicate in the sentence and is in
agreement with the subject. The other NPs (salt, law) function as subjects. Each
sentence consists of two NPs with the verb ESTIN implied.
POIHSATE TO DENDRON KALON (Matt 12:33)
Make a/the tree (a) good (tree/thing)
Here we have a VP (POIHSATE), an NP (TO DENDRON) functioning as object and
another NP (KALON) functioning as a second object. In the second NP the N is
implied (tree or thing). The word KALON is not part of the first NP.
Since KALOS is a regular, descriptive adjective, if it had been part of an NP
with an explicit N it would have been positioned differently:
TO KALON hALAS the good salt (as opposed to bad salt)
TO DENDRON TO KALON the good tree (as opposed to another good thing)
This is probably what has given rise to the terminology of
attributive/predicative position, but as I am trying to say this is IMO a
misleading and confusing description which ought to be discarded.
There are at least two reasons why it is misleading. One is that it gives the
impression that we are talking about the position of a modifier within the NP
that it belongs to. But the key difference is that in the first examples we have
two NPs and KALOS is not part of the NP which consists of an article and a N. In
the second set of examples we have one NP and KALOS is part of the NP. The other
reason is that other modifiers like demonstratives and the now famous PAS have
different positions within the NP, and these different positions do not reflect
an attributive/predicative function distinction.
Let us look at some examples with demonstratives:
Matt 12:45 THi GENEAi TAUTHI THi PONHRAi - To this evil group-of-people
Luke 11:29 hH GENEA hAUTH GENEA PONHRA ESTIN - This group-of-people is an evil
group-of-people
hAUTH hH GENEA - THIS group-of-people (in contrast to another group)
The first has one NP with a N and two modifiers, first a demonstrative and then
a descriptive adjective. The second is a sentence with the structure NP
(subject) NP (object) VP. The third is also a simple NP, but with contrastive
emphasis on THIS. This structure does not occur in the NT with GENEA, because
GENEA is never contrasted with another GENEA. It does occur with many other
nouns, e.g.
Matt 12:32 OUTE EN TOUTWI TWi AIWNI OUTE EN TWi MELLONTI. (either in THIS age or
the coming one)
To sum up, I think it is more helpful to abandon the concept of attributive and
predicative position of adjectives or other NP constituents. Instead, it would
be helpful to talk about the different types of NP constituents, and for each
type specify the normal, unmarked position both when the article is present and
when it is not. Fronting of the modifier within the NP functions to show
relative contrast.
Descriptive adjectives follow the head noun unless marked for emphasis. If the
noun is arthrous, the article is repeated before this type of adjective. In
fronted, marked position, the adjective is moved to come before the noun, but
following the article if the noun is arthrous.
For demonstratives and PAS (and a few others) occurring after the noun, the
article is not repeated, if the noun is arthrous. If they occur before the noun,
they are placed before the article, if the noun is arthrous. PAS is a strong
quantifier which is inherently emphatic and the unmarked order is therefore
before the noun. For the demonstratives there is no marked or unmarked order.
Whatever word comes first is relatively more prominent. (The special cases of
PAS occurring between the article and noun are then still "exceptions" which
could be explained by PAS here functioning not as a strong quantifier, but as a
descriptive adjective, somewhat akin to the difference between "all" and "whole"
in English, where "all" occurs before the article, but "whole" after it.)
Would these rules work and make sense? I may well have overlooked something,
requiring a refinement of the rules. Sorry for the length of this, but at least
it is clearer for me, if not for anybody else.
Best wishes,
Iver Larsen
Kolding, Denmark
alice-iver_larsen@wycliffe.org
---
B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [jwrobie@mindspring.com]
To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-327Q@franklin.oit.unc.edu
To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:36:48 EDT