From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Jan 22 2001 - 06:08:50 EST
At 6:53 PM -0500 1/21/01, Moon-Ryul Jung wrote:
>Carl wrote:
>> Even
>> if I concede that Iver's formulation adequately describes the phenomena of
>> placement of adjectives relative to noun and article in noun phrases (and
>> I'm halfway willing to do so), I still think that it's easier to explain
>> the basic positioning of KALON TO hALS, TO hALS KALON, TO KALON hALS and TO
>> hALS TO KALON as well as of PAS hO KOSMOS or hO KOSMOS PAS or hOUTOS hO
>> ANHR or hO ANHR hOUTOS by using the terminology of "attributive position"
>> and "predicate position" rather than to lump them all together as NP's and
>> sort out the different meanings of all these NP's in terms of where the
>> adjective or demonstrative or quantitative word stands in any particular
>> NP.
>[Moon]
>
>Carl,
>
>But what can we gain by saying that PAS in NOUN PHRASE
>PAS hO KOSMOS is in a predicate position? I guess that PAS is
>called that way because its position relative to the noun
>is the same as the position that KALON has
>relative to the noun TO hALAS in SENTENCE KALON TO hALAS.
>But PAS is not a predicate in the noun phrase. If you call
>the position of some constituent "predicate position"
>when that constituent is not a predicate, it would be
>confusing.
>
>I learned several foreign languages, but never heard of
>"predicate position" in relation to noun phrases.
>I wonder why understanding Greek noun phrases needs such a notion?
I've learned several languages too, although not enough to become a
linguist, but (1) I don't know any other language that uses the article in
anything like the way Greek does; (2) I don't know any other language that
consistently omits the verb in a "noun sentence". That is why some term
referring to what is called traditionally "predicate position" seems
helpful to me--at least as a pedagogical device for teaching beginning
Greek--to point to the semantic difference made by positioning an adjective
INSIDE an article, where it is the attribute of a noun which it qualifies,
and positioning the adject OUTSIDE of the article-noun group, where it
serves as a predicate word; (3) then the fact that PAS and demonstrative
pronouns must also take this position normally or otherwise the semantic
value of PAS and similar quantitative words is altered is added on.
Therefore, I think we might well seek for another word/phrase than
"predicate position" to refer to this positioning of the modifier, but it
seems to me that to teach it without some such term becomes considerably
more complicated; that's how it looks to me, at any rate.
--
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
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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