From: c stirling bartholomew (cc.constantine@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Mon Jul 02 2001 - 22:23:33 EDT
Recently took on an *impossible project a subset of which is to explain the
Greek case system in very simple language. I am having a little trouble with
the nominative case in apposition and distinguishing it from predicate
nominative in a verbless clause.
Can anyone explain to me why the a predicate nominative in a verbless clause
is not just an example of apposition? My mind has been perhaps polluted by
reading Dana and Manty on the nominative where they call it the appositonal
case.
I am looking more for help here than for discussion. I have enough to do
right now so I cannot get embroiled in endless back and forth but I could
use some clear headed analysis on this topic in language that even I can
understand.
Looking at about 15 different treatments of the case system today left me
pretty cynical about the whole subject. How can anyone make any sense out of
this mess? SE Porter (Idioms, 2nd Ed. 1992) thinks that all attempts
previous to his and J.P. Louw's (ACTA Classica 9:73-88,1966) are muddled by
confusion between the meaning of the form, the syntactical meaning and the
contextual meaning. I agree with him on this confusion issue. Terrible
confusion, absolutely mind boggling confusion. But Porter's treatment of the
*meaning of the forms* leaves us with a set of rebarative abstractions that
would make Hegel blush. These abstractions are of no use what so ever for
doing actual work in the Greek text. So we are left with what amounts to
denying the meaning of the form all together, pretending it does not exist
and just talking about the syntactical and semantic functions of the case
when it is found in a specific context.
Anyway, the last paragraph is just a side issue. The question isn't about
Porter's revised version of J.P. Louw's case theory.
Thanks for any help,
Clay
--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062
*impossible projects are really the only ones worth taking on since possible
projects are just tedium.
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