List of Articular Infinitives

Jonathan Robie
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Re: List of Articular Infinitives

Post by Jonathan Robie »

After corresponding with Stephen Carlson, Mike Aubrey, Micheal Palmer, and Randall Tan, I finally learned that my problem with constructs involving εἶναι is more general than that, it is really a problem with verb complements. So I modified the function for finding infinitives to this:

Code: Select all

declare function local:infinitives($wg as element(wg))
{
  let $verb-complement := $wg/w[@role='vc']
  let $headword := $wg/w[@head='true']
  return
    if ($verb-complement[@mood='infinitive']) then $verb-complement[@mood='infinitive']
    else if ($headword) then $headword[@mood='infinitive']     
    else
      $wg / wg !  local:infinitives(.)
};
If there is a verb complement that is an infinitive, that's what the article modifies, so return it. If there is a headword, that's what the article modifies, so return it if it is an infinitive. Otherwise, call the function recursively on each word group contained in the current word group.

Here is the output:

http://ibiblio.org/bgreek/resources/que ... tives5.xml

Here are the 14 missing infinitives that Burk listed, but are not found by this query - all but 3 (marked with a single *) are due to the issue with multiple infinitives conjoined with και (marked with ** or ***), which I have not yet fixed.

Code: Select all

Matthew 11:01 **
Matthew 20:19 (prepositional) **
Matthew 20:19 (prepositional) ***
Luke 09:18 (prepositional) *
Luke 11:01 (prepositional) *
Luke 24:15 (prepositional) **
1 Corinthians 11:06 **
1 Corinthians 11:22 (prepositional) **
2 Corinthians 07:03 (prepositional) **
Philippians 01:23 (prepositional) **
Philippians 04:10 *
1 Thessalonians 03:02 (prepositional) **
1 Thessalonians 04:06 **
2 Thessalonians 02:02 (prepositional) **
Of the 3 exceptions, 2 are verb complements that are not correctly marked in the syntax tree (we need to fix that). Here is the third:
Phillipians 4:10 wrote:Ἐχάρην δὲ ἐν κυρίῳ μεγάλως ὅτι ἤδη ποτὲ ἀνεθάλετε τὸ ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ φρονεῖν, ἐφ’ ᾧ καὶ ἐφρονεῖτε ἠκαιρεῖσθε δέ.
Our syntax trees say the object of ἀνεθάλετε is τὸ ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ, Burk says the object is τὸ φρονεῖν. I think Burk is right.

Bottom line: if we can fix three issues with the syntax trees and I can either fix the query or change the lowfat trees to handle multiple infinitives conjoined with και, I think we can reconstruct Burk's list (modulo those syntax tree bugs that have already been reported).
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Stephen Hughes
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Re: List of Articular Infinitives

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Stephen Carlson wrote:I need a list of articular infinitives in a corpus that includes at the least the NT.
I'm thinking of ways that this could go beyond the New Testament corpus.

For an untagged text, I think that the pattern is fairly simple and a search could be something like; identify the possible infinitives (there is some ambiguity in some forms), identify the three relevant forms of the article (there is some ambiguity), set a distance within which they should occur of each other.

From the exprience of searching the tagged text, is there a "maximum" distance between the article and the infinitive that can be used to reduce the number of false results that will need to be sifted through. Are there any instances where a punctuation mark comes between the article and the infinitive? Are there any word-classes that never occur between and article and its infinitive?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Jonathan Robie
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Re: List of Articular Infinitives

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:I need a list of articular infinitives in a corpus that includes at the least the NT.
I'm thinking of ways that this could go beyond the New Testament corpus.

For an untagged text, I think that the pattern is fairly simple and a search could be something like; identify the possible infinitives (there is some ambiguity in some forms), identify the three relevant forms of the article (there is some ambiguity), set a distance within which they should occur of each other.
If you have no syntax trees, punctuation helps a lot, but the relevant distance might be as large as a sentence because you need some level of parsing to know how units within commas relate to each other.

The Arethusa folks are working on treebanks for the classics, those are in dependency trees. We're just at the beginning when it comes to actually doing queries for useful results on treebanks, and everyone's treebanks will improve over time. Currently, different people are using significantly different conventions in the classics, and nothing forces consistency. That makes these treebanks harder to query.

If you're just looking for a representative set of examples, that may not be a problem. If you need the complete set of examples, I don't think that's easy to do outside the NT corpus yet.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Jonathan Robie
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Re: List of Articular Infinitives

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Here's one I think Burk missed:

Romans 04:13 : εἶναι
τὸ κληρονόμον αὐτὸν εἶναι κόσμου

κληρονόμον is masculine, so τὸ must modify εἶναι, right? Or am I missing something?
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Jonathan Robie
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Re: List of Articular Infinitives

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Status report: I am now missing 10 of the articular infinitives on Burk's list. 9 of these look like tree issues (these take a few weeks or so to talk through and fix), 1 of these might be a query issue. I also find one articular infinitive that he missed.

When we resolve the tree issues, I will publish a new version of the syntax trees and post the query and results here.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Jonathan Robie
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Re: List of Articular Infinitives

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Status report: I just committed a new version of the treebanks to github, so I decided it's time to run the query again. I did not change the query. By my tally:
  • The query finds two instances of articular infinitives that Burke missed. At first blush, they look valid to me, but I'd appreciate feedback.
  • My query misses two out of three infinitives in Matthew 20:19. The treebank isn't wrong, but I can't quickly see how to fix the query here. I'll get around to fixing this some time, but I have higher Greek priorities right now.
  • We don't catch two periphrastic infinitives, which should be marked as verb complements but are not. I will report this to Randall.
  • There are two clear treebank errors, which I will report to Randall
There are a couple of instances that the query catches but are not found in Burk, I'd like to make sure I am understanding these correctly. There's one case where the treebank is right but my query doesn't work, and I don't want to special-case it. There are also some instances that are worth discussing because I'm not sure Burk's analysis is right, or at least not the only reasonable one.

The query finds these instances that are not in Burk, but seem like valid instances of articular infinitives to me:
Acts 4:18 wrote:καὶ καλέσαντες αὐτοὺς παρήγγειλαν τὸ καθόλου μὴ φθέγγεσθαι μηδὲ διδάσκειν ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματι τοῦ Ἰησοῦ.
Romans 4:13 wrote:τὸ κληρονόμον αὐτὸν εἶναι κόσμου
Burk finds two infinitives here, we find only one. I imagine it can be read either way, but I don't see anything we need to fix here.
Philippians 1:23 wrote:τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν ἔχων εἰς τὸ ἀναλῦσαι καὶ σὺν Χριστῷ εἶναι
We don't catch two periphrastic infinitives, which should be marked as verb complements but are not. I will report this to Randall.
Luke 9:18 wrote:Καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν τῷ εἶναι αὐτὸν προσευχόμενον κατὰ μόνας
Luke 11:1 wrote:Καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν τῷ εἶναι αὐτὸν ἐν τόπῳ τινὶ προσευχόμενον
In Luke 24:15, Burk reads this one way, the treebank reads it another, so Burk finds two infinitives where we find only one. I suspect this is open to interpretation, I lean toward agreeing with Burk, but can't say that the treebank is wrong:
Luke 24:15 wrote:καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν τῷ ὁμιλεῖν αὐτοὺς καὶ συζητεῖν
My query finds only one of the three infinitives in Matthew 20:19. For reasons that would require a fair amount of explaining, I'm not sure how to fix that, but I'll try to fix it when I have time. Score this as a problem in my query:
Matthew 20:19 wrote:τὸ ἐμπαῖξαι καὶ μαστιγῶσαι καὶ σταυρῶσαι
The following look like treebank errors to me.

The treebank thinks both στηριχθῆναι (right!) and συμπαρακληθῆναι (wrong!) are governed by the article τὸ:
Romans 1:11 wrote:τὸ στηριχθῆναι ὑμᾶς, τοῦτο δέ ἐστιν συμπαρακληθῆναι ἐν ὑμῖν διὰ τῆς ἐν ἀλλήλοις πίστεως ὑμῶν τε καὶ ἐμοῦ.
The treebank thinks both βεβαιῶσαι (right!) and δοξάσαι (wrong!) are governed by the article τὸ:
Romans 15:8 wrote:εἰς τὸ βεβαιῶσαι τὰς ἐπαγγελίας τῶν πατέρων, τὰ δὲ ἔθνη ὑπὲρ ἐλέους δοξάσαι τὸν θεόν
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Stephen Carlson
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Re: List of Articular Infinitives

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Jonathan Robie wrote:The query finds these instances that are not in Burk, but seem like valid instances of articular infinitives to me:
Acts 4:18 wrote:καὶ καλέσαντες αὐτοὺς παρήγγειλαν τὸ καθόλου μὴ φθέγγεσθαι μηδὲ διδάσκειν ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματι τοῦ Ἰησοῦ.
Romans 4:13 wrote:τὸ κληρονόμον αὐτὸν εἶναι κόσμου
I'm sure Burk discusses this (I returned his book on ILL), but according to BDF § 399(3), "A 4: 18 παρήγγειλαν τὸ (om. S* B) καθόλου μὴ φθέγγεσθαι: the art., if correct, is to be taken with καθόλου, cf. § 160, Diodor. 1.77 (I 130. 17 Vogel)." I don't know, however, how the treebank parses Acts 4:18.

As for Rom 4:13, it looks to me like τό construes with the det/noun phrase τὸ κληρονόμον ... κόσμου, not with the infinitive εἶναι. Again, I haven't checked the treebank.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Stephen Carlson
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Re: List of Articular Infinitives

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Jonathan Robie wrote:Burk finds two infinitives here, we find only one. I imagine it can be read either way, but I don't see anything we need to fix here.
Philippians 1:23 wrote:τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν ἔχων εἰς τὸ ἀναλῦσαι καὶ σὺν Χριστῷ εἶναι
What do you think the εἶναι is doing then?
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Stephen Carlson
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Re: List of Articular Infinitives

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Jonathan Robie wrote:The treebank thinks both στηριχθῆναι (right!) and συμπαρακληθῆναι (wrong!) are governed by the article τὸ:
Romans 1:11 wrote:τὸ στηριχθῆναι ὑμᾶς, τοῦτο δέ ἐστιν συμπαρακληθῆναι ἐν ὑμῖν διὰ τῆς ἐν ἀλλήλοις πίστεως ὑμῶν τε καὶ ἐμοῦ.
The treebank thinks both βεβαιῶσαι (right!) and δοξάσαι (wrong!) are governed by the article τὸ:
Romans 15:8 wrote:εἰς τὸ βεβαιῶσαι τὰς ἐπαγγελίας τῶν πατέρων, τὰ δὲ ἔθνη ὑπὲρ ἐλέους δοξάσαι τὸν θεόν
It would be nice to produce the trees to show how treebanks understand the syntax. I looked at this before and if I recall the Rom 1:11 case right, it makes δέ a conjunction and joins τοῦτο δὲ ἐστιν συμπαρακληθῆναι under the scope of the τό in parallel with στηριχθῆναι. But this makes absolutely no sense to me because τό does not govern finite clauses like that (unless we're dealing with quotations, which we're not), and certainly not under the scope of a preposition. I am not aware of a shred of evidence that εἰς τὸ τοῦτο ἐστιν συμπαρακληθῆναι (which is what the treebank parsing implies if you remove the left member of the conjunction) is good Greek.

I believe I raised these two cases before offline somewhere before and tentatively suggested an analysis with ellipses, but I was told that the treebank system does not handle ellipsis.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Jonathan Robie
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Re: List of Articular Infinitives

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Carlson wrote:
Romans 4:13 wrote:τὸ κληρονόμον αὐτὸν εἶναι κόσμου
As for Rom 4:13, it looks to me like τό construes with the det/noun phrase τὸ κληρονόμον ... κόσμου, not with the infinitive εἶναι. Again, I haven't checked the treebank.
Am I missing something? τό is neuter, κληρονόμον and κόσμου are both masculine. To me, it looks like τὸ has to construe with the infinitive εἶναι.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
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