ὁ Ἰησοῦς· The article with proper names

MAubrey
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Re: ὁ Ἰησοῦς· The article with proper names

Post by MAubrey »

Ken M. Penner wrote:
MAubrey wrote: At the very least, I can rather confidently promise that when you find a name that does has the article with it, that particular participant has already been introduced earlier in the text (or that particular name refers to a person that is so incredible well-known to the writer's audience that he or she has absolutely no need of introduction).
You know I couldn't leave you there in your confidence, Mike! ;) Some texts to explain:
I'll see what I can do:
Isaiah 8:1-2 wrote:1 Καὶ εἶπεν Κύριος πρός με Λαβὲ σεαυτῷ τόμον καινοῦ μεγάλου καὶ γράψον ἐκεῖ γραφίδι ἀνθρώπου Τοῦ ὀξέως προνομὴν ποιῆσαι σκύλων· πάρεστιν γάρ. 2 καὶ μάρτυράς μοι ποίησον πιστοὺς ἀνθρώπους, τὸν Οὐρίαν καὶ τὸν Ζαχαρίαν υἱὸν Βαραχίου.
Direct Speech needs to be treated differently than narrative proper because it involves not the knowledge of the reader based on what has been said before, but rather on the shared knowledge of speaker and hearer and what God views Isaiah as being identifiable, in this case, God and Isaiah. With that said, its still the same principle, just functioning on a separate level from author & reader. I'd say in this case, both τὸν Οὐρίαν and τὸν Ζαχαρίαν are, at the very least, known extremely well to Isaiah. But I should revise my statement to say a speaker's audience rather than writer, since a speaker's audience may or may not be the writer's audience.
Isaiah 22:20; Isaiah 3:3, 22 wrote:20 Καὶ ἔσται ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐκείνῃ καλέσω τὸν παῖδά μου Ἐλιακὶμ τὸν τοῦ Χελκίου

3 καὶ ἐξῆλθεν πρὸς αὐτὸν Ἐλιακεὶμ ὁ τοῦ Χελκίου ὁ οἰκονόμος καὶ Σόμνας ὁ γραμματεὺς καὶ Ἰὼχ ὁ τοῦ Ἀσὰφ ὁ ὑπομνηματογράφος. ...

22 Καὶ εἰσῆλθεν Ἐλιακεὶμ ὁ τοῦ Χελκίου ὁ οἰκονόμος καὶ Σόμνας ὁ γραμματεὺς τῆς δυνάμεως καὶ Ἰωὰχ ὁ τοῦ Ἀσὰφ ὁ ὑπομνηματογράφος πρὸς Ἑζεκίαν ἐσχισμένοι τοὺς χιτῶνας καὶ ἀνήγγειλαν αὐτῷ τοὺς λόγους Ῥαψάκου.
In each of these cases, there has been sufficient space in the discourse that it is necessary to reintroduce Ἐλιακεὶμ for each of these. It is necessary to present him as a new participant only until the speaker can be sure that his audience can identify the Ἐλιακεὶμ in question. The late of the article here is necessary until the participant has been in a sense "reactivated" in the mind of the audience.
David Lim wrote:Actually I would like to agree with you, but there are many grammatical constructions where the individual constituents are essentially lexically empty but must all be used in a certain construction. One example is the accusative and infinitive in indirect statements. The case of the subject has no meaning until it is put together with the infinitive.
Are you sure? I have to say, David, you're in comfortable territory because you're perfectly safe to make negative assertions, which cannot be proven one way or the other, whereas my claims are positive and thus open to challenge and verification. You seem to be too quick to assume that because you don't understand why something would be done (or that it isn't done in English) that it isn't meaningful. If using the accusative as the subject of an infinitive isn't meaningful, why did speakers ever begin to do it in the first place? The answer is that the original assumption must be wrong: the accusative is meaningful. And in fact, accusative subjects of infinitives in indirect statements are the easier way to demonstrate this fact. But that's another topic. If you're curious, start a new thread.
David Lim wrote:I was actually including your second aspect in my definition, because I consider that if a specific person is in view, either previously mentioned or easily identifiable, then it is natural for the article to be used, whereas if it is a new character, the article is less natural.
Its okay if you're wanting to subsume identifiability with specificity. But I would encourage you to make it explicit so that everyone knows you're doing that. While we can probably safely say that all identifiable entities are specific, we cannot say that opposite that all specific entities are identifiable. Because of that you must always talk about both and make explicit what you're doing.
David Lim wrote:But still I cannot see any clear distinction in function or meaning in the occurrence or absence of the article. Looking at John 1 alone, "φιλιππος" appears without the article at 1:45,46,48 even though it is with the article at 1:44. "ναθαναηλ" on the other hand appears for the first time with the article at 1:45 but then without at 1:46 and then with it again at 1:47 and then without again at 1:48,49. So my conclusion is that the article with proper names in Koine Greek is essentially superfluous, even if it may have had any grammatical or semantic function earlier.
Let's look at the clauses in question (NA27).

v43: καὶ εὑρίσκει Φίλιππον καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· Ἀκολούθει μοι.
v44: ἦν δὲ ὁ Φίλιππος ἀπὸ Βηθσαϊδά
v45: εὑρίσκει Φίλιππος τὸν Ναθαναὴλ
v46: λέγει αὐτῷ [ὁ] Φίλιππος· ἔρχου καὶ ἴδε.
v48: πρὸ τοῦ σε Φίλιππον φωνῆσαι ὄντα ὑπὸ τὴν συκῆν εἶδόν σε.

Philip is introduced in verse 43 without the article and thus in 44, we find him being referred to by the narrator with the article. In verse 45, Φίλιππος is used post-verbally and thus has no need of the article (see below). Verse 46 is complicated by the fact that you seem to be using the majority text, which doesn't have the article. My text does, so there's no problem here. Verse 48 is direct speech and thus the lack of the article here has more to do with what Jesus think Nathanael knows than with what we have read thus far. Nathanael, of course, knows who Philip is, but he needs to be activated and brought to the forefront of Nathanael's mind before he would have the article before his name. Were Jesus and Nathanael to continue talking about Philip, we can expect that the article would now appear in their dialogue.
David Lim wrote:As for your suggestion that the placement after the verb indicates definiteness, the verb is often used in front. John 1:6 surely does not indicate that "ανθρωπος" is definite. Unless you mean that this kind of influence of word order is only relevant to proper names? But John 1:48 has "προ του σε φιλιππον φωνησαι".. So it does not apply to this kind of construction as well?
You're right. And I apologize for making things fuzzier than they needed to be. You're absolutely correct that ανθρωπος in John 1:6 isn't definite. I should have clarified here that it isn't the position that makes a noun definite. Rather the position makes the article that would go with an already definite noun unnecessary. Does that make sense? ανθρωπος wasn't definite to begin with, so placing it after the verb isn't going to make it definite. Equally important is the fact that the clause itself is presenting entirely new information: Ἐγένετο ἄνθρωπος. There was a man. When you see a clause initial γίνομαι in a piece of narrative proper at the beginning of a paragraph like this, you can expect that whatever follows is going to be new.

This is a lot of information. I really hope that I'm writing clearly and what I've said is remotely comprehensible...
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Re: ὁ Ἰησοῦς· The article with proper names

Post by Shirley Rollinson »

Many cultures are more formal in their modes of address than those in the West.
It can seem impolite to use someone's name without some sort of "title", and this seems to be the case in Greek (also in modern Greek).
Just think of the Definite Article as the equivalent of Mr. Mrs. Ms. (ugh)
For instance I have a friend in New Mexico who is generally referred to in her community as "La Sally", and in Germany my nieghbour's cat was always referred to "der Mauritz"
toujours la politesse :-)
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Re: ὁ Ἰησοῦς· The article with proper names

Post by David Lim »

MAubrey wrote:
David Lim wrote:Actually I would like to agree with you, but there are many grammatical constructions where the individual constituents are essentially lexically empty but must all be used in a certain construction. One example is the accusative and infinitive in indirect statements. The case of the subject has no meaning until it is put together with the infinitive.
Are you sure? I have to say, David, you're in comfortable territory because you're perfectly safe to make negative assertions, which cannot be proven one way or the other, whereas my claims are positive and thus open to challenge and verification. You seem to be too quick to assume that because you don't understand why something would be done (or that it isn't done in English) that it isn't meaningful. If using the accusative as the subject of an infinitive isn't meaningful, why did speakers ever begin to do it in the first place? The answer is that the original assumption must be wrong: the accusative is meaningful. And in fact, accusative subjects of infinitives in indirect statements are the easier way to demonstrate this fact. But that's another topic. If you're curious, start a new thread.
Actually I meant that in the mind of the speaker and hearer the case of the subject has only grammatical function, and has no semantic meaning, even if it once had before. But maybe it is not a good example. How about the case with prepositions? I definitely agree that there is a very rough relationship between the semantic meaning and the case used, but I do think it is clearly impossible to pin down definite reasons that explain all instances. I prefer the simplest explanation that can explain every instance (similar to Kolmogorov complexity), so if some set rules to ascertain meaning generates many exceptions, I prefer to take the "explanation" that says that there is none. Given a truly random string, the shortest specification is to just specify every bit. Likewise, there is no inherent meaning in the cases when not used "normally", so instead of an explanation sufficiently broad to include all grammatical constructions, the shorter explanation would be that in the special constructions the meaning is determined solely by which construction it is. In the same way, when the article is not used "normally", the shorter explanation says that its use with the proper names is somewhat arbitrary from a grammatical point of view. Longer explanations can always be made to "fit" by adding sufficiently many criteria to explain all exceptions, but then the shorter explanation is better, at least in my opinion.
MAubrey wrote:
David Lim wrote:But still I cannot see any clear distinction in function or meaning in the occurrence or absence of the article. Looking at John 1 alone, "φιλιππος" appears without the article at 1:45,46,48 even though it is with the article at 1:44. "ναθαναηλ" on the other hand appears for the first time with the article at 1:45 but then without at 1:46 and then with it again at 1:47 and then without again at 1:48,49. So my conclusion is that the article with proper names in Koine Greek is essentially superfluous, even if it may have had any grammatical or semantic function earlier.
Let's look at the clauses in question (NA27).

v43: καὶ εὑρίσκει Φίλιππον καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· Ἀκολούθει μοι.
v44: ἦν δὲ ὁ Φίλιππος ἀπὸ Βηθσαϊδά
v45: εὑρίσκει Φίλιππος τὸν Ναθαναὴλ
v46: λέγει αὐτῷ [ὁ] Φίλιππος· ἔρχου καὶ ἴδε.
v48: πρὸ τοῦ σε Φίλιππον φωνῆσαι ὄντα ὑπὸ τὴν συκῆν εἶδόν σε.

Philip is introduced in verse 43 without the article and thus in 44, we find him being referred to by the narrator with the article. In verse 45, Φίλιππος is used post-verbally and thus has no need of the article (see below). Verse 46 is complicated by the fact that you seem to be using the majority text, which doesn't have the article. My text does, so there's no problem here. Verse 48 is direct speech and thus the lack of the article here has more to do with what Jesus think Nathanael knows than with what we have read thus far. Nathanael, of course, knows who Philip is, but he needs to be activated and brought to the forefront of Nathanael's mind before he would have the article before his name. Were Jesus and Nathanael to continue talking about Philip, we can expect that the article would now appear in their dialogue.
The NU text has "[ο]", so I would think the article was originally not there, but alright here is not the place for that topic. What about Nathanael? As I mentioned earlier, his name has the article from the very beginning. Also, do you mind explaining these:
(1) "ισραηλ" comes with the article in its first appearance at 1:31
(2) "μαριαμ" in Matt 1:20 and "μαριας" in Matt 2:11 and "μαρια" in Luke 10:42 and "μαρια" in John 11:2 are without the article
(3) "λαζαρος" in John 11:14 does not have the article
(4) "ζαχαριου" in Luke 1:40 does not have the article
MAubrey wrote:
David Lim wrote:As for your suggestion that the placement after the verb indicates definiteness, the verb is often used in front. John 1:6 surely does not indicate that "ανθρωπος" is definite. Unless you mean that this kind of influence of word order is only relevant to proper names? But John 1:48 has "προ του σε φιλιππον φωνησαι".. So it does not apply to this kind of construction as well?
You're right. And I apologize for making things fuzzier than they needed to be. You're absolutely correct that ανθρωπος in John 1:6 isn't definite. I should have clarified here that it isn't the position that makes a noun definite. Rather the position makes the article that would go with an already definite noun unnecessary. Does that make sense? ανθρωπος wasn't definite to begin with, so placing it after the verb isn't going to make it definite. Equally important is the fact that the clause itself is presenting entirely new information: Ἐγένετο ἄνθρωπος. There was a man. When you see a clause initial γίνομαι in a piece of narrative proper at the beginning of a paragraph like this, you can expect that whatever follows is going to be new.
Okay, you are implying that the article has no semantic meaning when it appears with a proper name which is the subject of a preceding verb, because there are many examples where it does appear but also many where it does not. I am instead saying that it has no semantic meaning once it appears with a proper name. Unless there is a strong correlation between its presence and some factors in the case of the verb preceding the proper name as the subject, your conclusion is the same as mine on a smaller scale. Since I see no reason that the verb position matters to the article, I take the larger scale. ;)
MAubrey wrote:This is a lot of information. I really hope that I'm writing clearly and what I've said is remotely comprehensible...
It is very well conveyed. However, as you said, your explanation of the article with proper names requires a lot of information, which is precisely the length of the explanation. I still stick with my shorter explanation, which is that whichever sounds nicer gets used. Are you sure this factor never comes into play? How about different authors' styles, sometimes overriding grammar?
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Re: ὁ Ἰησοῦς· The article with proper names

Post by Stephen Carlson »

David Lim wrote:I still stick with my shorter explanation, which is that whichever sounds nicer gets used.
"Sounds nicer" is not an explanation.

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Re: ὁ Ἰησοῦς· The article with proper names

Post by David Lim »

Shirley Rollinson wrote:Many cultures are more formal in their modes of address than those in the West.
It can seem impolite to use someone's name without some sort of "title", and this seems to be the case in Greek (also in modern Greek).
Just think of the Definite Article as the equivalent of Mr. Mrs. Ms. (ugh)
For instance I have a friend in New Mexico who is generally referred to in her community as "La Sally", and in Germany my nieghbour's cat was always referred to "der Mauritz"
toujours la politesse :-)
I doubt the Greek article has to do with politeness because there are too many examples of missing articles. How about "ιησου" in Matt 14:1 and "ιησους" in Matt 20:30 and "ιησου" in Matt 26:51 and "ιησους" in Matt 28:9? I also noticed that in prepositional clauses the article is used with some but not others (which seems to be partially dependent on the speaker):
(1) "προς τον ιησουν"
(2) "κατα του ιησου"
(3) "περι του ιησου"
(4) "δια [τον] ιησουν"
(5) "μετα ιησου"
Also, the article seems to be always omitted when the proper name comes with a description of which person with that name it is referring to, such as "ιησους ο ναζωραιος".
Stephen Carlson wrote:
David Lim wrote:I still stick with my shorter explanation, which is that whichever sounds nicer gets used.
"Sounds nicer" is not an explanation.
If there is a shorter explanation I would take it. But the above is yet more evidence that it depends on the "sound" and not just the grammar.
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Re: ὁ Ἰησοῦς· The article with proper names

Post by Stephen Carlson »

David Lim wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:
David Lim wrote:I still stick with my shorter explanation, which is that whichever sounds nicer gets used.
"Sounds nicer" is not an explanation.
If there is a shorter explanation I would take it. But the above is yet more evidence that it depends on the "sound" and not just the grammar.
No, my point isn't that "sounds nicer" is a poor explanation. My point is that it is not an explanation at all. In a Popperian sense, it is an unfalsifiable claim and therefore not subject to scientific investigation.

Modern-day linguists are well aware of this problem. Here's what Helma Dik, Word Order in Ancient Greek, says about it:
H. Dik, Word Order, p.5, wrote:As a note of consolation (or perhaps flagrant heresy), I would suggest that ancient testimony on the crucial importance of euphony to ordering should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt: Present-day linguists trying to establish the 'grammaticality' of a constructed utterance receive responses from non-linguists in the same terms - 'It looks o.k., but it doesn't sound right'. Usually though, this response has nothing to do with phonology, but everything with grammatical intuitions, for which the non-linguist, and sometimes even the linguist himself simply has no terminology.
Of course, linguists are interested in precisely those grammatical intuitions and seek to provide explanations for them. "Sounds nicer" is at best a statement of the problem, not the explanation.

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Re: ὁ Ἰησοῦς· The article with proper names

Post by Eeli Kaikkonen »

Stephen Carlson wrote: Modern-day linguists are well aware of this problem. Here's what Helma Dik, Word Order in Ancient Greek, says about it:
H. Dik, Word Order, p.5, wrote:As a note of consolation (or perhaps flagrant heresy), I would suggest that ancient testimony on the crucial importance of euphony to ordering should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt: Present-day linguists trying to establish the 'grammaticality' of a constructed utterance receive responses from non-linguists in the same terms - 'It looks o.k., but it doesn't sound right'. Usually though, this response has nothing to do with phonology, but everything with grammatical intuitions, for which the non-linguist, and sometimes even the linguist himself simply has no terminology.
Of course, linguists are interested in precisely those grammatical intuitions and seek to provide explanations for them. "Sounds nicer" is at best a statement of the problem, not the explanation.
To put it another way: if it sounds nicer to native speakers, there must be something which makes it sound nicer. Native speakers don't know what it is, but linguistic science can try to find it out. It may be phonological, grammatical or discourse-grammatical "something", but there is some conformity to some law. "Sounds nicer" just says there is some law, but it's not the law itself. Just like saying "don't push I" in English doesn't sound nice - there is a clear grammatical law (or rule) behind it. Today it looks like the traditional grammatical rules don't explain everything, and discourse grammar is a way to find new rules. DG is what MAubrey was talking about. If you don't accept discourse grammar as a proper way to find a rule in this case, you have to find another one which tells us what makes it "sound nicer".
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Re: ὁ Ἰησοῦς· The article with proper names

Post by David Lim »

Stephen Carlson wrote:
David Lim wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote: "Sounds nicer" is not an explanation.
If there is a shorter explanation I would take it. But the above is yet more evidence that it depends on the "sound" and not just the grammar.
No, my point isn't that "sounds nicer" is a poor explanation. My point is that it is not an explanation at all. In a Popperian sense, it is an unfalsifiable claim and therefore not subject to scientific investigation.
Actually I do not think it is unfalsifiable. All that is necessary to falsify my hypothesis is a suitable rule that is reasonably simple (does not have a huge number of separate categories or exceptions) and completely explains all instances (except perhaps a small percentage attributable to error). Perhaps I should state more clearly what I mean, because I was not at all trying to be precise when I said "sounds nicer". My claim is that there is a basic grammar that everyone follows to a certain reasonable degree but concerning finer details which they are not taught, they adopt individual "intuitions" through individual processes, and as a result "intuitions" of different individuals may even disagree (and we all probably have encountered such occasions before). Thus in these areas no definitive grammatical or phonological rule can ever be claimed to apply across all users of the language, simply because there was no need for consensus and therefore no consensus.
Stephen Carlson wrote:Modern-day linguists are well aware of this problem. Here's what Helma Dik, Word Order in Ancient Greek, says about it:
H. Dik, Word Order, p.5, wrote:As a note of consolation (or perhaps flagrant heresy), I would suggest that ancient testimony on the crucial importance of euphony to ordering should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt: Present-day linguists trying to establish the 'grammaticality' of a constructed utterance receive responses from non-linguists in the same terms - 'It looks o.k., but it doesn't sound right'. Usually though, this response has nothing to do with phonology, but everything with grammatical intuitions, for which the non-linguist, and sometimes even the linguist himself simply has no terminology.
Of course, linguists are interested in precisely those grammatical intuitions and seek to provide explanations for them. "Sounds nicer" is at best a statement of the problem, not the explanation.
I agree that many instances where people say that something "sounds right/wrong" is due to grammatical rules. That said, I believe euphony has a not insignificant part in word ordering. The same grammatical construction with different words can have different typical word ordering simply because it is often heard used in a particular order and not due to grammar. For example, "grant him favour" instead of "grant favour to him", even though the latter is perfectly grammatical but merely sounds unusual. On the other hand "grant peace to him" is reasonably common although "grant him peace" is still by far the largest majority. Well, I am just of the opinion that there may not be a reason for everything, so I would rather not look for one when it is not clear that there should be one. Of course if anyone finds a good reason for the use of the article with proper names, I would surely prefer it to my current reason or lack thereof. And I don't have a specific disagreement with discourse grammar. :)

Sorry for the kind-of-off-topic discussion! ;)
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Re: ὁ Ἰησοῦς· The article with proper names

Post by cwconrad »

This thread may have had its start in a beginner's puzzlement, but it seems to me that it has in its course come to involve a much more serious and perhaps more difficult concern about what might be called "linguistic epistemology." I really think this thread belongs in the "Greek Language and Linguistics" forum. Whether or not it's a common puzzlement to beginning students of ancient Greek, it has certainly been my experience that beginning students get quite frustrated in trying to make sense of the usge of the definite article in Greek: it is indeed hard to pin down to a simple intelligible rule. In my own teaching experience, I can recall replying to questions about it by trotting out some of the more common explanations/rules and then offering what must always appear to be a rationalization for ignorance, "This is something you won't grasp adequately until you've read enough Greek." I think that David has put his finger upon a truth -- perhaps a "truism" -- about standard usages in any language : most people who speak and write a language will observe what they recognize as standard usage most of the time. But some usages are not so clearly and universally standardized as to be generally recognized, and consequently we find considerable inconsistency in our texts. Our grammatical/linguistic "rules" are in fact, like the "laws" in the explanations of natural scientists, practices observed by a majority of speakers/agents/reagents and ignored by a minority deviating from those standard practices. We may say that the deviations are "errors" -- but such "errors" occur more frequently when "rules" are not clearly formulated or understood. I think there's a good deal more fluctuation in usage between "standard" and "substandard" practice than we readily acknowledge. And, of course, there are the deliberate deviations from "standard" usage found in creative authors. I think it's true, in any case, that "standard" usage of the definite article in ancient Greek is not very adequately delineated in standard grammatical authorities. Have Linguists been more successful in delineating that "standard" usage in the case of the ancient Greek definite article?
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

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Re: ὁ Ἰησοῦς· The article with proper names

Post by Tony Pope »

cwconrad wrote:I think it's true, in any case, that "standard" usage of the definite article in ancient Greek is not very adequately delineated in standard grammatical authorities. Have Linguists been more successful in delineating that "standard" usage in the case of the ancient Greek definite article?
Stephen Levinsohn had a crack at it in his Discourse Features of New Testament Greek, 2nd ed., 2000, §9.2 pp. 150-162. I would be interested to know if anyone else on the list is familiar with his approach and what they think of it.

Much of what he claims is the same as what Mike Aubrey has said in this thread. However, Levinsohn explains τὸν Ναθαναὴλ in John 1.45 as due to the noun being indeclinable: such names have the article if they are introduced in an oblique case.

Also I suspect he would categorize Φίλιππος in 1.45 as having no article because the reference is "in connection with the introduction to a speech whose contents are particularly important". He says nothing in his book about nouns being in post-verbal position.

One thing I think is important in trying to establish rules for this kind of thing is to restrict the data to instances where there is no textual variant. I suspect modern editors are unlikely to have got it right in every case. And where there is textual variation there will be some instances where you could explain things either way.
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