Holy Spirit . . . Objection
clayton stirling bartholomew
c.s.bartholomew at worldnet.att.net
Sun Sep 20 03:03:01 EDT 1998
Yea but . . .
While I was out taking my evening walk I thought of several serious objections
to my response to this question. Some folks may find my objections rather
arcane but that is what the delete button is for, is it not?
There is a convention among those who discuss language to use terms like
'lexical semantics' and 'syntax' to indicated discreet functional domains
within a language system. This convention is useful and good because it
facilitates coherent discussion of a difficult and complex topic.
However, when we subject the notions of 'lexical semantics' and 'syntax' to
close scrutiny we discover that there are gray areas on the boundaries of
these functional domains. And in the case of GENDER, if one wants to look at
gender from a diachronic perspective one could probably make a case that
GENDER at some time in the history of the Greek language had close ties to the
semantic properties of a lexical item.
If however, we take a synchronic snap shot of the Greek language 'state' at
the middle of the first century A.D., I believe we will find that the lexical
semantic significance of GENDER has fallen far into the background and that
GENDER in this period primarily has to do with indicating syntactical
relationships between lexical items in a clause or larger construct.
This is just one example of a gray area between two functional domains
(lexical semantics and syntax) in our language model. The disturbing reality
is that there are a lot of other gray areas. Our language models are
imperfect.
--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062
clayton stirling bartholomew wrote:
>
> Dan Ebert wrote:
> >
> > Is the Holy Spirit referred to 'grammatically' as a person? Does it have
> > the proper 'grammatical' indicators for being a person?
> >
>
> Dan,
>
> This question is a bit open ended. I will assume that you are raising the
> issue of PNEUMA being a neuter noun.
>
> Every time this question comes up I am reminded of a comment by C.S. Lewis
> which I will misquote from memory "Using the phrase 'a person of feminine
> gender' is like saying 'a person of the accusative case.'"
>
> Gender marking in Greek functions within the domain of syntax and not within
> the domain of lexical semantics. For this reason the question "Can a neuter
> noun have a personal referent" is similar to the question "Can a noun in the
> accusative have a personal referent."
>
> Another way of saying this is that gender has no impact on a lexical item's
> semantic domain nor does it restrict the field of possible referents. The fact
> that PNEUMA is a neuter noun does not tell us anything about the range of
> meaning of the word or the possibility or impossibility of PNEUMA referring to
> a person.
>
> Without a doubt, I have overstated the case here for the sake of clarity and
> someone will want to reply with at "yea but . . ."
>
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