Pronoun gender agreement

B. Ward Powers bwpowers at eagles.com.au
Sat Jul 15 00:09:57 EDT 2000


To add a further comment to Carl's reply to John Barach:

>John Barach wrote:
>
> >But is it the case that there is a feminine word for everything which is
> >female?  Take the word DIAKONOS, for instance.  Phoebe (a female) is
> >called a DIAKONOS (Rom. 16:1).
> >
> >Suppose you wanted to say "I see the servant/deacon and send her" (one
> >of those typical Machenesque sentences).  Wouldn't you have to write:
> >BLEPW TON DIAKONON KAI PEMPW *AUTHN*?  And in that case, wouldn't
> >Machen's rule stated above break down, because the pronoun wouldn't
> >agree in gender with the antecedent?  Does anything like that ever
> >happen in NT Greek?


Carl responded:

>There are lots of nouns that are of common gender, and it should be
>understood that the second declension -OS paradigm for nouns has no
>obligatory relationship to masculine nouns (consider, for instance, hH
>hODOS, hH NOSOS, hH NHSOS, hH ANQRWPOS, hH HPEIROS, hH ERHMOS, as well as 
>numerous names of trees and shrubs which are regularly feminine.


I have examined these issues in my Grammar textbook "Learn To Read the 
Greek NT" (SPCK Australia, fifth edition 1995) and in my comments here I 
cross-reference to this for those who wish to further check out any 
particular point. My comments:

1. Words which are both masculine and feminine, i.e. do not have separate 
gender forms for masculine and feminine, are better called "personal 
gender" rather than "common gender". "Personal gender" distinguishes words 
that are masculine+feminine (i.e., personal) from those that are neuter 
gender. "Common gender", on the other hand, could refer to any combination 
of two genders, or all three, if such existed. Words which are personal 
gender are: two-termination adjectives of the second declension (ADIKOS, 
ADUNATOS; page 70); two-termination adjectives of the third declension 
(ALHQHS, AFRWN; pages 71, 265, 274-5); and TIS (pages 71, 282).

2. "Personal gender" words are to be distinguished from another group, 
which can be EITHER masculine or feminine gender. There are twenty-two such 
words in the GNT, eleven of which can occur either as masculine or feminine 
without any difference in meaning (such as ALABASTROS, alabaster flask; 
BATOS, thornbush; LHNOS, winepress; LIMOS, hunger) and eleven of which 
refer to living things and indicate male or female according to whether 
they are masculine or feminine gender (such as DIAKONOS, servant, deacon; 
QEOS, God, god, goddess; QURWROS, doorkeeper; ONOS, donkey; PARQENOS, 
virgin). These words are all second declension (listed, page 265).

3. There are also twenty-eight words of the second declension which are 
always feminine, including BIBLOS, book; ERHMOS, desert;  NHSOS, island; 
NOSOS, illness, disease; hODOS, way, road (these 28 are listed, page 264). 
There  is no significance in the fact that they are feminine. As such, they 
always take the feminine article, and any words which refer to them 
(adjectives, participles, pronouns) would be feminine by the agreement rule.


Carl continues,

>So in the above instance If we really had  such a sentence as "I see the
>servant/deacon and send her," I think we should have no compunctions about
>understanding DIAKONOS as a noun of common gender and writing BLEPW THN 
>DIAKONON KAI PEMPW AUTHN.


I concur completely with Carl's conclusion, but not the use here of 
"common" (or even "personal") gender. Rather, I would say that DIAKONOS is 
one of the class of words which can be EITHER masculine or feminine gender, 
and which indicates accordingly whether the person/animal referred to is 
male or female. In the instance given, the word is feminine gender, 
referring to a female deacon, and therefore both the article (THN) and the 
pronoun (AUTHN) are also feminine in agreement. The rule of agreement is 
not being broken.

Regards,

Ward

                                 http://www.eagles.bbs.net.au/~bwpowers
Rev Dr B. Ward Powers             Phone (International): 61-2-9799-7501
10 Grosvenor Crescent             Phone (Australia): (02) 9799-7501
SUMMER HILL  NSW  2130            email: bwpowers at eagles.bbs.net.au
AUSTRALIA.                      Director, Tyndale College




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