Verb Sequence in Mk 6:36

Daniel Riaño danielrr at retemail.es
Wed Mar 29 10:41:00 EST 2000


At 12:14 -0800 26/3/00, clayton stirling bartholomew wrote:
>Been mulling over questions about verb sequence for some time now in
>connection with reading R.E. Longacre* and as I was reading through Mark
>6:30ff again this morning I stumbled onto:
>
>Mk 6:36
>
>. . . hINA APELQONTES EIS TOUS KUKLWi AGROUS KAI KWMAS
>     AGORASWSIN hEAUTOIS TI FAGWSIN.

LONG SNIP

>
>***Final Solution*** (subject to revision at any time)
>
>My last stab at understanding this was to leave the text as it stands in
>Codex B (NA27) and to analyze TI FAGWSIN as an embedded clause which
>functions in the next higher constituent level as the direct object of
>AGORASWSIN. If this terminology bothers you then we could say that the
>object slot in the AGORASWSIN clause is filled by TI FAGWSIN.

	Of course ti/ fa/gwsin (another example where writing accents 
makes your life easier) is the direct object of a)gora/swsin, with 
ti/ functioning as subordinative (because interrogative pronoun ti/s 
is sufficient mark of subordination in Greek). This is a common Greek 
construction. The very rare construction where two finite verbs in 
the indicative stands in the same sentence, one of them functioning 
as the nucleus of a clause subordinate to the other verb, without 
there being any formal mark of subordination demands that the subject 
of the two verbs be different (the change of subject thus being *the* 
mark of subordination) I don't remember reading about it in Greek 
Grammars, but I've met several examples in the past. I don't have 
none of them at hand, but I could go out and chase some at $2 each 
:-).

[Since I don't know if what I wrote is intelligible in English, I'll 
say about the same thing in Spanish, to make myself a bit more clear:
  TI/ FA/GWSIN es necesariamente el complemento directo de 
A)GORA/SWSIN. Ti/ funciona como pronombre interrogativo que, en 
griego, puede ser por si marca de interrogación. Hay una construcción 
griega muy poco frecuente (todavía menos frecuente en español) en que 
dos verbos en indicativo y en forma personal aparecen en la misma 
oración sin que ninguno lleve marca de subordinación (como sería el 
modo subjuntivo, o la aparición de un relativo, conjunción, etc), y 
uno de ellos funciona como nucleo de una oración subordinada al otro. 
En tales casos, se exige que el sujeto de ambos verbos sea distinto 
(con lo que, según opino, el cambio de sujeto se considera entonces 
marca formal de subordinación).
-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Daniel Riaño Rufilanchas
Madrid, España



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