What is a Subject?

clayton stirling bartholomew c.s.bartholomew at worldnet.att.net
Sun May 28 17:40:41 EDT 2000


on 05/28/00 12:24 PM, yochanan bitan wrote:

> shalom Carl,
>> 
>> Example: Rev 8:2 KAI EIDON TOUS hEPTA AGGELOUS hOI ENWPION TOU QEOU
>> hESTHKASIN, KAI EDOQHSAN AUTOIS hEPTA SALPIGGES. In English perhaps we
>> would normally convert that last clause as "They were given seven
>> trumpets"--that is, English can make a recipient the syntactic subject and
>> treat what is the subject in the Greek sentence as a so-called "received
>> object" of the passive verb
> 
> As you mentioned in the example, the Recipient is not made the syntactic
> Subject (the nominative case) but remains in the dative, so we are still
> waiting for an example. The above example testifies to a greater
> flexibility in the "semantic function hierarchy" for English than for
> Greek.
> 
> ERRWSQE
> Randall Buth

Carl, Randall and private respondents,

Thank you,

I suspect that this question will remain somewhat OPEN since one of the
responses I received in private, from a veteran professional linguist
suggested that I should not rule out dative case subjects in NT Greek.
However, until we can come up with a live example I will remain skeptical
about dative subjects.

Thanks again to all who helped out with this.

Clay


--  
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062





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