some questions about Rom 3.27

Moon-Ryul Jung moon at saint.soongsil.ac.kr
Tue Jan 9 18:52:16 EST 2001


> > [Moon]
> > Because POU hH KAUCHSIS is a complete sentence in itself, one of the two
> > parts should be either the subject  or the predicate.
> > 
> > So, the whole problem comes from the assumption that ESTIN is omitted from
> > POU hH KAUCHSIS. Here POU itself is a predicate. Perhaps I am in a better
> > position to understand this problem, because my mother tongue, Korean,
> > has sentences of the forms SUBJECT ADJECTIVE and SUBJECT VERB.
> > In contrast, in English, the form SUBJECT ADJECTIVE is ungrammatical.
> > But don't kids at 4 or 5 often use such forms?
> 
[Steve]
> In the course I took on diagramming, we were taught to supply what was
> variously called the "elliptical" or "implied" or "understood" verb, which
> was often a copulative verb. Do you think this is the wrong way to approach
> the matter in diagramming? If so, how would you diagram the above
> construction?
> 
[Moon]

I would do as follows:

a)

POU        hH  KAUCHSIS
-----      ------------
predicate   subject
---------   -----------
adverb      noun phrase

b) 

POU           ESTIN              hH KAUCHSIS
-------------------------------  -----------
         predicate                 subject 
-----------   ----------------   ------------
complement    copulative verb     noun phrase
-----------   ----------------    ------------ 
adverb        copulative verb     noun phrase


I think we better consider both a) and b) complete sentences.
I did not do a statistical study, but I guess that
the form a) is too common to be an exception to the normal form
b). The habbit of supplying the implied verb does not seem
helpful in understanding Greek. 

Moon
Moon-Ryul Jung
Sogang Univ, Seoul, Korea    



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