[B-Greek] predicative, attributive and case

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Aug 12 07:11:32 EDT 2003


At 5:54 PM -0700 8/12/03, James Forsyth wrote:
>Hi B-Greek,
>
>Apologies in advance for the basic question:
>
>Is there a rule or guideline which assists in exceptions to translating the
>predicate adjective construction?  My feelings tell me that there may be,
>and that it is dependent on case and whether the sentence makes sense in
>English.
>
>An example of the difficulty, in English, is as follows:
>
>"We are going to the church is good on Sunday."
>
>If all the elementary clues indicate that this should be translated as a
>predicative (i.e. the article is not seen next to the adjective), what
>guidelines are placed alongside this to prohibit a nonsensical translation
>and bring us back to the attributive?

There's nothing wrong with basic questions--they often clarify things that
we take for granted as understoond but haven't ever really thought through
very carefully. The difficulty with your question is that it isn't at all
clear what you're asking: (a) your question seems to be more about
translating than understanding, but it isn't clear whether you're focusing
on usage in English or usage in Greek--and one dare not assume that the
usage in one corresponds (even "more or less") to usage in the other; (b)
your English sentence is ungrammatical and unintelligible in its
fundamental syntax: it is unclear what  subject of "is good on Sunday"
might be intended: do you mean that what is good on Sunday is "our going to
the church" or "the church" or simply "going to the church"?

Your question looks like it derives from difficulties understanding one or
more constructions that you've been dealing with; it might be easier if
you'd illustrate your (reformulated) question with texts (Greek texts,
presumably) that you have found troublesome with regard to predicate and
attributive usage and case.

For example, let me cite an instance of a construction that is predicative
and that may seem slightly out of the ordinary (although it isn't). In
classical Attic one occasionally finds something like TOIS STRATIWTAIS
EKEINOIS CRWMAI FILOIS; in idiomatic English that's "I am on friendly terms
with those soldiers"; more literally it's "I make-use-of (or
'enjoy-a-relationship-with' or 'deal-with those') soldiers (as) friends."
Here FILOIS is predicative to TOIS STRATIWTAIS; "predicative" means
'involved with the predicate' or 'belonging to the predicate.' In many
instances it means 'explanatory of how the verb and its complement are
functioning syntactically.'

I can use the same elements to construct a sentence wherein FILOIS is
attributive rather than predicative thus: EKEINOIS TOIS FILOIS STRATIWTAIS
CRWMAI KAQ' hHMERAN, "I make-use-of (lit. 'serve myself by means of') those
friendly soldiers every day." Here FILOIS is simply descriptive of the
SOLDIERS in the noun-phrase which functions as the complement of the verb
CRWMAI; it is not related to the linkage between the verb and its
complement at all.

I don't know if that helps or not; I'm not trying so much to make a point
myself as I am trying to show how you might explain what it is you want to
ask.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



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