[B-Greek] Newbie question on 1 John 1:10
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Dec 19 11:49:31 EST 2003
At 1:02 AM +0900 12/20/03, Raymond Regalado wrote:
>Dear List,
>
>1 Jn 1:10 says, "PSEUSTHN POIOUMEN AUTON..." I'm just wondering why
>there seems to be two direct objects (PSEUSTHN and AUTON, both in the
>accusative) in this construction and I'd appreciate your help. I just
>can't seem to remember the relevant grammatical rule here and I'd
>appreciate it if you could also refer me to some section of Machen or
>Summers or Wallace that would explain this to me. I kind of think a
>preposition is required here (e.g. "EIS PSEUSTHN...") Thank you very
>much.
This is usually referred to as a "predicate accusative" construction; when
the kind of verb that is equative takes a direct object and adds a
complement, e.g.
"We elect him president"; "we call them friends"; "My father named me Jim.'
It is not uncommon to see an infinitive such as EINAI used here, and
sometimes we do see EIS with the accusative, but it isn't necessary.
Wallace discusses this on pp. 182ff. as "Double accusative of
Object-complement" --but I learned it originally as a "predicate
accusative."
--
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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