John 20:31 was Re: [B-Greek] Phil 2:11

Doug Hoxworth dhoxworth at charter.net
Fri Oct 17 17:03:55 EDT 2003


this may be something helpful. i found this on rod 
decker's site at:

http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/rd_rsrc.htm

the article is called "What's the Subject" and it's 
available here:

http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/documents/pred_nom.pdf

here is an excerpt:

>The Hierarchy of Rules

When a linking verb is accompanied by two nominative 
substantives:

1. If one of them is a pronoun, it is always the subject. 
(Sometimes this pronoun is the "default/built-in" subject 
of the verb; i.e., a linking verb has only one explicit 
nominative substantive.)
2a. If one is a proper noun (i.e., a name) and the other a 
common noun, it is the subject.
2b. If one has an article and the other does note, the one 
with the article is the subject.
3. If both have one of the "tags" from #2 (i.e., proper 
noun or an article) or if neither has such a tag, then the 
first in word order is the subject. This statement is also 
known as a "convertible proposition", but it may still be 
important in terms of the context to specify the correct 
subject.

Note: these rules are heirarchical; the higher rule always 
prevails (#1 being the highest), except for 2a and 2b 
which hold equal rank (hence the numbering).

Convertible proposition means that the subject and 
predicate nominative can be reversed with no change in 
meaning.



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