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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