[B-Greek] some lingustic questions on Jn 7:8

Iver Larsen iver_larsen at sil.org
Thu Jan 29 12:21:14 EST 2004


Dear Harold,

> HH: I apologize for confusing things. Wallace has a section about
> demonstratives under pronouns, but he only treats them there when they
> function as pronouns, So I used the section on adjectives for the
> information. But I see at the start of the section Wallace has
> this comment:

Thanks for these added quotes from Wallace. Anyone reading his treatment of
adjectives and demonstratives has the right to be confused, because the way
he describes it is indeed confusing.

> The adjective may be either attributive or predicate in relation to the
> noun. That is, it may either modify the noun or assert something about it.
> Except for the use of pronominal adjectives with noun (e.g. PAS, hOLOS,
> hEIS), when the article is present, it is usually easy to discern the
> relationship..

The distinction between attributive and predicate function is fine and
needed.
"The green book" is a noun phrase and "The book is green" is a clause. In
Greek the copula "is" is often implied, so you can have a verbless clause
with the adjective functioning as a predicate.

> The article is used with demonstratives in predicate position to indicate
> attributive function. Demonstratives cannot stand in attributive position
> (e.g., between the article and noun). If they are related to an anarthrous
> noun, they function independently, as pronouns. Only when they are in
> predicate position to an articular noun can demonstratives be considered
> dependent and attributive.
<snip>
> 1. The Attributive Positions: 1) First Attributive Position
> (article-adjective-noun), 2) Second Attributive Position
> (article-noun-article-adjective, 3) Third Attributive Position
> (noun-article-adjective)
> 2. The Predicate Positions: 1) First Predicate Position
> (adjective-article-noun), 2) Second Predicate Position
> (article-noun-adjective.
>
> HH: He has another set of positions when the article is absent.

This whole thing about attributive and predicate *position* is what ought to
be banished from the teaching of Greek grammar as we discussed on this list
a couple of years ago.
It is much simpler to distinguish between adjectives which may precede or
follow the head noun in a certain way and demonstratives which may also
precede or follow the head noun but in a different way. For adjectives, if
the article is present, it precedes the adjective. A demonstrative that
precedes the head noun also precedes the article (which is obligatory when
the demonstrative precedes its noun - except when the demonstrative modifies
a preposed quantifier or numeral that modifies the head noun like in Acts
1:5 and 24:21).

Iver Larsen




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