[B-Greek] Predicate Adjective Participles
R Yochanan Bitan Buth
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Sat Aug 27 12:31:38 EDT 2005
TWi Mitch KAI Thi Elizabeth APOKRINOMENOS
PERI TOU AUTWN DIALOGOU
>Elizabeth:
>I was only partly able to follow your concern.
>(Sorry!) I do have this follow up. Can you give me a
>list of recommended Descriptive Koine Greek Language
>books (Grammar books?) that you highly recommend.
>Mitch Larramore
>--- Elizabeth Kline <kline-dekooning at earthlink.net>
>wrote:
>> On Aug 26, 2005, at 8:56 AM, Mitch Larramore wrote:
>>
>>> What is it in the nature of a
>>> participle that would restrict its use as a
>>>predicate adjective?
>
>> Syntax in natural languages is not calculus but
>> human behavior. This
>> is a fundamental stumbling block to many would be
>> students of Ancient
>> Greek who learned a list of rules from their
>> textbooks and now want
>> to know why the rules work or don't work. A question
>> like this is a
>> by product of reading language textbooks written by
>> non-lingutsts.
>>
>> What is required here is to start over from the
>> beginning approaching
>> the language from the perspective of descriptive
>> linguistics.
Might I suggest a third point on a triangle.
The original question deals with the nature of a METOXH 'participle'.
They are verbal-adjectives. As verbs, when the lexeme is wanted as a
PREDICATE, then they naturally lean toward their verbal side and tend
to become - full verbs. So there is less incentive to use them as
predicates while remaining adjectives. When participles are used as
predications, their natural habitat is inside of subordinations.
On to the third point of a triangle:
the nature of any language requires use and communication. Descriptive
linguistics' are metalanguages, that is they use language to talk
about a language. They are certainly not a starting point for
internalizing a language. The confusion on this point is endemic to
the field. See the, not one, but two articles on the SBL forum site
this month.
www.sbl-site.org
("Hebrew textbooks" and "Biblical studies in classroom" both deal with
this.) I would recommend, again, that people use lots of common sense
when they approach Greek so that they don't ask questions about it
that they would not ask of German. For example, what would you advise
a person who asked about the best ways to describe German, and did so
for twenty years, writing a book or two in the process, but couldn't
express themselves (fluently) in German? [PS: this is a fictional
question for discussion, any correspondence to persons living or
deceased is coincidental.] Is that really the direction that people
want to go? Either way, it is the only place that either 'traditional'
or 'descriptive' linguistics is capable of going. They are good in
themselves. O ANAGINWSKWN NOEITW.
PS: I checked out Dionysios Thrax on participles--after long
discussions on nouns/adjectives and verbs he had almost nothing to say
about participles, except that they partake of both natures.
"PERI METOXHS
METOXH ESTI LEKSIS METEXOUSA THS TWN RHMATWN KAI THS TWN ONOMATWN
IDIOTHTOS."
ERRWSQE
Randall Buth
Randall Buth, PhD
Director, Biblical Language Center
www.biblicalulpan.org
and Director, Biblical Studies in Israel
Hebrew University, Rothberg International School
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
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