[B-Greek] Rev 3:12 Pendent Nominative
Chet A. Creider
creider at uwo.ca
Thu Dec 29 21:07:08 EST 2005
Bert asks about Rev 3:12, hO NIKWN, POIHSW AUTON STULON EN TWi VAWi
TOU QEOU MOU. Carl gives TON NIKWONTA POIHSW STULON (without the
resumptive pronoun) as what the normal Greek would be, and Elizabeth
indicates the Semitic nature of the construction. I would like to
ask Randall or anyone else with a command of Hebrew, Aramaic and
Arabic for a little more detail. I hope it will be of interest to
everyone. First two bits of background information.
1. Linguists, for technical reasons that aren't immediately relevant,
distinguish between two kinds of similar constructions, one without
and one with a resumptive pronoun:
(1) Him I want to see right away (called 'Topicalization')
(2) Him, I want to see him right away (called 'Left-dislocation')
Both are quite marginal in English, although the second regularly
appears in unconscious usage when speakers get themselves into
situations where they must relativize into a position which is not
allowed by the rules of written English grammar as in (3), which
was uttered a few years ago by an American scientist on an expedition
in the Canadian Arctic about a meteor which fell near the expedition.
(3) It went down over that river that I don't know where it goes.
Relativization into an indirect question is not allowed in written
English (or French or German, but interestingly is allowed in Spanish
and Norwegian).
2. A number of years ago the linguist Hagit Borer wrote an article
contrasting these two types of construction (Topicalization and
Left-dislocation) in Classical Arabic. I don't have the article
or my Arabic grammars at home, but as I remember, the gist of the
article was that with one construction, the left-fronted item
was always in the nominative case whereas in the other, case was
respected. (Note that in English, accusative case is used in
both cases.) I'm sorry that I can't remember which was which.
So, noting that in the Rev 3:12 example, case is not respected
but a resumptive pronoun is used, I would like to know if this
usage is found in Biblical Hebrew, Classical Arabic (is it
conceivable that the author of Revelation was ethnically Arab?),
and/or Aramaic and more generally if either Hebrew or Aramaic
are similar to Arabic in distinguishing between Topicalization
and Left-Dislocation.
With thanks,
Chet Creider
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