Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Adjectival and Adverbial PrepositionalPhrases in Biblical Greek.

James Tauber jtauber at jtauber.com
Fri May 13 14:52:13 EDT 2005


On Fri, 13 May 2005 09:10:19 +0300, "Iver Larsen" <iver at larsen.dk> said:
> > Consider the English sentence:
> >
> > 'I saw the man with my binoculars.'

> Sometimes deep-structure, semantic distinctions are neutralized at the
> surface level (the syntax) as here.

Even at the surface level, the syntax is different in the two readings.
Assuming this has no effect on phonology (e.g. prosody) then I agree the
distinction is neutralized at the *phonetic* surface level.

> Your sentence has two possible semantic interpretations:

Right. And it has two syntactic interpretations too. It's a
prepositional phrase (PP) attachment ambiguity.

> > A hypothesis such as "META with the genitive is always adjectival and
> > META with the accusative is always adverbial" may have merit on semantic
> > grounds but I don't see it as being "because of case". A genitive
> > prepositional phrase in general can be either adjectival or adverbial.
> 
> I don't see that it has merit on any grounds, and certainly not on
> semantic grounds.

PP attachment can be ruled out on semantic grounds in many cases.

Consider:

'I saw the man with my hat.'

The syntactic analysis:

I [VP saw [NP the man] [PP with my hat]]

can be ruled out on the semantic grounds that a hat isn't a reasonable
instrument with which to see.

James
-- 
  James Tauber               http://jtauber.com/
  journeyman of some    http://jtauber.com/blog/




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