[B-Greek] Genitive vs Adjective

James Tauber jtauber at jtauber.com
Sat May 28 01:52:14 EDT 2005


On 28/05/2005, at 1:09 AM, Elizabeth Kline wrote:
> The movement of a nominal or adverbial phrase to the beginning of a  
> clause
> can have implications *beyond* the boundaries of the sentence. It  
> can be
> used to bind the new information in the sentence to the existing (old)
> information. Traditionally syntax has been confined to the  
> structure of
> sentences.

Sure. But all that demonstrates is that *more* than syntax is at work  
here (which is true of most linguistic phenomenon).

> I read recently a prominent NT linguist (name withheld  
> intentionally) who
> has written on this topic and who specifically stated that this is  
> not about
> syntax.

But a phenomenon could be said to be "not about syntax" and still  
alter the syntax.

For example consider the following two sentences:

(a) I gave him the rather heavy three-volume grammar of New Testament  
Greek that I, only weeks earlier, considered selling at a yard sale  
that ultimately had to be cancelled because of the weather, which had  
been unusually wet for the time of year.

(b) I gave the rather heavy three-volume grammar of New Testament  
Greek that I, only weeks earlier, considered selling at a yard sale  
that ultimately had to be cancelled because of the weather, which had  
been unusually wet for the time of year to him.

I think most people would strongly favour (a) on grounds that have  
nothing to do with syntax. But that doesn't change the fact that (a)  
and (b) are syntactically different.

Even though the dative shift from (b) to (a) was motivated on non- 
syntactic grounds, it did alter the syntax.

James Tauber




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