[B-Greek] Can a Noun function like an Adjective?
Iver Larsen
iver_larsen at sil.org
Sat Oct 7 04:14:56 EDT 2006
----- Original Message -----
From: <wayfaringman at netzero.net>
To: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 11:03 PM
Subject: [B-Greek] Can a Noun function like an Adjective?
>
> Hello All!
>
> I think the real question many want answered by the Greek scholars on
> the List is, can a noun function like an adjective?
It depends on how you understand the meaning of "function".
In terms of the morphology of a language, a noun is in a different category from an adjective. The way an adjective
modifies a noun is different from the way a noun modifies a noun, so the syntactical function is not the same.
However, if you think of semantic function, the situation is different. An adjective functions semantically as a
description of a "thing". In classical semantics one would talk about four basic categories: things, events, attributes
and relations. Things are normally expressed by nouns, events by verbs, attributes by adjectives and relations by
conjunctions, prepositions, the genitive etc. However, there is not always a one-to-one correspondence between semantic
and grammatical categories. Some languages use verbs for attributes. An abstract noun may correspond to an event.
It also depends on the type of noun you are talking about.
If we say "John is a scholar", we are actually describing John as being a member of the class of scholars. So, we
characterise John by saying that he fulfils the qualifications to belong to that class. I am not Greek scholar, but
rather a descriptive linguist and a Bible translator.
If we say "John is a scholar of great fame", the noun "fame" further describes John, or if you prefer, it further
describes the kind of scholar that John is. We could have used an adjective: "John is a great and famous scholar."
Take another example. Let us say we are discussing a particular solar system different from the one we live in. The
central planet of that system is called "helios". We could say that "helios is a sun". It belongs to the class of suns,
so the noun sun is used as a description of helios. There is no suitable adjective (sunly?), so we can use a noun to
describe it.
Since there is one particular Sun that we normally think about, namely the one in our solar system, you could also say
"helios is like the Sun", but we cannot say "helios is the Sun/sun". Sometimes we use capital letters to indicate that
we are thinking of a one-of-a-kind thing or a particular thing that is known to us as unique in some way. You talked
about "scholars on the List". Why did you capitalize the "List"?
In English we cannot say (or rather write) "the God" or "a God" without further qualification, but we can say "the God
of Israel" or "you are a God who cares". Capitalisation may indicate respect or uniqueness or both. We can talk
about "the god" or "a god", but the intended references of "God" and "god" would be somewhat different, depending on
context.
Very often language has fuzzy borders. How do we know whether John is a scholar? That depends on how exactly you can
define a scholar. The same fuzziness applies to many adjectives. Is Mary beautiful? How do you define beauty? Language
is not exact, so words must be understood in the context of the presuppositions of the speaker and hearer. There is also
a fuzziness about the use of capital letters.
Questions that look simple, often invite complex responses. I hope I wasn't too complex.
Iver Larsen
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