[B-Greek] Can a Noun function like an Adjective?

Rolf Furuli furuli at online.no
Sat Oct 7 03:25:20 EDT 2006


Dear Iver,

Your discussion below is interesting and fine. If I understand you 
correctly, as a descriptive linguist you say that a substantive must either 
be definite or indefinite, but in addition a substantive may signal 
characteristics or qualities without loosing its definiteness or 
indefiniteness. Have I undeerstood you correctly?

Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Iver Larsen" <iver_larsen at sil.org>
To: "BG" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2006 9:14 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Can a Noun function like an Adjective?


> ----- 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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