[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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