[B-Greek] Acts 17:26-27
Elizabeth Kline
kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Mon Oct 30 11:33:47 EST 2006
ACTS 17:26 EPOIHSEN TE EX hENOS PAN EQNOS ANQRWPWN KATOIKEIN EPI
PANTOS PROSWPOU THS GHS, hORISAS PROSTETAGMENOUS KAIROUS KAI TAS
hOROQESIAS THS KATOIKIAS AUTWN 27 ZHTEIN TON QEON, EI ARA GE
YHLAFHSEIAN AUTON KAI hEUROIEN, KAI GE OU MAKRAN APO hENOS hEKASTOU
hHMWN hUPARCONTA.
Culy & Parsons state that ZHTEIN TON QEON ... is in apposition to
KATOIKEIN EPI PANTOS PROSWPOU THS GHS. Finding this puzzling I looked
up appositive/apposition in two dictionaries of linguistics R.L.Trask
and David Crystal. Trask limited apposition to noun phrases but David
Crystal did not, he defined it as any two constituents at the same
grammatical level which are co-referential.
I was under the mistaken impression that second constituent in some
way needed to qualify or give further explanation about the first
constituent. Two constituents can be co-referential without the
second one qualifying the first.
Crystal comments that "apposition" is a traditional grammatical term
which has significant theoretical problems, for example, there are
cases where one of the conditions is met but not the other.
I didn't find Culy & Parsons use of the term apposition very helpful
in this context.
Elizabeth Kline
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