[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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