[B-Greek] Rom 6:17b;Fronted Relative with Demonstrative Sense
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Apr 9 07:24:21 EDT 2007
On Monday, April 09, 2007, at 06:10AM, "Iver Larsen" <iver_larsen at sil.org> wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Barry" <nebarry at verizon.net>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "yancywsmith" <yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net>
>>
>>> What is the difference between saying "proleptic" and "fronted
>>> relative"? Other than the fact that proleptic is based upon Greek
>>> roots? If we were going to use "proleptic" the question would be, is
>>> there any special meaning connected with its position, such as
>>> demonstrative force.
>>>
>>> "the form/model/stamp of teaching to which you were delivered"
>>> vs.
>>> "that form/model/stamp of teaching to which you were delivered"
>>
>> Exactly. Terminology aside, why make it more complicated than it has to be? >> Objections of interpolation, or creating a antecedent based, as you said
>> earlier, on theological (or perhaps, I would say, contextual) grounds is simply
>> wasted effort when there is a perfectly good grammatical explanation waiting in
>> the wings -- in fact, not even in the wings, right out on center stage. >>
>> N.E. Barry Hofstetter
>
>The point of interest here is the pragmatics rather than the syntax and labels. Yancy posed the
>question why the relative is fronted.
>
>For instance:
>
>Why not: EIS TON TUPON DIDACHS EIS hON PAREDOQHTE
>
>I am not sure of the answer, but find the question worth pondering,
For my part I like Culy's term (don't know whether or not he invented it -- I rather doubt it):
"internally-headed relative clauses." I'm not so sure that they are really demonstrative, and
that's why I object to Webb's tentative suggested term, "fronted relative with demonstrative
sense." As I've noted before, I've seen this in Latin, but as I recall it, it was only in Augustan
poetry, where it seems to have a deliberate sort of "framing" effect: the relative pronoun and
its antecedent 'enclose' or 'frame" the governing verb. It seems comparable to me to the
common poetic framing of a governing verb by coordinated adjective and noun in Greek
and Latin verse. For example, in the first line of Vergil's Eclogues:
Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi ...
'patulae' and 'fagi' are concordant adjective and noun ("spreading beech-tree") enclosing
the remainder of the verb phrase. One might argue that 'patulae' is emphasized by its
position in front of the phrase, but I am more inclined to think that the framing of the
entire phrase is intended. The framing is rhetorically effective.
Another factor here may well be 'fronting' of a relative pronoun as a matter of standard
positioning of an element in its expected location at the beginning of a clause, comparable
to the standard positioning of interrogative words at the beginning of clauses. Think of the
standard colloquial English usage "the place which we came to" where we prefer to postpone
the "to" in order to bring the relative pronoun to its expected position at the beginning of the
clause. Some believe that it would be more "proper" to say "the place to which we came,"
but Winston Churchill long ago rebutted that 'rule' with his classic, "This is the sort of
nonsense up with which I will not put."
So: yes, the question may be worth pondering, but it may not be so simply answered.
Carl W. Conrad
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