[B-Greek] Rom 6:17b;Fronted Relative with Demonstrative Sense

Barry nebarry at verizon.net
Mon Apr 9 09:13:22 EDT 2007


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
To: "Iver Larsen" <iver_larsen at sil.org>
Cc: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, April 09, 2007 7:24 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Rom 6:17b;Fronted Relative with Demonstrative Sense


> 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.

Sic, avunculus!  And I got to see dactylic hexameter this morning, that always 
makes me happy... :)

I know I have seen this kind of construction in more than one Greek author, but 
I don't have time to look it up.  I agree with Carl -- it appears to me to have 
no force as a demonstrative, particularly contextually, but I would be glad to 
be proven wrong if that is not the case.  The potential grammarian here needs to 
produce several examples, either pro or con, which would establish the case.

N.E. Barry Hofstetter

Si hoc legere potes, nimium eruditionis habes!

http://mysite.verizon.net/nebarry/ 




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