[B-Greek] EIMI with no Predicate Nominative

Oun Kwon kwonbbl at gmail.com
Sun Oct 12 15:07:35 EDT 2008


On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 9:16 AM, Iver Larsen <iver_larsen at sil.org> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kenneth Litwak" <javajedi2 at yahoo.com>
> To: "Carl Conrad" <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
> Cc: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: 11. oktober 2008 21:57
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] EIMI with no Predicate Nominative
>
>

<clipped>

>>
>> Ken
>
> I would encourage your students to take a basic course in semantics, because only then does grammar
> begin to make sense.
> A verb like EIMI is tricky because of its many usages, both in Greek and English. I have earlier
> said that the use of the term "predicate" in traditional Greek grammar is so confusing that IMO it
> ought to be banned or least rarely used.
>
> Every verb semantically has one, two or rarely three participants (sometimes called "arguments")
> with different semantic roles. In addition, several secondary roles exists, and they can be attached
> to the semantic verb which is always the nucleus of the clause.
>
> If I say "She is beautiful", the semantic verb is really "be beautiful" rather than "be". Some
> languages would say "She beautifuls". The verb "be beautiful" is a monovalent verb with one
> participant "she" in the semantic role of "patient". Monovalent semantic verbs with a P(atient) role
> are descriptive. Whether they are encoded in a particular language as verbs or adjectives or an
> adjective supported by "to be" is not particularly important.
>

>
<clipped>

This reminds me of the grammar of my native Korean. There is no
morphologic difference between verb and adjective.  No copulative 'be'
is used with adjectives. Of course the main difference is in the sense
(one is for action; the other is for status/description). On the level
of grammar, there is no need to separate them. I believe this was from
learning English grammar and its convention was simply imported. [I
think Japanese grammar is in the same pot.]

We have a separate verb 'to be' which is only for existential sense.

Oun Kwon.



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