[B-Greek] Attraction (was: syntax in 2 cor 10:12-13)
Iver Larsen
iver_larsen at sil.org
Mon Dec 14 01:22:14 EST 2009
----- Original Message -----
From: <yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net>
To: "greek B-Greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: 13. december 2009 18:11
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Attraction (was: syntax in 2 cor 10:12-13)
> If "attraction" were so neat and law abiding, grammar would be boring. The
> invention of "attraction" as a grammatical process, however, is an attempt to
> explain something more dynamic like "the way of an eagle in the sky,
> the way of a snake on a rock,
> the way of a ship on the high seas,
> and the way of a man with a girl."
> I would tend to think it is a bit more complicated than what George has
> written, based on Smyth. A semantic explanation of this phenomenon seems more
> appropriate for Hellenisitc Greek. A. T. Robertson, for example, in _A
> Grammar of the Greek New Testament_, says "The agreement of the relative with
> antecedent in person, number, gender, and sometives case, is just the natural
> effort to relate more exactly the two clauses with each other" (p. 711).
> Robertson's explanation seems supported in the often-occuring inverse
> attraction of the antecedent to the relative (J. H. Moulton,._Grammar of New
> Testament Greek_, Vol. III, _Syntax_, by Nigel Turner, p.324), and by certain
> exceptions to the rule of attraction according to semantic considerations
> (BDF, _A Greek Grammar of the New Testament_, #294, 1). This topic has been
> discussed before, do a Google search of attraction of the relative in Greek.
>
> Yancy
The topic is complicated partly because of the very free word order in Greek as
compared to English. In my view the concept of "inverse attraction" is dubious.
There are other possible explanations for these few cases that seem more
adequate.
I do not consider Robinson's explanation above an adequate description of
attraction. It may describe some instances, but is rather vague. What one needs
to do is to make a detailed analysis, taking into account several things:
1. Is there an an antecedent or not?
2. Is there a preposition that governs the case of the pronoun?
3. What is the grammatical function and case of the antecedent (which does not
always precede the relative)?
4. What would be the expected case of the pronoun according to its function in
the clause it is part of?
I made a beginning of such an analysis, but a comprehensive analysis will take
more time that I have at the moment.
According to my GNT database which marks the relatives that suggest attraction,
there are 60 of them in the NT, 43 of them in genitive and 17 in dative. It
doesn't seem to occur in nominative or accusative.
Iver Larsen
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