[B-Greek] hINA in Jn 9:3, 11:4

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Wed Feb 4 22:41:56 EST 2009


On Feb 4, 2009, at 4:27 PM, Steve Runge wrote:

> "Negatives, conjunctions, sentence connectors, and subordinators may  
> be termed function words (Fries: 87-109) or structure signaling  
> words (Roberts, 1958: 151f., 224ff.). The point of these labels is  
> that such words are nearly lexically empty, i.e. they have little or  
> no dictionary meaning of their own. However, they are grammatically  
> significant in indicating the structure of sentences and parts of  
> sentences (cf. §§001ff.). Some of them are so common as to require  
> acquaintance at the grossest level of the language. This simply  
> means that one must learn how they function early in the process.  
> One may guess at the meaning of lexically full words, or leave them  
> blank when reading (cf. §003), but one must know the grammatical  
> "meaning" of
> function words to be able to proceed at all."

I assume Funk is quoting from Charles Carpenter Fries: The structure  
of English 1952. While it happens that different frameworks often  
sound like they are agreeing on something, the agreement often times  
is only superficial. The difference between Structuralism and  
Relevance Theory is  such that a statement from Fries repeated almost  
verbatim in a book on Relevance Theory will have significantly  
different ramifications.

Thank you,

Elizabeth Kline







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