[B-Greek] subject and verb mismatch - John 19:31

Bill Barton phos at windstream.net
Thu Dec 23 16:38:59 EST 2010


"Stephen Carlson" <stemmatic at gmail.com> wrote on  Thursday, December 23, 
2010 12:38 PM:

>The Iliad was not written in Latin, however.  It was written in (Homeric) 
>Greek.>


My mistake, I was reading "Iliad" as "Aeneid."

To recap:  John 19:31 uses a singular verb with a neuter subject.  This link 
claims there are 190 examples of the neuter plural with a singular verb in 
the Iliad:

http://stason.org/TULARC/languages/linguistics/28-How-did-genders-and-cases-develop-in-IE.html


In fact I'm having a hard time finding such examples (neuter plural subject, 
singular verb) in Latin.

For example, in the verse in question (John 19:31) the Latin Vulgate uses a 
plural verb rather than a singular verb.

Likewise in Mark 4:11, the Greek has panta ginetai (plural subject, singular 
verb) but the Latin Vulgate has omnia fiunt (plural subject, plural verb).

Finally, this reference says that plural subject with singular verb is a 
"glaring solecism" in Latin:

"Lectures on Syntax: with special reference to Greek, Latin, and Germanic," 
page 18

http://books.google.ca/books?id=6bCWl_izTBUC&pg=PT54&dq=latin+grammar+%22neuter+plural+subject%22&lr=&as_brr=3#v=onepage&q=solecism&f=false


Bill Barton
Layman

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Stephen Carlson" <stemmatic at gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2010 12:38 PM
To: "Bill Barton" <phos at windstream.net>
Cc: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] subject and verb mismatch - John 19:31

> On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 12:09 PM, Bill Barton <phos at windstream.net> wrote:
>> Latin does the same.  For example, this link claims the Iliad uses the
>> neuter plural with a singular verb 190 times:
>
> The Iliad was not written in Latin, however.  It was written in (Homeric) 
> Greek.
>
> Stephen
> --
> Stephen C. Carlson
> Graduate Program in Religion
> Duke University

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