From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sun Jan 04 1998 - 09:27:33 EST
At 7:03 AM -0600 1/4/98, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>Robertson says that second attributive position repeats the article:
>
> hO ANQRWPOS hO AGAQOS
>
>There are some similar constructions where the initial noun has no article:
>
> PATER hHMWN, hO EN TOIS OURANOIS
> ECONTAS PLHGAS hEPTA TAS ESCATAS (Rev 15:1)
>
>Are these also second attributive position? The second one feels like it
>should be, but is the line from the Lord's Prayer?
I would offer two comments on this:
(1) Yes, I'd call them BOTH instances of the same construction; but
(2) I've grown increasingly sensitive, in recent years, to the distinct
nuance of what I think I might prefer to call "postpositive attributives":
if one bears in mind that what we call the definite article was originally
a demonstrative pronoun and never quite completely lost the character of a
demonstrative, it appears that the postpositive attribute introduced by the
article is a sort of appositive used by the writer/speaker to define more
precisely a noun already enunciated but characterized with insufficient
clarity. That's probably too "dramatic" a description of what I think's
going on here, but let me follow it up by offering similarly "overdramatic"
or "caricaturistic" translations of these phrases--translations that one
would rightly fault if offered by a student although they capture, I think,
something of the force of the word-order:
hO ANQRWPOS hO AGAQOS = 'that person--I mean the good one'
PATER hHMWN hO EN TOIS OURANOIS = 'our Father, the very one who are in
heaven' (cf. German 'der Du in Himmel bist')
PLHGAS hEPTA TAS ESCATAS = 'seven blows/catastrophes, the very
ultimate
ones'
I would underscore the point that I think these are overtranslations; one
would not want to adopt this pattern as a strategy for regular translation
of the "postpositive attribute"--just as one gets anxious about a student
who doesn't ever get beyond translating a MEN ... DE construction by "one
the one hand ... on the other"--yet there is a distinct rhetorical
difference, I think, between these and the ordinary attributive pattern: hO
AGAQOS ANQRWPOS, hO EN TOIS OURANOIS PATHR hHMWN (nom., not voc.), TAS
hEPTA ESCATAS PLHGAS.
You really ARE determined, aren't you, Jonathan, to know all there is to
know about articles before you complete that chapter! But if you wait that
long, it will NEVER get written!
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:38:44 EDT