[b-greek] Re: Adnominal & Adverbial Position?

From: Moon-Ryul Jung (moon@saint.soongsil.ac.kr)
Date: Tue Jan 30 2001 - 07:01:05 EST


Carl wrote a very impressive observation based on his broad knowledge of
Greek
as quoted below. I learned so much from this list, and particularly from
Carl. Thanks for that and for the insight for this thread.

> It seems to me that the demonstratives hOUTOS, EKEINOS, and hODE,
> PAS when it means "all", MONOS when it means "by oneself" adverbially,
> AUTOS when it is intensive and means "himself/herself/itself" adverbially,
> MESOS when it means "in the middle" adverbially, AKROS when it means "at
> the extremity" adverbially all function as part of the predicate--and that
> is why traditionally they have been said to be in the "predicate" position
> in relationship to the article, but it seems to me that we might
> conceivably call this instead the 'ADVERBIAL' position relative to the
> article and perhaps be more precisely descriptive in terminology. On the
> other hand, when any adjective or demonstrative FOLLOWS upon the article in
> what we have traditionally called the "attributive" position, they do
> essentially describe or characterize the noun, and when PAS, AKROS, MONOS,
> MESOS, or AUTOS are in this position, they have different semantic
> functions from those they had in the "predicate" or "adverbial" position:
> hH AKRH POLIS originally meant "the high citadel"; hH MESH POLIS meant "the
> central city"; hO MONOS ALHQINOS QEOS = "the only true God"; hO AUTOS ANHR
> = "the same man"; hH PASA OIKIA = "the entire household." Could we not use
> the term 'ADNOMINAL' for adjectives (or other phrases, adverbs, etc.) in
> that position relative to the article? or actually, I see nothing
> misleading about the traditional term 'ATTRIBUTIVE' in this case. The
> problem of terminology seems more to lie in the supposedly misleading
> phrase "predicate position" for modifiers of a substantive outside of the
> article-substantive phrase.
>

The obvious observation is that hOUTOS, EKEINOS, and hODE modify
nouns outside of the article-noun configuration. PAS, MONOS, MESOS, and
AUTOS can modify nouns in two ways, at two positions,
namely outside of the article-noun configuration
and within the article-noun configuration. The two positions give rise
to different meanings of the noun phrases. As Iver observed, we'd better
think as follows:

(a) The second class of words have basically two meanings;
one has the characteristics of "demonstrative pronouns or quantifiers" and
the other has the characteristics of "descriptive/attributive adjectives".
(b) The meaning determins the position of these words, rather than vice
versa;
    Note that the first class of words cannot be positioned within the
    article-noun configuration because of their meaning.

In sum, some words which we might call "demonstrative pronouns or
quantifiers"
are positioned outside of the article-noun configuration when they modify
the nouns. The other modifiers are positioned within the article-noun
configuration when they modify the nouns. But they are all modifiers of
nouns.
Associating noun modifiers with the terms like "predicate position" or
"adverbial position" seems misleading. What we have is simple enough:
modifiers are positioned differently relative to the article position
depending on the kind of meanings that they. In fact, I see no reasons why
we should name those positions. If we should give names, I think Carl
suggested good names, namely "outside of the article-noun group"
(OANG) and "within the article-noun group") (WANG).

If someone finds out why some are positioned at OANG and others are
positioned at WANG, we might be able to give good names to each position
based on the reason which each position is adopted.
The terms "predicate or adverbial position" and "attributive position"
give the impression that some modifiers are in the predicate / adverbial
position because they function somewhat like predicate or adverb, whereas
some are in the attribute position because they function like descriptive
adjectives. Again I have no problem with the latter implication. But
the first implication seems misleading, if in fact that
modifiers at OANG do not behave somewhat like predicates or adverbs of
the article-noun group. But Carl suggests that modifiers at OANG behave
somewhat like predicates or adverbs of the article-noun group. Unless
Carl's
suggestion is demonstrated to be valid, I would prefer OANG and WANG.

Many thanks to Iver. His insight from descriptive linguistics helped me a
lot
to clear up some of my confusion and puzzles about Greek grammar.


Moon
Moon-Ryul Jung
Associate Professor
Sogang Univ, Seoul, Korea

prediatesciton they describe the reasons why some are jseem{"


 

---
B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [jwrobie@mindspring.com]
To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-327Q@franklin.oit.unc.edu
To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu




This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:36:49 EDT