Can a verb be used twice with different senses?

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Stephen Hughes
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Can a verb be used twice with different senses?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

1Timothy 5:9 wrote:Χήρα καταλεγέσθω μὴ ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα γεγονυῖα, ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή,
Barry Hofstetter wrote:Considering the position of γεγονυῖα in the text, I think it could govern both what precedes and what follows. The use of the perfect here is, I think, stative, i.e., these are to be the current conditions for the women to be admitted as a widow to be supported by the church. εἰμί of course lacks a perfect and that is often supplied by γίνομαι (and a few other verbs in the broader Greek literature).
Barry Hofstetter wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:He means that it is between two different parts of the sentence so it could go either either way. That is it could be either μὴ ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα γεγονυῖα "She has come to be not less than 60 years old" or γεγονυῖα ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή "she has been a one man woman".
Actually, I meant that it is most likely understood with both.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't they two different usages of the perfect participle. The μὴ ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα γεγονυῖα is the sense of has become (by a change), while γεγονυῖα ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή is a stative (no change is involved).

I remember being told as an undergraduate, "that goes with both", but I never really felt comfortable with that line. In a case like this, there is even another large gap to jump in that to use it with both means taking it in two different senses.

I understand that given the right copula, a verb can act upon a number of elements in the sentence in various ways, but to assume that it acts upon two elements such as these without copula, is to assume a class of verbal copulation and/or implicit copulation within Greek syntax.

Are there any references and / or thoughts on this?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Can a verb be used twice with different senses?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

While I tend to be skeptical of explanations that a particular verb governs two sets of complements like this, I think it is defensible to see an ellipsis of the same participle in the second phrase (or some appropriate from of εἰμί). So I would understand the syntax differently, even though the ultimate effect on the interpretation is next to nil.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Can a verb be used twice with different senses?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Stephen Carlson wrote:While I tend to be skeptical of explanations that a particular verb governs two sets of complements like this, I think it is defensible to see an ellipsis of the same participle in the second phrase (or some appropriate from of εἰμί). So I would understand the syntax differently, even though the ultimate effect on the interpretation is next to nil.
I tend to agree with that.
Stephen Hughes wrote:we could write Χήρα καταλεγέσθω μὴ ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα γεγονυῖα, ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς [οὖσα] γυνή, or we could use a word διαμένουσα ... which means "remaining" Χήρα καταλεγέσθω μὴ ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα γεγονυῖα, ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς [διαμένουσα] γυνή.
Stephen Carlson wrote:I think it is defensible to see an ellipsis of the same participle in the second phrase
Logically within this language, or cross-linguistically? Are there examples of emphatic writing in Greek where repetitions of the same participle are spelt out in full?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Can a verb be used twice with different senses?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:I think it is defensible to see an ellipsis of the same participle in the second phrase
Logically within this language, or cross-linguistically?
As far as I am aware, ellipsis (an extreme form of deaccenting) of common ground elements is a common strategy in human languages.
Stephen Hughes wrote:Are there examples of emphatic writing in Greek where repetitions of the same participle are spelt out in full?
I'm not sure I understand the question.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: Can a verb be used twice with different senses?

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Stephen Carlson wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:Are there examples of emphatic writing in Greek where repetitions of the same participle are spelt out in full?
I'm not sure I understand the question.
I take the sentence; "I'm going to the shops, then going to the swimming pool and then going to the cinema." is more emphatic than "I'm going to the shops, the swimming pool and then the cinema." The same verb is spelt out or not spelt out, and we know it is okay in the English language.

Do we find a similar thing in Greek where verbs are repeated for emphasis / explication? Or is that role in language expressed differently?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Can a verb be used twice with different senses?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:Are there examples of emphatic writing in Greek where repetitions of the same participle are spelt out in full?
I'm not sure I understand the question.
I take the sentence; "I'm going to the shops, then going to the swimming pool and then going to the cinema." is more emphatic than "I'm going to the shops, the swimming pool and then the cinema." The same verb is spelt out or not spelt out, and we know it is okay in the English language.
Do we find a similar thing in Greek where verbs are repeated for emphasis / explication? Or is that role in language expressed differently?
OK, I think this is what's going on in the English examples. In the first example, you're putting the destinations in separate intonation units, giving each one its own pitch accent at the end, while in the second example, all the destinations have to share the same intonation unit with multiple pitch accents, with presumably the last one being more prominent than the others. So it's not the repetition per se that lends the first example more emphasis, but rather that the repetition enables the distribution of the information to occur over multiple intonation units, with each destination positioned in the most prominent position (for English).

I suppose that it's conceivable for a similar strategy to be implemented in Greek (distributing coordinated constituents over multiple intonation unit, each with its own prominence), except that the most prominent place in the Greek intonation unit is toward the left edge instead of the right as per English.

In 1 Tim 5:9, the phrase ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή is in apposition and would normally gets its own intonation unit, so putting a participle on the end isn't really going to do much.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: Can a verb be used twice with different senses?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Stephen Carlson wrote:I suppose that it's conceivable for a similar strategy to be implemented in Greek (distributing coordinated constituents over multiple intonation unit, each with its own prominence), except that the most prominent place in the Greek intonation unit is toward the left edge instead of the right as per English.

In 1 Tim 5:9, the phrase ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή is in apposition and would normally gets its own intonation unit, so putting a participle on the end isn't really going to do much.
I understand that you mean putting an extra participle that is not really going to do much such as another γεγονυῖα or a οὖσα. In refering to intonation units are you making an assumption that the spoken Koine underlies the literary form of the language? Have there been many studies made on the intonational patterns in Koine Greek?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Can a verb be used twice with different senses?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Stephen Hughes wrote: In refering to intonation units are you making an assumption that the spoken Koine underlies the literary form of the language?
Koine is not an artificial literary standard, like Wenyan. We have lots of documentary papyri showing that the Greek of the New Testament for the most part is not terribly different from what people were speaking (or writing in private letters). Even so, the segmentation of speech into morae, syllables, phonological words, phonological phrases, and intonation units is something basic to language. You have to remember that texts in those days were not read silently but phrased and read aloud orally to listeners.
Stephen Hughes wrote:Have there been many studies made on the intonational patterns in Koine Greek?
Most of the studies have involved Classical Greek, at all literary registers (including narrative and . There are some of Koine, especially involving the second-position clausal clitic placement, which is perhaps the most direct evidence of Koine prosody we have.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: Can a verb be used twice with different senses?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Stephen Carlson wrote:Koine is not an artificial literary standard, like Wenyan. We have lots of documentary [non-literary?] papyri showing that the Greek of the New Testament for the most part is not terribly different from what people were speaking (or writing in private letters). ... You have to remember that texts in those days were not read silently but phrased and read aloud orally to listeners.
The Wenyan form of the language preserved an earlier form of the language is something that requires specialist study to master these days. It (along with the Imperial Examinations) more or less lost any influence under the Nationalist republic. The situation here was changed by a major social upheaval.

I assume that we are talking about the non-literary papyri found in Egypt. It is said that Middle Egyptian as a literary language underwent some changes during its history, but it wasn't until the Ramesside period (approx. the Exodus) that I can find any real differences. It is definitely closer to the Coptic written since the Ptolemaic period. It would seem that the extinction of Greek and the continuity of the Egyptian language in its venacular form (after the closing of the temples in 391AD) until the 10th or 11th century on a large scale (and in a few rare examples besides that), suggests to me that Greek was not accepted as a home language or a language of everyday communication within communities. In Palestine also, the reemergence of Aramaic (Syrian / Syriac / Assyrian) after Byzantine territorial losses to the Persians in the 6th and 7th centuries as a common language of communication (up until the forced Arabisation several hundred years later) suggests that Aramaic had been there as a spoken language all along, and at the very best there was an educated bilingualism. The only group that continued to use Greek as a language of home communication were the "Greek" communities of Lower (Northern) Egypt especially in Alexandria, which by now have all but left by immigration.

From what understand, it was the job of a scribe to hear what was said in the venacular, write it in Greek. The recieving scribe at the other end of the communication read it in Greek and spoke it out in the venacular of the place that he was in. The Coptic dialects up and down the length of the Nile and off into the Fayyum show us that the Coptic lanuage differed greatly within Egypt, and communicating with a person of a different ethnic group required a common language, and Greek filled that need.

That is different from the situation for peoples who remained "Greek" after the Battle of Manzikert (1071AD) where large populations of Greek speaking Christians found themselves suddenly under Turkish rule, and while Greek was initially retained as a language of communication between different ethnic communities in the area, that role was later taken over by what we now call Turkish. The Greek speakers retained their language, in some cases after forsaking Chrisitianity and following another faith.

My main point is that taking the disintegration of Greek as a language of interethnic communication as in indication as to its usage patterns in the pervious periods, one comes to the conclusion that Greek was not a home language for a large part of the people using it, and for some it was only a written language. The written record is useful to a point, but unless there is an assumed educational system as was in the case of Poland (Polish < German/Russian) and Denmark (<German), it is only the people in their homes and the everyday life of the community to carry the language through the unrecorded periods.

While of course in our modern age of learning by TPR and by speaking, speaking Koine Greek is a great and beneficial thing, and I myself intend to at least try to learn to do that soon, it may not have been the case in all given communities at all times.

Moreover, the only possible reference to speaking Greek, the tribune's Ἑλληνιστὶ γινώσκεις of Acts 21:37 leaves the linguistic situation ambiguous in that he does not say Ἑλληνιστὶ ὁμιλείς; but I guess what he meant was "Wow, you are talking to me (a Roman who doesn't understand Aramaic) in Greek.". I think that the written form was the dominant usage for Greek.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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