Non-formal vocatives

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Alan Bunning
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Non-formal vocatives

Post by Alan Bunning »

I see that Tauber changed his morphological parsing on the SBL text a while back so that all of the vocatives that are accompanied with an article have been changed to nominatives. He referred to them as “non-formal vocatives”. I assume he did that because, in several other languages (I think including modern Greek), a vocative would not be preceded by an article.

But is this also true of Koine Greek? I have been trying to find some reference on this and have not found anything substantial. This website https://wordofgracestudies.org/portfoli ... -vocative/ seems to say to the contrary, “The article is used with the Vocative to ascribe special definiteness to the object of address.”

Can anyone enlighten me in this area or point me to a more definitive source?
Stirling Bartholomew
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Re: Non-formal vocatives

Post by Stirling Bartholomew »

If I understand your question (???) it is addressed in BDF #147, ATR p461. Cooper[1] talks about the use of the nominative for the vocative even when there is a vocative form. His examples all show the nominative-vocative preceded by the omega which is the standard particle with vocative. He also mentions a rare use of an article with a vocative in prose and poetry. His examples are not enlightening. BDF ascribes the use of the article with the vocative to semitic influence.

Mark 15:34 καὶ τῇ ἐνάτῃ ὥρᾳ ἐβόησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς φωνῇ μεγάλῃ· ἐλωϊ ἐλωϊ λεμα σαβαχθανι; ὅ ἐστιν μεθερμηνευόμενον· ὁ θεός μου ὁ θεός μου, εἰς τί ἐγκατέλιπές με;

Gramcord 2001[2], tags these nominative-vocatives as discussed in Cooper.



[1] 2:45.2.4.A, v3 p1946

Aeschylus Trag., Persae
Line 832

Ζεύς τοι κολαστὴς τῶν ὑπερκόμπων ἄγαν
φρονημάτων ἔπεστιν, εὔθυνος βαρύς.
πρὸς ταῦτ' ἐκεῖνον, σωφρονεῖν κεχρημένοι,
πινύσκετ' εὐλόγοισι νουθετήμασιν,
λῆξαι θεοβλαβοῦνθ' ὑπερκόμπῳ θράσει.
σὺ δ', ὦ γεραιὰ μῆτερ ἡ Ξέρξου φίλη,
"And as for you, beloved and venerable mother of Xerxes"

ἐλθοῦσ' ἐς οἴκους κόσμον ὅστις εὐπρεπὴς
λαβοῦσ' ὑπαντίαζε παιδί. † πάντα γὰρ
κακῶν ὑπ' ἄλγους λακίδες ἀμφὶ σώματι
στημορραγοῦσι ποικίλων ἐσθημάτων.
ἀλλ' αὐτὸν εὐφρόνως σὺ πράυνον λόγοις·




Herodotus Hist., Historiae (0016: 001)
Book 3, section 71, line 15

Ὑστάσπεος, εἶς τε πατρὸς ἀγαθοῦ καὶ ἐκφαίνειν ἔοικας
σεωυτὸν ἐόντα τοῦ πατρὸς οὐδὲν ἥσσω. Τὴν μέντοι ἐπι-
χείρησιν ταύτην μὴ οὕτω συντάχυνε ἀβούλως, ἀλλ' ἐπὶ τὸ
σωφρονέστερον αὐτὴν λάμβανε· δεῖ γὰρ πλέονας γενομέ-
νους οὕτως ἐπιχειρέειν.» Λέγει πρὸς ταῦτα Δαρεῖος·
»Ἄνδρες οἱ παρεόντες, τρόπῳ τῷ εἰρημένῳ ἐξ Ὀτάνεω εἰ
χρήσεσθε, ἐπίστασθε ὅτι ἀπολέεσθε κάκιστα· ἐξοίσει γάρ
τις πρὸς τὸν μάγον, ἰδίῃ περιβαλλόμενος ἑωυτῷ κέρδεα.
Μάλιστα μέν νυν ὠφείλετε ἐπ' ὑμέων αὐτῶν βαλλόμενοι
ποιέειν ταῦτα· ἐπείτε δὲ ὑμῖν ἀναφέρειν ἐς πλέονας ἐδόκεε
καὶ ἐμοὶ ὑπερέθεσθε, ἢ ποιέωμεν σήμερον ἢ ἴστε ὑμῖν ὅτι

[2]
Greek New Testament (Nestle-Aland, 27th Edition, second printing)

The Greek New Testament, edited by Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, Carlo M. Martini, Bruce M. Metzger, and Allen Wikgren, Fourth Revised Edition.

Copyright © 1966, 1968, 1975 by United Bible Societies, 1983, 1994 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
Used by permission.

Copyright © 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2001. The GRAMCORD Institute.
All rights reserved.

Version 3.6
C. Stirling Bartholomew
jtauber
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Re: Non-formal vocatives

Post by jtauber »

By “non-formal vocatives” I simply mean vocatives that don't have a contrasting form but just use the nominative form. As my analysis is only interested in form, not function, I didn't want to distinguish.

For similar reasons, I'm moving towards this proposal for gender: https://github.com/morphgnt/sblgnt/wiki ... er-Tagging
James Tauber
http://jktauber.com/
Alan Bunning
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Re: Non-formal vocatives

Post by Alan Bunning »

jtauber wrote: August 2nd, 2017, 9:33 pm By “non-formal vocatives” I simply mean vocatives that don't have a contrasting form but just use the nominative form. As my analysis is only interested in form, not function, I didn't want to distinguish.

For similar reasons, I'm moving towards this proposal for gender: https://github.com/morphgnt/sblgnt/wiki ... er-Tagging
Okay, so if I am understanding this right, the vocatives you changed to nominatives are still vocatives, and indeed are still vocatives in form (but just happen to also share their form with the nominative). They were changed to nominatives because they were not *distinctly* vocative in form (such as masculine singular ones that end in epsilon). And the fact that all the ones I looked at that were changed to nominatives just happened to be accompanied by articles, was merely coincidental. Is this right?
Alan Bunning
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Re: Non-formal vocatives

Post by Alan Bunning »

So now I am wondering, since there is not a vocative form of the article, and yet many “vocatives” are preceded by an article, do they carry a different sense? A.T. Robertson referred to them as “idioms” (p. 465). In those cases, is the direct address, not quite as direct?
jtauber
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Re: Non-formal vocatives

Post by jtauber »

Alan Bunning wrote: August 3rd, 2017, 8:49 am Okay, so if I am understanding this right, the vocatives you changed to nominatives are still vocatives, and indeed are still vocatives in form (but just happen to also share their form with the nominative).
More precisely, they could be vocatives but their form is indistinguishable from that of nominatives. I could have invented a new case value that means "nominative or vocative" but given any nominative form could be used as a vocative, it seemed best to just use "N" and reserve "V" for the contrasting form.
James Tauber
http://jktauber.com/
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