Lexical entry question

Semantic Range, Lexicography, and other approaches to word meaning - in general, or for particular words.
Alan Bunning
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Re: Lexical entry question

Post by Alan Bunning »

Stephen Carlson wrote:
Ken M. Penner wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote: (Serious not suggestive question) Are there NT examples of adverbial neuter plurals?
I haven't been following this thread; I'm just jumping in because today I was commenting on Isaiah 40:2 where we find adverbial διπλᾶ, and this form appears also in Revelation.
I think the neuter plural πολλά also has some adverbial uses.
In all the ones I found in the NT, both Tauber and Robinson call them adjectives.

In any case, if any neuter plural adjective does present itself as an adverb, to be consistent I would then give it its own lexical entry as well.
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Lexical entry question

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Alan Bunning wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:I think the neuter plural πολλά also has some adverbial uses.
In all the ones I found in the NT, both Tauber and Robinson call them adjectives.

In any case, if any neuter plural adjective does present itself as an adverb, to be consistent I would then give it its own lexical entry as well.
BAGD πολύς I.2.b.β lists Mark 5:38; Hermas, Sim. 4:5c; Mark 6:20; 1 Cor 16:19; Hermas, Sim. 5,4,1; Mark 5:43; Mark 3:12; Hermas, Vis. 2,2,1; Mark 15:3; Mark 1:45; Rom 16:6, 12; 2 Clem 7:1b; Mark 5:10, 23; 1 Cor 16:12; Jas 3:2; Mark 9:26a, plus some variant readings. These should be checked.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Alan Bunning
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Re: Lexical entry question

Post by Alan Bunning »

Stephen Carlson wrote:
Alan Bunning wrote:
Stephen Carlson wrote:I think the neuter plural πολλά also has some adverbial uses.
In all the ones I found in the NT, both Tauber and Robinson call them adjectives.

In any case, if any neuter plural adjective does present itself as an adverb, to be consistent I would then give it its own lexical entry as well.
BAGD πολύς I.2.b.β lists Mark 5:38; Hermas, Sim. 4:5c; Mark 6:20; 1 Cor 16:19; Hermas, Sim. 5,4,1; Mark 5:43; Mark 3:12; Hermas, Vis. 2,2,1; Mark 15:3; Mark 1:45; Rom 16:6, 12; 2 Clem 7:1b; Mark 5:10, 23; 1 Cor 16:12; Jas 3:2; Mark 9:26a, plus some variant readings. These should be checked.
Those look like adverbs to me, so I will mark them as such in my parsing. Then to be consistent with the singular neuters, I would need to give it its own lexical entry. Thanks for finding that.
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Lexical entry question

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Alan Bunning wrote:In any case, if any neuter plural adjective does present itself as an adverb, to be consistent I would then give it its own lexical entry as well.
On a scale of white to black, the point where light grey becomes dark grey, can sometimes be subjectively defined.

I understand that you are working with a model of the Greek language that has on the one hand accusative as a direct object and on the other hand accusative as adverb, but theoretically, that distinction itself can be a bit arbitrary. How adverbial is a cognate accusative? for example. It is both object and adverb. For verbs which change from vi to vt with the addition of an accusative into their syntactic construction, in addition to a further description of the action of the verb, the accusative also has the power to reclasdify the verb from vi to vt. That is another (vertical) dimension to the accusative that is included in the scalar distinction between object (indicating what the verb acts upon) and adverb (indicating how, etc. the verb acts). Take the English example, "He threw the ball against the door", "He threw the knife against the door", and "He threw the empty box against the door". In those cases, the "object" served equally as "adverb", implying (I say "implying" because we have classified ball, knife and box as objects) that the nature of the action throwing has been changed (or we might say defined) by the physical properties of the things thrown. The phrase πολλὰ παθεῖν, rendered with "suffered a lot", if it were taken to be adverbial "he suffered severely", explaining the severity etc. of the suffering, or "suffered many things", if it were taken nominally as an object, but the choice is not binary, but scalar. Imagine a common form of suffering, like a sprain - the more little sprains one gets, the worse the nature of the suffering becomes. Common words with a wide lexical semantic field are more in need of "adverbial" definition from their objects, eg. ἔδωκεν [αὐτῷ] ῥάπισμα (ἐδίδουν αὐτῷ ῥαπίσματα in the imperfective) "let him have a slap" is quite a different type of giving than that of καρπὸν οὐκ ἔδωκεν "yield fruit".

I encourage you not to do away with the distinction, because it can be of some use to some people, but I just want to point out the overlap that can occur, and consequently, that both classifications can be true at the same time, no matter how any particular instance is categorised. I think that readers who are more experienced with the language will make up there own minds about the extent of object-hood and adverbiality to be found in given cases, but less experienced readers could do with some guidance.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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