Can a pl verb (ἐθαύμαζον) take a sg subject (ὁ λαὸς)?

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Stephen Carlson
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Re: Can a pl verb (ἐθαύμαζον) take a sg subject (ὁ λαὸς)?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I'm coming late to this thread, and I see that part of the problem is that some of the terminology is used incorrectly or inconsistently ("grammatically" for "syntactically"; "focus" for "topic"; and in some cases "subject" for "topic").

Here are my two δραχμαί:
Luke 1:21 wrote:καὶ ἦν ὁ λαὸς προσδοκῶν τὸν Ζαχαρίαν, καὶ ἐθαύμαζον ἐν τῷ χρονίζειν αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ ναῷ.
There are two clauses here. In the first clause, the syntactic subject is the singular ὁ λαός. In the second clause, the syntactic subject of ἐθαύμαζον is not expressed (zero anaphora), but its third-person plural ending implies a plural antecedent.

Though the subjects are syntactically different, the zero anaphora suggests a continuity of topic: both clauses are about the same group of people.

The antecedent for the plural implied subject of ἐθαύμαζον is the singular collective noun ὁ λαός. As already noted earlier in the thread, this is an instance of constructio ad sensum, which is not uncommon in Greek.

In this case, the construction is not particularly harsh because the singular antecedent is in a different clause than its zero-anaphora reference, but, as the earlier quoted BDF section indicates, there are harsher examples of constructio ad sensum, even in Luke.

Stephen
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
David Lim
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Re: Can a pl verb (ἐθαύμαζον) take a sg subject (ὁ λαὸς)?

Post by David Lim »

Barry Hofstetter wrote:[...] In the third clause, the subject is masculine (στόμα is neuter, γλῶσσα feminine) as the participle εὐλογῶν makes clear. Therefore, your example is not parallel.
Yes unfortunately, but I didn't search for a better example.
Barry Hofstetter wrote:If all you are saying is that there are two different clauses, that's fine, as long as you understand that it's the same subject with both clauses, unless otherwise marked (that's simply the way ellipsis normally works). If there is an implicit change in subject, then who are you talking about? And at the risk of an ad verecundiam fallacy, why would all the grammars, et al., be wrong on this point?
Yes that is all I was saying from the start, which is why I kept emphasizing that it was still the same group of people but that was referred to in a different way, the first time as a whole and the second time as many individuals. I think most grammars to which you are referring do not distinguish between the grammatical syntax and semantic meaning, so they are not "all wrong". Sorry that you might have misunderstood my terminology, and Stephen helpfully pointed out what I meant. Thanks!
δαυιδ λιμ
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