Barry Hofstetter wrote:Jason, it took me a while to parse out what I think is wrong with what you're saying. A controvertible proposition simply means that the subject and predicate are reversible because they precisely, in every way, are interchangeable. In this case, the qualifying genitive would remain with the new predicate and it would still mean the same thing, i.e, (in English for convenience), "the light was the life of men" would be the same as "the life was the light of men." In a nod to another post, I think this is possible here because both light and life are specified with the article -- it is a specific light and a specific life which are absolutely equated, and not equated in a generic or qualitative sense.
This makes no sense to me at all. It's like saying that
The butcher was the savior of the town.
is the same as
The savior was the butcher of the town.
That's just ridiculous.
Yet, it is clear that
The savior of the town was the butcher is the conversion of the initial statement. As long as the modifiers that are part of the noun phrase are pulled along with the head noun, it works. Otherwise, it does not.
I remember when I was in high school and took Algebra for the first time how people had difficulty understanding that in
9(x+1) = 36
you could not just subtract the x from both sides to balance it. It's about order of operations and keeping what must be together together! In this case, first divide by nine, then subtract one. And (x+1) is not the same as x. Such is the case also with "light of the world," which is not the same as "light" (generically). While, we could say that "the light of the world" is itself here identified as "life," we cannot say that "light" (generically) is identified as the light of the world - else, we might be speaking of the light of the Sun or of a candle.
The
full subject (along with its modifiers) must be convertible with the
full predicate nominative (along with its modifiers). Otherwise makes no sense whatsoever. I disagree with your statement that "life was the light of men" is the same as "light was the life of men." It
cannot be true.