Rank shifting

KimmoHuovila
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Rank shifting

Post by KimmoHuovila »

Which of the following makes for a good continuation and which are not good Greek?
(Optional words are in parentheses and alternatives in brackets.)
Γινώσκομεν ὅτι ὁ Ἀκύλας φιλεῖ τὴν Πρίσκιλλαν. Τοῦτ' ἔστιν, γινώσκομεν
(1) τὴν φιλίαν (τὴν) [ἀπὸ, ἐκ, παρὰ] τοῦ Ἀκύλα [εἰς, πρὸς] τὴν Πρίσκιλλαν.
(2) τὴν φιλίαν (τὴν) [ἀπὸ, ἐκ, παρὰ] τοῦ Ἀκύλα ἐν τῇ Πρισκίλλῃ.
(3) τὴν φιλίαν (τὴν) τοῦ Ἀκύλα [εἰς, πρὸς] τὴν Πρίσκιλλαν.
(4) τὴν φιλίαν (τὴν) τοῦ Ἀκύλα ἐν τῇ Πρισκίλλῃ.
(5) τὴν φιλίαν (τὴν) τῆς Πρισκίλλης [ἀπὸ, ἐκ, παρὰ] τοῦ Ἀκύλα.

Are there any permissible variants that were not expressed above?

How can we generalize the results to other verbal nouns? In other words, how are clauses rank shifted from full clause to a noun phrase in general?
Kimmo Huovila
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Rank shifting

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Assuming that you are taking everything that a non-native speakers says about a language with a healthy-sized grain of salt, I would say that none of your versions are true in all the permutations that your symbols seem to suggest are possible. I think that only your option 3 - without the "(τὴν)" - works.
(3) τὴν φιλίαν (τὴν) τοῦ Ἀκύλα [εἰς, πρὸς] τὴν Πρίσκιλλαν.
I hope I've understood your symbols correctly:
  1. τὴν φιλίαν αὐτῶν.
  2. τὴν φιλίαν τοῦ Ἀκύλα καὶ τῆς Πρισκίλλης ([εἰς, πρὸς] ἀλλήλους).
  3. τὴν φιλίαν ἣν λαμβάνει ἡ Πρισκίλλη παρὰ τοῦ Ἀκύλα.
  4. τὴν φιλίαν τὴν λη(μ)φθεῖσαν [ὑπὸ τῆς Πρισκίλλης, τῇ Πρισκίλλῃ] παρὰ τοῦ Ἀκύλα.
Perhaps ἐν τῇ Πρισκίλλῃ would work in my (d).

  • I don't think it is a gender dependent word, so reversing the people involved would seem to work too.
  • Different word orders for this and your other examples are possible too.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
cwconrad
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Re: Rank shifting

Post by cwconrad »

I wonder whether φιλία is the proper word here. Would we say that Aquila and Priscilla are φίλοι? It's curious that the noun appears only once in the GNT:
Jas 4:4 μοιχαλίδες, οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ἡ φιλία τοῦ κόσμου ἔχθρα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστιν;
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Rank shifting

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:It's curious that the noun appears only once in the GNT:
Speaking in the "abstract" is not so common in the New Testament - I mean speaking in the voice of a commentator on the text. (i.e. an attempt at translating a modern commentary ends up with a lot of -οτης / -ία, ἡ words to describe the adjectives / nouns in the Biblical text, and so on, φιλία is a commentary on the descriptive word φίλος). There are other texts of the same period that have a high degree of abstraction.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stirling Bartholomew
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Re: Rank shifting

Post by Stirling Bartholomew »

cwconrad wrote:I wonder whether φιλία is the proper word here. Would we say that Aquila and Priscilla are φίλοι? It's curious that the noun appears only once in the GNT:
Jas 4:4 μοιχαλίδες, οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ἡ φιλία τοῦ κόσμου ἔχθρα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστιν;
Yes it would make more sense if we used a verb and noun relating to marriage partners. οἴδατε ὅτι Πρίσκιλλα ἡ γυνὴ αὐτοῦ.

The following looks to me like well formed English translated into Greek literally.
Γινώσκομεν ὅτι ὁ Ἀκύλας φιλεῖ τὴν Πρίσκιλλαν. Τοῦτ' ἔστιν, γινώσκομεν
C. Stirling Bartholomew
cwconrad
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Re: Rank shifting

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
cwconrad wrote:It's curious that the noun appears only once in the GNT:
Speaking in the "abstract" is not so common in the New Testament - I mean speaking in the voice of a commentator on the text. (i.e. an attempt at translating a modern commentary ends up with a lot of -οτης / -ία, ἡ words to describe the adjectives / nouns in the Biblical text, and so on, φιλία is a commentary on the descriptive word φίλος). There are other texts of the same period that have a high degree of abstraction.
"Speaking in the abstract" is something that is frowned on in courses in ancient Greek composition; there's a lot of substantivized adjectives (τὸ ἀγαθόν, τὸ καλόν); there's the weird noun καλοκἀγαθία derived from the Athenian equivalent of "a gentleman and a scholar" (a rather archaic ideal!), καλὸς κἀγαθός. But I thought it was indeed curious that ἡ φιλία appears only once in the GNT while ἡ ἀγάπη appears no less than 116 times.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Rank shifting

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:I wonder whether φιλία is the proper word here.
Longus' love story, Daphnis and Cloe has;
    • φιλεῖν "to kiss", "to show affection" - 61 (approx.)
    • φίλημα "kiss", "show of affection" - 36 (approx.)
    • φίλος "friendly" / "friend" - 10 (approx.)
    • φιλία "affectionate regard" - 1
cwconrad wrote:Would we say that Aquila and Priscilla are φίλοι?
I think that logically the φιλία is the abstract noun derived from φίλος, and φίλημα is nominal form derived from φιλεῖν
Stirling Bartholomew wrote:The following looks to me like well formed English translated into Greek literally.
Γινώσκομεν ὅτι ὁ Ἀκύλας φιλεῖ τὴν Πρίσκιλλαν. Τοῦτ' ἔστιν, γινώσκομεν
One difficulty in dealing with this statement and the suggestions is making a reasonable guess as to what was meant by what was written in Greek. There are broadly-speaking three strategies;
  1. word-for-word from another language (gloss-to-gloss),
  2. modelling a native speaker's passage with some reasonable level of change, or
  3. constructing sentences using abstracted structures and the requirements of different words.
It is a reasonable effort, word classes and the number-case system are clearly understood, there is an attempt to use the article idiomatically with proper nouns. Some other points are;
  • The choice of φιλεῖ (as I think Clay suggests) seems to be an attempt to render English "love" - a type 1 strategy.
  • The SVO order of ὁ Ἀκύλας φιλεῖ τὴν Πρίσκιλλαν could have been modeled on English and be "accidently" correct, or modeled on something like John 5:20 Ὁ γὰρ πατὴρ φιλεῖ τὸν υἱόν, or have been from constructed from rules, so because it is not a mistake, it can't indicate anything. A question like, "Why is John 20:2 ὃν ἐφίλει ὁ Ἰησοῦς OVS while 5:20 was SVO?" might go some way to clarifying what happened in composition.
  • The transitional phrase Τοῦτ' ἔστιν is used in some of the same ways that we use "i.e." in English, but not all.
    • The most common way it is used is in Greek to expand on one aspect of an idea (as in, "I will be cooking in the late morning, τοῦτ’ ἔστιν the lunch for you to eat" - ) cf. Acts 19:4, Romans 10:6, 7, Philemon 12.
    • another way is "He lives in 601, τοῦτ’ ἔστιν at the end of the corridor." or vice versa) cf. Romans 10:8, Hebrews 2:14, 7:5, 9:11, 10:20, 13:15, 1 Peter 3:20, or
    • before a translation (Matthew 27:46, Acts 1:19) where one phrase is put into the same place in another language. Where it seems to say, "in other words" as in Hebrews 11:16 κρείττονος ... τοῦτ’ ἔστιν, ἐπουρανίου "better, in actual fact heavenly" still here more information, or
    • a better understanding is given, cf. Mark 7:2, Romans 7:18, 9:7-8.
    The most important point is that either more information is given, almost by way of explanation, or the case (and where appropriate the number and gender) (in the case of translation the overall structure and meaning in an unknown language) is preserved. Does this composition meet either of those 2 requirements? No. It attempts to express the same information in other words, so it neither preserves nor adds. Therefore Τοῦτ' ἔστιν in this seems to be a calque of the English use of "i.e.". To make an explanation, perhaps something based on ὁμόσημος might work, but using ὅ ἐστιν "which is to say", an εἰ (if-then) at the beginning of the sentence, a participle + full verb γινώσκοντες ὅτι ... οἴδατε τὴν ... .
  • There is a degree of variance as to whether the second or third person is used for framing statements (γινώσκομεν vs. γινώσκετε). It is unclear whether the composer's English habit or an awareness of Greek conventions was brought to bear in the composition.
  • γινώσκομεν τὴν φιλίαν τινός may imply that we have personally experienced it and now know it, in a way that the distance of a ὅτι. LSJ (γιγνώσκω) notes "οἶδα know by reflection, γιγνώσκω, = know by observation". The abstract noun φιλία seems to be what is known by reflection after observation. That suggests that using γινώσκομεν twice was a gloss-for-gloss translation of the English.
In short, yes, it seems to be grammatically-well enough, but somewhat unidiomatically translated from good English.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
KimmoHuovila
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Re: Rank shifting

Post by KimmoHuovila »

Trying to steer the conversation back to my question about rank shifting, I notice that LSJ says about φιλία
the person is commonly expressed by πρός τινα...less freq. εἰς ἀλλήλους...also by object. gen.
The purpose of the permutations was just to make the question shorter. For example my number (3) can be written out
(3) τὴν φιλίαν (τὴν) τοῦ Ἀκύλα [εἰς, πρὸς] τὴν Πρίσκιλλαν.
(3a) τὴν φιλίαν τὴν τοῦ Ἀκύλα εἰς τὴν Πρίσκιλλαν.
(3b) τὴν φιλίαν τὴν τοῦ Ἀκύλα πρὸς τὴν Πρίσκιλλαν.
(3c) τὴν φιλίαν τοῦ Ἀκύλα εἰς τὴν Πρίσκιλλαν.
(3d) τὴν φιλίαν τοῦ Ἀκύλα πρὸς τὴν Πρίσκιλλαν.
So the question was not whether all (3a)-(3d) are possible, but which among them.

As to the question of whether they were φίλοι, I do not presume to have much evidence, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary, I would think rather φίλοι than ἐχθροί. However, this may be outside of the scope for b-greek. :-)

As for using γινώσκομεν twice, I am not sure why it would be a mistake. If you paraphrase a sentence, you are not necessarily making a reflection on another sentence. Remember that the context is a grammatical question about language, not a story of two people and our inferences about them. So, it seems better to repeat the word to lessen the irrelevant differences between the sentences to focus on the relevant differences for the question.

ὄ ἐστιν seems good to me.
Kimmo Huovila
KimmoHuovila
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Joined: June 2nd, 2011, 8:57 am

Re: Rank shifting

Post by KimmoHuovila »

How would a writer disambiguate between the subjective and objective genitives in ἡ φιλία τοῦ Ἀκύλα? ἡ φιλία ἣν ἔχει ὁ Ἀκύλας and ἡ φιλία πρὸς τὸν Ἀκύλαν?

Would 1 John 4:16 support using ἐν to indicate the object or is it irrelevant?

I looked at a few grammars on rank shifting and found nothing. Is this a neglected topic of Greek grammar?
Kimmo Huovila
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Rank shifting

Post by Stephen Hughes »

KimmoHuovila wrote:Which of the following makes for a good continuation and which are not good Greek?
KimmoHuovila wrote:Trying to steer the conversation back to my question about rank shifting
I thought the original question was about "good Greek", and you were attempting some sort of variable composition. - Good Greek vs. bad continuation(s).

Could you please re-state / rephrase your question?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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