Placement of adverb

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David Ting
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Joined: July 9th, 2011, 9:32 am

Placement of adverb

Post by David Ting »

Is the placement of οὐκετι in the example below correct? I wonder whether it should be placed after the μενετε.

You(pl.) are no longer abiding in the darkness of sin because you hear the voice of the Lord.
οὐκετι μενετε ἐν τῃ σκοτιᾳ ἁμαρτιας ὁτι ἀκουετε την φωνην του κυριου.
timothy_p_mcmahon
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Re: Placement of adverb

Post by timothy_p_mcmahon »

Placement of οὐκετι is fine although you need to add an article before ἁμαρτιας (or delete the one before σκοτιᾳ).
David Ting
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Re: Placement of adverb

Post by David Ting »

Placement of οὐκετι is fine although you need to add an article before ἁμαρτιας (or delete the one before σκοτιᾳ).
I cannot figure out why we should add an article before ἁμαρτιας as there is no article "the" before "sin" in he English sentence.
Evan May
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Re: Placement of adverb

Post by Evan May »

It's not an issue of English syntax, but of Greek. If the head noun (σκοτιᾳ) is articular (has τῃ), then the genitive (ἁμαρτιας) should be articular as well. Or, they could both be anarthrous. Either way, they should match. It's called Apollonius' Canon.
David Ting
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Re: Placement of adverb

Post by David Ting »

Thank you Timothy and Evan, I learn something new from your explanation.
David Lim
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Re: Placement of adverb

Post by David Lim »

Evan May wrote:It's not an issue of English syntax, but of Greek. If the head noun (σκοτιᾳ) is articular (has τῃ), then the genitive (ἁμαρτιας) should be articular as well. Or, they could both be anarthrous. Either way, they should match. It's called Apollonius' Canon.
It is true in general, especially if the nouns are not proper nouns and the head noun is not in a prepositional clause, but of course there are exceptions. I believe it is not a syntactical rule but a semantic principle, because when the head noun is articular, it is referring to something specific and therefore the genitive adjectival clause is usually also articular in Greek. On the contrary, in English the article is not used in many places, and even in this case "sin" in "the darkness of sin" is somewhat definite, not referring to an arbitrary sin but "sin itself". If we wanted to say "the darkness of some sin", we could use the indefinite pronoun in Greek.
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David Ting
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Re: Placement of adverb

Post by David Ting »

David, what do you mean by head noun is not in a prepositional clause?

Is ἐν τῃ σκοτιᾳ ἁμαρτιας considered as prepositional clause as there is a preposition before the noun τῃ σκοτιᾳ? If this is the case, shall we still need the article before ἁμαρτιας?
David Lim
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Re: Placement of adverb

Post by David Lim »

David Ting wrote:David, what do you mean by head noun is not in a prepositional clause?

Is ἐν τῃ σκοτιᾳ ἁμαρτιας considered as prepositional clause as there is a preposition before the noun τῃ σκοτιᾳ? If this is the case, shall we still need the article before ἁμαρτιας?
In prepositional clauses the head noun is often anarthous because the preposition already implies some specific entity, so it is common to see "preposition + noun + article + genitive noun". But "article + noun + genitive noun" is rare. Can anyone list examples where the genitive noun is not a proper noun? (I do not remember seeing any so far.)
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timothy_p_mcmahon
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Re: Placement of adverb

Post by timothy_p_mcmahon »

David Lim wrote:In prepositional clauses the head noun is often anarthous because the preposition already implies some specific entity, so it is common to see "preposition + noun + article + genitive noun".
How exactly does a preposition imply some specific entity? Can you cite some NT examples of the chain Pr+N+Art+gN?
David Lim
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Re: Placement of adverb

Post by David Lim »

timothy_p_mcmahon wrote:
David Lim wrote:In prepositional clauses the head noun is often anarthous because the preposition already implies some specific entity, so it is common to see "preposition + noun + article + genitive noun".
How exactly does a preposition imply some specific entity? Can you cite some NT examples of the chain Pr+N+Art+gN?
The problem is that I do not remember any off-hand, but I think I have seen it before. There is an earlier email on B-Greek that is related: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-gr ... 55382.html. I found some: "αρχη του ευαγγελιου ιησου χριστου υιου του θεου" in Mark 1:1 (I do not consider "υιου του θεου" to be a valid exception because it is used as a title) and "εν μεσω της θαλασσης" in Mark 6:47 and "περι τεταρτην φυλακην της νυκτος" in Mark 6:48 and "θορυβος του λαου" in Mark 14:2. The last example also implies that it is almost purely due to semantic reasons rather than grammatical structure, because it simply means "an uproar of the people", not "any people" but "the people". The reason they all come from Mark is because I found: http://ntresources.com/documents/apol_can.pdf. ;)
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