Restrictive Adjectives

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Jonathan Robie
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Re: Restrictive Adjectives

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Hmmm, so what if the noun is not nominative, but the adjective is? Here, the adjective phrase functions as a subject, and is not predicative.

Matt.12.6!5 τοῦ ἱεροῦ μεῖζόν - λέγω δὲ ὑμῖν ὅτι τοῦ ἱεροῦ μεῖζόν ἐστιν ὧδε.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: Restrictive Adjectives

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Adjectives of "all" behave differently from other adjectives. They locate more freely, not necessarily following expected rules.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Restrictive Adjectives

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Hughes wrote: May 5th, 2017, 1:39 pm Adjectives of "all" behave differently from other adjectives. They locate more freely, not necessarily following expected rules.
Yes, that seems to be what is going on in most of those examples.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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timothy_p_mcmahon
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Re: Restrictive Adjectives

Post by timothy_p_mcmahon »

Interesting examples of adjectives in the 'predicate position' whose meaning is attributive (except Acts 20:26), but it seems they all are either ολος or πας – are there any examples with descriptive adjectives?
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Restrictive Adjectives

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Jonathan Robie wrote: May 5th, 2017, 2:47 pm
Stephen Hughes wrote: May 5th, 2017, 1:39 pm Adjectives of "all" behave differently from other adjectives. They locate more freely, not necessarily following expected rules.
Yes, that seems to be what is going on in most of those examples.
To add to your list of "all" words ὁλόκληρος is used twice with different senses in each place - "complete" / "integral" (an adjective) at James 1:4, but I think that it follows the "all"/"whole"-type-word freer word order in:
1 Thessalonians 5:23 wrote:Αὐτὸς δὲ ὁ θεὸς τῆς εἰρήνης ἁγιάσαι ὑμᾶς ὁλοτελεῖς · καὶ ὁλόκληρον ὑμῶν τὸ πνεῦμα καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ τὸ σῶμα ἀμέμπτως ἐν τῇ παρουσίᾳ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ χριστοῦ τηρηθείη.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
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Jonathan Robie
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Re: Restrictive Adjectives

Post by Jonathan Robie »

timothy_p_mcmahon wrote: May 5th, 2017, 7:56 pm Interesting examples of adjectives in the 'predicate position' whose meaning is attributive (except Acts 20:26), but it seems they all are either ολος or πας – are there any examples with descriptive adjectives?
Not that I could find quickly. The ones with descriptive adjectives are predicative, just as the grammars tell us. For instance ...

Matt.26.41!9: τὸ πνεῦμα πρόθυμον, - τὸ μὲν πνεῦμα πρόθυμον, ἡ δὲ σὰρξ ἀσθενής.
Matt.26.41!13: ἡ σὰρξ ἀσθενής. - τὸ μὲν πνεῦμα πρόθυμον, ἡ δὲ σὰρξ ἀσθενής.
Rom.7.12!2: ὁ νόμος ἅγιος, - ὥστε ὁ μὲν νόμος ἅγιος, καὶ ἡ ἐντολὴ ἁγία καὶ δικαία καὶ ἀγαθή.
Rom.11.16!3: ἡ ἀπαρχὴ ἁγία, - εἰ δὲ ἡ ἀπαρχὴ ἁγία, καὶ τὸ φύραμα·
Rom.11.16!11: ἡ ῥίζα ἁγία, - καὶ εἰ ἡ ῥίζα ἁγία, καὶ οἱ κλάδοι.
Rom.12.9!1: ἡ ἀγάπη ἀνυπόκριτος. - ἡ ἀγάπη ἀνυπόκριτος.
Heb.13.4!7: ἡ κοίτη ἀμίαντος, - Τίμιος ὁ γάμος ἐν πᾶσιν καὶ ἡ κοίτη ἀμίαντος, πόρνους γὰρ καὶ μοιχοὺς κρινεῖ ὁ Θεός.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: Restrictive Adjectives

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Jonathan Robie wrote: May 5th, 2017, 12:48 pmAnd there's a logical reason for this - a predicate is in the nominative, so if the adjective is not nominative, it probably isn't functioning as a predicate.
Case marks the layers of meaning. The nominative case marks the outermost layer of meaning. Non-verbal sentences have the noun and adjective in the nominativem because that is as far as the information goes. A verbal sentence adds more information, so the noun and the adjective become non-nominative. The rules of what in English would be subject and predicate seem to still hold in the oblique cases in phrases like Romans 1:20 "εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὐτοὺς ἀναπολογήτους·", where "they are unable to make a defence (for themselves)" occurs in a prepositional adverbial phrase. English might construct that verse from the simple statement out, "They are unable to mount a defence because his unchanging power and divinity have been displayed through all that He made since the beginning of creation."

[To labour the point of the different ways that our two languages construct meaning, English naturally starts with the basic statement (the detail), the adds layers after it, (ignoring genitives absolute for a moment) Greek starts with the nominative (on the outside) and then gets to the detail in an oblique case. Case doesn't seem to affect the rules of predication, but rather it is a function of the construction of meaning. English tends to add details after a simple statement, like, "There are fifty apples on a single tree because of God's blessing." (vs. God blessed the tree to produce fiftyfold).]
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Alan Bunning
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Re: Restrictive Adjectives

Post by Alan Bunning »

timothy_p_mcmahon wrote: May 5th, 2017, 7:56 pm Interesting examples of adjectives in the 'predicate position' whose meaning is attributive (except Acts 20:26), but it seems they all are either ολος or πας – are there any examples with descriptive adjectives?
Yes, there are many other such “adjectives” and it has nothing to do with them meaning “all”. For starters, there is also αρχοσ, μεσοσ, εσχατοσ. All of these are more correctly thought of as types of “determiners”. Here is a good introductory article that discusses the subject: https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstrea ... h_2009.pdf.

If you want more information it is also discussed here: Richard Faure, “Determiners”, Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics, vol. 1, p. 442-446. Brill: Leiden, 2014.

Here is something I wrote about them in a nutshell:

Determiners are a relatively new concept in the field of linguistics, but are significantly different than adjectives in both syntax and meaning. Concerning syntax, determiners can occupy syntactical positions that do not apply to descriptive adjectives. For example, you could say, “some happy people”, but not “happy some people”. Concerning meaning, determiners are typically not gradable and cannot form comparatives or superlatives. For example, you could say “very happy”, “happier”, or happiest”, but not “very some”, “somer” or “somest”.

Over the last several months I have been working on finding all of the different determiners in the New Testament which are identifiable by syntax. So far have identified 100 different possible words which I have classified into 9 different categories as shown in section 4.2 of the CNTR project description (http://greekcntr.org/downloads/project.pdf). I hope to write a paper someday on my findings, but would like to check some of the words over a wider range of data. (Some of the potential determiners are used so few times in the New Testament that they don’t appear in an unambiguous determiner position.) I had asked Jonathan Robie if there was a way to search for individual words in Perseus that would show their context, of if there were syntax trees for some of the classic Greek works, but he ignored my email. So does anyone know of such ways to search other classical works?
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Re: Restrictive Adjectives

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Alan Bunning wrote: May 6th, 2017, 8:05 am Over the last several months I have been working on finding all of the different determiners in the New Testament which are identifiable by syntax. So far have identified 100 different possible words which I have classified into 9 different categories as shown in section 4.2 of the CNTR project description (http://greekcntr.org/downloads/project.pdf). I hope to write a paper someday on my findings, but would like to check some of the words over a wider range of data. (Some of the potential determiners are used so few times in the New Testament that they don’t appear in an unambiguous determiner position.) I had asked Jonathan Robie if there was a way to search for individual words in Perseus that would show their context, of if there were syntax trees for some of the classic Greek works, but he ignored my email. So does anyone know of such ways to search other classical works?
I just searched my email and found the one you sent - it was at the end of a long chain of emails from you, James Tauber, Randall Tan, and Micheal Palmer, and I didn't participate much in it because I was busy. You then sent an email copied just to me, but in Gmail, it shows up at the end of the same thread, and I had tuned out by then. In general, I don't usually use email for long technical discussions, so email easily gets lost. Phone, Slack, video chat, or forums work better for me. And for this, B-Greek might be a good place.

Is there a test I could apply to the GNT to identify all determiners? I have syntax trees for the GNT.

You can certainly search for individual words on Perseus, here's one way you can do it:

http://perseus.uchicago.edu/#GreekTexts

For instance, here are results for the three examples you named:
There are syntax trees for some Perseus texts here:

https://perseusdl.github.io/treebank_data/

There are others of varying quality scattered around the Web ...
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Restrictive Adjectives

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Alan Bunning wrote: May 6th, 2017, 8:05 am section 4.2 of the CNTR project description (http://greekcntr.org/downloads/project.pdf)
The morphology columns are largely the same as what Tauber or Robinson use. The syntax columns overlap a great deal with the labels we use in the syntax trees - are you also building trees? One nit: the section header is Morphology, but some of these labels are syntax.

Our trees allow labels for class and type, which is more or less a subtype, for each syntactic function. I am slowly filling in the type for various things. For adjectives, I would be inclined to use (1) attributive, (2) predicative, and (3) substantive rather than ascriptive and restrictive, for reasons discussed in this thread. I'm not sure how best to treat participles used in the same way.

Our determiners are currently less sophisticated than yours, and are basically equivalent to articles.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
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