Re: Relative Clause Position

From: Carl William Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Wed Jan 28 1998 - 15:59:03 EST


On Wed, 28 Jan 1998, clayton stirling bartholomew wrote:

> Let's assume that you are reading the NT using a Greek text without
> punctuation. And let's assume that you come upon a long but well formed main
> clause which contains all the necessary elements and when you come to the end
> of this clause you mentally place a period. Now the next word you encounter is
> a relative pronoun introducing a relative clause which appears to be modifying
> the subject of the previous clause.
>
> Would this scenario cause you confusion? Is there some sort of syntax rule
> that states that a relative clause modifying the subject of a main clause must
> be embedded within the main clause?
 
No, not really. I think this has more to do with rhetoric than with any
rules governing "ordinary" sequence. What is particularly common in a
rhetorical sequence is the positioning of a relative clause in advance
with a relative pronoun that is picked up later by a demonstrative, as in
Rom 7:15 OU GAR hO QELW TOUTO POIW, ALL' hO MISW TOUTO POIW. I think that
the more natural order would have been: OU GAR TOUTO POIW hO QELW ALLA
TOUTO POIW hO MISW.

Another feature that I think is probably more common in Latin than in
Greek, although I think I've seen it in Greek, is the positioning of a
relative pronoun at the beginning of what is really a new sentence and the
relative pronoun doesn't introduce a relative clause but simply functions
as a subject with an identifying antecedent in a previous sentence. In
English this would be something like: "The king will be in town next week;
he will proclaim a new decree"-- where we use the pronoun 'he' Greek or
Latin may use a hOS (or QUI). You can see this illustrated in my
'favorite' passage in Ephesians (1:3-14): look at the usage of hO in vs
14, or of EN hWi in vs 11 and vs 13. We translate these relative pronouns
in English normally with demonstratives ('this,' 'that') or simple
personal pronouns ('he,''she,' 'it').

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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