[b-greek] RE: Does it have support out side of the NT, also universal syntax

From: Mark Beatty (marksresearch@hawaii.rr.com)
Date: Thu Oct 26 2000 - 02:09:18 EDT


Brian Sullivan wrote

"Can anyone demonstrate Smarts rule applying outside the NT? It seems to me
that since the corpus was written in the common language of the day a
significant body of examples should exist as part of common speech."

Then there is still my question, what would a Modern Greek speaker say?
Formerly I wrote:

"This is one of the
problems of studying Koine Greek. Many answers concern intuitions and it is
hard to did up a Koine Greek speakers. Are there any Modern Greek speakers
reading? Could we say, "yini mou kai adelphia mou" and "yini kai adelphia
mou" (or whatever the equivalent of 4 and 5 would be for a native speaker
of Modern Greek)? One further point about the Greek, the discussion should
not be limited to possessive pronouns. The discussion should include all
genitives in the constituency structure. Thus, the "leading example and
perfect example OF FAITH" of Hebrews 12:2 should also be subject to a Smart
type analysis."

Briefly, in response to Daniel L. Christiansen on using other languages, he
is partially right about syntax not applying to other languages-but this
depends on what syntax you are using. It appears, by Christiansen's own
confession, that his syntax does not apply to other languages, and perhaps
not even to Modern Greek. My syntactic paradigm does, and if exceptions can
be found it is a significant blow to the validity of my syntactic paradigm.
Consider Christiansen's examples:

"hO ANHR KALOS An anarthrous adjective paired
with an articular noun, is predicative, and the phrase is acceptable,
"normal" Greek;
[English]: THE MAN HANDSOME This "parallel construction" is parallel only in
terms of
word order"

But consider the following well-formed sentence in English: "I consider the
man handsome." Whether you analyze this by larsonian structures or small
clauses, the syntax is very similar to the Greek hO ANHR KALOS.

(I recommend Radford (1997, Syntactic theory and the structure of English: A
minimalist approach Cambridge) as a good, but difficult starting point for
the syntactic theory I am using. Larsonian structures and small clauses are
covered some in that book.)




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