[b-greek] Re: PASAN THN PISTIN

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Wed Jan 17 2001 - 20:25:12 EST


At 11:29 AM +0100 1/17/01, Iver Larsen wrote:
>In a reply to Mark Wilson Carl wrote among other things:
>>
>> (1) PAS is one of those "demonstrative" adjectives that is ALWAYS used in
>> the predicative position with respect to article and noun.
>>
>I am not sure what "predicative position" means, but I assume it means
>that when
>PAS modifies a nominal construction it ALWAYS precedes it. If that
>assumption is
>wrong, the following comments may not be speaking to the point. If the
>assumption is right, then we need to clarify the issue.

The distinction normally made in teaching of Greek in the U.S. is between
an ATTRIBUTIVE position of an adjective WITHIN an article directly
referring to a noun and a PREDICATE or PREDICATIVE position of an adjective
OUTSIDE an article directly referring to a noun. So, yes: PANTES hOI
ANQRWPOI is predicative, and so is hOI ANQRWPOI PANTES; what we DON'T see
with forms of PAS is hOI PANTES ANQRWPOI (unless we wanted to say something
like "whole men"!).

>Although PAS normally precedes the noun it modifies, there are 23 instances in
>the NT where it follows. For those who want to look them up, I am listing them
>at the end of the message.
>
>We are dealing here with both inherent and positional prominence/emphasis.
>Certain lexical items are prominent simply by the fact that they occur. This I
>call inherent prominence. For instance, I could say "A child was screaming" or
>"The children were screaming." I could also say "One child was screaming" or
>"All the children were screaming." The mere mentioning of "one" and "all"
>marks
>the idea it refers to as prominent. In English, such words tend to be stressed
>to show the prominence.
>
>In Greek, the normal, unmarked, expected order of a noun + modifier is
>that the
>modifier follows the noun (opposite of English order.) However, if the author
>wants to put a relatively greater prominence on the modifier than the
>noun, then
>the modifier is moved forward to precede the noun.
>In the case of a few modifiers which are inherently prominent, the normal,
>unmarked, expected order is modifier+noun. That is why words like PAS, POLUS,
>hOLOS and hEIS precede the nouns they modify, unless they are markedly
>downgraded in prominence. If these words follow the noun, it means that
>the noun
>itself has relatively greater prominence than the modifier, and this is an
>important aspect to take into account.
>
>To go back to the English example. We can do some of the things with
>stress what
>Greek does with word order. If I say "All the CHILDREN were screaming" I am
>contrasting the children to some other people who were not screaming, and the
>word "all" is then made relatively less prominent. To show that in Greek, one
>would need to say PAIDES PANTES, and not PANTES PAIDES. However if there
>is no
>particular stress on children, the default order in Greek for "all the
>children"
>would be PANTES PAIDES.
>
>Now the list for PAS following the noun it modifies (to save you firing up
>GRAMCORD):
>Matt 9:35, 10:30, 26:56, Mark 1:5, Luke 21:24, John 5:22,
>Acts 2:14, 4:29, 8:40, 16:26, 27:20
>Rom 3:8, 12:4, 16:16
>1 Cor 7:17, 13:2 (note the different orders in the various PAS constructions),
>15:7, 16:20
>Eph 5:8, 1 Th 5:26, 2 Ti 4:21, 2 Pet 1:5, Rev 13:12
>
>Iver Larsen
>Kolding, Denmark
>alice-iver_larsen@wycliffe.org
>
>
>---
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--

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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