Reid-Heimerdinger - Adjectives and word order

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Matthew Longhorn
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Reid-Heimerdinger - Adjectives and word order

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

Jenny Reid-Heimerdinger recently released the book “Luke in His Own Words - A Study of the Language of Luke-Acts in Greek
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/luke-in- ... 567692986/

I would be curious to hear people’s thoughts on her view of emphasis or lack thereof in the various positions that the adjective takes.

In chapter 4 she deals with word order and on page 117 turns to “Adjectives in the noun phrase”.
She states the following regarding 1st attributive adjectives
The more frequent order is article-adjective noun. In such cases, the order may express a familiar association of the adjective and the noun it qualifies… or it may accord equal attention to the adjective and the noun
Regarding second attributive position adjectives she state
When the adjective follows the arthrous noun (and the article is thereby repeated), the context is somewhat explanatory - explanatory rather than emphatic. The repetition of the article and the separation of the adjective and the noun that it qualifies seem to be factors that achieve this purpose. One example can be seen at 12.10: τὴν πύλην τὴν σιδηρᾶν, ‘the-gate-the-iron’, where the situation is one of defining which gate rather than naming it, as is the case with ‘The Beautiful Gate’ at 3.10
This seems to make sense to me in many of the examples that she gives but runs counter to the view in some grammars I read in the past that the second attributive is an emphatic position. The notion of emphasis that I have seen in some of those grammars can be a bit vague with no specification as to what kind of emphasis is being given. Would it be reasonable to see the adjective in τὴν πύλην τὴν σιδηρᾶν as being emphatic is some sense, just not giving some sort of focal prominence, which remains on the noun, but expressly constraining the options as to which gate is thought of?
That is probably badly expressed, but I am wondering if there is a way to thread the needle and have Reid-Heimerdinger correct as well as people who say that the second attributive is actually emphatic - it just being a question of what we mean by emphasis. I haven’t done enough reading on prominence etc to really know here.


I am also aware that the discussion above doesn’t factor in information flow and I could probably do with re-reading Levinsohn’s work there.


She also deals with examples where the nouns and adjectives are both anarthrous
When the adjective is adding more detail to the noun, the noun being the more important of the two elements, then the adjective follows the noun… When the adjective is placed before the anarthrous noun, the epithet is usually more carefully chosen than when it is in post position. This may be because it is significant of itself, or because special emphasis is being given to it and attention is being focussed on it. Examples occur at 2.4 ‘other tongues’, ἑτέραις γλώσσαις
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Re: Reid-Heimerdinger - Adjectives and word order

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

I think I just answered my own question in part.
Firstly, I missed part of Reid-Heimerdinger’s description of the first attributive stating
…or it may confer special importance on the adjective
. I can’t seem to locate anything explaining what those circumstances would be.

Many of the grammars I have gone through this morning seem to see the first attributive as placing more emphasis on the adjective as a blanket statement, but the second attributive placing emphasis on the adjective and the noun. Both these seem to run counter-to Reid-Heimerdinger to some extent but there is overlap

A couple of examples from the grammars that I was thinking of
Young - Intermediate New Testament Grammar page 81
An attributive adjective ascribes a quality or quantity to the noun with which it agrees. This happens when (1) the adjective is articular and the noun is anarthrous, as in Luke 6:45 (ὁ ἀγαθὸς ἄνθρωπος, the good man), (2) both the adjective and noun are articular (ὁ ἀγαθὸς ὁ ἄνθρωπος, the good man), or (3) both the adjective and noun are anarthrous (ἄνθρωπος ἀγαθός, a good man). There is some emphasis attached to the adjective in the second type, which could be brought out in English by making it a relative clause or an appositive. For example, we could translate 1 John 1:2 τὴν ζωὴν τὴν αἰώνιον as either “the life which is eternal” or “the life, the eternal one.” There is also emphasis in the third type when the adjective precedes the noun: Matthew 10:31 πολλῶν στρουθίων διαφέρετε ὑμεῖς (you are worth more than many sparrows).
Here young does allow for the emphasis he is thinking of in the second position to come out with a relative but I am not sure that this he is restricting his notion of emphasis to just defining like Reid Heimerdinger.

Wallace in his chapter on adjectives IIIa:a and b
The first attributive position is article-adjective-noun (e.g., ὁ ἀγαθὸς βασιλεύς = the good king). In this construction “the adjective receives greater emphasis than the substantive.”… The second attributive position is article-noun-article-adjective (e.g., ὁ βασιλεὺς ὁ ἀγαθός = the good king). This difference in the placement of the adjective is not one of relation, but of position and emphasis. In the second attributive position “both substantive and adjective receive emphasis and the adjective is added as a sort of climax in apposition with a separate article.” A literal, though awkward, gloss, bringing out the force of such a construction of ὁ βασιλεὺς ὁ ἀγαθός, is “the king, the good one.”
Wallace here is saying that there is more emphasis on the adjective than the noun when in the first attributive position. He doesn’t seem to allow for it to sometimes just be the default, or according equal attention counter to Reid-Heimerdinger.
Regarding the second attributive, he references Robertson page 777 when talking of climax in apposition and Robertson gives the following explanation in the footnote 4 there
In Jas. 3:7, τῇ φύσει τῇ ἀνθρωπίνῃ, the repeated article makes for greater clearness
I missed the footnote in Robertson when I had previously read through in the past which made that clarifying role unclear to me. That coheres more with Reid-Heimerdinger than I had previously thought.
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Re: Reid-Heimerdinger - Adjectives and word order

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I don’t think the second attributive is emphatic position and if you hadn’t quoted Young, I wouldn’t have thought grammars said so. That said, when I read the excerpt from Young, I get the impression that he does not know what emphasis means, or at least he’s using it in a very non-standard and certainly not contemporary way.

A good treatment of adjective order in the noun phrase is Stephanie Bakker’s The Noun Phrase in Ancient Greek.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Matthew Longhorn
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Re: Reid-Heimerdinger - Adjectives and word order

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

Thanks Stephen
Wallace, following Robertson also seems to be saying that there is emphasis on the adjective in the second attributive, just that it isn’t on the adjective alone but also on the noun. With both noun and adjective emphatic, it isn’t clear what emphasis means in this case either. If we follow the footnote in Robertson then we could read it as the adjectives emphasis being climactic apposition which clarifies. That then leaves open the question of what the emphasis on the noun is doing.
Any thoughts?

Thanks also for the book recommendation. I will add that one to the list - too many on the go at the moment but always good to have suggestions.
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Re: Reid-Heimerdinger - Adjectives and word order

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I read Wallace as saying that the second attributive position is a default with no special emphasis on the adjective, while there is such on the adjective in the first attributive position. This is somewhat obscured by his statement that both the noun and adjective have emphasis, which seems equivalent to neither having it since emphasis is a relative, not absolute, concept.
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Re: Reid-Heimerdinger - Adjectives and word order

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I should add that the excerpt on the second attributive position from Jenny R-H doesn’t differ from my understanding.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Matthew Longhorn
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Re: Reid-Heimerdinger - Adjectives and word order

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

Stephen Carlson wrote: August 21st, 2022, 10:08 am I read Wallace as saying that the second attributive position is a default with no special emphasis on the adjective, while there is such on the adjective in the first attributive position. This is somewhat obscured by his statement that both the noun and adjective have emphasis, which seems equivalent to neither having it since emphasis is a relative, not absolute, concept.
That makes sense - my initial thought was that if both are emphasised then neither is, but wanted to ensure I wasn’t missing something. That only applies though if we aren’t meant to take the entire noun phrase as now emphatic somehow in the sentence that it appears in. But that seems to stretch it too far.
I will run with your / Reid-Heimerdinger’s interpretation.
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Re: Reid-Heimerdinger - Adjectives and word order

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

Interesting quote from Levinsohn in his SIL paper "A Fresh Look at Adjective – Noun Ordering in Articular Noun Phrases"
By quoting Robertson, Wallace appears to agree that “both substantive and adjective receive emphasis
and the adjective is added as a sort of climax in apposition with a separate article”.9 However,
Bakker makes a weaker claim for Herodotus that appears to fit the New Testament data more
accurately. She asserts that the adjective “is either less or equally salient compared to the noun
(postposition of the modifier being the default situation)...
...I therefore follow Bakker in treating Art N (Poss) Art Adj as a default order in which the adjective
may be either less or equally salient compared to the noun that it modifies.”.
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