Rank shifting

[Stephen Hughes]

Would 1 John 4:16 support using ἐν to indicate the object or is it irrelevant?

ἡμεῖς ἐγνώκαμεν ... τὴν ἀγάπην ἣν ἔχει ὁ θεὸς ἐν ἡμῖν

I think it is a dative of advantage with the dative-marking preposition ἐν.

Another verse very similar to the one you mentioned is:

ἐὰν ἀγάπην ἔχητε ἐν ἀλλήλοις.

Cf.

εἰρηνεύετε ἐν ἀλλήλοις

Perhaps ἐν + dat. expresses an unchangingness rather than the scope of the action

[cwconrad]

Would 1 John 4:16 support using ἐν to indicate the object or is it irrelevant?

ἡμεῖς ἐγνώκαμεν ... τὴν ἀγάπην ἣν ἔχει ὁ θεὸς ἐν ἡμῖν

I think it is a dative of advantage with the dative-marking preposition ἐν.

Another verse very similar to the one you mentioned is:

ἐὰν ἀγάπην ἔχητε ἐν ἀλλήλοις.

Cf.

εἰρηνεύετε ἐν ἀλλήλοις

Perhaps ἐν + dat. expresses an unchangingness rather than the scope of the action

I sometimes wonder whether there's much more we can say about ἐν + dative in the Koine of the GNΤ than that ἐν is a dative-marking preposition and that it can express almost any kind of linkage between the dative form and whatever it is syntactically linked to. There are, of course, plenty of instances of the older standard locative usage, but the looseness of GNT usages of ἐν + dative never ceases to seem remarkable to me.

[cwconrad]

How would a writer disambiguate between the subjective and objective genitives in ἡ φιλία τοῦ Ἀκύλα? ἡ φιλία ἣν ἔχει ὁ Ἀκύλας and ἡ φιλία πρὸς τὸν Ἀκύλαν?

Would 1 John 4:16 (ἡμεῖς ἐγνώκαμεν ... τὴν ἀγάπην ἣν ἔχει ὁ θεὸς ἐν ἡμῖν) support using ἐν to indicate the object or is it irrelevant?

I looked at a few grammars on rank shifting and found nothing. Is this a neglected topic of Greek grammar?

(1) I don't think there's any way in the world to disambiguate between subjective and objective genitive in ἡ φιλία τοῦ Ἀκύλα. The genitive-case form simply indicates a relationship between the two nouns, like a two-noun linkage in English with or without a hyphen: "Aquila-love" or "Aquila love" can mean either "the love that Aquila feels" or "love for Aquila." There's the vexing question of whether πίστις ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ means "faith in Jesus Christ" or "Jesus Christ's faith". Language is imprecise here. I understand that you want to disambiguate, but that does require more conscious effort on the part of speakers and writers than is ordinarily exercised. A considerable proportion of what we say and write communicates only to the extent that speaker/writer and audience/readers can "read" between the lines the implicit assumptions that are unspoken but shared.
(2) I have never felt comfortable with he expression τὴν ἀγάπην ἣν ἔχει ὁ θεὸς ἐν ἡμῖν: it's always seemed to me to admit the interpretation: "the love which God sustains among us." Perhaps it does mean "the love that God has for us" -- but, as I've stated elsewhere, ἐν ἡμῖν seems a rather vague "having to do with us."
(3) I do think Greek writers tend to avoid constructions such as have both a subjective and an objective genitive dependent on the same noun; any usage that involves two distinct nouns in the same case is awkward, as for example, the text cited in the A.T. Robertson citation recently under discussion, Lk. 2:27, ἐν τῷ εἰσαγαγεῖν τοὺς γονεῖς τὸ παιδίον. Here we assume that τοὺς γονεῖς is the subject, τὸ παιδίον the object of εἰσαγαγεῖν, but it's only the context that makes that clear. Sometimes one suspects that the author deliberately phrases the text ambiguously -- there's a celebrated passage in Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus in which it's unclear whether a σε or a με is the subject or object of a verb -- and we suspect that the ambiguity is intentional (if I can find that, I'll edit it into this later).

[KimmoHuovila]

Stephen,

I am basically trying to figure out what ways of rank shifting a clause into a noun phrase are 'good Greek', meaning grammatical and secondarily, considered normal (as opposed to 'foreign' or 'awkward'). My interest is in noun phrases that are headed by a noun and not composition per se. What are the ways of expressing what would be the subject and the object if it was a finite sentence?

[KimmoHuovila]

(1) I don't think there's any way in the world to disambiguate between subjective and objective genitive in ἡ φιλία τοῦ Ἀκύλα.

I was not clear. I do not mean disambiguate in the sense of what readers do. I mean how to write it in an unambiguous way.

(3) I do think Greek writers tend to avoid constructions such as have both a subjective and an objective genitive dependent on the same noun; any usage that involves two distinct nouns in the same case is awkward, as for example, the text cited in the A.T. Robertson citation recently under discussion, Lk. 2:27, ἐν τῷ εἰσαγαγεῖν τοὺς γονεῖς τὸ παιδίον. Here we assume that τοὺς γονεῖς is the subject, τὸ παιδίον the object of εἰσαγαγεῖν, but it's only the context that makes that clear. Sometimes one suspects that the author deliberately phrases the text ambiguously -- there's a celebrated passage in Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus in which it's unclear whether a σέ or an ἐμέ is the subject or object of a verb -- and we suspect that the ambiguity is intentional (if I can find that, I'll edit it into this later).

Yes. Authors do not strive for more unambiguous expressions than they feel need for. In Luke 2:27 the lexis is enough. What I am interested in is what strategies do authors use when they do want to make their text unambiguous. In other words, how do authors avoid these ambiguous constructions?

I am not basically asking a question of modern composition but rather trying to understand choices from the point of view of the ancient author.

[cwconrad]

I do think Greek writers tend to avoid constructions such as have both a subjective and an objective genitive dependent on the same noun; any usage that involves two distinct nouns in the same case is awkward, as for example, the text cited in the A.T. Robertson citation recently under discussion, Lk. 2:27, ἐν τῷ εἰσαγαγεῖν τοὺς γονεῖς τὸ παιδίον. Here we assume that τοὺς γονεῖς is the subject, τὸ παιδίον the object of εἰσαγαγεῖν, but it's only the context that makes that clear. Sometimes one suspects that the author deliberately phrases the text ambiguously -- there's a celebrated passage in Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus in which it's unclear whether a σε or a με is the subject or object of a verb -- and we suspect that the ambiguity is intentional (if I can find that, I'll edit it into this later).

The passage to which I was referring is Sophocles, OT 376-7. Oedipus and Teiresias have been exchanging angry taunts and threats at each other. Here Teiresias responds to Oedipus:

οὐ γάρ σε μοῖρα πρός γ ̓ ἐμοῦ πεσεῖν, ἐπεὶ
ἱκανὸς Ἀπόλλων, ᾧ τάδ ̓ ἐκπρᾶξαι μέλει.

Roughly: "It's not your fate to fall at my hands, since Apollo is enough, his task it is to bring that about."

But there's a textual variant that reverses the relationship and that makes every bit as much sense in the context, inasmuch as the destinies of both Oedipus and Teiresias are enmeshed in Apollo's devious machinations:

οὐ γάρ με μοῖρα πρός γἐ σοῦ πεσεῖν, ἐπεὶ
ἱκανὸς Ἀπόλλων, ᾧ τάδ ̓ ἐκπρᾶξαι μέλει.

"It's not my fate to fall at your hands, since Apollo is enough; his task it is to bring that about."

Opinions differ over which reading is original; the alternative could be an "actor's interpolation" -- actors often substituted alternative elements into the texts of plays they performed, just as did the rhapsodes performing the Homeric epics.

[Stirling Bartholomew]

Trying to steer the conversation back to my question about rank shifting, I notice that LSJ says about φιλία

the person is commonly expressed by πρός τινα...less freq. εἰς ἀλλήλους...also by object. gen.

The purpose of the permutations was just to make the question shorter. For example my number (3) can be written out
(3) τὴν φιλίαν (τὴν) τοῦ Ἀκύλα [εἰς, πρὸς] τὴν Πρίσκιλλαν.
(3a) τὴν φιλίαν τὴν τοῦ Ἀκύλα εἰς τὴν Πρίσκιλλαν.
(3b) τὴν φιλίαν τὴν τοῦ Ἀκύλα πρὸς τὴν Πρίσκιλλαν.
(3c) τὴν φιλίαν τοῦ Ἀκύλα εἰς τὴν Πρίσκιλλαν.
(3d) τὴν φιλίαν τοῦ Ἀκύλα πρὸς τὴν Πρίσκιλλαν.
So the question was not whether all (3a)-(3d) are possible, but which among them.

Trying to wrap my mind around rank shifting[1]. Your examples seem to raise questions about the syntax of prepositions rather than rank shifting. Perhaps I am missing the point.

I am not sure if the following are examples of rank shifting:

26 Ἰησοῦς οὖν ἰδὼν τὴν μητέρα καὶ τὸν μαθητὴν παρεστῶτα ὃν ἠγάπα, λέγει τῇ μητρί· γύναι, ἴδε ὁ υἱός σου. 27 εἶτα λέγει τῷ μαθητῇ· ἴδε ἡ μήτηρ σου. καὶ ἀπ᾿ ἐκείνης τῆς ὥρας ἔλαβεν ὁ μαθητὴς αὐτὴν εἰς τὰ ἴδια.

John 21:7 λέγει οὖν ὁ μαθητὴς ἐκεῖνος ὃν ἠγάπα ὁ Ἰησοῦς τῷ Πέτρῳ· ὁ κύριός ἐστιν. Σίμων οὖν Πέτρος ἀκούσας ὅτι ὁ κύριός ἐστιν τὸν ἐπενδύτην διεζώσατο, ἦν γὰρ γυμνός, καὶ ἔβαλεν ἑαυτὸν εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν,

John 21:20 Ἐπιστραφεὶς ὁ Πέτρος βλέπει τὸν μαθητὴν ὃν ἠγάπα ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἀκολουθοῦντα, ὃς καὶ ἀνέπεσεν ἐν τῷ δείπνῳ ἐπὶ τὸ στῆθος αὐτοῦ καὶ εἶπεν· κύριε, τίς ἐστιν ὁ παραδιδούς σε;


[1]Systemic Functional Grammar

[Stephen Carlson]

I had not heard of rank shifting, thanks, but, then, I'm not really familiar with Systemic Functional Grammar.

[Stirling Bartholomew]

I had not heard of rank shifting, thanks, but, then, I'm not really familiar with Systemic Functional Grammar.

Over the last half century generative grammar has spun off a number of branches some of which I find difficult to comprehend. I looked at several explanations of rank and rank shifting which seemed to contradict each other.

http://linguisticslearner.blogspot.com/ ... ional.html

http://eprints.uny.ac.id/6740/1/Jurnal%20ini.pdf

“Rank” here refers to the hierarchical linguistic units of sentence, clause, group, word and morpheme. There are two types of rank shifts that is the upward and downward rank shift. The upward rank shift is the movement of units of language from lower to upper unit of language. There are six types of upward rank shift: words into phrases, words into clauses, words into sentences, phrases into clauses, phrases into sentences, and clauses into sentences.

RANK SHIFTS IN ENGLISH-BAHASA INDONESIA SUBTITLE OF THE KING’S SPEECH MOVIE, thesis summary Sonny Primadani Hasannudin, page 2.

Thematization, Topic, and Information Flow
James D. Dvorak
Associate Professor of Greek and New Testament, Oklahoma Christian University

https://www.academia.edu/842374/Themati ... ation_Flow

I follow the OpenText.org definitions of primary, secondary, and embedded clauses (see "Introduction to the
Annotation Model," [http://www.opentext.org/model/introduction.html]):
Clauses are divided into two levels: (1) primary clauses; and (2) secondary clauses. The primary and secondary
distinction has to do with the two possible types of logical dependency, dependence (hypotaxis) or equality
(parataxis). Primary clauses are connected to each other, while secondary clauses are connected to the primary
clause to which it is dependent. The majority of primary clauses consist of clauses with a finite verb. Secondary
clauses are typically distinguished by means of a subordinating conjunction. A second type of secondary clause, the
embedded clause, involves the phenomenon of rank-shifting—a linguistic element is embedded to a level of
grammar lower than the typical level at which it functions. The majority of secondary embedded clauses in Greek
are participial and infinitival clauses.

Thematization, Topic, and Information Flow James D. Dvorak p. 6, n43
Associate Professor of Greek and New Testament, Oklahoma Christian University

I am still not sure what we are talking about. It seems like a somewhat convoluted manner of speaking about a straightforward feature of language that has been explained with less ambiguity in other frameworks.

[KimmoHuovila]

I chose the term 'rank shifting' to emphasize the fact that I am looking into the relationship of elements in two different ranks: clauses and noun phrases. But for my limited purpose here, we can talk about the syntax of prepositions as long as we can talk about subjects and objects and the relationship of the phrases to corresponding finite clauses.

Most grammars seem to look at the syntax of prepositions with little regard to the relationship between the prepositional phrase and a corresponding finite clause – at least not spelling out the options an author had in rank shifting a finite clause into a noun phrase.