Bavinck wrote: ↑November 12th, 2017, 5:13 pm
re. the link between
morphology and semantic function I found it a useful thought when pulling in his further observations about the fact that the article can be used alongside pronouns other than the relative pronoun. He suggests that this is due to the similar function of the two.
Thanks for the link to Wallace. I found it amusing that Wallace agrees. I wonder if Wallace is aware that this is a fundamental doctrine of SFL. Morphologically:
difference implies (a distinction in) meaning. Peters appears to be affirming the opposite: Morphologically:
similarity implies functional-semantic relationship, not exactly
identity but some sort of semantic overlap.
The second chapter (“The Common Function of the Article and Relative Pronouns: Methodology” [69–82]) puts forth Peters’s general approach. Two essential arguments are given for the association of the relative pronoun with the article in the Koine period: they are both used in similar constructions and they have a similar morphology. The first argument is explicated in subsequent chapters. The second argument seems to be against Peters’s overall thesis that the article’s functions have changed over time. He nowhere discusses the relative pronoun’s changing functions but uses morphology as an argument that the two have similar functions. Yet morphology is akin to etymology, and this argument looks suspiciously like what lexicologists call root fallacy or etymologizing. Syntactical studies could benefit from input from lexicology, reaching back to Barr’s Semantics of Biblical Language and, through that landmark volume, to Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale. Throughout Peters’s treatment he is careful never to label the formal relationship of the relative pronoun and the article as etymological (though he comes close to this on p. 2), but by calling it morphological it seems to be little more than a rose with a different name.
—Daniel B. Wallace
September 1, 2016
RE: Brill edition, I totally agree with Stephen Carlson. Two years is a tight schedule for getting a dissertation into print.
C. Stirling Bartholomew