[B-Greek] Acts 17:26-27

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Mon Oct 30 23:48:19 EST 2006


On Oct 30, 2006, at 7:03 PM, Eddie Mishoe wrote:
> Then you say...
>
> Two constituents can be co-referential
>> without the
>> second one qualifying the first.
>
> How so?


Eddie,

That is in fact what my question was about. How can this be?

Culy & Parsons state that ZHTEIN TON QEON ... is in a second purpose  
clause of EPOIHSEN in apposition to KATOIKEIN EPI PANTOS PROSWPOU THS  
GHS.

David Crystal (Dict. Ling. & Phon. 4th ed) apposition(al) ... a  
sequence of units which are constituents at the same grammatical  
level, and which have identity or similarity of reference.

Crystal then gives an example "John Smith, the butcher, came in" with  
two noun phrases and notes that they have the same syntactic function  
so that either can be eliminated without breaking down the structure  
of the clause.

In what sense do the two "purpose clauses" (?) ZHTEIN TON QEON ...  
and KATOIKEIN EPI PANTOS PROSWPOU THS GHS have the same referent? Are  
we calling EPOIHSEN the referent? I cannot see how the second purpose  
clause qualifies or gives more information about the first purpose  
clause. They both point back to EPOIHSEN.

My best guess, and it is only a guess, is that Culy & Parsons are  
using the term apposition here to tell us that in a generative  
parsing tree the two "purpose clauses" are at the same level and are  
attached to the same higher level constituent EPOIHSEN.

Elizabeth Kline


On Oct 30, 2006, at 8:33 AM, Elizabeth Kline wrote:

> ACTS 17:26 EPOIHSEN TE EX hENOS PAN EQNOS ANQRWPWN KATOIKEIN EPI
> PANTOS PROSWPOU THS GHS, hORISAS PROSTETAGMENOUS KAIROUS KAI TAS
> hOROQESIAS THS KATOIKIAS AUTWN  27 ZHTEIN TON QEON, EI ARA GE
> YHLAFHSEIAN AUTON KAI hEUROIEN, KAI GE OU MAKRAN APO hENOS hEKASTOU
> hHMWN hUPARCONTA.
>
> Culy & Parsons state that ZHTEIN TON QEON ... is in apposition to
> KATOIKEIN EPI PANTOS PROSWPOU THS GHS. Finding this puzzling I looked
> up appositive/apposition in two dictionaries of linguistics R.L.Trask
> and David Crystal. Trask limited apposition to noun phrases but David
> Crystal did not, he defined it as any two constituents at the same
> grammatical level which are co-referential.
>
> I was under the mistaken impression that second constituent in some
> way needed to qualify or give further explanation about the first
> constituent. Two constituents can be co-referential without the
> second one qualifying the first.
>











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