Referent of an appositive

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Hi ya,

 

  I am looking at apposition where the case of the referent and the appositive differ. It turns out that identifying such case is rather prone to false positives. I am wondering if it is possible to know the referent of the appositive. It appears that there is no real tagging of this, and thus that one must infer it by various other means, such as case agreement, proximity, enclosing clause structure and so on. Is that correct or is there a way to find appositive and it's referent directly ?

 

  If there is not then it would be a really nice thing to add though I realise it would require additional tagging work.

 

thx

D

[Robert Holmstedt]

Hebrew or Greek database?

And please provide an illustrative example for your question. 

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Hi Robert,

 

Thanx for getting back to me. A rather long, I'm afraid, response below.

 

This is Greek. Specifically I'm working on apposition as defined by Wallace in Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics.

His classification of Nominative in Apposition to Oblique Cases cites as examples, Rev 1:5, 3:12, 7:9, 9:14,14:12 and 16:13.

 

Now as a preface I ought to note that taking one grammarians' definition of a feature and trying to match it to anothers' is not going to strike 100% accord, often nothing like it. One must expect that there will be differences of opinion and that tagging done by one would not match that done by the other. This has occurred routinely in cases I've been investigating in Wallace using the Accordance Greek syntax as tagged by Marco. Pertinent to the question at hand then some cases that Wallace claims for apposition Marco tags as adjuncts (or perhaps otherwise - my analysis is not complete) and those I do not expect to find any match using the apposition tagging in the syntax database.

 

But this particular feature has the following key characteristics :

 

  1. adjacent substantives, for some definition of adjacent. Clearly literally adjacent words will exclude too many cases.

  2. The appositive itself is in the nominative case

  3. The referent of the appositive is in an oblique case - I have excluded both nominative and vocative

 

  Now strictly I am probably abusing the term referent here as strictly both the oblique substantive and the nominative in apposition to it have the same referent. But by referent of the appositive I mean the substantive to which it stands in apposition. Perhaps the appositee ? I don't know if there is a special term for it.

 

  Now with all that background what is the problem I am having and why did I ask what I asked ?

 

  I am trying to construct an Accordance search which finds examples of Nominative in Apposition to Oblique Cases.

  In doing so I would like to be able to specify that the substantive (referent) be in an oblique case and that the appositive be in the nominative. The problem arises because of sometimes the nearest words to the appositive are oblique case substantives which are not the referent. As one cannot attach the oblique case specification definitively to the correct substantive the number of false positives rises.

 

  And so finally to an example :

 

“Ὧδε ἡ ὑπομονὴ τῶν ἁγίων ἐστίν, οἱ τηροῦντες τὰς ἐντολὰς τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τὴν πίστιν Ἰησοῦ.”
(Ἀποκάλυψις 14·12 Novum Testamentum Graece (New Testament in Greek))
accord://read/GNT28-T#Rev._14:12

 

  Here is the endurance of the holy ones, those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

 

  And here is the syntax chart :

 

 

  You'll notice that this case is correctly found by this search :

 

 

  Note that this one half of the full search. The other half does the same basic search but searches for the same structure replacing the Subject phrase with a Complement phrase. It is attached below for reference.

 

  Now taking a false positive from the results :

 

“Καὶ ὡς ἐγένετο ἡμέρα, συνήχθη τὸ πρεσβυτέριον τοῦ λαοῦ, ἀρχιερεῖς τε καὶ γραμματεῖς, καὶ ἀπήγαγον αὐτὸν εἰς τὸ συνέδριον αὐτῶν”
(Λουκᾶν 22·66 Novum Testamentum Graece (New Testament in Greek))
accord://read/GNT28-T#Luke_22:66

 

  And when day broke, the body of elders of the people gathered, both the high-priests and scribes, and they lead him away to their council.

 

  And here is the syntax for this :

 

 

  Now what happens here is that the wrong substantive is selected, λαοῦ rather than πρεσβυτέριον or more correctly τὸ πρεσβυτέριον τοῦ λαοῦ. Had that referent been known the search could have excluded this hit because it would be known that the referent had the wrong case.

 

  Similar examples occur in a number of places particularly where the referent has an adjunct substantive in an oblique case. It is possible of course that these might be exclude by other means than I suggest, but I've not figured out something as fool proof yet. I need to complete my analysis to see if other different cases exist.

 

“Ὀψίας δὲ γενομένης ἦλθεν ἄνθρωπος πλούσιος ἀπὸ Ἁριμαθαίας, τοὔνομα Ἰωσήφ, ὃς καὶ αὐτὸς ἐμαθητεύθη τῷ Ἰησοῦ·”
(Μαθθαῖον 27·57 Novum Testamentum Graece (New Testament in Greek))
accord://read/GNT28-T#Matt._27:57

 

  provides another interesting false positive. In this case the substantive Ἁριμαθαίας is found when in fact the referent should be ἄνθρωπος. There are a number of this type.

 

  Ok this took way longer to explain than I had intended. Hopefully it helps.

 

Thx

D

 

 

[Robert Holmstedt]

Very interesting. But I'm going to have to let Marco address this. I'm curious about a few things and don't dare make assumptions, since it's Greek and not my database.

 

I call the first term th "anchor".

[Λύχνις Δαν]

No worries, and thanx for the term "anchor" - that should help in the future.

 

Thx

D

[Marco V. Fabbri]

Daniel:

 

I will try to divide the answer into parts.

 

In general, we expect appositions to be in the same case as their anchor. So, we shouldn't find any hit. But then, the book of Revelation sometimes departs from the rules. This is why there actually are hits.

 

About the first example: do you mean that this works as you exepected, or that it doesn't?

 

 

  And so finally to an example :

 

“Ὧδε ἡ ὑπομονὴ τῶν ἁγίων ἐστίν, οἱ τηροῦντες τὰς ἐντολὰς τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τὴν πίστιν Ἰησοῦ.”
(Ἀποκάλυψις 14·12 Novum Testamentum Graece (New Testament in Greek))
accord://read/GNT28-T#Rev._14:12

 

  Here is the endurance of the holy ones, those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

 

  And here is the syntax chart :

 

Rev14_12.jpg

 

  You'll notice that this case is correctly found by this search :

 

AppSubjSearch.jpg

 

  Note that this one half of the full search. The other half does the same basic search but searches for the same structure replacing the Subject phrase with a Complement phrase. It is attached below for reference.

 

 

 

If I understand you correctly, this is the part that works. If it is so, then we may move to other examples that don't work as expected.

 

Marco

[Λύχνις Δαν]

Hi Marco,

 

  Thanx for getting back to me. Yes Rev 14:12, the case you quote above, is correctly found.

 

  The other two cases I note in my original post, Luke 22:66 and Matt. 27:57 are the incorrect cases. I believe they should highlighted different substantives than they actually did.

 

Thx

D