Phillip S Marshall | Houston Baptist University (original) (raw)

Drafts by Phillip S Marshall

Paper delivered to Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics Section of Society of Biblical Literat... more Paper delivered to Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics Section of Society of Biblical Literature in Atlanta, November 2015.

This paper investigates the issue of how to determine whether anarthrous Greek participles in an oblique case (excepting Genitive Absolute constructions) are adverbial or adjectival in function. Many Greek grammarians, when explaining participial usage, identify an adverbial function for anarthrous participles in oblique cases. In 2003, Martin Culy published a thought-provoking article in which he argued that syntactically, adverbial participles are distributed in only one of two situations: (1) when the participle agrees with the case of the subject noun and the participial action is performed by that subject (usually, the participle is in the nominative case--when the main verb is finite--but sometimes in the accusative case--when the the main verb/action is the infinitive and the agent is required to be in the accusative case), and (2) when the subject of the main verb is not identical to the “subject” of the adverbial participle (in such cases, the Genitive Absolute construction--which has an adverbial function--is used). Culy reanalyzed anarthrous participles in oblique cases as instances, not of adverbial function, but adjectival function, since such morpho-syntactic situations fall outside of these two proposed constraints on the normal distribution of adverbial participles. This paper will analyze the weaknesses (and strength) of Culy’s claims, attempt to shed some light on how to determine whether such participles in oblique cases are adverbial or adjectival, and finally discuss the discourse-pragmatic function of these sorts of participles.

Books by Phillip S Marshall

Paper delivered to Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics Section of Society of Biblical Literat... more Paper delivered to Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics Section of Society of Biblical Literature in Atlanta, November 2015.

This paper investigates the issue of how to determine whether anarthrous Greek participles in an oblique case (excepting Genitive Absolute constructions) are adverbial or adjectival in function. Many Greek grammarians, when explaining participial usage, identify an adverbial function for anarthrous participles in oblique cases. In 2003, Martin Culy published a thought-provoking article in which he argued that syntactically, adverbial participles are distributed in only one of two situations: (1) when the participle agrees with the case of the subject noun and the participial action is performed by that subject (usually, the participle is in the nominative case--when the main verb is finite--but sometimes in the accusative case--when the the main verb/action is the infinitive and the agent is required to be in the accusative case), and (2) when the subject of the main verb is not identical to the “subject” of the adverbial participle (in such cases, the Genitive Absolute construction--which has an adverbial function--is used). Culy reanalyzed anarthrous participles in oblique cases as instances, not of adverbial function, but adjectival function, since such morpho-syntactic situations fall outside of these two proposed constraints on the normal distribution of adverbial participles. This paper will analyze the weaknesses (and strength) of Culy’s claims, attempt to shed some light on how to determine whether such participles in oblique cases are adverbial or adjectival, and finally discuss the discourse-pragmatic function of these sorts of participles.