From: B. Ward Powers (bwpowers@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Mon Apr 08 2002 - 20:38:49 EDT
<x-flowed>
At 11:50 PM 020406 -0800, Glenn Blank wrote:
> >At 10:05 PM 020406 -0500, Clwinbery@aol.com wrote:
>
> >>Glen, the predicate nominative is a substantive in the nominative case
>used
> >>with a verb to be (in Greek EIMI, GINOMAI, or hUPARCW some also count
> >>nominatives used with KALEW). The predicate nominative modifies (some say
> >renames) the subject [whether] it is a noun or noun substitute. eg.hO QEOS
> >AGAPH ESTIN, "God is love." God is the subject and love is the pred. nom.
>
>Ward Powers wrote:
>
> >This is one possible and completely valid grammatical description. An
> >alternative term for this, instead of "predicative nominative", is
> >"complement".
>
>Be careful about equating "predicate nominative" with "complement."
>Granted, a "predicate nominative" is a type of a complement. But there are
>other complements that are not predicate nominatives. For example, "to
>be" verbs in Greek also take prepositional phrases as their complements,
>but these are not predicate nominatives.
Yes, as in "God is in his heaven".
>In fact, whatever completes any verb is its complement.
True enough in a kind of way. But I have never seen the term "complement"
applied by a grammarian or linguist to a prepositional phrase. Have you?
>Ward wrote,
>
> >Because it [the "complement"] refers to the same person as the subject, it
> >takes the same case (nominative). (Contrast "Matthew saw the treasurer".)
>
>Most grammars I have seen would call "the treasurer" a complement as well.
Really. This is new to me. I would regard calling "the treasurer" in this
sentence a complement to be completely in error. Tell me the grammars that
do this.
>But Ward, since you are equating "predicate nominative" and "complement",
>you would categorize "the treasurer" with another term, right? What term?
In this sentence "the treasurer" is a distinctly different person from the
subject, "Matthew", and is the direct object of Matthew's "seeing". So it
is in the accusative case. It doesn't "complete" the action of the verb,
it is the object of the action of the verb. Distinctly different from a
complement.
>Of course, I can still hear Evie Pike admonishing us green linguistics
>students at SIL about the arbitrariness of labels: "it doesn't matter what
>you call it -- you can call it 'flowerpot' if you like -- just make sure you
>are consistent." :)
Fair enough comment. "A rose by any other name ..."
>You have to make sure no how the linguist you are reading is using the
>term. In most cases, when he says "complement," he will not mean exactly
>the same thing as "predicate nominative."
Okay, tell me what he will mean.
>--the other Glenn :)
>
>glenn blank
>Pensacola FL
A point of departure for this thread was the comment that some grammars do
not appear to cover "predicate nominative". My comment, in effect, is:
"Also try looking in the index under 'complement'."
Regards,
Ward
http://www.netspace.net.au/~bwpowers
Rev Dr B. Ward Powers Phone (International): 61-2-8714-7255
259A Trafalgar Street Phone (Australia): (02) 8714-7255
PETERSHAM NSW 2049 email: bwpowers@optusnet.com.au
AUSTRALIA. Director, Tyndale College
---
B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [jwrobie@mindspring.com]
To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-327Q@franklin.oit.unc.edu
To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu
</x-flowed>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:23 EDT