TIP OF THE DAY 39: Name as a word; basic linguistics

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STEP SEVEN: Name as a word

In this step, I will discuss only Greek because it is an Indo-European language where I understand the basic grammar and syntax. I lack that knowledge for Semitic languages. If someone wishes to provide a parallel section for Semitic languages, I will gladly include it.

TOPIC: Basic linguistics

VOCABULARY

accusative — The case that normally marks the direct object of a verb or the object of some prepositions.^[1]

case — A term that refers to the role a noun or pronoun plays in a sentence; a word’s grammatical relationship to other words in a sentence.^[2]

dative — The case that is regularly used for indirect objects and the objects of some prepositions. The dative refers to the person or thing to which something is given or for whom something is done.^[3]

genitive — The genitive is the case that qualifies or restricts a noun by means of a specific characterization. The genitive normally marks a noun as the source or possessor of something, or refers to the kind of relationship that noun has to another noun. It is typically expressed in English by the preposition “of”. For example, in the phrase “throne of the king” the noun “king” is in the genitive and qualifies the type of throne. In “blood of Christ,” Christ is the genitive noun which describes possession. The genitive case is also used for the objects of some prepositions.^[4]

grammar --  the whole system and structure of a language or of languages in general, usually taken as consisting of syntax and morphology.^[5]

morpheme — The smallest grammatical unit of a language that conveys meaning.

morphology — The study of the structure of words and how words are formed from morphemes^[7]

nominative — The case that normally refers to the subject of a verb or a noun following a form of the verb “to be” or “to become” (ie, a predicate nominative) that renames the subject.

part of speech — a category of words that have similar grammatical properties or syntactic functions. E.g. substantive, verb or adjective.^[9]

phoneme — The smallest sound units in a language.^[10]

semantics — The study of meaning in a language’s morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences.^[11]

syntax — The study of the grammatical relationship between words and other components within a sentence.^[12]

vocative — The case that is used for direct address. The noun in the vocative case is being directly addressed.^[13]

QUESTION: What is the difference between morphology, grammar, syntax, and semantics?

SOFTWARE: Entering this question in the Logos/Verbum all search yields reasonable results.

ANSWER: from the synopsis:

In linguistics, morphology, grammar, syntax, and semantics are distinct but interrelated aspects of language study. Morphology focuses on how words are formed and structured. Grammar is a broader term encompassing the overall science of language, which includes morphology, syntax, and other components. Syntax specifically deals with the arrangement of words and word groups into sentences and larger units. It's often seen as closely related to morphology, with some linguists considering it a second phase of grammar study]. Semantics, on the other hand, is concerned with the meaning of words and expressions. While these components are often studied separately, they are interconnected in the overall structure and function of language.[14]

From myself:

Morphology tells you which grammatical roles it might fill.

Grammar tells you which grammatical roles it does fill.

Syntax refines the meaning of the grammatical role.

Semantics gives you the roles that hold across all synonymous transformations of the sentence.

QUESTION: What is meaning?

Answer: from Bock, Darrell L. “Lexical Analysis: Studies in Words.” In Interpreting the New Testament Text: Introduction to the Art and Science of Exegesis, edited by Darrell L. Bock and Buist M. Fanning, 135–153. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books: A Publishing Ministry of Good News Publishers, 2006.

In semantics one of the problems of lexical meaning is, in fact, determining what one means by speaking about a word’s meaning!⁵ Semanticists have produced as many as twenty-five possible senses for meaning; but a few distinctions are extremely significant for exegesis and indicate the need for careful analysis. A list of these distinctions follows.

1. Entailment meaning pertains to a word or idea that implies some type of conclusion or implication not explicit in the term or context. For example, a passage that shows Jesus engaged in an activity that only God can perform entails the idea that Jesus is divine, even though the specific theological assertion that Jesus is God is not explicitly made in the text (e.g., Mark 2:1–12).

2. Emotive meaning applies to the use of a term that carries emotional force. So when James calls his readers adulteresses for their poor behavior (4:4), he is picking a term with emotive meaning to purposely shame them. A sensitive interpreter will note this emotive force to the term.

3. Significance meaning refers to a term or concept that takes on new meaning when brought into a context different from the original one (e.g., the NT use of the OT may bring additional force or emphasis to an earlier text). So when Jews were seen as enemies of Messiah in Acts 4:25–27 using an appeal to Psalm 2, the category of enemy expanded in terms of referent. It went from the general expectation of a Psalm that used to be read by Israel about the nations who opposed God’s chosen regal ruler to include also Jews who opposed the Lord and his chosen. The switch in who is referred to shows how much things have changed with Jesus’ coming and the rejection of him by many Jews. A text that once expressed Jewish hope now reveals their potential opposition to the gospel.

4. Encyclopedic meaning denotes all the possible meaning that a term may have. One generates such a full list from a dictionary, lexicon, or exhaustive word study tool.⁶ This range of possible meanings allows for a variety of interpretations, as well as misinterpretation. The goal of an interpreter is to take these possibilities for meaning and determine which particular meaning fits in a given context.

5. Grammatical meaning refers to the grammatical role of a term, such as the categories that one learns in an intermediate Greek grammar course. Some interpreters use this limited area of grammatical or syntactical classification to secure meaning, when in fact all these categories often do is limit the array of possible meanings. Just as words have possible meanings, so grammatical categories often have a variety of possible forces or uses, with the exact force being determined by contextual factors.

6. Figurative meaning indicates the use of a term because of the association it makes, not because the term’s sense and referent are directly applied to what the term describes. For example, when Jesus speaks of faith that can “move mountains,” he is not referring to the use of earth-moving equipment but to faith that can do marvelous things. Many exegetical debates turn on whether a term is literal or figurative, which is always an appropriate question to consider. Usually an understanding of genre, idiom, a judgment about whether a literal meaning makes “good” sense, and authorial style help in interpreting figures.

These senses of meaning can be significant in assessing the force of a given term, and must receive attention in thinking through the study of a term. However, they are not as central to the study of a term as the three basic elements of a word.

5.1.2.2 The Three Elements of a Word

Considered most abstractly, words are made up of three basic elements that contribute most directly to their intended meaning: sign, sense, and referent. In reality a word is a symbol that communicates meaning within a given culture or subculture.⁷ A word does not have meaning; it is assigned meaning through cultural convention and usage.

The first element of a word is the sign, the collection of symbols that comprise a word. For example, the English word “p-a-r-a-c-l-e-t-e” is made up of nine alphabetic symbols. These symbols allow us to identify and pronounce the word. If we know the symbols and the coding patterns of the language, then we can understand the meaning. Sometimes a word is obscure because we do not know the symbols that comprise it. For example the term παράκλητος makes no sense to someone who does not know Greek, because the symbols of the word make no sense. If one went to Israel and tried to read Hebrew without having studied the language, that person could not begin to work with meaning because he or she would not be able to read the symbols that make up the word. Without translation or explanation, the reader would be unable to work with the text.

The second element of a word is sense, which is the content associated with the symbol.⁸ The sense of a word is closely related to one of the lexical “definitions” of the word, with the exact sense being a function of the word’s use in context. However, the concept referred to by the sense of the term need not precisely identify what a text is actually referring to with a given term. For example, the Greek term for “paraclete” means “comforter,” which by itself is ambiguous in English, since it could refer specifically either to an object similar to a quilt or to a sympathetic encourager. The ambiguity results in part from an ambiguity in the “receptor” language (in this case English). In addition, one must identify who or what exactly is referred to as a comforter. In this case, the sense of the term is really a description of an attribute as opposed to making an identification of what exactly is being described. So the sense often gets one closer to the meaning of a text, but it does not always specify or identify clearly what exactly is being referred to by the term in question. Interpretation requires that we inquire into what exactly is being described. The context in which the word appears will help us not only to determine the term’s sense, but also, hopefully, its referent (what it actually refers to). Nonetheless, once the term’s general content is clear, one begins to know the passage’s general direction in terms of its meaning.

The third element of a word is the referent. The referent is the actual thing denoted by the term in a specific context. In John 14–16, for example, the referent of “paraclete” is clearly neither a human sympathetic figure nor a blanket; rather the term refers to the one Jesus will send after his resurrection to be with believers. This is specifically a reference to the Holy Spirit. The identification of the referent, where possible, produces specificity and clarity in interpretation. Thus, specifying referents, where possible, is an important goal in exegesis.

The complex nature of a word’s meaning and its various elements requires that the interpreter exercise great care in approaching the study of words. Once the biblical student has grasped the fundamentals of word study, the meaning of meaning, and the basic elements of a word, then he or she can proceed with care and precision in the actual procedure of word analysis.^[15]

TOPIC: Morphological cases

QUESTION: Build a table of the Greek morphological cases, their definition, and the roles they may fill in a sentence.

SOFTWARE: Chapman, Benjamin, and Gary Steven Shogren. Greek New Testament Insert. 2nd ed., revised. Quakertown, PA: Stylus Publishing, 1994. and Heiser, Michael S., and Vincent M. Setterholm. Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology. Lexham Press, 2013; 2013. are the primary sources of this data.

WARNING: It is a common error on the forums for one to assume that nominative=subject=agent. That is NOT true and can lead to errors in the interpretation of scripture as well as search arguments that lead to inaccurate results.

^[1] Michael S. Heiser and Vincent M. Setterholm, Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology (Lexham Press, 2013; 2013).

^[2] Michael S. Heiser and Vincent M. Setterholm, Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology (Lexham Press, 2013; 2013).

^[3] Michael S. Heiser and Vincent M. Setterholm, Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology (Lexham Press, 2013; 2013).

^[4] Michael S. Heiser and Vincent M. Setterholm, Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology (Lexham Press, 2013; 2013).

^[5] Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson, eds., Concise Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

Douglas Mangum, The Lexham Glossary of Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).

^[7] Douglas Mangum, The Lexham Glossary of Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).

Michael S. Heiser and Vincent M. Setterholm, Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology (Lexham Press, 2013; 2013).

^[9] Vincent M. Setterholm, Biblia Hebraica Transcripta Glossary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).

^[10] Douglas Mangum, The Lexham Glossary of Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).

^[11] Douglas Mangum, The Lexham Glossary of Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).

^[12] Douglas Mangum, The Lexham Glossary of Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).

^[13] Michael S. Heiser and Vincent M. Setterholm, Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology (Lexham Press, 2013; 2013).

[14] H. W. Fowler, “Grammar, Syntax,” in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Oxford; London: The Clarendon Press; Humphrey Milford, 1926), 220.and Jimmy Parks, Faithlife Hebrew Grammar Ontology (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2023).and Walter R. Bodine et al., Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1992), 90.and Benjamin Chapman and Gary Steven Shogren, Greek New Testament Insert, 2nd ed., revised. (Quakertown, PA: Stylus Publishing, 1994).and NOLx 57 (1992).

⁵ G. B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980), 37–61.

NT New Testament

OT Old Testament

⁶ In a normal lexicon the meanings of a word are simply listed along with passages that reflect a particular meaning. They can also be charted semantically in relation to the term’s “field of meaning,” where the senses are charted as categories of meaning that a word may have and are placed alongside other terms that can be associated with that category of meaning (see Thiselton, “Semantics,” 91, where he charts out the word πνεῦμα; see also Louw, Semantics of New Testament Greek, 60–66). Wods that address the same conceptual area are said to share the same semantic domain. A semantic domain lexicon examines words according to these conceptual groupings. See Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, eds., Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2 vols. (New York: United Bible Societies, 1988). For another excellent treatment of the various relationships among words, see Silva, Biblical Words, 118–35.

⁷ This point is illustrated by the existence of different languages and alphabets, which are simply different symbolic systems for representing concepts in words.

⁸ Silva, Biblical Words, 101–3.

^[15] Darrell L. Bock, “Lexical Analysis: Studies in Words,” in Interpreting the New Testament Text: Introduction to the Art and Science of Exegesis, ed. Darrell L. Bock and Buist M. Fanning (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books: A Publishing Ministry of Good News Publishers, 2006), 139–141.

^[16] Michael S. Heiser and Vincent M. Setterholm, Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology (Lexham Press, 2013; 2013).

^[17] Michael S. Heiser and Vincent M. Setterholm, Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology (Lexham Press, 2013; 2013).

^[18] Michael S. Heiser and Vincent M. Setterholm, Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology (Lexham Press, 2013; 2013).

^[19] Michael S. Heiser and Vincent M. Setterholm, Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology (Lexham Press, 2013; 2013).

[20] Cases in Indo-European Languages: an article by Cyril Babaev

^[21] Michael S. Heiser and Vincent M. Setterholm, Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology (Lexham Press, 2013; 2013).