Re: THEORY: Adpositional Heads

On Thursday, September 11, 2003, at 07:14 , John Cowan wrote:

> Joe scripsit:
>
>> I don't think I've ever heard 'our Father who is in heaven' 'who art',
>> 'which art' and just 'in heaven', but never 'who is in heaven'
>
> The point is, in English we use a relative clause (in all but very modern
> versions) when we don't need to, because we are calquing the Latin version
> which did need to.
That's right - direct translation from the Greek would be:
"Our father in the heavens"

The early vernacular translations of Wycliffe and the Lollards were of the
Latin Vulgate versions; the Lord's Prayer was amongst the first passages to
become familiar in vernacular use and the early versions of the English
Bible
reflect this.  The Great Bible (1539), from which the Anglican Book of
Common
Prayer (1549, revised & reissued in 1662) took its scriptural passages, and
the used the King James version (1607) has:
"Our father which art in heaven"

The Catholic Douai-Rheims (NT 1582, OT 1609) version has:
"Our father who art in heaven"

Most modern translations AFAIK have: "Our father in heaven".

> Googling shows "who is" with about 3600 hits, "who art" with about 32,800,
> "which art" with about 16,000, and no relative clause with about 48,000.
> So "who is" is a minority taste but not unknown.  Me, I'm an agnostic.
Interesting - I suspect that had the Internet been around 50 years ago the
results would've been a bit different.  I suspect the figures for "who art"
and "which" would've at least have been more evenly balanced. Certainly
this
side of the Pond, the opening line of the Lord's Prayer was one of the
shibboleths distinguishing. Catholic & Protestant.  But "who art" seems now
to be generally used among all but the most conservative Protestant
communities
over here.

And "who is" would've been condemned as "ungrammatical" after the vocative
"Our father" and, I guess, would have figured significantly lower.
==================================

On Friday, September 12, 2003, at 02:55 , Isidora Zamora wrote:

[snip]
> I learn something new on this list all the time.  I had no idea that this
> was the case with prepositional phrases in Latin, and I took it in both
> high school and in college --all the way through Vergil, plus a course in
> Medieval Latin.  I really do begin to wonder what they *didn't* neglect to
> teach me in school.  <sigh>
Did your high course basically read Latin or did you get around to actually
writing continuous Latin prose (or verse)?  We were not taught this the
'standard' Latin course for the hoi polloi. It was those few of us who
continued with Latin after the age of 16 in what was called over here the
"Sixth Form" (I haven't got used to the modern terminology!) who thus
enlightened when we emabarked on Latin prose composition (which I loved).

As for Medieval Latin, that differed in very many respects from the
Classical
norm.  You find these phrases used both adverbially & adjectivally there.
'Twas the classical language and late Roman Latin that used them only
adverbially.

Ray
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