This article resolves the semantic, syntactic, and lexical requirements for the grammatical use of the twenty-nine New Testament verbs that designate communication without a necessary reference to speaking. The discussion establishes criteria for distinguishing verbal usages, identifies four basic usages of non-spoken communication, and examines the conditions for the permissible omission of required complements. The presentation of the licensing properties of verbs with the four basic usages clarifies the similarities and dissimilarities in the realizations of complements for verbs of non-spoken and spoken communication and illustrates two further usages that are restricted to verbs of non-spoken communication. The concluding discussion considers patterns in the distribution of complements and usages among verbs of non-spoken communication.
44 Paul Danove
Passivization in Greek (as in English) permits the Agent complement
to remain unrealized, with or without a definite retrievable contextual
referent:
οὐ γάρ ἐστιν κρυπτὸν ἐὰν μὴ ἵνα φανερωθῇ (Mark 4,22)
For nothing is hidden, except that it be revealed [by someone] [to someo-
ne].
1.4. The Conventions of the Presentation
The presentation resolves all occurrences of verbs with each usage ac-
cording to the lexical realizations of their second and third complements
and groups all occurrences of a given lexical realization of the second
complement with its associated realizations of the third complement.
The text specifies the number of verbs with each set of second / third
complement realizations and the number of occurrences of these verbs
in parentheses. When the set of realizations for a usage has an exact
parallel among NT verbs of spoken communication, the parallel appears
immediately beneath the example of non-spoken communication. When
a complement realization or usage is unique to non-spoken communica-
tion, the discussion presents the NT example of non-spoken communica-
tion followed by one LXX parallel of non-spoken communication. The
footnotes present the usage with a slash separating the second and third
arguments (e.g., AC/E), each set of realizations of second and third argu-
ments separated by a slash, and, after each set of realizations, the verbs
with these realizations, the number of their occurrences in parentheses,
and the list of their occurrences. The footnotes identify occasions of at-
traction of a relative pronoun to the case of its antecedent by [dat
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