[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Deconstructing Deep Structure



At 7:31 AM -0400 5/24/97, Clayton Bartholomew wrote:
>Deconstructing Deep Structure
>
>The title of this post is more provocative than the question. Richard
>A. Young in his Greek Grammar uses a phrase regularly which I would
>like to have defined.
>
>The phrase is of the form: *In the objective genitive, the genitive
>represents a deep structure object . . .* (p31).
>
>Is it fair or accurate to reword this: *An objective genitive
>functions in it's context as an object*?
>
>This is not a question about objective genitives. This is a question
>about the phrase *represents a deep structure . . .*; is this another
>way of saying *it functions as . . .* or is it really saying a lot
>more than this or something entirely different than this?

I would not want to claim to be reading Young's mind, but I think he's
saying that an objective genitive dependent upon a verbal noun implies a
hidden clause whose verb represents the verbal noun and whose object
represents the objective genitive. Sorry if I'm jus stating the obvious,
but that's what I *think* he means.

>I am not trying to start an argument about terminology here. I am just
>trying to decode what is for me a rather obfuscatious phrase.

You mean "rather obfuscatious phrase" such as "the arguments of HN"? ;-)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu  OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



Follow-Ups: References: