Re: Ethical date, EMOI

Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Wed, 19 Nov 1997 18:37:42 -0600

At 3:38 PM -0600 11/19/97, Paul S. Dixon wrote:
>On Wed, 19 Nov 1997 15:39:24 -0500 (EST) Edward Hobbs
><EHOBBS@wellesley.edu> writes:
>>The translation of EMOI in such cases is IMHO (in cyberspeak).
>
>Edward:
>
>Am trying desperately to exegete your last sentence. Are your really
>saying the translation of EMOI is IMHO, that is, "in my honest opinion?"
>Or, should we take this as a scribal error where the last part of the
>sentence was thought, but not written? If so, then what was the last and
>most interesting part?

Well, I had always thought that IMHO was "in my humble opinion," but either
way, I think Edward really did say what he meant. Another term for the
"ethical dative" (which I was taught not as "ethical" --as opposed to
unethical?)-- but as the "ethic" dative) is "sentence dative," a dative
which indicates the person in whose eyes, or from whose viewpoint, or in
whose humble (or honest) opinion, the proposition expressed in the main
clause is valid. You may have it as well with a SOI, but it seems to me
that it most often appears in a first or second person form. Thus:

EMOI DH OU CRH OUPOTE TAUTA POIHSAI
"So far as I am concerned, one ought never to do that."
TAUTA SOI ESTI TOIAUTA BIBLIA PALAI GRAFQENTA
"Here you have some books of that sort that were written long ago."

The latter sentence might look like a case of possessive dative, but it
isn't really, even though it's translated as if it were. More literally
it's "Here are some books of that sort that were written long ago, you
know" -- i.e. the function of the dative is to indicate the person to whom
the proposition in the main clause may be of concern or interest.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/