'instrumental-comitative dative' - beginners guide to grammatical terms

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Jun 17 08:12:34 EDT 1999


At 4:26 PM +0100 6/16/99, Jonathan Ryder wrote:
>"Carl W. Conrad" wrote:
>
>>So far as "instrumental-comitative case" is concerned, I'd suggest looking at
>>
>><http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/text?lookup=smyth+1503&vers=english>ht
>>tp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/text?lookup=smyth+1503&vers=english
>>(i.e. Smyth's Greek Grammar, #1503).
>>
>>Occasionally there is (pedagogical) discussion on this list as to whether
>>we should teach/learn a five-case system or an eight-case system. When I
>>start out in Greek on the case-system, I usually go over the following very
>>elementary introduction; here's the account I offered of it last Fall on
>>this list in a brief thread entitled "Re: 5 case system vs. 8 case system":
>>
>>>At 2:56 AM -0500 10/22/98, Byron P. Knutson wrote:
>>>>I was out looking at grammars today ( haven't bought any for a few years)
>>>>and it seems that all those I've found that are new are 5 case system
>>>>grammars.  ATR pushed the 8 case system and I thought many thought
>>>>highly of
>>>>his work and scholarship enough to follow it.  The newer scholarship must
>>>>have reasons for going back to the 5 case system like the Classical Greek
>>>>grammars do/did.  Is there any discussion on this by those who have kept up
>>>>on this aspect of the research?
>>>
>>>I don't think this is so much a matter of research, personally. I work more
>>>with Classical Attic than with Koine, and I only refer to five cases, but I
>>>think that some of the functions are so readily distinguishable in terms of
>>>original IE cases that I teach the cases at the outset as:
>>>       Partitive Genitive: basic sense of "part of," "some of"
>>>       Pertinentive or Adnominal Genitive: basic sense of "of"
>>>       Ablatival Genitive: basic sense of "from"
>>>       True Dative: basic sense of "to," "for"
>>>       Instrumental-Comitative Dative: basic sense of "with"
>>>       Locative Dative: basic sense of "in," "on," or "at"
>>>Of course Nominative and Accusative are distinct cases reasonably clearly
>>>defined; and some would refer to Vocative as a real case, although I'd say
>>>it's just a form of the noun without a distinct ending.
>>>
>>>It's true that some secondary Genitive meanings may appear difficult to
>>>assign to one of the three Genitive categories, and I think that more than
>>>economy is involved in the historical assimilation of originally distinct
>>>case functions to a smaller number of case endings--but it's hard to get
>>>too precise about that. I just personally think it's easier to
>>>understand--and explain-- the great bulk of functional case usages if they
>>>are broken down as I have suggested in terms of the historical IE
>>>antecedents.
>>
>>I hope that helps a little, but there's a sizable literature on the subject.
>>
>Ok so far, but what about prepositions. Do the cases following the
>prepositions still fit into the 8 categories suggested above? The example
>we've been discussing (EN + dative) obviously does. Would it be true to
>say that EN + dative is always 'instrumental-comitative'? Can such
>statements be made about all prepositions with their respective cases?

I think it may generally be said that prepositions tend to be used with
only ONE of the alternative categories under a case, but it is not really
so simple or cut-and-dried. EN is normally used (originally used) with a
Locative dative to indicate stationary position; however, it is already
used even in classical Attic with an Instrumental dative to express means
and it is quite frequently so used in the LXX; I've often had the sense
that EN was used with a dative by the LXX translators whenever they
encountered the Hebrew preposition "B'"--but I can't vouch for this as more
than a surmise. Nevertheless it is certainly the case that many instances
of EN + Dative in the GNT are pretty clearly instrumental and the EN needs
to be conveyed in English by "with" or "by means of."

What one really needs to do is to STUDY the prepositions and the range of
their usage in each of the cases; this is the sort of thing I meant to
suggest in my long, pedantic discussion of PROS; there are fundamental
senses to each of the prepositions, even if some of them occasionally
overlap, like hUPER and PERI; one needs to learn these basic senses of the
prepositions that govern more than one case and see how they work with the
basic senses of each of the cases. Smyth's full several-page discussion of
the prepositions is very useful in this way.


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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