Grammatical categories and Luke 6:12b

Mike Sangrey msangrey at BlueFeltHat.org
Tue Jul 24 14:51:01 EDT 2001



Grammatical categories, as taught, are presented as a laundry list
of possibilities.  One thing wrong, IMO, is the assumption that the
list is perfectly discrete or scalar.  There's been some cases for me 
where that just doesn't seem quite right.  Another is that the student 
is lulled into a sort-of best-fit mentality.  "Ummmmm...let's see now.
This ending here is a dingwhat and that gives me these 7 choices.  
Well, yep, it's gotta be dis here one."  Well, I suppose that has been
insultingly over stated, but I think the gist of it is pretty close to
reality.

I wish, if grammars are going to give me a laundry list, then they
would also give me the process which partitions a document using 
those catagories.  And that's the problem, isn't it?

Being a fluent English speaker, I can take the following sentence
and make sense of how the infinitive `to go' is functioning.

   I got to go to the bedroom.

And, again, being a fluent English speaker, I can take the following
sentence, too.  And it makes sense.

   I got to go to the bathroom.

It's a little different, isn't it?  Why did the room change the meaning
of `to go'?  Some will suggest I've used a poor example; but I've chosen
it since it illustrates the subtle interplay between the form--an
infinitive--lexical semantics, context, and the extra-linguistic
context.

The use does not spring from the form; the form only provides the 
potential.  Other factors select and refine the use.  I need to 
understand better how that selection process works in Greek.  Grammars 
don't seem to help here.

And it seems we are lulled into thinking they do.
-- 
Mike Sangrey
msangrey at BlueFeltHat.org
Landisburg, Pa.
                        "The first one last wins."
            "A net of highly cohesive details reveals the truth."





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