Datives with Prepositions

Carl Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Nov 23 06:32:15 EST 2002


At 3:06 PM -0600 11/22/02, Ron Fay wrote:
>It has been my experience that what one labels a dative with a
preposition
>is irrelevent, that is the label of the dative.  It is the preposition
that
>carries the force, not the case.  EN is locative, the dative case is just
>the case that EN takes.
>
>Thus, EK and a genitive is just labeled by what EK does, it has nothing
to
>do with the genitive.
>
>Therefore, I recommend labeling the full phrase, not the case by itself,
>since it is the full phrase doing something, specifically by the semantic
>force of the preposition.

But in fact EN + dative is NOT always locative; if it were, it would be
consistently turned to English "in" or "at"; but the phrases listed by
Heinz Schmitz in his original post are not locative at all; to call them
"locative" is, I think, not really all that helpful. When John the Baptist
says (Mk 1:8), EGW EBAPTISA hUMAS hUDATI, AUTOS DE BAPTISEI hUMAS EN
PNEUMATI hAGIWi, EN PNEUMATI hAGIWi is instrumental (just as is the hUDATI
without any EN in the preceding clause).
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



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