dative "direct object"
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Oct 18 20:17:47 EDT 2002
At 7:58 PM -0400 10/18/02, Tracey Ray Lane wrote:
>Dr. Conrad,
>
>Might we regard those verbs which take their objects in the dative as,
>perhaps, containing some 'internal object', with the dative, then,
>receiving the action of the verb indirectly? This is an initial thought,
>and I plan to look into it a bit more. Maybe I'll find that I am way off
>base.
I don't want to be dogmatic on this, but I've just done a quick search on
PROSERCOMAI; I find 10 hits with this verb followed immediately by a noun
in the dative governed by it (e.g., Mt 15:1 TOTE PROSERCONTAI TWi IHSOU APO
hIEROSOLUMWN FARISAIOI KAI GRAMMATEIS ...) and 42 hits with this verb
followed immediately by AUTWi which is clearly governed by the verb.
There are several of these verbs that take the dative; I've not looked them
up, since PROSERCOMAI came to mind immediately; many of them are verbs of
motion.
Then there are those verbs that take two accusatives: one of the person and
one of the thing ...
Verbs are ornery "creatures": you have to learn them like you learn persons
by faces and behavior; you can categorize them to some extent, but they
don't all quite fit into neat schemes of intelligibility. I've just been
reading through Guy Cooper's _Attic Greek Prose Syntax_ and have been
utterly astounded at the detailed differences of behavior of verbs most of
which I thought I knew pretty well.
--
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.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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