[B-Greek] Job 3:24

Albert Pietersma albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Fri Dec 12 21:29:55 EST 2003


Dear Bert,
Perhaps the easiest way is to think of case-endings. As case-endings 
establish a syntactic/structural relationship between constituents of 
phrase/clause/sentence, so do prepositions. With that in mind it is not 
surprising to see that in the history of Greek case-endings tended to 
give way to prepositions. E.g. EIPEN AUTW > EIPEN PROS AUTON.
The DIFFERENCE is that prepositions have greater semantic content than 
do case-endings. Yet in distinction from full lexemes (content words 
like GUNH) they are often referred to as bleached lexemes (relatively 
empty, fluid words whose primary role it is to mark relationships)
As an aside, note that in Greek certain prepositions nuance their 
semantic content by taking different cases. E.g. DIA + accusative means 
roughly "on account of" while DIA + genitive means roughly "through." 
Thus qua prepositions they are even more fluid than the rest.
In sum, case-endings and prepositions are on a continuum.

Cf. Handouts 6 (Cases) and 14(Preposition) on my website (below).
Al
On Friday, December 12, 2003, at 08:16 PM, <bertdehaan at gosympatico.ca> 
wrote:

>
>   Albert Pietersma  wrote;
> ..... One needs to remember, of course, that
>> prepositions are first and foremost structure words, with a very wide
>> range of meaning.....
>
> I have come to realize that prepositions have a very wide range of 
> meaning.
> I was wondering if you could explain what you meant by prepositions 
> being first and foremost stucture words.
> Thank you.
> Bert de Haan.
>
>
>
—
Albert Pietersma
Professor of Septuagint and Hellenistic Greek
Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
University of Toronto
Home: 21 Cross Street,
Weston ON Canada M9N 2B8
Email: albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Homepage: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~pietersm




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